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[[underline]] Chapter IX. [[/underline]] 166. [[underline]] CHAPTER IX. EXCAVATIONS IN SOUTHERN HONAN (concl.). [[/underline]] [[underline]] Permission to dig at the Lei Ku T'ai. [[/underline]] It was with some misgiving that we broached the subject of digging at the Lei Ku T'ai. For in addition to the probable objections that we had foreseen (see page 152), we learned that the mound played an important part in the local [[underline]] fêng-shui [[/underline]], being supposed to protect the town of Yu Ho Chên against maleficent influences coming from the north---the evil quarter according to Chinese geomancy. And to disregard the latter, we knew, was almost certain to bring on trouble. We found the local gentry, however, unexpectedly complaisant---or perhaps freer from superstition than most of their fellow-countrymen. Provided we undertook to pay for the growing barley that we might destroy in the course of our operations, they assured us that we might do as we liked at the mound. We lost no time in availing ourselves of their permission. [[underline]] Nature of the Site. [[/underline]] The mound differed in shape from the one that we had just excavated at the Wang Fên Wa; for though its present height, of almost exactly 20 feet above the surrounding ricefields, was approximately the same, its horizontal dimensions were far greater. It was also more irregular of outline. Like the mound at the Wang Fên Wa, however, it had been constructed not of [[underline]] terre pisée [[/underline]] but of earth loosely heaped together, containing objects of various periods and compacted only through the passage of time. The thought had occurred to me, indeed, that the Lei Ku T'ai, with its broad flattened top (see pl. [[strikethrough]] LXXIII), [[strikethrough]] ^[[28, fig. 1),]] might turn out not to be a grave-mound at all---that perhaps it was in reality an ancient habitation-site, raised in what had once been a swampy area (now one of irrigated rice-