NOTE 1.—­ + The history of the city on the site of Peking goes back to very old times, for it had been [under the name of Ki] the capital of the kingdom of Yen, previous to B.C. 222, when it was captured by the Prince of the T’sin Dynasty. [Under the T’ang dynasty (618-907) it was known under the name of Yu-chau.] It became one of the capitals of the Khitans in A.D. 936, and of the Kin sovereigns, who took it in 1125, in 1151 under the name of Chung-tu.  Under the name of Yenking, [given to this city in 1013] it has a conspicuous place in the wars of Chinghiz against the latter dynasty.  He captured it in 1215.  In 1264, Kublai adopted it as his chief residence, and founded in 1267, the new city of TATU ("Great Court"), called by the Mongols TAIDU or DAITU since 1271 (see Bk.  I. ch. lxi. note 1), at a little distance—­Odoric says half a mile—­to the north-east of the old Yenking.  Tatu was completed in the summer of 1267.

Old Yenking had, when occupied by the Kin, a circuit of 27 li (commonly estimated at 9 miles, but in early works the li is not more than 1/5 of a mile), afterwards increased to 30 li.  But there was some kind of outer wall about the city and its suburbs, the circuit of which is called 75 li. ["At the time of the Yuen the walls still existed, and the ancient city of the Kin was commonly called Nan-ch’eng (Southern city), whilst the Mongol capital was termed the northern city.” Bretschneider, Peking, 10.—­H.  C.] (Lockhart; and see Amyot, II. 553, and note 6 to last chapter.)

Polo correctly explains the name Cambaluc, i.e. Kaan-baligh, “The City of the Kaan.”

NOTE 2.—­The river that ran between the old and new city must have been the little river Yu, which still runs through the modern Tartar city, and fills the city ditches.

[Dr. Bretschneider (Peking, 49) thinks that there is a strong probability that Polo speaks of the Wen-ming ho, a river which, according to the ancient descriptions, ran near the southern wall of the Mongol capital.—­H.  C.]

[Illustration:  South Gate of Imperial City at Peking.

“Elle a donze portes, et sor chascune porte a une grandisme palais et biaus.”]

NOTE 3.—­This height is from Pauthier’s Text; the G. Text has, “twenty paces,” i.e. 100 feet.  A recent French paper states the dimensions of the existing walls as 14 metres (45-1/2 feet) high, and 14.50 (47-1/4 feet) thick, “the top forming a paved promenade, unique of its kind, and recalling the legendary walls of Thebes and Babylon.” (Ann. d’Hygiene Publique, 2nd s. tom, xxxii. for 1869, p. 21.)

[According to the French astronomers (Fleuriais and Lapied) sent to Peking for the Transit of Venus in December, 1875, the present Tartar city is 23 kil. 55 in circuit, viz. if 1 li = 575 m., 41 li; from the north to the south 5400 metres; from east to west 6700 metres; the wall is 13 metres in height and 12 metres in width.—­H.  C.]