When you leave the City of Cambaluc and have ridden ten miles, you come to a very large river which is called PULISANGHIN, and flows into the ocean, so that merchants with their merchandise ascend it from the sea. Over this River there is a very fine stone bridge, so fine indeed, that it has very few equals. The fashion of it is this: it is 300 paces in length, and it must have a good eight paces of width, for ten mounted men can ride across it abreast. It has 24 arches and as many water-mills, and ’tis all of very fine marble, well built and firmly founded. Along the top of the bridge there is on either side a parapet of marble slabs and columns, made in this way. At the beginning of the bridge there is a marble column, and under it a marble lion, so that the column stands upon the lion’s loins, whilst on the top of the column there is a second marble lion, both being of great size and beautifully executed sculpture. At the distance of a pace from this column there is another precisely the same, also with its two lions, and the space between them is closed with slabs of grey marble to prevent people from falling over into the water. And thus the columns run from space to space along either side of the bridge, so that altogether it is a beautiful object.{2} [Illustration: The Bridge of Pulisanghin. (Reduced from a Chinese original.) “=—et desus cest flum a un mout biaus pont de pieres: car sachiez qe pont n’a en tout le monde de si biaus ne son pareil.=”] NOTE 1.—[When Marco leaves the capital, he takes the main road, the “Imperial Highway,” from Peking to Si-ngan fu, _viâ_ Pao-ting, Cheng-ting, Hwai-luh, Taï-yuan, Ping-yang, and T’ung-kwan, on the Yellow River. Mr. G. F. Eaton, writing from Han-chung (_Jour. China Br. R. As. Soc._ XXVIII. No. 1) says it is a cart-road, except for six days between Taï-yuan and Hwai-luh, and that it takes twenty-nine days to go from Peking to Si-ngan, a figure which agrees well with Polo’s distances; it is also the time which Dr. Forke’s journey lasted; he left Peking on the 1st May, 1892, reached Taï-yuan on the 12th, and arrived at Si-ngan on the 30th (_Von Peking nach Ch’ang-an_). Mr. Rockhill left Peking on the 17th December, 1888, reached T’aï-yuan on the 26th, crossed the Yellow River on the 5th January, and arrived at Si-ngan fu on the 8th January, 1889, in twenty-two days, a distance of 916 miles. (_Land of the Lamas_, pp. 372–374.) M. Grenard left Si-ngan on the 10th November and reached Peking on the 16th December, 1894 = thirty-six days; he reckons 1389 kilometres = 863 miles. (See _Rev. C. Holcombe, Tour through Shan-hsi and Shen-hsi_ in _Jour. North China Br. R. A. S._ N. S. X. pp. 54–70.)—H. C.]