KEIBUNG Kuerdu Balgasun, for Winter Residence Yeke DAITU Khotan, and on the shady side of the Altai (see ch. li. note 3, supra) Arulun TSAGHAN BALGASUN, and Erchuegin LANGTING Balgasun.”  A valuable letter from Dr. Bushell enables me now to indicate the position of Langtin:  “The district through which the river flows eastward from Shangtu is known to the Mongolians of the present day by the name of Lang-tirh (Lang-ting’rh)....  The ruins of the city are marked on a Chinese map in my possession Pai-dseng-tzu, i.e.  ‘White City,’ implying that it was formerly an Imperial residence.  The remains of the wall are 7 or 8 li in diameter, of stone, and situated about 40 li north-north-west from Dolon-nor.”

(Gerbillon in Astley, IV. 701-716; Klaproth, in J.  As. ser.  II. tom. xi. 345-350; Schott, Die letzten Jahre der Mongolenherrschaft in China (Berl.  Acad. d.  Wissensch. 1850, pp. 502-503); Huc’s Tartary, etc., p. seqq.; Cathay, 134, 261; S.  Setzen, p. 115; Dr. S. W. Bushell, Journey outside the Great Wall, in J.  R. G. S. for 1874, and MS. notes.)

One of the pavilions of the celebrated Yuen-ming-Yuen may give some idea of the probable style, though not of the scale, of Kublai’s Summer Palace.

Hiuen Tsang’s account of the elaborate and fantastic ornamentation of the famous Indian monasteries at Nalanda in Bahar, where Mr. Broadley has lately made such remarkable discoveries, seems to indicate that these fantasies of Burmese and Chinese architecture may have had a direct origin in India, at a time when timber was still a principal material of construction there:  “The pavilions had pillars adorned with dragons, and posts that glowed with all the colours of the rainbow, sculptured frets, columns set with jade, richly chiselled and lackered, with balustrades of vermilion, and carved open work.  The lintels of the doors were tastefully ornamented, and the roofs covered with shining tiles, the splendours of which were multiplied by mutual reflection and from moment to moment took a thousand forms.” (Vie et Voyages, 157.)

NOTE 3.—­[Rubruck says, (Rockhill, p. 248):  “I saw also the envoy of a certain Soldan of India, who had brought eight leopards and ten greyhounds, taught to sit on horses’ backs, as leopards sit.”—­H.  C.]

NOTE 4.—­Ramusio’s is here so much more lucid than the other texts, that I have adhered mainly to his account of the building.  The roof described is of a kind in use in the Indian Archipelago, and in some other parts of Transgangetic India, in which the semi-cylinders of bamboo are laid just like Roman tiles.

Rashiduddin gives a curious account of the way in which the foundations of the terrace on which this palace stood were erected in a lake.  He says, too, in accord with Polo:  “Inside the city itself a second palace was built, about a bowshot from the first:  but the Kaan generally takes up his residence in the palace outside the town,” i.e., as I imagine, in Marco’s Cane Palace. (Cathay, pp. 261-262.)