As our traveller has not thought proper, however, to describe these various journeys chronologically, or, indeed, to determine with any degree of exactness when any one of them took place, we are at liberty, in recording his peregrinations, to adopt whatever arrangement we please; and it being indisputable that Northern China was the first part of Kublai’s dominions, properly so called, which he entered, it appears most rational to commence the history of his Chinese travels with an outline of what he saw in that division of the empire. The khan himself, whose profuse munificence enabled Marco Polo to perform with pleasure and comfort his long and numerous expeditions, was a fine handsome man of middle stature, with a fresh complexion, bright black eyes, a well-formed nose, and a form every way well proportioned. He had four wives, each of whom had the title of empress, and possessed her own magnificent palace, with a separate court, consisting of three hundred maids of honour, a large number of eunuchs, and a suite amounting at least to ten thousand persons. He, moreover, possessed a numerous harem besides his wives; and in order to keep up a constant supply of fresh beauties, messengers were despatched every two years into a province of Tartary remarkable for the beauty of its women, and therefore set apart as a nursery for royal concubines, to collect the finest among the daughters of the land for the khan. As the inhabitants of this country considered it an honour to breed mistresses for their prince, the “elegans formarum spectator” had no difficulty in finding whatever number of young women he desired, and generally returned to court with at least five hundred in his charge. So vast an army of women were not, however, marched all at once into the khan’s harem. Examiners were appointed to fan away the chaff from the corn,—that is, to discover whether any of these fair damsels snored in their sleep, had an unsavoury smell, or were addicted to any mischievous or disagreeable tricks in their behaviour. Such, says the traveller, as were finally approved were divided into parties of five, and one such party attended in the chamber of the khan during three days and three nights in their turn, while another party waited in an adjoining apartment to prepare whatever the others might command them. The girls of inferior charms were employed in menial offices about the palace, or were bestowed in marriage, with large portions, upon the favoured officers of the khan. The number of the khan’s family, though not altogether answerable to this vast establishment of women, was respectable,—consisting of forty-seven sons, of whom twenty-two were by his wives, and all employed in offices of trust and honour in the empire. Of the number of his daughters we are not informed.