First as regards Chanshan, which, with the notable circumstances about the waters there, constitutes the key to the route, I extract the following remarks from a note which Mr. Fortune has kindly sent me:  “When we get to Chanshan the proof as to the route is very strong.  This is undoubtedly my Chang-shan.  The town is near the head of the Green River (the Ts’ien T’ang) which flows in a N.E. direction and falls into the Bay of Hang-chau.  At Chang-shan the stream is no longer navigable even for small boats.  Travellers going west or south-west walk or are carried in sedan-chairs across country in a westerly direction for about 30 miles to a town named Yuh-shan.  Here there is a river which flows westward (’the other half goes down’), taking the traveller rapidly in that direction, and passing en route the towns of Kwansinfu, Hokow or Hokeu, and onward to the Poyang Lake.”  From the careful study of Mr. Fortune’s published narrative I had already arrived at the conclusion that this was the correct explanation of the remarkable expressions about the division of the waters, which are closely analogous to those used by the traveller in ch. lxii. of this book when speaking of the watershed of the Great Canal at Sinjumatu.  Paraphrased the words might run:  “At Chang-shan you reach high ground, which interrupts the continuity of the River; from one side of this ridge it flows up country towards the north, from the other it flows down towards the south.”  The expression “The River” will be elucidated in note 4 to ch. lxxxii. below.

This route by the Ts’ien T’ang and the Chang-shan portage, which turns the danger involved in the navigation of the Yang-tzu and the Poyang Lake, was formerly a thoroughfare to the south much followed; though now almost abandoned through one of the indirect results (as Baron Richthofen points out) of steam navigation.

The portage from Chang-shan to Yuh-shan was passed by the English and Dutch embassies in the end of last century, on their journeys from Hang-chau to Canton, and by Mr. Fortune on his way from Ningpo to the Bohea country of Fo-kien.  It is probable that Polo on some occasion made the ascent of the Ts’ien T’ang by water, and that this leads him to notice the interruption of the navigation.

[Mr. Phillips writes (T.  Pao, I. p. 222):  “From Fuyang the next point reached is Tunglu, also another 100 li distant.  Polo calls this city Ugim, a name bearing no resemblance to Tunglu, but this name and Ta Pin Zu are so corrupted in all editions that they defy conjecture.  One hundred li further up the river from Tunglu, we come to Yenchau, in which I think we have Polo’s Gengiu of Ramusio’s text.  Yule’s text calls this city Ghiuju, possibly an error in transcription for Ghinju; Yenchau in ancient Chinese would, according to Williams, be pronounced Ngam, Ngin, and Ngienchau, all of which are sufficiently near Polo’s Gengiu.  The next city reached is Lan Ki Hien or Lan Chi Hsien,