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[[underlined]] Chapter XV. [[/underlined]]   314.

Yü-hisang, the "Christian general", and his Kuo-min Chün [[3 Chinese characters]], or "People's Army". The wildest rumors became current in Peking, and we had to modify our plans almost from day to day. The Chinese troops more than once, in flat defiance of treaty stipulations, cut Peking entirely off from contact of any kind with the outside world; and on several occasions I store our Expedition's papers and valuables in the fortified Legation Quarter, for fear of their looting or destruction by unruly Chinese soldiery. 
     On Dec. 16th I learned that a detachment of U.S. Marines from the Legation Guard had gone out to T'ung Hsien [[2 Chinese characters]] (commonly known among foreigners as "Tungchow"), a dozen miles east of Peking and near the upper end of the Grand Canal, [[superscript]] (275) [[/superscript]] to protect the American school and chil-
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[[superscript]] (275) [[/superscript]]  The Grand Canal, called by the Chinese the Yü Ho [[2 Chinese characters]] ("Imperial River") or the Yün Ho [[2 Chinese Characters]] ("Transport River"), was not an engineering [[underlined]] tour de force, [[/underlined]] executed all at once. On the contrary, it was a slow and gradual development that went on, by fits and starts, during nearly two thousand years.
     The earliest portion, that connecting the Yangtze and the Huai Rivers, was dug early in the 5th century B.C. (just at the time when Xerxes was cutting his canal through the isthmus at Mount Athos in preparation for his invasion of Greece); its purpose being to permit the fleets of war-canoes (ancestors of the later "dragon-boats"; for a reference to the latter, [[underlined]] cf. [[/underlined]] note 176, on page 189) of the non-Chinese kingdom of Wu [[Chinese character]], at the mouth of the Yangtze River, to attack the Chinese states of the great northern plain without having first to incur the hazards of the sea-voyage up the coast from the mouth of the Yangtze to that of the Huai.
     Seventeen hundred years later, after the Sung Dynasty withdrew its capital southward to Hangchow (not far from the present Shanghai), the southern end of the Grand Canal was extended thither.
     Finally the Mongols, in the 13th century A. D., carried its northern end to their capital, Khanbaligh (Marco Polo's "Cambaluc"), on the site of Peking, to enable cargoes of tribute rice to reach the latter from South China without having to face the dangers of the sea-route, up along the coast and around the stormy Shantung promontory.
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dren there in case the town was sacked (as did happen a little later) by the approaching Shantung troops; for these had gained the reputation of being a particularly ill-disciplined and badly behaved lot, given to the perpetration of indescribable outrages and atrocities on non-combat-

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