THREE:"After the wrestling was over they had some fencing, which I liked much better, as there was more skill to it and less brutality. The fencers were announced in the same way as the other performers had been. They[Pg 232] wore large masks that protected their heads, and their fencing was with wooden swords or sticks, so that no harm was done. The game was for each to hit his adversary's head, and when this was done a point was scored for the man who made the hit. They did a good deal of shouting and snarling at each other, and sometimes their noise sounded more as if made by cats than by human beings. In other respects their fencing was very much like ours, and was very creditable to the parties engaged in it. One of the best fencers in the lot was a young girl. She wasn't more than sixteen years old, and she had arms strong enough for a man of thirty. The performance ended with the fencing, and then we went back to the hotel.""Oh, I know," answered Frank; "they are storks. I recognize them from the pictures I have seen on fans and screens. I'm sure they are storks."
THREE:"The Great Wall is certainly one of the wonders of the world, and it was very much so at the time of its construction. It was built two thousand[Pg 387] years ago, and is about twelve hundred miles long. It runs westward from the shores of the Gulf of Pe-chi-li to what was then the western frontier of the Chinese Empire. For the greater part of the way it consists of a wall of earth faced with stone or brick, and it is paved on the top with large tiles. It is about twenty-five feet wide at the bottom, and diminishes to fifteen feet wide at the top, with a height of thirty feet. In many places it is not so substantial as this, being nothing more than a wall of earth faced with brick, and not more than fifteen feet high. At varying intervals there are towers for watchmen and soldiers. They are generally forty or fifty feet high, and about three hundred feet apart.Frank had several fish-hooks in his pockets, and was determined not to be behind Fred in making a trade. His eye rested on a family group that was evidently returning from a fishing excursion; the man was carrying some fishing-tackle and a small bag, while the woman bore a basket of fish on her head and held a child to her breast. A boy six or eight years old was dragging a live tortoise by a string, and it occurred to Frank to free the tortoise from captivity.
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