182 FINDS ALONG THE CHINESE LIMES CH. XI
plentiful specimens picked up all along the Limes. But of special interest was a perfectly preserved wooden cover, provided with the seal socket and string grooves so familiar to me from the oblong wooden envelopes of the Niya site. As a small rim sunk on the under-surface of the cover proved, it had served as a lid to a small box which the Chinese inscription in fine big characters declared to have been "the medicine case belonging to the Hsien-ming company". I was glad to let this proof of early medical care figure at the exhibition arranged in 1912 at the Wellcome Medical Museum in London.
From the small lake where our first camp by the border wall had stood there extends a well-defined and very interesting portion of the Han Limes as far as the Khara-nor lake. The defensive line has here been carried across a succession of marshes and small lakes filling the depressions which descend from the gravel glacis in the south towards the Su-to-ho. Farther east it stretches along the wide lagoons and marshes into which the Su-lo-ho expands after leaving the Khara-nor as well as along this large lake itself. This alignment had with much care been chosen by the old Chinese engineers in order to supplement their line by natural defences, and thus to save labour in construction as well as effort in its protection. The Imperial edict which one of the previously mentioned documents from the sectional headquarters station on the south-western flank of the Limes quotes, had enjoined the governor of Su-chou "to examine the configuration of the places. Utilizing natural obstacles, a wall is to be constructed in order to exercise control at a distance."
Our survey of the Limes section extending from that small
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