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[underlined] Chapter XVI. [/underlined] 339. the old city moat; in it were wading in waistdeep water groups of excited and laughing men and boys, catching small fish in bottomless basket-traps of the kind already mentioned. [[superscript]] (305) [[/superscript]] ------------------- [[superscript]] (305) [[/superscript]] I have witnessed elsewhere in central and southern China also---especially in the province of Szechuan (where irrigated rice-culture is strongly developed)---the taking of fish in shallow water by this method; and I believe that it is employed in other parts of the world likewise. ------------------- A few rods north of the pond was a much eroded earthen rampart running in a due east-and-west direction and quite overgrown with bushes, weeds, sword grass, and a few low trees. With sloping sides, it was nowhere (save at its eastern end, to be discussed below) more than 10 feet in height; though its average basal thickness was from five to six times that figure. [[superscript]] (306) [[/superscript]] This old earthwork, according to the local peasantry, was ---------------- [[superscript]] (306) [[/superscript]] Ancient Chinese city-walls, made of earth as they were, usually had what at first glance seems a quite unnecessary thickness. The purpose of this was apparently to deter or at least impede efforts at mining by a besieging force. On this point, see pp. 89-92. Ying itself was taken, late in 506 B.C., by an attacking army from Wu, which dammed up the waters of a river and then released them suddenly, thus washing away enough of the rampart to effect a practicable breach. On this episode see Appendix II, pa^[[g]]e 14. As noted above (on page 91), the same device was sometimes employed in the Occident also. -------------------- the southern wall of ancient Ying (pl. 44, fig. 2). We mounted the rampart, and from its low summit could see that it enclosed a level space of no great extent. Its four faces, our informants told us, each measured only 3 [underlined] li [/underlined] (approximately a mile) in length. Thus the entire circuit of the earthwork that had once surrounded the now deserted city would be about 4 miles---a distance which agreed almost exactly with out own survey made at this time (see plan, fig. 56). As commonly the case with Chinese city-walls, ancient as well as more recent, the sides of the square faced the four cardinal points. We next made our way along the rampart to its aforementioned eastern