The manners, customs, and opinions of the people, though apparently considered by Marco Polo as less important than what regarded the magnificence and greatness of the khan, commanded a considerable share of our traveller’s attention. The religion of Buddha, whose mysterious doctrines have eluded the grasp of the most comprehensive minds even up to the present moment, he could not be expected to understand; but its great leading tenets, the unity of the supreme God, the immortality of the soul, the metempsychosis, and the final absorption of the virtuous in the essence of the Divinity, are distinctly announced. The manners of the Tartars were mild and refined; their temper cheerful; their character honest. Filial affection was assiduously cultivated, and such as were wanting in this virtue were condemned to severe punishment by the laws. Three years’ imprisonment was the usual punishment for heinous offences; but the criminals were marked upon the cheek when set at liberty, that they might be known and avoided. Agriculture has always commanded a large share of the attention of the Chinese. The whole country for many days’ journey west of Cambalu was covered with a numerous population, distinguished for their ingenuity and industry. Towns and cities were numerous, the fields richly cultivated, and interspersed with vineyards or plantations of mulberry-trees. On approaching the banks of the Hoang-ho, which was so broad and deep that no bridges could be thrown over it from the latitude of Cambalu to the ocean, the fields abounded with ginger and silk; and game, particularly pheasants, were so abundant, that three of these beautiful birds might be purchased for a Venetian groat. The margin of the river was clothed with large forests of bamboos, the largest, tallest, and most useful of the cane species. Crossing the Hoang-ho, and proceeding for two days in a westerly direction, you arrived at the city of Karianfu, situated in a country fertile in various kinds of spices, and remarkable for its manufactories of silk and cloth of gold. This appears to have been the route pursued by Marco Polo when proceeding as the emperor’s ambassador into Western Tibet. Having travelled for ten days through plains of surpassing beauty and fertility, thickly sprinkled with cities, castles, towns, and villages, shaded by vast plantations of mulberry-trees, and cultivated like a garden, he arrived in the mountainous district of the province of Chunchian, which abounded with lions, bears, stags, roebucks, and wolves. The country through which his route now lay was an agreeable succession of hill, valley, and plain, adorned and improved by art, or reluctantly abandoned to the rude but sublime fantasies of nature.