NOTE 3.—­This statement about the abundance of rhubarb in the hills near Su-chau is believed by the most competent authorities to be quite erroneous.  Rhubarb is exported from Shang-hai, but it is brought thither from Hankau on the Upper Kiang, and Hankau receives it from the further west.  Indeed Mr. Hanbury, in a note on the subject, adds his disbelief also that ginger is produced in Kiang-nan.  And I see in the Shang-hai trade-returns of 1865, that there is no ginger among the exports. [Green ginger is mentioned in the Shang-hai Trade Reports for 1900 among the exports (p. 309) to the amount of 18,756 piculs; none is mentioned at Su-chau.—­H.C.].  Some one, I forget where, has suggested a confusion with Suh-chau in Kan-suh, the great rhubarb mart, which seems possible.

["Polo is correct in giving Tangut as the native country of Rhubarb (Rheum palmatum) but no species of Rheum has hitherto been gathered by our botanists as far south as Kiang-Su, indeed, not even in Shan-tung.” (Bretschneider, Hist. of Bot.  Disc., I. p. 5.)—­H.C.]

NOTE 4.—­The meanings ascribed by Polo to the names of Su-chau and King-sze (Hang-chau) show plainly enough that he was ignorant of Chinese.  Odoric does not mention Su-chau, but he gives the same explanation of Kinsay as signifying the “City of Heaven,” and Wassaf also in his notice of the same city has an obscure passage about Paradise and Heaven, which is not improbably a corrupted reference to the same interpretation.[1] I suspect therefore that it was a “Vulgar Error” of the foreign residents in China, probably arising out of a misunderstanding of the Chinese adage quoted by Duhalde and Davis:—­

  “Shang yeu t’ien t’ang, Hia yeu SU HANG!”

  “There’s Paradise above ’tis true,
  But here below we’ve HANG and SU!”

These two neighbouring cities, in the middle of the beautiful tea and silk districts, and with all the advantages of inland navigation and foreign trade, combined every source of wealth and prosperity, and were often thus coupled together by the Chinese.  Both are, I believe, now recovering from the effects of devastation by T’ai-P’ing occupation and Imperialist recapture; but neither probably is one-fifth of what it was.

The plan of Su-chau which we give is of high interest.  It is reduced (1/10 the scale) from a rubbing of a plan of the city incised on marble measuring 6’ 7” by 4’ 4”, and which has been preserved in the Confucian Temple in Su-chau since A.D. 1247.  Marco Polo’s eyes have probably rested on this fine work, comparable to the famous Pianta Capitolina.  The engraving on page 183 represents one of the gates traced from the rubbing and reduced to half the scale.  It is therefore an authentic representation of Chinese fortification in or before the 13th century.[2]