The tale runs on of the Khan’s silk-corded pavilion in the grove, gilt all over, and having lacquered, dragon-pedimented columns; of cave-born rivers running deep below the ground; of treasured gems and gold. No wonder that Coleridge’s imagination was warmed to his dream poem. In Xanadu did Kublai Khan A stately pleasure dome decree, Where Alph the sacred river ran, Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea. London’s tortuous streets were to wait two hundred years for their first pavement, when Cambaluc’s were so straight and wide that one could see right along them from end to end, and from one gate to the other. In the Khan’s parks, the roads, being all paved and raised two cubits above the surface, never became muddy, nor did the rain lodge on them, but flowed off into the meadows. In addition to civilization’s wealth and magnificence, the Mongols had developed a well-organized government. The Khan’s twelve barons exercised his delegated authority, as does a modern cabinet in behalf of the national executive. Cambaluc was policed by a thousand guards. The city wards were laid out, for taxation and government, in squares like a chess-board, and all these plots were assigned to different heads of families. The military roads were constantly kept up by a large force. The Emperor had ordered that all the highways should be planted with great trees a few yards apart. Even the roads through the unpeopled regions were thus planted, and it was the greatest possible solace to travelers. The post, too, was as thoroughly organized as Napoleon’s. The messengers of the Emperor, bound in whatsoever direction from Cambaluc, found, every twenty-five miles of the way, a relay-station. Where the route lay through uninhabited deserts, the relay-posts were made houses of sojourn. At all stations express messengers were in readiness, as links in the system for speeding dispatches to provincial governors or generals: they were equipped with the fastest horses, which stood fresh and saddled, ready for an instant mount. The men wore girdles hung with bells; when within hearing of a station came the sound of jingling and the clatter of hoofs, the next man similarly provided would leap to his horse, take the delivered letter, and be off at full speed. The post covered a full two hundred miles by day, and an equal distance by night. Marco Polo states that, in the season, fruit gathered one morning at the capital, in the evening of the next day reached the Great Khan in Shang-tu--a distance of ten days’ journey.