Asia -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Mongols -- History; Polo, Marco, 1254-1323?; Voyages and travels
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 _Variétés Sinologiques_,
No. 19, a complete study of the inscription of a _chwang_, nearly
similar to the one given here, which is erected near Ch’êng-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.
_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._)
[Illustration: South Part of KING-SZÉ with the SUNG PALACE, from
a Chinese reprint of a Plan dated circa A.D. 1270.
Lit. Frauenfelder, Palermo]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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