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[[underline]] Chapter IX.  [[underline]]  168.

struck for higher wages; but mainly through the firm though conciliatory attitude of Mr. Tung, they returned to work cheerfully and with little loss of time.
An elderly member of the local gentry had told us that about 20 years before, somewhere about the present summit of the mound there had stood exposed a group of ruined structures---apparently, from his description, brick grave-vaults.  Of these we could find no present trace; either they had been covered entirely over, probably in order to level the spot for cultivation.  We deternined to learn whether the latter had been the case.  Hence, in the absence of surface indications, we started two exploratory trenches, from the northeast and the northwest respectively and converging upon the general area that our informant had pointed out to us (162).
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(162)
See plan, [[strikethrough pl. LXXXVII [[strikethrough]] ^fig. 39^ ( where the edges of these trenches are indicated by broken lines); also view, p. [[strikethrough]] LXXXVIII [[strikethrough]] 32, fig. 1.
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[[underline]] Character of the Soil at the Lei Ku T'ai.  [[underline]]
Our digging showed at once that the soil here was quite different in character from that at the Wang Fên Wa.  In place of the stiff and rather heavy red clay of the latter, it consisted in the main of a dark though likewise unstratified loam, loosely compacted for the first few inches down from the top.  Interspersed through this were deposits, often quite sharply defined, of a tough yellowish-gray clay, also without stratification.  Both loam and clay contained fragments of charcoal; small pockets of ash; and waterworn pebbles and cobbles, their presence