This plain extends for two days’ journey, throughout which it is as fine as I have told you, with towns and villages as numerous. After those two days, you again come to great mountains and valleys, and extensive forests, and you continue to travel westward through this kind of country for 20 days, finding however numerous towns and villages. The people are Idolaters, and live by agriculture, by cattle-keeping, and by the chase, for there is much game. And among other kinds, there are the animals that produce the musk, in great numbers.{2} NOTE 1.—Though the termini of the route, described in these two chapters, are undoubtedly Si-ngan fu and Ch’êng-tu fu, there are serious difficulties attending the determination of the line actually followed. The time according to all the MSS., so far as I know, except those of one type, is as follows: In the plain of Kenjanfu 3 days. In the mountains of Cuncun 20 „ In the plain of Acbalec 2 „ In mountains again 20 „ —— 45 days. —— [From Si-ngan fu to Ch’êng-tu (Sze-ch’wan), the Chinese reckon 2300 _li_ (766 miles). (Cf. _Rockhill, Land of the Lamas_, p. 23.) Mr. G. F. Eaton, writing from Han-chung (_Jour. China Br. R. A. S._ xxviii. p. 29) reckons: “From Si-ngan Fu S.W. to Ch’êng-tu, _viâ_ K’i-shan, Fung-sien, Mien, Kwang-yuan and Chao-hwa, about 30 days, in chairs.” He says (p. 24): “From Ch’êng-tu _viâ_ Si-ngan to Peking the road does not touch Han-chung, but 20 _li_ west of the city strikes north to Pao-ch’eng.—The road from Han-chung to Ch’êng-tu made by Ts’in Shi Hwang-ti to secure his conquest of Sze-ch’wan, crosses the Ta-pa-shan.”—H. C.] It seems to me almost impossible to doubt that the Plain of Acbalec represents some part of the river-valley of the Han, interposed between the two ranges of mountains called by Richthofen _T’sing-Ling-Shan_ and _Ta-pa-Shan_. But the time, as just stated, is extravagant for anything like a direct journey between the two termini. The distance from Si-ngan fu to Pao-ki is 450 _li_, which _could_ be done in 3 days, but at Polo’s rate would probably require 5. The distance by the mountain road from Pao-ki to the Plain of Han-chung, could never have occupied 20 days. It is really a 6 or 7 days’ march.