Sometimes they will say _no_, and in that case the journey is put off till such day as the astrologer may recommend. These astrologers are very skilful at their business, and often their words come to pass, so the people have great faith in them.
They burn the bodies of the dead. And when any one dies the friends and relations make a great mourning for the deceased, and clothe themselves in hempen garments,[NOTE 12] and follow the corpse playing on a variety of instruments and singing hymns to their idols. And when they come to the burning place, they take representations of things cut out of parchment, such as caparisoned horses, male and female slaves, camels, armour suits of cloth of gold (and money), in great quantities, and these things they put on the fire along with the corpse, so that they are all burnt with it. And they tell you that the dead man shall have all these slaves and animals of which the effigies are burnt, alive in flesh and blood, and the money in gold, at his disposal in the next world; and that the instruments which they have caused to be played at his funeral, and the idol hymns that have been chaunted, shall also be produced again to welcome him in the next world; and that the idols themselves will come to do him honour. [NOTE 13]
Furthermore there exists in this city the palace of the king who fled, him who was Emperor of Manzi, and that is the greatest palace in the world, as I shall tell you more particularly. For you must know its demesne hath a compass of ten miles, all enclosed with lofty battlemented walls; and inside the walls are the finest and most delectable gardens upon earth, and filled too with the finest fruits. There are numerous fountains in it also, and lakes full of fish. In the middle is the palace itself, a great and splendid building. It contains 20 great and handsome halls, one of which is more spacious than the rest, and affords room for a vast multitude to dine. It is all painted in gold, with many histories and representations of beasts and birds, of knights and dames, and many marvellous things. It forms a really magnificent spectacle, for over all the walls and all the ceiling you see nothing but paintings in gold. And besides these halls the palace contains 1000 large and handsome chambers, all painted in gold and divers colours.
Moreover, I must tell you that in this city there are 160 _tomans_ of fires, or in other words 160 _tomans_ of houses. Now I should tell you that the _toman_ is 10,000, so that you can reckon the total as altogether 1,600,000 houses, among which are a great number of rich palaces. There is one church only, belonging to the Nestorian Christians.
There is another thing I must tell you. It is the custom for every burgess of this city, and in fact for every description of person in it, to write over his door his own name, the name of his wife, and those of his children, his slaves, and all the inmates of his house, and also the number of animals that he keeps. And if any one dies in the house then the name of that person is erased, and if any child is born its name is added. So in this way the sovereign is able to know exactly the population of the city. And this is the practice also throughout all Manzi and Cathay. [NOTE 14]
[Illustration: Plan of the City of SI-NGAN-FU]
And I must tell you that every hosteler who keeps an hostel for travellers is bound to register their names and surnames, as well as the day and month of their arrival and departure. And thus the sovereign hath the means of knowing, whenever it pleases him, who come and go throughout his dominions. And certes this is a wise order and a provident.
NOTE 1.–Kinsay represents closely enough the Chinese term _King-sze_, “capital,” which was then applied to the great city, the proper name of which was at that time Lin-ngan and is now HANG-CHAU, as being since 1127 the capital of the Sung Dynasty. The same term _King-sze_ is now on Chinese maps generally used to designate Peking. It would seem, however, that the term adhered long as a quasi-proper name to Hang-chau; for in the Chinese Atlas, dating from 1595, which the traveller Carletti presented to the Magliabecchian Library, that city appears to be still marked with this name, transcribed by Carletti as _Camse_; very near the form _Campsay_ used by Marignolli in the 14th century.
[Illustration: The ancient Lun ho-ta Pagoda at Hang-chau.]
NOTE 2.–+The Ramusian version says: “Messer Marco Polo was frequently at this city, and took great pains to learn everything about it, writing down the whole in his notes.” The information being originally derived from a Chinese document, there might be some ground for supposing that 100 miles of circuit stood for 100 _li_. Yet the circuit of the modern city is stated in the official book called _Hang-chau Fu-Chi_ or topographical history of Hang-chau, at only 35 _li_. And the earliest record of the wall, as built under the Sui by Yang-su (before A.D. 606), makes its extent little more (36 _li_ and 90 paces.)[1] But the wall was reconstructed by Ts’ien Kiao, feudal prince of the region, during the reign of Chao Tsung, one of the last emperors of the T’ang Dynasty (892), so as to embrace the Luh-ho-ta Pagoda, on a high bluff over the Tsien-tang River,[2] 15 _li_ distant from the present south gate, and had then a circuit of 70 _li_. Moreover, in 1159, after the city became the capital of the Sung emperors, some further extension was given to it, so that, even exclusive of the suburbs, the circuit of the city may have been not far short of 100 _li_. When the city was in its glory under the Sung, the Luh-ho-ta Pagoda may be taken as marking the extreme S.W. Another known point marks approximately the chief north gate of that period, at a mile and a half or two miles beyond the present north wall. The S.E. angle was apparently near the river bank. But, on the other hand, the _waist_ of the city seems to have been a good deal narrower than it now is. Old descriptions compare its form to that of a slender-waisted drum (dice-box or hour-glass shape).
Under the Mongols the walls were allowed to decay; and in the disturbed years that closed that dynasty (1341-1368) they were rebuilt by an insurgent chief on a greatly reduced compass, probably that which they still retain. Whatever may have been the facts, and whatever the origin of the estimate, I imagine that the ascription of 100 miles of circuit to Kinsay had become popular among Westerns. Odoric makes the same statement. Wassaf calls it 24 parasangs, which will not be far short of the same amount. Ibn Batuta calls the _length_ of the city three days’ journey. Rashiduddin says the enceinte had a _diameter_ of 11 parasangs, and that there were three post stages between the two extremities of the city, which is probably what Ibn Batuta had heard. The _Masalak-al-Absar_ calls it _one_ day’s journey in length, and half a day’s journey in breadth. The enthusiastic Jesuit Martini tries hard to justify Polo in this as in other points of his description. We shall quote the whole of his remarks at the end of the chapters on Kinsay.
[Dr. F. Hirth, in a paper published in the _T’oung Pao_, V. pp. 386-390 (_Ueber den Shiffsverkehr von Kinsay zu Marco Polo’s Zeit_), has some interesting notes on the maritime trade of Hang-chau, collected from a work in twenty books, kept at the Berlin Royal Library, in which is to be found a description of Hang-chau under the title of _Meng-liang-lu_, published in 1274 by Wu Tzu-mu, himself a native of this city: there are various classes of sea-going vessels; large boats measuring 5000 _liao_ and carrying from five to six hundred passengers; smaller boats measuring from 2 to 1000 _liao_ and carrying from two to three hundred passengers; there are small fast boats called _tsuan-feng_, “wind breaker,” with six or eight oarsmen, which can carry easily 100 passengers, and are generally used for fishing; sampans are not taken into account. To start for foreign countries one must embark at Ts’wan-chau, and then go to the sea of Ts’i-chau (Paracels), through the Tai-hsue pass; coming back he must look to Kwen-lun (Pulo Condor).–H.C.]
The 12,000 bridges have been much carped at, and modern accounts of Hang-chau (desperately meagre as they are) do not speak of its bridges as notable. “There is, indeed,” says Mr. Kingsmill, speaking of changes in the hydrography about Hang-chau, “no trace in the city of the magnificent canals and bridges described by Marco Polo.” The number was no doubt in this case also a mere popular saw, and Friar Odoric repeats it. The sober and veracious John Marignolli, alluding apparently to their statements, and perhaps to others which have not reached us, says: “When authors tell of its ten thousand noble bridges of stone, adorned with sculptures and statues of armed princes, it passes the belief of one who has not been there, and yet peradventure these authors tell us no lie.” Wassaf speaks of 360 bridges only, but they make up in size what they lack in number, for they cross canals as big as the Tigris! Marsden aptly quotes in reference to this point excessively loose and discrepant statements from modern authors as to the number of bridges in Venice. The great _height_ of the arches of the canal bridges in this part of China is especially noticed by travellers. Barrow, quoted by Marsden, says: “Some have the piers of such an extraordinary height that the largest vessels of 200 tons sail under them without striking their masts.”
[Illustration: Plan of the Imperial City of Hangchow in the 13th Century. (From the Notes of the Right Rev. G.E. Moule.)]
Mr. Moule has added up the lists of bridges in the whole department (or _Fu_) and found them to amount to 848, and many of these even are now unknown, their approximate sites being given from ancient topographies. The number _represented_ in a large modern map of the city, which I owe to Mr. Moule’s kindness, is III.
NOTE 3.–Though Rubruquis (p. 292) says much the same thing, there is little trace of such an ordinance in modern China. Pere Parrenin observes: “As to the hereditary perpetuation of trades, it has never existed in China. On the contrary, very few Chinese will learn the trade of their fathers; and it is only necessity that ever constrains them to do so.” (_Lett. Edif._ XXIV. 40.) Mr. Moule remarks, however, that P. Parrenin is a little too absolute. Certain trades do run in families, even of the free classes of Chinese, not to mention the disfranchised boatmen, barbers, chair-coolies, etc. But, except in the latter cases, there is no compulsion, though the Sacred Edict goes to encourage the perpetuation of the family calling.
NOTE 4.–This sheet of water is the celebrated SI-HU, or “Western Lake,” the fame of which had reached Abulfeda, and which has raised the enthusiasm even of modern travellers, such as Barrow and Van Braam. The latter speaks of _three_ islands (and this the Chinese maps confirm), on each of which were several villas, and of causeways across the lake, paved and bordered with trees, and provided with numerous bridges for the passage of boats. Barrow gives a bright description of the lake, with its thousands of gay, gilt, and painted pleasure boats, its margins studded with light and fanciful buildings, its gardens of choice flowering shrubs, its monuments, and beautiful variety of scenery. None surpasses that of Martini, whom it is always pleasant to quote, but here he is too lengthy. The most recent description that I have met with is that of Mr. C. Gardner, and it is as enthusiastic as any. It concludes: “Even to us foreigners … the spot is one of peculiar attraction, but to the Chinese it is as a paradise.” The Emperor K’ien Lung had erected a palace on one of the islands in the lake; it was ruined by the T’ai-P’ings. Many of the constructions about the lake date from the flourishing days of the T’ang Dynasty, the 7th and 8th centuries.
Polo’s ascription of a circumference of 30 miles to the lake, corroborates the supposition that in the compass of the city a confusion had been made between miles and _li_, for Semedo gives the circuit of the lake really as 30 _li_. Probably the document to which Marco refers at the beginning of the chapter was seen by him in a Persian translation, in which _li_ had been rendered by _mil_. A Persian work of the same age, quoted by Quatremere (the _Nuzhat al-Kultub_, gives the circuit of the lake as six parasangs, or some 24 miles, a statement which probably had a like origin).
Polo says the lake was _within_ the city. This might be merely a loose way of speaking, but it may on the other hand be a further indication of the former existence of an extensive outer wall. The Persian author just quoted also speaks of the lake as within the city. (_Barrow’s Autobiog._, p. 104; _V. Braam_, II. 154; _Gardner_ in _Proc. of the R. Geog. Soc._, vol. xiii. p. 178; _Q. Rashid_, p. lxxxviii.) Mr. Moule states that popular oral tradition does enclose the lake within the walls, but he can find no trace of this in the Topographies.
Elsewhere Mr. Moule says: “Of the luxury of the (Sung) period, and its devotion to pleasure, evidence occurs everywhere. Hang-chow went at the time by the nickname of the melting-pot for money. The use, at houses of entertainment, of _linen and silver plate_ appears somewhat out of keeping in a Chinese picture. I cannot vouch for the linen, but here is the plate…. ‘The most famous Tea-houses of the day were the _Pa-seen_ (“8 genii”), the “Pure Delight”, the “Pearl”, the “House of the Pwan Family,” and the “Two and Two” and “Three and Three” houses (perhaps rather “Double honours” and “Treble honours”). In these places they always set out bouquets of fresh flowers, according to the season…. At the counter were sold “Precious thunder Tea”, Tea of fritters and onions, or else Pickle broth; and in hot weather wine of snow bubbles and apricot blossom, or other kinds of refrigerating liquor. _Saucers, ladles, and bowls were all of pure, silver_!’ (_Si-Hu-Chi_.)”
[Illustration: Plan of the Metropolitan City of Hangchow in the 13th Century. (From the Notes of the Right Rev. G.E. Moule.)
1-17, Gates; 18, _Ta-nuy_, Central Palace; 19, _Woo-Foo_, The Five Courts; 20, _T’ai Miao_, The Imperial Temple; 21, _Fung-hwang shan_, Phoenix Hill; 22, _Shih fuh she_, Monastery of the Sacred Fruit; 25-30, Gates; 31, _T’ien tsung yen tsang_ T’ien tsung Salt Depot; 2, _T’ien tsung tsew koo_, T’ien tsung Wine Store; 33, _Chang she_, The Chang Monastery; 34, _Foo che_, Prefecture; _Foo hio_, Prefectural Confucian Temple.]
NOTE 5.–This is still the case: “The people of Hang-chow dress gaily, and are remarkable among the Chinese for their dandyism. All, except the lowest labourers and coolies, strutted about in dresses composed of silk, satin, and crape…. ‘Indeed’ (said the Chinese servants) ‘one can never tell a rich man in Hang-chow, for it is just possible that all he possesses in the world is on his back.'” (_Fortune_, II. 20.) “The silk manufactures of Hang-chau are said to give employment to 60,000 persons within the city walls, and Hu-chau, Kia-hing, and the surrounding villages, are reputed to employ 100,000 more.” (_Ningpo Trade Report_, January 1869, comm. by Mr. N. B. Dennys.) The store-towers, as a precaution in case of fire, are still common both in China and Japan.
NOTE 6.–Mr. Gardner found in this very city, in 1868, a large collection of cottages covering several acres, which were “erected, after the taking of the city from the rebels, by a Chinese charitable society for the refuge of the blind, sick, and infirm.” This asylum sheltered 200 blind men with their families, amounting to 800 souls; basket-making and such work was provided for them; there were also 1200 other inmates, aged and infirm; and doctors were maintained to look after them. “None are allowed to be absolutely idle, but all help towards their own sustenance.” (_Proc. R.G.Soc._ XIII. 176-177.) Mr. Moule, whilst abating somewhat from the colouring of this description, admits the establishment to be a considerable charitable effort. It existed before the rebellion, as I see in the book of Mr. Milne, who gives interesting details on such Chinese charities. (_Life in China_, pp. 46 seqq.)
NOTE 7.–The paved roads of Manzi are by no means extinct yet. Thus, Mr. Fortune, starting from Chang-shan (see below, ch. lxxix.) in the direction of the Black-Tea mountains, says: “The road on which we were travelling was well paved with granite, about 12 feet in width, and perfectly free from weeds.” (II. 148). Garnier, Sladen, and Richthofen speak of well-paved roads in Yun-Nan and Sze-ch’wan.
The Topography quoted by Mr. Moule says that in the year 1272 the Governor renewed the pavement of the Imperial road (or Main Street), “after which nine cars might move abreast over a way perfectly smooth, and straight as an arrow.” In the Mongol time the people were allowed to encroach on this grand street.
NOTE 8.–There is a curious discrepancy in the account of these baths. Pauthier’s text does not say whether they are hot baths or cold. The latter sentence, beginning, “They are hot baths” (_estuves_), is from the G. Text. And Ramusio’s account is quite different: “There are numerous baths of cold water, provided with plenty of attendants, male and female, to assist the visitors of the two sexes in the bath. For the people are used from their childhood to bathe in cold water at all seasons, and they reckon it a very wholesome custom. But in the bath-houses they have also certain chambers furnished with hot water, for foreigners who are unaccustomed to cold bathing, and cannot bear it. The people are used to bathe daily, and do not eat without having done so.” This is in contradiction with the notorious Chinese horror of cold water for any purpose.
A note from Mr. C. Gardner says: “There are numerous public baths at Hang-chau, as at every Chinese city I have ever been in. In my experience natives always take _hot_ baths. But only the poorer classes go to the public baths; the tradespeople and middle classes are generally supplied by the bath-houses with hot water at a moderate charge.”
NOTE 9.–The estuary of the Ts’ien T’ang, or river of Hang-chau, has undergone great changes since Polo’s day. The sea now comes up much nearer the city; and the upper part of the Bay of Hang-chau is believed to cover what was once the site of the port and town of KANP’U, the Ganpu of the text. A modern representative of the name still subsists, a walled town, and one of the depots for the salt which is so extensively manufactured on this coast; but the present port of Hang-chau, and till recently the sole seat of Chinese trade with Japan, is at _Chapu_, some 20 miles further seaward.
It is supposed by Klaproth that KANP’U was the port frequented by the early Arab voyagers, and of which they speak under the name of _Khanfu_, confounding in their details Hang-chau itself with the port. Neumann dissents from this, maintaining that the Khanfu of the Arabs was certainly Canton. Abulfeda, however, states expressly that Khanfu was known in his day as _Khansa_ (i.e. Kinsay), and he speaks of its lake of fresh water called _Sikhu_ (Si-hu). [Abulfeda has in fact two Khanqu (Khanfu): Khansa with the lake which is Kinsay, and one Khanfu which is probably Canton. (See _Guyard’s transl._, II., ii., 122-124.)–H.C.] There seems to be an indication in Chinese records that a southern branch of the Great Kiang once entered the sea at Kanp’u; the closing of it is assigned to the 7th century, or a little later.
[Dr. F. Hirth writes (_Jour. Roy. As. Soc._, 1896, pp. 68-69): “For centuries Canton must have been the only channel through which foreign trade was permitted; for it is not before the year 999 that we read of the appointment of Inspectors of Trade at Hang-chou and Ming-chou. The latter name is identified with Ning-po.” Dr. Hirth adds in a note: “This is in my opinion the principal reason why the port of _Khanfu_, mentioned by the earliest Muhammadan travellers, or authors (Soleiman, Abu Zeid, and Macoudi), cannot be identified with Hang-chou. The report of Soleiman, who first speaks of _Khanfu_, was written in 851, and in those days Canton was apparently the only port open to foreign trade. Marco Polo’s _Ganfu_ is a different port altogether, viz. _Kan-fu_, or _Kan-pu_, near Hang-chou, and should not be confounded with _Khanfu_.”–H.C.]
The changes of the Great Kiang do not seem to have attracted so much attention among the Chinese as those of the dangerous Hwang-Ho, nor does their history seem to have been so carefully recorded. But a paper of great interest on the subject was published by Mr. Edkins, in the _Journal of the North China Branch of the R.A.S._ for September 1860 [pp. 77-84], which I know only by an abstract given by the late Comte d’Escayrac de Lauture. From this it would seem that about the time of our era the Yang-tzu Kiang had three great mouths. The most southerly of these was the Che-Kiang, which is said to have given its name to the Province still so called, of which Hang-chau is the capital. This branch quitted the present channel at Chi-chau, passed by Ning-Kwe and Kwang-te, communicating with the southern end of a great group of lakes which occupied the position of the T’ai-Hu, and so by Shih-men and T’ang-si into the sea not far from Shao-hing. The second branch quitted the main channel at Wu-hu, passed by I-hing (or I-shin) communicating with the northern end of the T’ai-Hu (passed apparently by Su-chau), and then bifurcated, one arm entering the sea at Wu-sung, and the other at Kanp’u. The third, or northerly branch is that which forms the present channel of the Great Kiang. These branches are represented hypothetically on the sketch-map attached to ch. lxiv. supra.
(_Kingsmill_, u.s. p. 53; _Chin. Repos._ III. 118; _Middle Kingdom_, I. 95-106; _Buerck._ p. 483; _Cathay_, p. cxciii.; _J.N.Ch.Br.R.A.S._, December 1865, p. 3 seqq.; _Escayrac de Lauture, Mem. sur la Chine, H. du Sol_, p. 114.)
NOTE 10.–Pauthier’s text has: “_Chascun Roy fait chascun an le compte de son royaume aux comptes du grant siege_,” where I suspect the last word is again a mistake for _sing_ or _scieng_. (See supra, Bk. II. ch. xxv., note 1.) It is interesting to find Polo applying the term _king_ to the viceroys who ruled the great provinces; Ibn Batuta uses a corresponding expression, _sultan_. It is not easy to make out the nine kingdoms or great provinces into which Polo considered Manzi to be divided. Perhaps his _nine_ is after all merely a traditional number, for the “Nine Provinces” was an ancient synonym for China proper, just as _Nau-Khanda_, with like meaning, was an ancient name of India. (See _Cathay_, p. cxxxix. _note_; and _Reinaud, Inde_, p. 116.) But I observe that on the portage road between Chang-shan and Yuh-shan (infra, p. 222) there are stone pillars inscribed “Highway (from Che-kiang) to Eight Provinces,” thus indicating Nine. (_Milne_, p. 319.)
NOTE 11.–We have in Ramusio: “The men levied in the province of Manzi are not placed in garrison in their own cities, but sent to others at least 20 days’ journey from their homes; and there they serve for four or five years, after which they are relieved. This applies both to the Cathayans and to those of Manzi.
“The great bulk of the revenue of the cities, which enters the exchequer of the Great Kaan, is expended in maintaining these garrisons. And if perchance any city rebel (as you often find that under a kind of madness or intoxication they rise and murder their governors), as soon as it is known, the adjoining cities despatch such large forces from their garrisons that the rebellion is entirely crushed. For it would be too long an affair if troops from Cathay had to be waited for, involving perhaps a delay of two months.”
NOTE 12.–“The sons of the dead, wearing hempen clothes as badges of mourning, kneel down,” etc. (_Doolittle_, p. 138.)
NOTE 13.–These practices have been noticed, supra, Bk. I. ch. xl.
NOTE 14.–This custom has come down to modern times. In Pauthier’s _Chine Moderne_, we find extracts from the statutes of the reigning dynasty and the comments thereon, of which a passage runs thus: “To determine the exact population of each province the governor and the lieutenant-governor cause certain persons who are nominated as _Pao-kia_, or Tithing-Men, in all the places under their jurisdiction, to add up the figures inscribed on the wooden tickets attached to the doors of houses, and exhibiting the number of the inmates” (p. 167).
Friar Odoric calls the number of fires 89 _tomans_; but says 10 or 12 households would unite to have one fire only!
[1] In the first edition, my best authority on this matter was a lecture on the city by the late Rev. D.D. Green, an American Missionary at Ningpo, which is printed in the November and December numbers for 1869 of the (Fuchau) _Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal_. In the present (second) edition I have on this, and other points embraced in this and the following chapters, benefited largely by the remarks of the Right Rev. G.E. Moule of the Ch. Mission. Soc., now residing at Hang-chau. These are partly contained in a paper (_Notes on Colonel Yule’s Edition of Marco Polo’s ‘Quinsay’_) read before the North China Branch of the R.A.Soc. at Shang-hai in December 1873 [published in New Series, No. IX. of the _Journal N.C.B.R.A.Soc._], of which a proof has been most kindly sent to me by Mr. Moule, and partly in a special communication, both forwarded through Mr. A. Wylie. [See also _Notes on Hangchow Past and Present_, a paper read in 1889 by Bishop G.E. Moule at a Meeting of the Hangchau Missionary Association, at whose request it was compiled, and subsequently printed for private circulation.–H.C.]
[2] The building of the present Luh-ho-ta (“Six Harmonies Tower”), after repeated destructions by fire, is recorded on a fine tablet of the Sung period, still standing (_Moule_).
CHAPTER LXXVII.
[FURTHER PARTICULARS CONCERNING THE GREAT CITY OF KINSAY.[NOTE 1]]
[The position of the city is such that it has on one side a lake of fresh and exquisitely clear water (already spoken of), and on the other a very large river. The waters of the latter fill a number of canals of all sizes which run through the different quarters of the city, carry away all impurities, and then enter the Lake; whence they issue again and flow to the Ocean, thus producing a most excellent atmosphere. By means of these channels, as well as by the streets, you can go all about the city. Both streets and canals are so wide and spacious that carts on the one and boats on the other can readily pass to and fro, conveying necessary supplies to the inhabitants.[NOTE 2]
At the opposite side the city is shut in by a channel, perhaps 40 miles in length, very wide, and full of water derived from the river aforesaid, which was made by the ancient kings of the country in order to relieve the river when flooding its banks. This serves also as a defence to the city, and the earth dug from it has been thrown inwards, forming a kind of mound enclosing the city.[NOTE 3]
In this part are the ten principal markets, though besides these there are a vast number of others in the different parts of the town. The former are all squares of half a mile to the side, and along their front passes the main street, which is 40 paces in width, and runs straight from end to end of the city, crossing many bridges of easy and commodious approach. At every four miles of its length comes one of those great squares of 2 miles (as we have mentioned) in compass. So also parallel to this great street, but at the back of the market places, there runs a very large canal, on the bank of which towards the squares are built great houses of stone, in which the merchants from India and other foreign parts store their wares, to be handy for the markets. In each of the squares is held a market three days in the week, frequented by 40,000 or 50,000 persons, who bring thither for sale every possible necessary of life, so that there is always an ample supply of every kind of meat and game, as of roebuck, red-deer, fallow-deer, hares, rabbits, partridges, pheasants, francolins, quails, fowls, capons, and of ducks and geese an infinite quantity; for so many are bred on the Lake that for a Venice groat of silver you can have a couple of geese and two couple of ducks. Then there are the shambles where the larger animals are slaughtered, such as calves, beeves, kids, and lambs, the flesh of which is eaten by the rich and the great dignitaries. [NOTE 4]
Those markets make a daily display of every kind of vegetables and fruits; and among the latter there are in particular certain pears of enormous size, weighing as much as ten pounds apiece, and the pulp of which is white and fragrant like a confection; besides peaches in their season both yellow and white, of every delicate flavour.[NOTE 5]
Neither grapes nor wine are produced there, but very good raisins are brought from abroad, and wine likewise. The natives, however, do not much care about wine, being used to that kind of their own made from rice and spices. From the Ocean Sea also come daily supplies of fish in great quantity, brought 25 miles up the river, and there is also great store of fish from the lake, which is the constant resort of fishermen, who have no other business. Their fish is of sundry kinds, changing with the season; and, owing to the impurities of the city which pass into the lake, it is remarkably fat and savoury. Any one who should see the supply of fish in the market would suppose it impossible that such a quantity could ever be sold; and yet in a few hours the whole shall be cleared away; so great is the number of inhabitants who are accustomed to delicate living. Indeed they eat fish and flesh at the same meal.
All the ten market places are encompassed by lofty houses, and below these are shops where all sorts of crafts are carried on, and all sorts of wares are on sale, including spices and jewels and pearls. Some of these shops are entirely devoted to the sale of wine made from rice and spices, which is constantly made fresh and fresh, and is sold very cheap.
Certain of the streets are occupied by the women of the town, who are in such a number that I dare not say what it is. They are found not only in the vicinity of the market places, where usually a quarter is assigned to them, but all over the city. They exhibit themselves splendidly attired and abundantly perfumed, in finely garnished houses, with trains of waiting-women. These women are extremely accomplished in all the arts of allurement, and readily adapt their conversation to all sorts of persons, insomuch that strangers who have once tasted their attractions seem to get bewitched, and are so taken with their blandishments and their fascinating ways that they never can get these out of their heads. Hence it comes to pass that when they return home they say they have been to Kinsay or the City of Heaven, and their only desire is to get back thither as soon as possible.[NOTE 6]
Other streets are occupied by the Physicians, and by the Astrologers, who are also teachers of reading and writing; and an infinity of other professions have their places round about those squares. In each of the squares there are two great palaces facing one another, in which are established the officers appointed by the King to decide differences arising between merchants, or other inhabitants of the quarter. It is the daily duty of these officers to see that the guards are at their posts on the neighbouring bridges, and to punish them at their discretion if they are absent.
All along the main street that we have spoken of, as running from end to end of the city, both sides are lined with houses and great palaces and the gardens pertaining to them, whilst in the intervals are the houses of tradesmen engaged in their different crafts. The crowd of people that you meet here at all hours, passing this way and that on their different errands, is so vast that no one would believe it possible that victuals enough could be provided for their consumption, unless they should see how, on every market-day, all those squares are thronged and crammed with purchasers, and with the traders who have brought in stores of provisions by land or water; and everything they bring in is disposed of.
To give you an example of the vast consumption in this city let us take the article of _pepper_; and that will enable you in some measure to estimate what must be the quantity of victual, such as meat, wine, groceries, which have to be provided for the general consumption. Now Messer Marco heard it stated by one of the Great Kaan’s officers of customs that the quantity of pepper introduced daily for consumption into the city of Kinsay amounted to 43 loads, each load being equal to 223 lbs. [NOTE 7]
The houses of the citizens are well built and elaborately finished; and the delight they take in decoration, in painting and in architecture, leads them to spend in this way sums of money that would astonish you.
The natives of the city are men of peaceful character, both from education and from the example of their kings, whose disposition was the same. They know nothing of handling arms, and keep none in their houses. You hear of no feuds or noisy quarrels or dissensions of any kind among them. Both in their commercial dealings and in their manufactures they are thoroughly honest and truthful, and there is such a degree of good will and neighbourly attachment among both men and women that you would take the people who live in the same street to be all one family.[NOTE 8]
And this familiar intimacy is free from all jealousy or suspicion of the conduct of their women. These they treat with the greatest respect, and a man who should presume to make loose proposals to a married woman would be regarded as an infamous rascal. They also treat the foreigners who visit them for the sake of trade with great cordiality, and entertain them in the most winning manner, affording them every help and advice on their business. But on the other hand they hate to see soldiers, and not least those of the Great Kaan’s garrisons, regarding them as the cause of their having lost their native kings and lords.
On the Lake of which we have spoken there are numbers of boats and barges of all sizes for parties of pleasure. These will hold 10, 15, 20, or more persons, and are from 15 to 20 paces in length, with flat bottoms and ample breadth of beam, so that they always keep their trim. Any one who desires to go a-pleasuring with the women, or with a party of his own sex, hires one of these barges, which are always to be found completely furnished with tables and chairs and all the other apparatus for a feast. The roof forms a level deck, on which the crew stand, and pole the boat along whithersoever may be desired, for the Lake is not more than 2 paces in depth. The inside of this roof and the rest of the interior is covered with ornamental painting in gay colours, with windows all round that can be shut or opened, so that the party at table can enjoy all the beauty and variety of the prospects on both sides as they pass along. And truly a trip on this Lake is a much more charming recreation than can be enjoyed on land. For on the one side lies the city in its entire length, so that the spectators in the barges, from the distance at which they stand, take in the whole prospect in its full beauty and grandeur, with its numberless palaces, temples, monasteries, and gardens, full of lofty trees, sloping to the shore. And the Lake is never without a number of other such boats, laden with pleasure parties; for it is the great delight of the citizens here, after they have disposed of the day’s business, to pass the afternoon in enjoyment with the ladies of their families, or perhaps with others less reputable, either in these barges or in driving about the city in carriages.[NOTE 9]
Of these latter we must also say something, for they afford one mode of recreation to the citizens in going about the town, as the boats afford another in going about the Lake. In the main street of the city you meet an infinite succession of these carriages passing to and fro. They are long covered vehicles, fitted with curtains and cushions, and affording room for six persons; and they are in constant request for ladies and gentlemen going on parties of pleasure. In these they drive to certain gardens, where they are entertained by the owners in pavilions erected on purpose, and there they divert themselves the livelong day, with their ladies, returning home in the evening in those same carriages.[NOTE 10]
(FURTHER PARTICULARS OF THE PALACE OF THE KING FACFUR.)
The whole enclosure of the Palace was divided into three parts. The middle one was entered by a very lofty gate, on each side of which there stood on the ground-level vast pavilions, the roofs of which were sustained by columns painted and wrought in gold and the finest azure. Opposite the gate stood the chief Pavilion, larger than the rest, and painted in like style, with gilded columns, and a ceiling wrought in splendid gilded sculpture, whilst the walls were artfully painted with the stories of departed kings.
On certain days, sacred to his gods, the King Facfur[1] used to hold a great court and give a feast to his chief lords, dignitaries, and rich manufacturers of the city of Kinsay. On such occasions those pavilions used to give ample accommodation for 10,000 persons sitting at table. This court lasted for ten or twelve days, and exhibited an astonishing and incredible spectacle in the magnificence of the guests, all clothed in silk and gold, with a profusion of precious stones; for they tried to outdo each other in the splendour and richness of their appointments. Behind this great Pavilion that faced the great gate, there was a wall with a passage in it shutting off the inner part of the Palace. On entering this you found another great edifice in the form of a cloister surrounded by a portico with columns, from which opened a variety of apartments for the King and the Queen, adorned like the outer walls with such elaborate work as we have mentioned. From the cloister again you passed into a covered corridor, six paces in width, of great length, and extending to the margin of the lake. On either side of this corridor were ten courts, in the form of oblong cloisters surrounded by colonnades; and in each cloister or court were fifty chambers with gardens to each. In these chambers were quartered one thousand young ladies in the service of the King. The King would sometimes go with the Queen and some of these maidens to take his diversion on the Lake, or to visit the Idol-temples, in boats all canopied with silk.
The other two parts of the enclosure were distributed in groves, and lakes, and charming gardens planted with fruit-trees, and preserves for all sorts of animals, such as roe, red-deer, fallow-deer, hares, and rabbits. Here the King used to take his pleasure in company with those damsels of his; some in carriages, some on horseback, whilst no man was permitted to enter. Sometimes the King would set the girls a-coursing after the game with dogs, and when they were tired they would hie to the groves that overhung the lakes, and leaving their clothes there they would come forth naked and enter the water and swim about hither and thither, whilst it was the King’s delight to watch them; and then all would return home. Sometimes the King would have his dinner carried to those groves, which were dense with lofty trees, and there would be waited on by those young ladies. And thus he passed his life in this constant dalliance with women, without so much as knowing what _arms_ meant! And the result of all this cowardice and effeminacy was that he lost his dominion to the Great Kaan in that base and shameful way that you have heard.[NOTE 11]
All this account was given me by a very rich merchant of Kinsay when I was in that city. He was a very old man, and had been in familiar intimacy with the King Facfur, and knew the whole history of his life; and having seen the Palace in its glory was pleased to be my guide over it. As it is occupied by the King appointed by the Great Kaan, the first pavilions are still maintained as they used to be, but the apartments of the ladies are all gone to ruin and can only just be traced. So also the wall that enclosed the groves and gardens is fallen down, and neither trees nor animals are there any longer.[NOTE 12]]
NOTE 1.–I have, after some consideration, followed the example of Mr. H. Murray, in his edition of _Marco Polo_, in collecting together in a separate chapter a number of additional particulars concerning the Great City, which are only found in Ramusio. Such of these as could be interpolated in the text of the older form of the narrative have been introduced between brackets in the last chapter. Here I bring together those particulars which could not be so interpolated without taking liberties with one or both texts.
The picture in Ramusio, taken as a whole, is so much more brilliant, interesting, and complete than in the older texts, that I thought of substituting it entirely for the other. But so much doubt and difficulty hangs over _some_ passages of the Ramusian version that I could not satisfy myself of the propriety of this, though I feel that the dismemberment inflicted on that version is also objectionable.
NOTE 2.–The tides in the Hang-chau estuary are now so furious, entering in the form of a bore, and running sometimes, by Admiral Collinson’s measurement, 11-1/2 knots, that it has been necessary to close by weirs the communication which formerly existed between the River Tsien-tang on the one side and the Lake Si-hu and internal waters of the district on the other. Thus all cargoes are passed through the small city canal in barges, and are subject to transhipment at the river-bank, and at the great canal terminus outside the north gate, respectively. Mr. Kingsmill, to whose notices I am indebted for part of this information, is, however, mistaken in supposing that in Polo’s time the tide stopped some 20 miles below the city. We have seen (note 6, ch. lxv. supra) that the tide in the river before Kinsay was the object which first attracted the attention of Bayan, after his triumphant entrance into the city. The tides reach Fuyang, 20 miles higher. (_N. and Q., China and Japan_, vol. I. p. 53; _Mid. Kingd._ I. 95, 106; _J.N.Ch.Br.R.A.S._, December, 1865, p. 6; _Milne_, p. 295; _Note_ by _Mr. Moule_).
[Miss E. Scidmore writes (_China_, p. 294): “There are only three wonders of the world in China–The Demons at Tungchow, the Thunder at Lungchow, and the Great Tide at Hangchow, the last, the greatest of all, and a living wonder to this day of ‘the open door,’ while its rivals are lost in myth and oblivion…. The Great Bore charges up the narrowing river at a speed of ten and thirteen miles an hour, with a roar that can be heard for an hour before it arrives.”–H.C.]
NOTE 3.–For satisfactory elucidation as to what is or may have been authentic in these statements, we shall have to wait for a correct survey of Hang-chau and its neighbourhood. We have already seen strong reason to suppose that _miles_ have been substituted for _li_ in the circuits assigned both to the city and to the lake, and we are yet more strongly impressed with the conviction that the same substitution has been made here in regard to the canal on the east of the city, as well as the streets and market-places spoken of in the next paragraph.
Chinese plans of Hang-chau do show a large canal encircling the city on the east and north, i.e., on the sides away from the lake. In some of them this is represented like a ditch to the rampart, but in others it is more detached. And the position of the main street, with its parallel canal, does answer fairly to the account in the next paragraph, setting aside the extravagant dimensions.
The existence of the squares or market-places is alluded to by Wassaf in a passage that we shall quote below; and the _Masalak-al-Absar_ speaks of the main street running from end to end of the city.
On this Mr. Moule says: “I have found no certain account of market-squares, though the _Fang_,[2] of which a few still exist, and a very large number are laid down in the Sung Map, mainly grouped along the chief street, may perhaps represent them…. The names of some of these (_Fang_) and of the _Sze_ or markets still remain.”
Mr. Wylie sent Sir Henry Yule a tracing of the figures mentioned in the footnote; it is worth while to append them, at least in _diagram_.
No 1. No 2. No 3.
++ ++ ++
|———–| |———–| |—–|——|——| | | | | | | | a | |
+| | |+ +| |+ +|—–+——+——|+ +|—–+—–|+ +|———–|+ +| | | |+ | | | | | | | b | |
| | | | | +|—–+——+——|+ |———–| |———–| +| | | |+ ++ | | c | |
|—–|——|——| ++ ++
No. 1. Plan of a _Fang_ or Square.
No. 2. Plan of a _Fang_ or Square in the South of the Imperial City of Si-ngan fu.
No. 3. Arrangement of Two-Fang Square, with four streets and 8 gates. a. The Market place.
b. The Official Establishment.
c. Office for regulating Weights.
Compare Polo’s statement that in each of the squares at Kinsay, where the markets were held, there were two great Palaces facing one another, in which were established the officers who decided differences between merchants, etc.
The double lines represent streets, and the ++ are gates.
NOTE 4.–There is no mention of _pork_, the characteristic animal food of China, and the only one specified by Friar Odoric in his account of the same city. Probably Mark may have got a little _Saracenized_ among the Mahomedans at the Kaan’s Court, and doubted if ’twere good manners to mention it. It is perhaps a relic of the same feeling, gendered by Saracen rule, that in Sicily pigs are called _i neri_.
“The larger game, red-deer and fallow-deer, is now never seen for sale. Hog-deer, wild-swine, pheasants, water-fowl, and every description of ‘vermin’ and small birds, are exposed for sale, not now in markets, but at the retail wine shops. Wild-cats, racoons, otters, badgers, kites, owls, etc., etc., festoon the shop fronts along with game.” (_Moule_.)
NOTE 5.–Van Braam, in passing through Shan-tung Province, speaks of very large pears. “The colour is a beautiful golden yellow. Before it is pared the pear is somewhat hard, but in eating it the juice flows, the pulp melts, and the taste is pleasant enough.” Williams says these Shan-tung pears are largely exported, but he is not so complimentary to them as Polo: “The pears are large and juicy, sometimes weighing 8 or 10 pounds, but remarkably tasteless and coarse.” (_V. Braam_, II. 33-34; _Mid. Kingd._, I. 78 and II. 44). In the beginning of 1867 I saw pears in Covent Garden Market which I should guess to have weighed 7 or 8 lbs. each. They were priced at 18 guineas a dozen!
[“Large pears are nowadays produced in Shan-tung and Manchuria, but they are rather tasteless and coarse. I am inclined to suppose that Polo’s large pears were Chinese quinces, _Cydonia chinensis_, Thouin, this fruit being of enormous size, sometimes one foot long, and very fragrant. The Chinese use it for sweet-meats.” (_Bretschneider, Hist. of Bot. Disc._ I. p. 2.)–H.C.]
As regards the “yellow and white” peaches, Marsden supposes the former to be apricots. Two kinds of peach, correctly so described, are indeed common in Sicily, where I write;–and both are, in their raw state, equally good food for _i neri_! But I see Mr. Moule also identifies the yellow peach with “the _hwang-mei_ or clingstone apricot,” as he knows no yellow peach in China.
NOTE 6.–“_E non veggono mai l’ora che di nuovo possano ritornarvi;_” a curious Italian idiom. (See _Vocab. It. Univ._ sub. v. “_vedere_”.)
NOTE 7.–It would seem that the habits of the Chinese in reference to the use of pepper and such spices have changed. Besides this passage, implying that their consumption of pepper was large, Marco tells us below (ch. lxxxii.) that for one shipload of pepper carried to Alexandria for the consumption of Christendom, a hundred went to Zayton in Manzi. At the present day, according to Williams, the Chinese use little spice; pepper chiefly as a febrifuge in the shape of _pepper-tea_, and that even less than they did some years ago. (See p. 239, infra, and _Mid. Kingd._, II. 46, 408.) On this, however, Mr. Moule observes: “Pepper is not so completely relegated to the doctors. A month or two ago, passing a portable cookshop in the city, I heard a girl-purchaser cry to the cook, ‘Be sure you put in _pepper and leeks!_'”
NOTE 8.–Marsden, after referring to the ingenious frauds commonly related of Chinese traders, observes: “In the long continued intercourse that has subsisted between the agents of the European companies and the more eminent of the Chinese merchants … complaints on the ground of commercial unfairness have been extremely rare, and on the contrary, their transactions have been marked with the most perfect good faith and mutual confidence.” Mr. Consul Medhurst bears similar strong testimony to the upright dealings of Chinese merchants. His remark that, as a rule, he has found that the Chinese deteriorate by intimacy with foreigners is worthy of notice;[3] it is a remark capable of application wherever the East and West come into habitual contact. Favourable opinions among the nations on their frontiers of Chinese dealing, as expressed to Wood and Burnes in Turkestan, and to Macleod and Richardson in Laos, have been quoted by me elsewhere in reference to the old classical reputation of the Seres for integrity. Indeed, Marco’s whole account of the people here might pass for an expanded paraphrase of the Latin commonplaces regarding the Seres. Mr. Milne, a missionary for many years in China, stands up manfully against the wholesale disparagement or Chinese character (p. 401).
NOTE 9.–Semedo and Martini, in the 17th century, give a very similar account of the Lake Si-hu, the parties of pleasure frequenting it, and their gay barges. (_Semedo_, pp. 20-21; _Mart._ p. 9.) But here is a Chinese picture of the very thing described by Marco, under the Sung Dynasty: “When Yaou Shunming was Prefect of Hangchow, there was an old woman, who said she was formerly a singing-girl, and in the service of Tung-p’o Seen-sheng.[4] She related that her master, whenever he found a leisure day in spring, would invite friends to take their pleasure on the lake. They used to take an early meal on some agreeable spot, and, the repast over, a chief was chosen for the company of each barge, who called a number of dancing-girls to follow them to any place they chose. As the day waned a gong sounded to assemble all once more at ‘Lake Prospect Chambers,’ or at the ‘Bamboo Pavilion,’ or some place of the kind, where they amused themselves to the top of their bent, and then, at the first or second drum, before the evening market dispersed, returned home by candle-light. In the city, gentlemen and ladies assembled in crowds, lining the way to see the return of the thousand Knights. It must have been a brave spectacle of that time.” (_Moule_, from the _Si-hu-Chi_, or “Topography of the West Lake.”) It is evident, from what Mr. Moule says, that this book abounds in interesting illustration of these two chapters of Polo. Barges with paddle-wheels are alluded to.
NOTE 10.–Public carriages are still used in the great cities of the north, such as Peking. Possibly this is a revival. At one time carriages appear to have been much more general in China than they were afterwards, or are now. Semedo says they were abandoned in China just about the time that they were adopted in Europe, viz. in the 16th century. And this disuse seems to have been either cause or effect of the neglect of the roads, of which so high an account is given in old times. (_Semedo; N. and Q. Ch. and Jap._ I. 94.)
Deguignes describes the public carriages of Peking, as “shaped like a palankin, but of a longer form, with a rounded top, lined outside and in with coarse blue cloth, and provided with black cushions” (I. 372). This corresponds with our author’s description, and with a drawing by Alexander among his published sketches. The present Peking cab is evidently the same vehicle, but smaller.
NOTE 11.–The character of the King of Manzi here given corresponds to that which the Chinese histories assign to the Emperor Tu-Tsong, in whose time Kublai commenced his enterprise against Southern China, but who died two years before the fall of the capital. He is described as given up to wine and women, and indifferent to all public business, which he committed to unworthy ministers. The following words, quoted by Mr. Moule from the _Hang-Chau Fu-Chi_, are like an echo of Marco’s: “In those days the dynasty was holding on to a mere corner of the realm, hardly able to defend even that; and nevertheless all, high and low, devoted themselves to dress and ornament, to music and dancing on the lake and amongst the hills, with no idea of sympathy for the country.” A garden called Tseu-king (“of many prospects”) near the Tsing-po Gate, and a monastery west of the lake, near the Lingin, are mentioned as pleasure haunts of the Sung Kings.
NOTE 12.–The statement that the palace of Kingsze was occupied by the Great Kaan’s lieutenant seems to be inconsistent with the notice in De Mailla that Kublai made it over to the Buddhist priests. Perhaps _Kublai’s_ name is a mistake; for one of Mr. Moule’s books (_Jin-ho-hien-chi_) says that under _the last_ Mongol Emperor five convents were built on the area of the palace.
Mr. H. Murray argues, from this closing passage especially, that Marco never could have been the author of the Ramusian interpolations; but with this I cannot agree. Did this passage stand alone we might doubt if it were Marco’s; but the interpolations must be considered as a whole. Many of them bear to my mind clear evidence of being his own, and I do not see that the present one _may_ not be his. The picture conveyed of the ruined walls and half-obliterated buildings does, it is true, give the impression of a long interval between their abandonment and the traveller’s visit, whilst the whole interval between the capture of the city and Polo’s departure from China was not more than fifteen or sixteen years. But this is too vague a basis for theorising.
Mr. Moule has ascertained by maps of the Sung period, and by a variety of notices in the Topographies, that the palace lay to the south and south-east of the present city, and included a large part of the fine hills called _Fung-hwang Shan_ or Phoenix Mount,[5] and other names, whilst its southern gate opened near the Ts’ien-T’ang River. Its north gate is supposed to have been the Fung Shan Gate of the present city, and the chief street thus formed the avenue to the palace.
By the kindness of Messrs. Moule and Wylie, I am able to give a copy of the Sung Map of the Palace (for origin of which see list of illustrations). I should note that the orientation is different from that of the map of the city already given. This map elucidates Polo’s account of the palace in a highly interesting manner.
[Father H. Havret has given in p. 21 of _Varietes Sinologiques_, No. 19, a complete study of the inscription of a _chwang_, nearly similar to the one given here, which is erected near Ch’eng-tu.–H.C.]
Before quitting KINSAY, the description of which forms the most striking feature in Polo’s account of China, it is worth while to quote other notices from authors of nearly the same age. However exaggerated some of these may be, there can be little doubt that it was the greatest city then existing in the world.
[Illustration: Stone _Chwang_, or Umbrella Column, on site of “Brahma’s Temple,” Hang-chau.]
[Illustration: South Part of KING-SZE, with the SUNG PALACE, from a Chinese reprint of a Plan dated circa A.D. 1270]
_Friar Odoric_ (in China about 1324-1327):–“Departing thence I came unto the city of CANSAY, a name which signifieth the ‘City of Heaven.’ And ’tis the greatest city in the whole world, so great indeed that I should scarcely venture to tell of it, but that I have met at Venice people in plenty who have been there. It is a good hundred miles in compass, and there is not in it a span of ground which is not well peopled. And many a tenement is there which shall have 10 or 12 households comprised in it. And there be also great suburbs which contain a greater population than even the city itself…. This city is situated upon lagoons of standing water, with canals like the city of Venice. And it hath more than 12,000 bridges, on each of which are stationed guards, guarding the city on behalf of the Great Kaan. And at the side of this city there flows a river near which it is built, like Ferrara by the Po, for it is longer than it is broad,” and so on, relating how his host took him to see a great monastery of the idolaters, where there was a garden full of grottoes, and therein many animals of divers kinds, which they believed to be inhabited by the souls of gentlemen. “But if any one should desire to tell all the vastness and great marvels of this city, a good quire of stationery would not hold the matter, I trow. For ’tis the greatest and noblest city, and the finest for merchandize that the whole world containeth.” (_Cathay_, 113 seqq.)
_The Archbishop of Soltania_ (circa 1330):–“And so vast is the number of people that the soldiers alone who are posted to keep ward in the city of Cambalec are 40,000 men by sure tale. And in the city of CASSAY there be yet more, for its people is greater in number, seeing that it is a city of very great trade. And to this city all the traders of the country come to trade; and greatly it aboundeth in all manner of merchandize.” (Ib. 244-245.)
_John Marignolli_ (in China 1342-1347):–“Now Manzi is a country which has countless cities and nations included in it, past all belief to one who has not seen them…. And among the rest is that most famous city of CAMPSAY, the finest, the biggest, the richest, the most populous, and altogether the most marvellous city, the city of the greatest wealth and luxury, of the most splendid buildings (especially idol-temples, in some of which there are 1000 and 2000 monks dwelling together), that exists now upon the face of the earth, or mayhap that ever did exist.” (Ib. p. 354.) He also speaks, like Odoric, of the “cloister at Campsay, in that most famous monastery where they keep so many monstrous animals, which they believe to be the souls of the departed” (384). Perhaps this monastery may yet be identified. Odoric calls it _Thebe_. [See _A. Vissiere, Bul. Soc. Geog. Com._, 1901, pp. 112-113.–H.C.]
Turning now to Asiatic writers, we begin with _Wassaf_ (A.D. 1300):–
“KHANZAI is the greatest city of the cities of Chin,
“‘_Stretching like Paradise through the breadth of Heaven._’
“Its shape is oblong, and the measurement of its perimeter is about 24 parasangs. Its streets are paved with burnt brick and with stone. The public edifices and the houses are built of wood, and adorned with a profusion of paintings of exquisite elegance. Between one end of the city and the other there are three _Yams_ (post-stations) established. The length of the chief streets is three parasangs, and the city contains 64 quadrangles corresponding to one another in structure, and with parallel ranges of columns. The salt excise brings in daily 700 _balish_ in paper-money. The number of craftsmen is so great that 32,000 are employed at the dyer’s art alone; from that fact you may estimate the rest. There are in the city 70 _tomans_ of soldiers and 70 _tomans_ of _rayats_, whose number is registered in the books of the Dewan. There are 700 churches (_Kalisia_) resembling fortresses, and every one of them overflowing with presbyters without faith, and monks without religion, besides other officials, wardens, servants of the idols, and this, that, and the other, to tell the names of which would surpass number and space. All these are exempt from taxes of every kind. Four _tomans_ of the garrison constitute the night patrol…. Amid the city there are 360 bridges erected over canals ample as the Tigris, which are ramifications of the great river of Chin; and different kinds of vessels and ferry-boats, adapted to every class, ply upon the waters in such numbers as to pass all powers of enumeration…. The concourse of all kinds of foreigners from the four quarters of the world, such as the calls of trade and travel bring together in a kingdom like this, may easily be conceived.” (_Revised on Hammer’s Translation_, pp. 42-43.)
The Persian work _Nuzhat-al-Kulub_:–“KHINZAI is the capital of the country of Machin. If one may believe what some travellers say, there exists no greater city on the face of the earth; but anyhow, all agree that it is the greatest in all the countries in the East. Inside the place is a lake which has a circuit of six parasangs, and all round which houses are built…. The population is so numerous that the watchmen are some 10,000 in number.” (_Quat. Rash._ p. lxxxviii.)
The Arabic work _Masalak-al-Absar_:–“Two routes lead from Khanbalik to KHINSA, one by land, the other by water; and either way takes 40 days. The city of Khinsa extends a whole day’s journey in length and half a day’s journey in breadth. In the middle of it is a street which runs right from one end to the other. The streets and squares are all paved; the houses are five-storied (?), and are built with planks nailed together,” etc. (Ibid.)
_Ibn Batuta_:–“We arrived at the city of KHANSA…. This city is the greatest I have ever seen on the surface of the earth. It is three days’ journey in length, so that a traveller passing through the city has to make his marches and his halts!.. It is subdivided into six towns, each of which has a separate enclosure, while one great wall surrounds the whole,” etc. (_Cathay_, p. 496 seqq.)
Let us conclude with a writer of a later age, the worthy Jesuit Martin Martini, the author of the admirable _Atlas Sinensis_, one whose honourable zeal to maintain Polo’s veracity, of which he was one of the first intelligent advocates, is apt, it must be confessed, a little to colour his own spectacles:–“That the cosmographers of Europe may no longer make such ridiculous errors as to the QUINSAI of Marco Polo, I will here give you the very place. [He then explains the name.] … And to come to the point; this is the very city that hath those bridges so lofty and so numberless, both within the walls and in the suburbs; nor will they fall much short of the 10,000 which the Venetian alleges, if you count also the triumphal arches among the bridges, as he might easily do because of their analogous structure, just as he calls tigers _lions_;.. or if you will, he may have meant to include not merely the bridges in the city and suburbs, but in the whole of the dependent territory. In that case indeed the number which Europeans find it so hard to believe might well be set still higher, so vast is everywhere the number of bridges and of triumphal arches. Another point in confirmation is that lake which he mentions of 40 Italian miles in circuit. This exists under the name of _Si-hu_; it is not, indeed, as the book says, inside the walls, but lies in contact with them for a long distance on the west and south-west, and a number of canals drawn from it _do_ enter the city. Moreover, the shores of the lake on every side are so thickly studded with temples, monasteries, palaces, museums, and private houses, that you would suppose yourself to be passing through the midst of a great city rather than a country scene. Quays of cut stone are built along the banks, affording a spacious promenade; and causeways cross the lake itself, furnished with lofty bridges, to allow of the passage of boats; and thus you can readily walk all about the lake on this side and on that. ‘Tis no wonder that Polo considered it to be part of the city. This, too, is the very city that hath within the walls, near the south side, a hill called _Ching-hoang_ [6] on which stands that tower with the watchmen, on which there is a clepsydra to measure the hours, and where each hour is announced by the exhibition of a placard, with gilt letters of a foot and a half in height. This is the very city the streets of which are paved with squared stones: the city which lies in a swampy situation, and is intersected by a number of navigable canals; this, in short, is the city from which the emperor escaped to seaward by the great river Ts’ien-T’ang, the breadth of which exceeds a German mile, flowing on the south of the city, exactly corresponding to the river described by the Venetian at Quinsai, and flowing eastward to the sea, which it enters precisely at the distance which he mentions. I will add that the compass of the city will be 100 Italian miles and more, if you include its vast suburbs, which run out on every side an enormous distance; insomuch that you may walk for 50 Chinese _li_ in a straight line from north to south, the whole way through crowded blocks of houses, and without encountering a spot that is not full of dwellings and full of people; whilst from east to west you can do very nearly the same thing.” (_Atlas Sinensis_, p. 99.)
And so we quit what Mr. Moule appropriately calls “Marco’s famous rhapsody of the Manzi capital”; perhaps the most striking section of the whole book, as manifestly the subject was that which had made the strongest impression on the narrator.
[1] _Fanfur_, in Ramusio.
[2] See the mention of the _I-ning Fang_ at Si-ngan fu, supra, p. 28. Mr. Wylie writes that in a work on the latter city, published during the Yuen time, of which he has met with a reprint, there are figures to illustrate the division of the city into _Fang_, a word “which appears to indicate a certain space of ground, not an open square … but a block of buildings crossed by streets, and at the end of each street an open gateway.” In one of the figures a first reference indicates “the market place,” a second “the official establishment,” a third “the office for regulating weights.” These indications seem to explain Polo’s squares. (See Note 3, above.)
[3] _Foreigner in Far Cathay_, pp. 158, 176.
[4] A famous poet and scholar of the 11th century.
[5] Mr. Wylie, after ascending this hill with Mr. Moule, writes: “It is about two miles from the south gate to the top, by a rather steep road. On the top is a remarkably level plot of ground, with a cluster of rocks in one place. On the face of these rocks are a great many inscriptions, but so obliterated by age and weather that only a few characters can be decyphered. A stone road leads up from the city gate, and another one, very steep, down to the lake. This is the only vestige remaining of the old palace grounds. There is no doubt about this being really a relic of the palace…. You will see on the map, just inside the walls of the Imperial city, the Temple of Brahma. There are still two stone columns standing with curious Buddhist inscriptions…. Although the temple is entirely gone, these columns retain the name and mark the place. They date from the 6th century, and there are few structures earlier in China.” One is engraved above, after a sketch by Mr. Moule.
[6] See the plan of the city with last chapter.
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
TREATING OF THE GREAT YEARLY REVENUE THAT THE GREAT KAAN HATH FROM KINSAY.
Now I will tell you about the great revenue which the Great Kaan draweth every year from the said city of Kinsay and its territory, forming a ninth part of the whole country of Manzi.
First there is the salt, which brings in a great revenue. For it produces every year, in round numbers, fourscore _tomans_ of gold; and the _toman_ is worth 70,000 _saggi_ of gold, so that the total value of the fourscore tomans will be five millions and six hundred thousand _saggi_ of gold, each saggio being worth more than a gold florin or ducat; in sooth, a vast sum of money! [This province, you see, adjoins the ocean, on the shores of which are many lagoons or salt marshes, in which the sea-water dries up during the summer time; and thence they extract such a quantity of salt as suffices for the supply of five of the kingdoms of Manzi besides this one.]
Having told you of the revenue from salt, I will now tell you of that which accrues to the Great Kaan from the duties on merchandize and other matters.
You must know that in this city and its dependencies they make great quantities of sugar, as indeed they do in the other eight divisions of this country; so that I believe the whole of the rest of the world together does not produce such a quantity, at least, if that be true which many people have told me; and the sugar alone again produces an enormous revenue.–However, I will not repeat the duties on every article separately, but tell you how they go in the lump. Well, all spicery pays three and a third per cent. on the value; and all merchandize likewise pays three and a third per cent. [But sea-borne goods from India and other distant countries pay ten per cent.] The rice-wine also makes a great return, and coals, of which there is a great quantity; and so do the twelve guilds of craftsmen that I told you of, with their 12,000 stations apiece, for every article they make pays duty. And the silk which is produced in such abundance makes an immense return. But why should I make a long story of it? The silk, you must know, pays ten per cent., and many other articles also pay ten per cent.
And you must know that Messer Marco Polo, who relates all this, was several times sent by the Great Kaan to inspect the amount of his customs and revenue from this ninth part of Manzi,[NOTE 1] and he found it to be, exclusive of the salt revenue which we have mentioned already, 210 _tomans_ of gold, equivalent to 14,700,000 _saggi_ of gold; one of the most enormous revenues that ever was heard of. And if the sovereign has such a revenue from one-ninth part of the country, you may judge what he must have from the whole of it! However, to speak the truth, this part is the greatest and most productive; and because of the great revenue that the Great Kaan derives from it, it is his favourite province, and he takes all the more care to watch it well, and to keep the people contented. [NOTE 2]
Now we will quit this city and speak of others.
NOTE 1.–Pauthier’s text seems to be the only one which says that Marco was sent by the Great Kaan. The G. Text says merely: “_Si qe jeo March Pol qe plusor foies hoi faire le conte de la rende de tous cestes couses_,”– “had several times heard the calculations made.”
NOTE 2.–_Toman_ is 10,000. And the first question that occurs in considering the statements of this chapter is as to the unit of these tomans, as intended by Polo. I believe it to have been the _tael_ (or Chinese ounce) of gold.
We do not know that the Chinese ever made monetary calculations in gold. But the usual unit of the revenue accounts appears from Pauthier’s extracts to have been the _ting_, i.e. a money of account equal to ten taels of silver, and we know (supra, ch. l. note 4) that this was in those days the exact equivalent of one tael of gold.
The equation in our text is 10,000 _x_ = 70,000 saggi of gold, giving _x_, or the unit sought, = 7 _saggi_. But in both Ramusio on the one hand, and in the Geog. Latin and Crusca Italian texts on the other hand, the equivalent of the toman is 80,000 _saggi_; though it is true that neither with one valuation nor the other are the calculations consistent in any of the texts, except Ramusio’s.[1] This consistency does not give any greater weight to Ramusio’s reading, because we know that version to have been _edited_, and corrected when the editor thought it necessary: but I adopt his valuation, because we shall find other grounds for preferring it. The unit of the _toman_ then is = 8 _saggi_.
The Venice saggio was one-sixth of a Venice ounce. The Venice mark of 8 ounces I find stated to contain 3681 grains troy;[2] hence the _saggio_ = 76 grains. But I imagine the term to be used by Polo here and in other Oriental computations, to express the Arabic _miskal_, the real weight of which, according to Mr. Maskelyne, is 74 grains troy. The _miskal_ of gold was, as Polo says, something more than a ducat or sequin, indeed, weight for weight, it was to a ducat nearly as 1.4: 1.
Eight _saggi_ or _miskals_ would be 592 grains troy. The tael is 580, and the approximation is as near as we can reasonably expect from a calculation in such terms.
Taking the silver tael at 6_s._ 7_d._, the gold tael, or rather the _ting_, would be = 3_l._ 5_s._ 10_d._; the _toman_ = 32,916_l._ 13_s._ 4_d._; and the whole salt revenue (80 tomans) = 2,633,333_l._; the revenue from other sources (210 tomans) = 6,912,500_l._; total revenue from Kinsay and its province (290 tomans) = 9,545,833_l._ A sufficiently startling statement, and quite enough to account for the sobriquet of Marco Milioni.
Pauthier, in reference to this chapter, brings forward a number of extracts regarding Mongol finance from the official history of that dynasty. The extracts are extremely interesting in themselves, but I cannot find in them that confirmation of Marco’s accuracy which M. Pauthier sees.
First as to the salt revenue of Kiang-Che, or the province of Kinsay. The facts given by Pauthier amount to these: that in 1277, the year in which the Mongol salt department was organised, the manufacture of salt amounted to 92,148 _yin_, or 22,115,520 _kilos.;_ in 1286 it had reached 450,000 _yin_, or 108,000,000 _kilos.;_ in 1289 it fell off by 100,000 _yin_.
The price was, in 1277, 18 _liang_ or taels, in _chao_ or paper-money of the years 1260-64 (see vol. i. p. 426); in 1282 it was raised to 22 taels; in 1284 a permanent and reduced price was fixed, the amount of which is not stated.
M. Pauthier assumes as a mean 400,000 _yin_, at 18 taels, which will give 7,200,000 _taels;_ or, at 6_s._ 7_d._ to the tael, 2,370,000_l._ But this amount being in _chao_ or paper-currency, which at its highest valuation was worth only 50 per cent. of the nominal value of the notes, we must _halve_ the sum, giving the salt revenue on Pauthier’s assumptions = 1,185,000_l._
Pauthier has also endeavoured to present a table of the whole revenue of Kiang-Che under the Mongols, amounting to 12,955,710 paper _taels_, or 2,132,294_l._, _including_ the salt revenue. This would leave only 947,294_l._ for the other sources of revenue, but the fact is that several of these are left blank, and among others one so important as the sea-customs. However, even making the extravagant supposition that the sea-customs and other omitted items were equal in amount to the whole of the other sources of revenue, salt included, the total would be only 4,264,585_l._
Marco’s amount, as he gives it, is, I think, unquestionably a huge exaggeration, though I do not suppose an intentional one. In spite of his professed rendering of the amounts in gold, I have little doubt that his tomans really represent paper-currency, and that to get a valuation in gold, his total has to be divided _at the very least_ by two. We may then compare his total of 290 tomans of paper _ting_ with Pauthier’s 130 tomans of paper _ting_, excluding sea-customs and some other items. No nearer comparison is practicable; and besides the sources of doubt already indicated, it remains uncertain what in either calculation are the limits of the province intended. For the bounds of Kiang-Che seem to have varied greatly, sometimes including and sometimes excluding Fo-kien.
I may observe that Rashiduddin reports, on the authority of the Mongol minister Pulad Chingsang, that the whole of Manzi brought in a revenue of “900 tomans.” This Quatremere renders “nine million pieces of gold,” presumably meaning dinars. It is unfortunate that there should be uncertainty here again as to the unit. If it were the _dinar_ the whole revenue of Manzi would be about 5,850,000_l._, whereas if the unit were, as in the case of Polo’s toman, the _ting_, the revenue would be nearly 30,000,000 sterling!
It does appear that in China a toman of some denomination of money near the dinar was known in account. For Friar Odoric states the revenue of Yang-chau in _tomans_ of _Balish_, the latter unit being, as he explains, a sum in paper-currency equivalent to a florin and a half (or something more than a dinar); perhaps, however, only the _liang_ or tael (see vol. i. pp. 426-7).
It is this calculation of the Kinsay revenue which Marco is supposed to be expounding to his fellow-prisoner on the title-page of this volume. [See _P. Hoang, Commerce Public du Sel_, Shanghai, 1898, Liang-tahe-yen, pp. 6-7.–H.C.]
[1] Pauthier’s MSS. A and B are hopelessly corrupt here. His MS. C agrees with the Geog. Text in making the toman = 70,000 saggi, but 210 tomans = 15,700,000, instead of 14,700,000. The Crusca and Latin have 80,000 saggi in the first place, but 15,700,000 in the second. Ramusio alone has 80,000 in the first place, and 16,800,000 in the second.
[2] _Eng. Cyclop., “Weights and Measures.”_
CHAPTER LXXIX.
OF THE CITY OF TANPIJU AND OTHERS.
When you leave Kinsay and travel a day’s journey to the south-east, through a plenteous region, passing a succession of dwellings and charming gardens, you reach the city of TANPIJU, a great, rich, and fine city, under Kinsay. The people are subject to the Kaan, and have paper-money, and are Idolaters, and burn their dead in the way described before. They live by trade and manufactures and handicrafts, and have all necessaries in great plenty and cheapness.[NOTE 1]
But there is no more to be said about it, so we proceed, and I will tell you of another city called VUJU at three days’ distance from Tanpiju. The people are Idolaters, &c., and the city is under Kinsay. They live by trade and manufactures.
Travelling through a succession of towns and villages that look like one continuous city, two days further on to the south-east, you find the great and fine city of GHIUJU which is under Kinsay. The people are Idolaters, &c. They have plenty of silk, and live by trade and handicrafts, and have all things necessary in abundance. At this city you find the largest and longest canes that are in all Manzi; they are full four palms in girth and 15 paces in length.[NOTE 2]
When you have left Ghiuju you travel four days S.E. through a beautiful country, in which towns and villages are very numerous. There is abundance of game both in beasts and birds; and there are very large and fierce lions. After those four days you come to the great and fine city of CHANSHAN. It is situated upon a hill which divides the River, so that the one portion flows up country and the other down.[1] It is still under the government of Kinsay.
I should tell you that in all the country of Manzi they have no sheep, though they have beeves and kine, goats and kids and swine in abundance. The people are Idolaters here, &c.
When you leave Changshan you travel three days through a very fine country with many towns and villages, traders and craftsmen, and abounding in game of all kinds, and arrive at the city of CUJU. The people are Idolaters, &c., and live by trade and manufactures. It is a fine, noble, and rich city, and is the last of the government of Kinsay in this direction.[NOTE 3] The other kingdom which we now enter, called Fuju, is also one of the nine great divisions of Manzi as Kinsay is.
NOTE 1.–The traveller’s route proceeds from Kinsay or Hang-chau southward to the mountains of Fo-kien, ascending the valley of the Ts’ien T’ang, commonly called by Europeans the Green River. The general line, directed as we shall see upon Kien-ning fu in Fo-kien, is clear enough, but some of the details are very obscure, owing partly to vague indications and partly to the excessive uncertainty in the reading of some of the proper names.
No name resembling Tanpiju (G.T., _Tanpigui_; Pauthier, _Tacpiguy, Carpiguy, Capiguy_; Ram., _Tapinzu_) belongs, so far as has yet been shown, to any considerable town in the position indicated.[2] Both Pauthier and Mr. Kingsmill identify the place with Shao-hing fu, a large and busy town, compared by Fortune, as regards population, to Shang-hai. Shao-hing is across the broad river, and somewhat further down than Hang-chau: it is out of the traveller’s general direction; and it seems unnatural that he should commence his journey by passing this wide river, and yet not mention it.
For these reasons I formerly rejected Shao-hing, and looked rather to Fu-yang as the representative of Tanpiju. But my opinion is shaken when I find both Mr. Elias and Baron Richthofen decidedly opposed to Fu-yang, and the latter altogether in favour of Shao-hing. “The journey through a plenteous region, passing a succession of dwellings and charming gardens; the epithets ‘great, rich, and fine city’; the ‘trade, manufactures, and handicrafts,’ and the ‘necessaries in great plenty and cheapness,’ appear to apply rather to the populous plain and the large city of ancient fame, than to the small Fu-yang hien … shut in by a spur from the hills, which would hardly have allowed it in former days to have been a great city.” (_Note by Baron R._) The after route, as elucidated by the same authority, points with even more force to Shao-hing.
[Mr. G. Phillips has made a special study of the route from Kinsay to Zaytun in the _T’oung Pao_, I. p. 218 seq. (_The Identity of Marco Polo’s Zaitun with Changchau_). He says (p. 222): “Leaving Hangchau by boat for Fuhkien, the first place of importance is Fuyang, at 100 _li_ from Hangchau. This name does not in any way resemble Polo’s Ta Pin Zu, but I think it can be no other.” Mr. Phillips writes (pp. 221-222) that by the route he describes, he “intends to follow the highway which has been used by travellers for centuries, and the greater part of which is by water.” He adds: “I may mention that the boats used on this route can be luxuriously fitted up, and the traveller can go in them all the way from Hangchau to Chinghu, the head of the navigation of the Ts’ien-t’ang River. At this Chinghu, they disembark and hire coolies and chairs to take them and their luggage across the Sien-hia pass to Puching in Fuhkien. This route is described by Fortune in an opposite direction, in his _Wanderings in China_, vol. ii. p. 139. I am inclined to think that Polo followed this route, as the one given by Yule, by way of Shao-hing and Kin-hua by land, would be unnecessarily tedious for the ladies Polo was escorting, and there was no necessity to take it; more especially as there was a direct water route to the point for which they were making. I further incline to this route, as I can find no city at all fitting in with Yenchau, Ramusio’s Gengiu, along the route given by Yule.”
In my paper on the Catalan Map (Paris, 1895) I gave the following itinerary: Kinsay (Hang-chau), Tanpiju (Shao-hing fu), Vuju (Kin-hwa fu), Ghiuju (K’iu-chau fu), Chan-shan (Sui-chang hien), Cuju (Ch’u-chau), Ke-lin-fu (Kien-ning fu), Unken (Hu-kwan), Fuju (Fu-chau), Zayton (Kayten, Hai-t’au), Zayton (Ts’iuen-chau), Tyunju (Tek-hwa).
Regarding the burning of the dead, Mr. Phillips (_T’oung Pao_, VI. p. 454) quotes the following passage from a notice by M. Jaubert. “The town of Zaitun is situated half a day’s journey inland from the sea. At the place where the ships anchor, the water is fresh. The people drink this water and also that of the wells. Zaitun is 30 days’ journey from Khanbaligh. The inhabitants of this town burn their dead either with Sandal, or Brazil wood, according to their means; they then throw the ashes into the river.” Mr. Phillips adds: “The custom of burning the dead is a long established one in Fuh-Kien, and does not find much favour among the upper classes. It exists even to this day in the central parts of the province. The time for cremation is generally at the time of the Tsing-Ming. At the commencement of the present dynasty the custom of burning the dead appears to have been pretty general in the Fuchow Prefecture; it was looked upon with disfavour by many, and the gentry petitioned the Authorities that proclamations forbidding it should be issued. It was thought unfilial for children to cremate their parents; and the practice of gathering up the bones of a partially cremated person and thrusting them into a jar, euphoniously called a Golden Jar, but which was really an earthen one, was much commented on, as, if the jar was too small to contain all the bones, they were broken up and put in, and many pieces got thrown aside. In the Changchow neighbourhood, with which we have here most to do, it was a universal custom in 1126 to burn the dead, and was in existence for many centuries after.” (See note, supra, II. p. 134.)
Captain Gill, speaking of the country near the Great Wall, writes (I. p. 61): [“The Chinese] consider mutton very poor food, and the butchers’ shops are always kept by Mongols. In these, however, both beef and mutton can be bought for 3_d._ or 4_d._ a lb., while pork, which is considered by the Chinese as the greatest delicacy, sells for double the price.”–H.C.]
NOTE 2.–Che-kiang produces bamboos more abundantly than any province of Eastern China. Dr. Medhurst mentions meeting, on the waters near Hang-chau, with numerous rafts of bamboos, one of which was one-third of a mile in length. (_Glance at Int. of China_, p. 53.)
NOTE 3.–Assuming Tanpiju to be Shao-hing, the remaining places as far as the Fo-kien Frontier run thus:–
3 days to Vuju (P. _Vugui_, G.T. _Vugui, Vuigui_, Ram. _Uguiu_). 2 ” to Ghiuju (P. _Guiguy_, G.T. _Ghingui, Ghengui, Chengui_, Ram. _Gengui_).
4 ” to Chanshan (P. _Ciancian_, G.T. _Cianscian_, Ram. _Zengian_). 3 ” to Cuju or Chuju (P. _Cinguy_, G.T. _Cugui_, Ram. _Gieza_).
First as regards _Chanshan_, which, with the notable circumstances about the waters there, constitutes the key to the route, I extract the following remarks from a note which Mr. Fortune has kindly sent me: “When we get to _Chanshan_ the proof as to the route is _very strong_. This is undoubtedly my _Chang-shan_. The town is near the head of the Green River (the Ts’ien T’ang) which flows in a N.E. direction and falls into the Bay of Hang-chau. At Chang-shan the stream is no longer navigable even for small boats. Travellers going west or south-west walk or are carried in sedan-chairs across country in a westerly direction for about 30 miles to a town named Yuh-shan. Here there is a river which flows westward (‘the other half goes down’), taking the traveller rapidly in that direction, and passing _en route_ the towns of Kwansinfu, Hokow or Hokeu, and onward to the Poyang Lake.” From the careful study of Mr. Fortune’s published narrative I had already arrived at the conclusion that this was the correct explanation of the remarkable expressions about the division of the waters, which are closely analogous to those used by the traveller in ch. lxii. of this book when speaking of the watershed of the Great Canal at Sinjumatu. Paraphrased the words might run: “At Chang-shan you reach high ground, which interrupts the continuity of the River; from one side of this ridge it flows up country towards the north, from the other it flows down towards the south.” The expression “The River” will be elucidated in note 4 to ch. lxxxii. below.
This route by the Ts’ien T’ang and the Chang-shan portage, which turns the danger involved in the navigation of the Yang-tzu and the Poyang Lake, was formerly a thoroughfare to the south much followed; though now almost abandoned through one of the indirect results (as Baron Richthofen points out) of steam navigation.
The portage from Chang-shan to Yuh-shan was passed by the English and Dutch embassies in the end of last century, on their journeys from Hang-chau to Canton, and by Mr. Fortune on his way from Ningpo to the Bohea country of Fo-kien. It is probable that Polo on some occasion made the ascent of the Ts’ien T’ang by water, and that this leads him to notice the interruption of the navigation.
[Mr. Phillips writes (_T. Pao_, I. p. 222): “From Fuyang the next point reached is Tunglu, also another 100 _li_ distant. Polo calls this city Ugim, a name bearing no resemblance to Tunglu, but this name and Ta Pin Zu are so corrupted in all editions that they defy conjecture. One hundred _li_ further up the river from Tunglu, we come to Yenchau, in which I think we have Polo’s Gengiu of Ramusio’s text. Yule’s text calls this city Ghiuju, possibly an error in transcription for Ghinju; Yenchau in ancient Chinese would, according to Williams, be pronounced Ngam, Ngin, and Ngienchau, all of which are sufficiently near Polo’s Gengiu. The next city reached is Lan Ki Hien or Lan Chi Hsien, famous for its hams, dates, and all the good things of this life, according to the Chinese. In this city I recognise Polo’s Zen Gi An of Ramusio. Does its description justify me in my identification? ‘The city of “Zen gi an”,’ says Ramusio, ‘is built upon a hill that stands isolated in the river, which latter, by dividing itself into two branches, appears to embrace it. These streams take opposite directions: one of them pursuing its course to the south-east and the other to the north-west.’ Fortune, in his _Wanderings in China_ (vol. li. p. 139), calls Lan-Khi, Nan-Che-hien, and says: ‘It is built on the banks of the river, and has a picturesque hill behind it.’ Milne, who also visited it, mentions it in his _Life in China_ (p. 258), and says: ‘At the southern end of the suburbs of Lan-Ki the river divides into two branches, the one to the left on south-east leading direct to Kinhua.’ Milne’s description of the place is almost identical with Polo’s, when speaking of the division of the river. There are in Fuchau several Lan-Khi shopkeepers, who deal in hams, dates, etc., and these men tell me the city from the river has the appearance of being built on a hill, but the houses on the hill are chiefly temples. I would divide the name as follows, Zen gi an; the last syllable _an_ most probably represents the modern Hien, meaning District city, which in ancient Chinese was pronounced _Han_, softened by the Italians into _an_. Lan-Khi was a Hien in Polo’s day.” –H.C.]
Kin-hwa fu, as Pauthier has observed, bore at this time the name of WU-CHAU, which Polo would certainly write _Vugiu_. And between Shao-hing and Kin-hwa there exists, as Baron Richthofen has pointed out, a line of depression which affords an easy connection between Shao-hing and Lan-ki hien or Kin-hwa fu. This line is much used by travellers, and forms just 3 short stages. Hence Kin-hwa, a fine city destroyed by the T’ai-P’ings, is satisfactorily identified with _Vugiu_.
The journey from Vugui to Ghiuju is said to be through a succession of towns and villages, looking like a continuous city. Fortune, whose journey occurred before the T’ai-P’ing devastations, speaks of the approach to Kiu-chau as a vast and beautiful garden. And Mr. Milne’s map of this route shows an incomparable density of towns in the Ts’ien T’ang valley from Yen-chau up to Kiu-chau. _Ghiuju_ then will be KIU-CHAU. But between Kiu-chau and Chang-shan it is impossible to make four days: barely possible to make two. My map (_Itineraries_, No. VI.), based on D’Anville and Fortune, makes the _direct_ distance 24 miles; Milne’s map barely 18; whilst from his book we deduce the distance travelled by water to be about 30. On the whole, it seems probable that there is a mistake in the figure here.
[Illustration: Marco Polo’s route from Kinsai to ZAITUN, illustrating Mr. G. Phillips’ theory.]
From the head of the great Che-kiang valley I find two roads across the mountains into Fo-kien described.
One leads from _Kiang-shan_ (not Chang-shan) by a town called Ching-hu, and then, nearly due south, across the mountains to Pu-ch’eng in Upper Fo-kien. This is specified by Martini (p. 113): it seems to have been followed by the Dutch Envoy, Van Hoorn, in 1665 (see _Astley_, III. 463), and it was travelled by Fortune on his return _from_ the Bohea country to Ningpo. (II. 247, 271.)
The other route follows the portage spoken of above from _Chang-shan_ to Yuh-shan, and descends the river on that side to _Hokeu_, whence it strikes south-east across the mountains to Tsung-ngan-hien in Fo-kien. This route was followed by Fortune on his way _to_ the Bohea country.
Both from Pu-ch’eng on the former route, and from near Tsung-ngan on the latter, the waters are navigable down to Kien-ning fu and so to Fu-chau.
Mr. Fortune judges the first to have been Polo’s route. There does not, however, seem to be on this route any place that can be identified with his Cuju or Chuju. Ching-hu seems to be insignificant, and the name has no resemblance. On the other route followed by Mr. Fortune himself from that side we have Kwansin fu, _Hokeu_, Yen-shan, and (last town passed on that side) _Chuchu_. The latter, as to both name and position, is quite satisfactory, but it is described as a small poor town. _Hokeu_ would be represented in Polo’s spelling as Caghiu or Cughiu. It is now a place of great population and importance as the entrepot of the Black Tea Trade, but, like many important commercial cities in the interior, not being even a _hien_ it has no place either in Duhalde or in Biot, and I cannot learn its age.
It is no objection to this line that Polo speaks of Cuju or Chuju as the last city of the government of Kinsay, whilst the towns just named are in Kiang-si. For _Kiang-Che_, the province of Kinsay, then included the eastern part of Kiang-si. (See _Cathay_, p. 270.)
[Mr. Phillips writes (_T. Pao_, I. 223-224): “Eighty-five _li_ beyond Lan-ki hien is Lung-yin, a place not mentioned by Polo, and another ninety-five _li_ still further on is Chuechau or Keuchau, which is, I think, the Gie-za of Ramusio, and the Cuju of Yule’s version. Polo describes it as the last city of the government of Kinsai (Che-kiang) in this direction. It is the last Prefectural city, but ninety _li_ beyond Chue-chau, on the road to Pu-cheng, is Kiang-shan, a district city which is the last one in this direction. Twenty _li_ from Kiang-shan is Ching-hu, the head of the navigation of the T’sien-T’ang river. Here one hires chairs and coolies for the journey over the Sien-hia Pass to Pu-cheng, a distance of 215 _li_. From Pu-cheng, Fu-chau can be reached by water in 4 or 5 days. The distance is 780 _li_.”–H.C.]
[1] “_Est sus un mont que parte le Flum, gue le une moitie ala en sus e l’autre moitie en jus_” (G.T.).
[2] One of the _Hien_, forming the special districts of Hang-Chau itself, now called _Tsien-tang_, was formerly called _Tang-wei-tang_. But it embraces the _eastern_ part of the district, and can, I think, have nothing to do with _Tanpiju_. (See _Biot_, p. 257, and _Chin. Repos._ for February, 1842, p. 109.)
CHAPTER LXXX.
CONCERNING THE KINGDOM OF FUJU.
On leaving Cuju, which is the last city of the kingdom of Kinsay, you enter the kingdom of FUJU, and travel six days in a south-easterly direction through a country of mountains and valleys, in which are a number of towns and villages with great plenty of victuals and abundance of game. Lions, great and strong, are also very numerous. The country produces ginger and galingale in immense quantities, insomuch that for a Venice groat you may buy fourscore pounds of good fine-flavoured ginger. They have also a kind of fruit resembling saffron, and which serves the purpose of saffron just as well.[NOTE 1]
And you must know the people eat all manner of unclean things, even the flesh of a man, provided he has not died a natural death. So they look out for the bodies of those that have been put to death and eat their flesh, which they consider excellent.[NOTE 2]
Those who go to war in those parts do as I am going to tell you. They shave the hair off the forehead and cause it to be painted in blue like the blade of a glaive. They all go afoot except the chief; they carry spears and swords, and are the most savage people in the world, for they go about constantly killing people, whose blood they drink, and then devour the bodies.[NOTE 3]
Now I will quit this and speak of other matters. You must know then that after going three days out of the six that I told you of you come to the city of KELINFU, a very great and noble city, belonging to the Great Kaan. This city hath three stone bridges which are among the finest and best in the world. They are a mile long and some nine paces in width, and they are all decorated with rich marble columns. Indeed they are such fine and marvellous works that to build any one of them must have cost a treasure.[NOTE 4]
The people live by trade and manufactures, and have great store of silk [which they weave into various stuffs], and of ginger and galingale. [NOTE 5] [They also make much cotton cloth of dyed thread, which is sent all over Manzi.] Their women are particularly beautiful. And there is a strange thing there which I needs must tell you. You must know they have a kind of fowls which have no feathers, but hair only, like a cat’s fur. [NOTE 6] They are black all over; they lay eggs just like our fowls, and are very good to eat.
In the other three days of the six that I have mentioned above[NOTE 7], you continue to meet with many towns and villages, with traders, and goods for sale, and craftsmen. The people have much silk, and are Idolaters, and subject to the Great Kaan. There is plenty of game of all kinds, and there are great and fierce lions which attack travellers. In the last of those three days’ journey, when you have gone 15 miles you find a city called UNKEN, where there is an immense quantity of sugar made. From this city the Great Kaan gets all the sugar for the use of his Court, a quantity worth a great amount of money. [And before this city came under the Great Kaan these people knew not how to make fine sugar; they only used to boil and skim the juice, which when cold left a black paste. But after they came under the Great Kaan some men of Babylonia who happened to be at the Court proceeded to this city and taught the people to refine the sugar with the ashes of certain trees.[NOTE 8]]
There is no more to say of the place, so now we shall speak of the splendour of Fuju. When you have gone 15 miles from the city of Unken, you come to this noble city which is the capital of the kingdom. So we will now tell you what we know of it.
NOTE 1.–The vague description does not suggest the root _turmeric_ with which Marsden and Pauthier identify this “fruit like saffron.” It is probably one of the species of _Gardenia_, the fruits of which are used by the Chinese for their colouring properties. Their splendid yellow colour “is due to a body named crocine which appears to be identical with the polychroite of saffron.” (_Hanbury’s Notes on Chinese Mat. Medica_, pp. 21-22.) For this identification, I am indebted to Dr. Flueckiger of Bern. [“Colonel Yule concludes that the fruit of a _Gardenia_, which yields a yellow colour, is meant. But Polo’s vague description might just as well agree with the Bastard Saffron, _Carthamus tinctorius_, a plant introduced into China from Western Asia in the 2nd century B.C., and since then much cultivated in that country.” (_Bretschneider, Hist. of Bot. Disc._ I. p. 4.)–H.C.]
[Illustration: Scene in the Bohea Mountains, on Polo’s route between Kiang-si and Fo-kien (From Fortune.)
“Adonc entre l’en en roiaume de Fugin, et ici comance. Et ala siz jornee por
montangnes e por bales….”]
NOTE 2.–See vol. i. p. 312.
NOTE 3.–These particulars as to a race of painted or tattooed caterans accused of cannibalism apparently apply to some aboriginal tribe which still maintained its ground in the mountains between Fo-kien and Che-kiang or Kiang-si. Davis, alluding to the Upper part of the Province of Canton, says: “The Chinese History speaks of the aborigines of this wild region under the name of Man (Barbarians), who within a comparatively recent period were subdued and incorporated into the Middle Nation. Many persons have remarked a decidedly Malay cast in the features of the natives of this province; and it is highly probable that the Canton and Fo-kien people were originally the same race as the tribes which still remain unreclaimed on the east side of Formosa.”[1] (_Supply. Vol._ p. 260.) Indeed Martini tells us that even in the 17th century this very range of mountains, farther to the south, in the Ting-chau department of Fo-kien, contained a race of uncivilised people, who were enabled by the inaccessible character of the country to maintain their independence of the Chinese Government (p. 114; see also _Semedo_, p. 19).
[“Colonel Yule’s ‘pariah caste’ of Shao-ling, who, he says, rebelled against either the Sung or the Yuean, are evidently the _tomin_ of Ningpo and _zikas_ of Wenchow. Colonel Yule’s ‘some aboriginal tribe between Fo-kien and Che-kiang’ are probably the _zikas_ of Wenchow and the _siapo_ of Fu-kien described by recent travellers. The _zikas_ are locally called dogs’ heads, which illustrates Colonel Yule’s allophylian theories.” (_Parker, China Review_, XIV. p. 359.) Cf. _A Visit to the “Dog-Headed Barbarians” or Hill People, near Fu-chow, by Rev. F. Ohlinger, Chinese Recorder_, July, 1886, pp. 265-268.–H.C.]
NOTE 4.–Padre Martini long ago pointed out that this _Quelinfu_ is KIEN-NING FU, on the upper part of the Min River, an important city of Fo-kien. In the Fo-kien dialect he notices that _l_ is often substituted for _n_, a well-known instance of which is _Liampoo_, the name applied by F.M. Pinto and the old Portuguese to _Ningpo_.
[Mr. Phillips writes (_T. Pao_, I. p. 224): “From Pucheng to Kien-Ning-Foo the distance is 290 _li_, all down stream. I consider this to have been the route followed by Polo. His calling Kien-Ning-Foo, Que-lin-fu, is quite correct, as far as the Ling is concerned, the people of the city and of the whole southern province pronounce Ning, Ling. The Ramusian version gives very full particulars regarding the manufactures of Kien-Ning-Foo, which are not found in the other texts; for example, silk is said in this version to be woven into various stuffs, and further: ‘They also make much cotton cloth of dyed thread which is sent all over Manzi.’ All this is quite true. Much silk was formerly and is still woven in Kien-Ning, and the manufacture of cotton cloth with dyed threads is very common. Such stuff is called Hung Lu Kin ‘red and green cloth.’ Cotton cloth, made with dyed thread, is also very common in our day in many other cities in Fuh-Kien.”–H.C.]
In Ramusio the bridges are only “each more than 100 paces long and 8 paces wide.” In Pauthier’s text _each_ is a mile long, and 20 feet wide. I translate from the G.T.
Martini describes _one_ beautiful bridge at Kien-ning fu: the piers of cut stone, the superstructure of timber, roofed in and lined with houses on each side (pp. 112-113). If this was over the Min it would seem not to survive. A recent journal says: “The river is crossed by a bridge of boats, the remains of a stone bridge being visible just above water.” (_Chinese Recorder_ (Foochow), August, 1870, p. 65.)
NOTE 5.–_Galanga_ or Galangal is an aromatic root belonging to a class of drugs once much more used than now. It exists of two kinds: 1. _Great_ or _Java Galangal_, the root of the _Alpinia Galanga_. This is rarely imported and hardly used in Europe in modern times, but is still found in the Indian bazaars. 2. _Lesser_ or _China Galangal_ is imported into London from Canton, and is still sold by druggists in England. Its botanical origin is unknown. It is produced in Shan-si, Fo-kien, and Kwang-tung, and is called by the Chinese _Liang Kiang_ or “Mild Ginger.”
[“According to the Chinese authors the province of Sze-ch’wan and Han-chung (Southern Shen-si) were in ancient times famed for their Ginger. Ginger is still exported in large quantities from Han k’ou. It is known also to be grown largely in the southern provinces.–Galingale is the Lesser or Chinese Galanga of commerce, _Alpinia officinarum_ Hance.” (_Bretschneider, Hist. of Bot. Disc._ I. p. 2. See _Heyd, Com. Levant_, II. 616-618.)–H.C.]
Galangal was much used as a spice in the Middle Ages. In a syrup for a capon, _temp._ Rich. II., we find ground-ginger, cloves, cinnamon and _galingale_. “Galingale” appears also as a growth in old English gardens, but this is believed to have been _Cyperus Longus_, the tubers of which were substituted for the real article under the name of English Galingale.
The name appears to be a modification of the Arabic _Kulijan_, Pers. _Kholinjan_, and these from the Sanskrit _Kulanjana_. (_Mr. Hanbury; China Comm.-Guide_, 120; _Eng. Cycl.; Garcia_, f. 63; _Wright_, p. 352.)
NOTE 6.–The cat in question is no doubt the fleecy Persian. These fowls,–but white,–are mentioned by Odoric at Fu-chau; and Mr. G. Phillips in a MS. note says that they are still abundant in Fo-kien, where he has often seen them; all that he saw or heard of were _white_. The Chinese call them “velvet-hair fowls.” I believe they are well known to poultry-fanciers in Europe. [_Gallus Lanatus_, Temm. See note, p. 286, of my edition of Odoric.–H.C.]
NOTE 7.–The _times_ assigned in this chapter as we have given them, after the G. Text, appear very short; but I have followed that text because it is perfectly consistent and clear. Starting from the last city of Kinsay government, the traveller goes six days south-east; _three_ out of those six days bring him to Kelinfu; he goes on the other three days and at the 15th mile of the 3rd day reaches Unken; 15 miles further bring him to Fuju. This is interesting as showing that Polo reckoned his day at 30 miles.
In Pauthier’s text again we find: “_Sachiez que quand on est ale_ six journees, apres ces trois que je vous ay dit,” not having mentioned _trois_ at all “_on treuve la cite de Quelifu_.” And on leaving Quelinfu: “_Sachiez que_ es autres trois journees oultre et plus xv. milles _treuve l’en une cite qui a nom Vuguen_.” This seems to mean from Cugui to Kelinfu six days, and thence to Vuguen (or Unken) three and a half days more. But evidently there has been bungling in the transcript, for the _es autre trois journees_ belongs to the same conception of the distance as that in the G.T. Pauthier’s text does not say how far it is from Unken to Fuju. Ramusio makes six days to Kelinfu, three days more to Unguem, and then 15 miles more to Fuju (which he has erroneously as _Cugiu_ here, though previously given right, _Fugiu_).
The latter scheme looks probable certainly, but the times in the G.T. are quite admissible, if we suppose that water conveyance was adopted where possible.
For assuming that _Cugiu_ was Fortune’s Chuchu at the western base of the Bohea mountains (see note 3, ch. lxxix.), and that the traveller reached Tsun-ngan-hien, in two marches, I see that from Tsin-tsun, near Tsun-ngan-hien, Fortune says he could have reached Fu-chau in four days by boat. Again Martini, speaking of the skill with which the Fo-kien boatmen navigate the rocky rapids of the upper waters, says that even from _Pu-ch’eng_ the descent to the capital could be made in three days. So the thing is quite possible, and the G. Text may be quite correct. (See _Fortune_, II. 171-183 and 210; _Mart._ 110.) A party which recently made the journey seem to have been six days from _Hokeu_ to the Wu-e-shan and then five and a half days by water (but in stormy weather) to Fu-chau. (_Chinese Recorder_, as above.)
NOTE 8.–Pauthier supposes Unken, or _Vuguen_ as he reads it, to be _Hukwan_, one of the _hiens_ under the immediate administration of Fu-chau city. This cannot be, according to the lucid reading of the G.T., making Unken 15 miles from the chief city. The only place which the maps show about that position is _Min-ts’ing hien_. And the Dutch mission of 1664-1665 names this as “Binkin, by some called Min-sing.” (_Astley_, III. 461.)
[Mr. Phillips writes (_T. Pao_, I. 224-225): “Going downstream from Kien-Ning, we arrive first at Yen-Ping on the Min Main River. Eighty-seven _li_ further down is the mouth of the Yiu-Ki River, up which stream, at a distance of eighty _li_, is Yiu-Ki city, where travellers disembark for the land journey to Yung-chun and Chinchew. This route is the highway from the town of Yiu-Ki to the seaport of Chinchew. This I consider to have been Polo’s route, and Ramusio’s Unguen I believe to be Yung-chun, locally known as Eng-chun or Ung-chun, a name greatly resembling Polo’s Unguen. I look upon this mere resemblance of name as of small moment in comparison with the weighty and important statement, that ‘this place is remarkable for a great manufacture of sugar.’ Going south from the Min River towards Chin-chew, this is the first district in which sugar-cane is seen growing in any quantity. Between Kien-Ning-Foo and Fuchau I do not know of any place remarkable for the _great_ manufacture of sugar. Pauthier makes How-Kuan do service for Unken or Unguen, but this is inadmissible, as there is no such place as How-Kuan; it is simply one of the divisions of the city of Fuchau, which is divided into two districts, viz. the Min-Hien and the How-Kuan-Hien. A small quantity of sugar-cane is, I admit, grown in the How-Kuan division of Fuchau-foo, but it is not extensively made into sugar. The cane grown there is usually cut into short pieces for chewing and hawked about the streets for sale. The nearest point to Foochow where sugar is made in any great quantity is Yung-Foo, a place quite out of Polo’s route. The great sugar manufacturing districts of Fuh-Kien are Hing-hwa, Yung-chun, Chinchew, and Chang-chau.”–H. C]
The _Babylonia_ of the passage from Ramusio is Cairo,–Babylon of Egypt, the sugar of which was very famous in the Middle Ages. _Zucchero di Bambellonia_ is repeatedly named in Pegolotti’s Handbook (210, 311, 362, etc.).
The passage as it stands represents the Chinese as not knowing even how to get sugar in the granular form: but perhaps the fact was that they did not know how to _refine_ it. Local Chinese histories acknowledge that the people of Fo-kien did not know how to make fine sugar, till, in the time of the Mongols, certain men from the West taught the art.[2] It is a curious illustration of the passage that in India coarse sugar is commonly called _Chini_, “the produce of China,” and sugar candy or fine sugar _Misri_, the produce of Cairo (_Babylonia_) or Egypt. Nevertheless, fine _Misri_ has long been exported from Fo-kien to India, and down to 1862 went direct from Amoy. It is now, Mr. Phillips states, sent to India by steamers via Hong-Kong. I see it stated, in a late Report by Mr. Consul Medhurst, that the sugar at this day commonly sold and consumed throughout China is excessively coarse and repulsive in appearance. (See _Academy_, February, 1874, p. 229.) [We note from the _Returns of Trade for 1900_, of the Chinese Customs, p. 467, that during that year 1900, the following quantities of sugar were exported from Amoy: _Brown_, 89,116 _piculs_, value 204,969 Hk. taels; _white_, 3,708 _piculs_, 20,024 Hk. taels; _candy_, 53,504 _piculs_, 304,970 Hk. taels.–H.C.]
[Dr. Bretschneider (_Hist. of Bot. Disc._ I. p. 2) remarks that “the sugar cane although not indigenous in China, was known to the Chinese in the 2nd century B.C. It is largely cultivated in the Southern provinces.”–H.C.]
The fierce lions are, as usual, tigers. These are numerous in this province, and tradition points to the diversion of many roads, owing to their being infested by tigers. Tiger cubs are often offered for sale in Amoy.[3]
[1] “It is not improbable that there is some admixture of aboriginal blood in the actual population (of Fuh-Kien), but if so, it cannot be much. The _surnames_ in this province are the same as those in Central and North China…. The language also is pure Chinese; actually much nearer the ancient form of Chinese than the modern Mandarin dialect. There are indeed many words in the vernacular for which no corresponding character has been found in the literary style: but careful investigation is gradually diminishing the number.” (_Note by Rev. Dr. C. Douglas_.)
[2] _Note_ by _Mr. C. Phillips_. I omit a corroborative quotation about sugar from the Turkish Geography, copied from Klaproth in the former edition: because the author, Hajji Khalfa, used European sources; and I have no doubt the passage was derived indirectly from Marco Polo.
[3] _Note_ by _Mr. G. Phillips_.
CHAPTER LXXXI.
CONCERNING THE GREATNESS OF THE CITY OF FUJU.
Now this city of Fuju is the key of the kingdom which is called CHONKA, and which is one of the nine great divisions of Manzi.[NOTE 1] The city is a seat of great trade and great manufactures. The people are Idolaters and subject to the Great Kaan. And a large garrison is maintained there by that prince to keep the kingdom in peace and subjection. For the city is one which is apt to revolt on very slight provocation.
There flows through the middle of this city a great river, which is about a mile in width, and many ships are built at the city which are launched upon this river. Enormous quantities of sugar are made there, and there is a great traffic in pearls and precious stones. For many ships of India come to these parts bringing many merchants who traffic about the Isles of the Indies. For this city is, as I must tell you, in the vicinity of the Ocean Port of ZAYTON,[NOTE 2] which is greatly frequented by the ships of India with their cargoes of various merchandize; and from Zayton ships come this way right up to the city of Fuju by the river I have told you of; and ’tis in this way that the precious wares of India come hither. [NOTE 3]
The city is really a very fine one and kept in good order, and all necessaries of life are there to be had in great abundance and cheapness.
NOTE 1.–The name here applied to Fo-kien by Polo is variously written as _Choncha, Chonka, Concha, Chouka_. It has not been satisfactorily explained. Klaproth and Neumann refer it to _Kiang-Che_, of which Fo-kien at one time of the Mongol rule formed a part. This is the more improbable as Polo expressly distinguishes this province or kingdom from that which was under Kinsay, viz. Kiang-Che. Pauthier supposes the word to represent _Kien-Kwe_ “the Kingdom of Kien,” because in the 8th century this territory had formed a principality of which the seat was at _Kien-chau_, now Kien-ning fu. This is not satisfactory either, for no evidence is adduced that the name continued in use.
One might suppose that _Choncha_ represented _T’swan-chau_, the Chinese name of the city of Zayton, or rather of the department attached to it, written by the French _Thsiuan-tcheou_, but by Medhurst _Chwanchew_, were it not that Polo’s practice of writing the term _tcheu_ or _chau_ by _giu_ is so nearly invariable, and that the soft _ch_ is almost always expressed in the old texts by the Italian _ci_ (though the Venetian does use the soft _ch_).[1]
It is again impossible not to be struck with the resemblance of _Chonka_ to “CHUNG-KWE” “the Middle Kingdom,” though I can suggest no ground for the application of such a title specially to Fo-kien, except a possible misapprehension. _Chonkwe_ occurs in the Persian _Historia Cathaica_ published by Mueller, but is there specially applied to _North China_. (See _Quat. Rashid._, p. lxxxvi.)
The city of course is FU-CHAU. It was visited also by Friar Odoric, who calls it _Fuzo_, and it appears in duplicate on the Catalan Map as _Fugio_ and as _Fozo_.
I used the preceding words, “the city of course is Fu-chau,” in the first edition. Since then Mr. G. Phillips, of the consular staff in Fo-kien, has tried to prove that Polo’s Fuju is not Fu-chau (_Foochow_ is his spelling), but T’swan-chau. This view is bound up with another regarding the identity of Zayton, which will involve lengthy notice under next chapter; and both views have met with an able advocate in the Rev. Dr. C. Douglas, of Amoy.[2] I do not in the least accept these views about Fuju.
In considering the objections made to Fu-chau, it must never be forgotten that, according to the spelling usual with Polo or his scribe, Fuju is not merely “a name with a great resemblance in sound to Foochow” (as Mr. Phillips has it); it _is_ Mr. Phillips’s word Foochow, just as absolutely as my word Fu-chau is his word Foochow. (See remarks almost at the end of the Introductory Essay.) And what has to be proved against me in this matter is, that when Polo _speaks_ of Fu-chau he does not _mean_ Fu-chau. It must also be observed that the distances as given by Polo (three days from Quelinfu to Fuju, five days from Fuju to Zayton) do correspond well with my interpretations, and do _not_ correspond with the other. These are