and private houses, that you would suppose yourself to be passing through the midst of a great city rather than a country scene.  Quays of cut stone are built along the banks, affording a spacious promenade; and causeways cross the lake itself, furnished with lofty bridges, to allow of the passage of boats; and thus you can readily walk all about the lake on this side and on that.  ’Tis no wonder that Polo considered it to be part of the city.  This, too, is the very city that hath within the walls, near the south side, a hill called Ching-hoang [6] on which stands that tower with the watchmen, on which there is a clepsydra to measure the hours, and where each hour is announced by the exhibition of a placard, with gilt letters of a foot and a half in height.  This is the very city the streets of which are paved with squared stones:  the city which lies in a swampy situation, and is intersected by a number of navigable canals; this, in short, is the city from which the emperor escaped to seaward by the great river Ts’ien-T’ang, the breadth of which exceeds a German mile, flowing on the south of the city, exactly corresponding to the river described by the Venetian at Quinsai, and flowing eastward to the sea, which it enters precisely at the distance which he mentions.  I will add that the compass of the city will be 100 Italian miles and more, if you include its vast suburbs, which run out on every side an enormous distance; insomuch that you may walk for 50 Chinese li in a straight line from north to south, the whole way through crowded blocks of houses, and without encountering a spot that is not full of dwellings and full of people; whilst from east to west you can do very nearly the same thing.” (Atlas Sinensis, p. 99.)

And so we quit what Mr. Moule appropriately calls “Marco’s famous rhapsody of the Manzi capital”; perhaps the most striking section of the whole book, as manifestly the subject was that which had made the strongest impression on the narrator.

[1] Fanfur, in Ramusio.

[2] See the mention of the I-ning Fang at Si-ngan fu, supra,
    p. 28.  Mr. Wylie writes that in a work on the latter city, published
    during the Yuen time, of which he has met with a reprint, there are
    figures to illustrate the division of the city into Fang, a
    word “which appears to indicate a certain space of ground, not an open
    square ... but a block of buildings crossed by streets, and at the end
    of each street an open gateway.”  In one of the figures a first
    reference indicates “the market place,” a second “the official
    establishment,” a third “the office for regulating weights.”  These
    indications seem to explain Polo’s squares. (See Note 3, above.)

[3] Foreigner in Far Cathay, pp. 158, 176.

[4] A famous poet and scholar of the 11th century.