So we will leave it and tell you of a great city called Cachanfu.  But stay—­first let us tell you about the noble castle called Caichu.

NOTE 1.—­Marsden translates the commencement of this passage, which is peculiar to Ramusio, and runs “E in capo di cinque giornate delle predette dieci,” by the words “At the end of five days’ journey beyond the ten,” but this is clearly wrong.[1] The place best suiting in position, as halfway between Cho-chau and T’ai-yuan fu, would be CHENG-TING FU, and I have little doubt that this is the place intended.  The title of Ak-Baligh in Turki,[2] or Chaghan Balghasun in Mongol, meaning “White City,” was applied by the Tartars to Royal Residences; and possibly Cheng-ting fu may have had such a claim, for I observe in the Annales de la Prop. de la Foi (xxxiii. 387) that in 1862 the Chinese Government granted to the R.C.  Vicar-Apostolic of Chihli the ruined Imperial Palace at Cheng-ting fu for his cathedral and other mission establishments.  Moreover, as a matter of fact, Rashiduddin’s account of Chinghiz’s campaign in northern China in 1214, speaks of the city of “Chaghan Balghasun which the Chinese call Jintzinfu.”  This is almost exactly the way in which the name of Cheng-ting fu is represented in ’Izzat Ullah’s Persian Itinerary (Jigdzinfu, evidently a clerical error for Jingdzinfu), so I think there can be little doubt that Cheng-ting fu is the place intended.  The name of Hwai-luh’ien (see Note 2), which is the first stage beyond Cheng-ting fu, is said to mean the “Deer-lair,” pointing apparently to the old character of the tract as a game-preserve.  The city of Cheng-ting is described by Consul Oxenham as being now in a decayed and dilapidated condition, consisting only of two long streets crossing at right angles.  It is noted for the manufacture of images of Buddha from Shan-si iron. (Consular Reports, p. 10; Erdmann, 331.)

[The main road turns due west at Cheng-ting fu, and enters Shan-si through what is known among Chinese travellers as the Ku-kwan, Customs’ Barrier.—­H.C.]

Between Cheng-ting fu and T’ai-yuan fu the traveller first crosses a high and rugged range of mountains, and then ascends by narrow defiles to the plateau of Shan-si.  But of these features Polo’s excessive condensation takes no notice.

The traveller who quits the great plain of Chihli [which terminates at Fu-ch’eng-i, a small market-town, two days from Pao-ting.—­H.C.] for “the kingdom of Taianfu,” i.e.  Northern Shan-si, enters a tract in which predominates that very remarkable formation called by the Chinese Hwang-tu and to which the German name Loess has been attached.  With this formation are bound up the distinguishing characters of Northern Interior China, not merely in scenery but in agricultural products, dwellings, and means of transport.  This Loess is a brownish-yellow loam, highly porous, spreading