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[[underline]] Chapter XVI. [[/underline]] 343.

two gaps was that the second contained a path still in use, while the first did not.

[[underline]] Former City Moats. [[/underline]]
   During my study of the site I noted, a short distance outside the earthwork, a series of shallow depressions, now nearly silted up but still traceable all the way around the ancient city.  Their poorly defined inner edges were something like a dozen yards or so distan^[[t]] from the latter and exactly parallel to it save at the northeastern corner, where they did not bend inward as did the rampart itself, ([[strikethrough]] see page 340), [[/strikethrough]] but instead kept on in a direct line (see plan).
  These sight depressions were at the time of our visit partly under cultivation and partly overgrown with grass and bushes; but they undoubtedly represented the remains of the old city moat. So irregular were they, however, and so masked by vegetation, that we could form no adequate idea of their present outlines---much less, of the width and depth of the moat in its [[strikethrough]] present [[/strikethrough]] original state.
  Again, a few feet from the other or [[underlined]] inner [[/underlined]] side of the rampart but likewise extending all the way around the enclosure was a similar but narrower line of depressions. These however, like the rampart itself, did bend inward at the northeastern corner (see plan).
    This inner series of depressions could hardly, I thought, have been part of the old defensive scheme; for their interior position, behind the rampart instead of in front of it, would have robbed them of any practical protective value.  Possibly they represented traces of a former ditch intended merely for drainage (always, no doubt, a serious problem in a city so low-lying as was ancient Ying); or perhaps they were simply the remains of the excavations from which the builders of the rampart had obtained earth for its construction in the first place.