The canal appears to have been [begun in 1289 and to have been completed in 1292.—­H.C.] though large portions were in use earlier.  Its chief object was to provide the capital with food.  Pauthier gives the statistics of the transport of rice by this canal from 1283 to the end of Kublai’s reign, and for some subsequent years up to 1329.  In the latter year the quantity reached 3,522,163 shi or 1,247,633 quarters.  As the supplies of rice for the capital and for the troops in the Northern Provinces always continued to be drawn from Kiang-nan, the distress and derangement caused by the recent rebel occupation of that province must have been enormous. (Pauthier, p. 481-482; De Mailla, p. 439.) Polo’s account of the formation of the canal is exceedingly accurate.  Compare that given by Mr. Williamson (I. 62).

NOTE 3.—­“On the Kiang, not far from the mouth, is that remarkably beautiful little island called the ‘Golden Isle,’ surmounted by numerous temples inhabited by the votaries of Buddha or Fo, and very correctly described so many centuries since by Marco Polo.” (Davis’s Chinese, I. 149.) The monastery, according to Pauthier, was founded in the 3rd or 4th century, but the name Kin-Shan, or “Golden Isle,” dates only from a visit of the Emperor K’ang-hi in 1684.

The monastery contained one of the most famous Buddhist libraries in China.  This was in the hands of our troops during the first China war, and, as it was intended to remove the books, there was no haste made in examining their contents.  Meanwhile peace came, and the library was restored.  It is a pity now that the jus belli had not been exercised promptly, for the whole establishment was destroyed by the T’ai-P’ings in 1860, and, with the exception of the Pagoda at the top of the hill, which was left in a dilapidated state, not one stone of the buildings remained upon another.  The rock had also then ceased to be an island; and the site of what not many years before had been a channel with four fathoms of water separating it from the southern shore, was covered by flourishing cabbage-gardens. (Guetzlaff in J.R.A.S. XII. 87; Mid.  Kingd. I. 84, 86; Oliphant’s Narrative, II. 301; N. and Q. Ch. and Jap. No. 5, p. 58.)

CHAPTER LXXIII.

OF THE CITY OF CHINGHIANFU.

Chinghianfu is a city of Manzi.  The people are Idolaters and subject to the Great Kaan, and have paper-money, and live by handicrafts and trade.  They have plenty of silk, from which they make sundry kinds of stuffs of silk and gold.  There are great and wealthy merchants in the place; plenty of game is to be had, and of all kinds of victual.

[Illustration:  West Gate of Chin-kiang fu in 1842.]

There are in this city two churches of Nestorian Christians which were established in the year of our Lord 1278; and I will tell you how that happened.  You see, in the year just named, the Great Kaan sent a Baron of his whose name was MAR SARGHIS, a Nestorian Christian, to be governor of this city for three years.  And during the three years that he abode there he caused these two Christian churches to be built, and since then there they are.  But before his time there was no church, neither were there any Christians.[NOTE 1]