[The Rev. C. Holcombe (l.c. p. 66) writes:  “From T’ung-kwan to Si-ngan fu, the road runs in a direction nearly due west, through a most lovely section of country, having a range of high hills upon the south, and the Wei River on the north.  The road lies through one long orchard, and the walled towns and cities lie thickly along, for the most part at a little distance from the highway.”  Mr. Rockhill says (Land of the Lamas, pp. 19-20):  “The road between T’ung-kwan and Si-ngan fu, a distance of 110 miles, is a fine highway—­for China—­with a ditch on either side, rows of willow-trees here and there, and substantial stone bridges and culverts over the little streams which cross it.  The basin of the Wei ho, in which this part of the province lies, has been for thousands of years one of the granaries of China.  It was the colour of its loess-covered soil, called ‘yellow earth’ by the Chinese, that suggested the use of yellow as the colour sacred to imperial majesty.  Wheat and sorghum are the principal crops, but we saw also numerous paddy fields where flocks of flamingoes were wading, and fruit-trees grew everywhere.”—­H.C.]

[Illustration:  Reduced Facsimile of the celebrated Christian Inscription of Singan fu in Chinese and Syrian Characters]

Kenjanfu, or, as Ramusio gives it, Quenzanfu, is SI-NGAN FU, or as it was called in the days of its greatest fame, Chang-ngan, probably the most celebrated city in Chinese history, and the capital of several of the most potent dynasties.  It was the metropolis of Shi Hwang-ti of the T’sin Dynasty, properly the first emperor and whose conquests almost intersected those of his contemporary Ptolemy Euergetes.  It was, perhaps, the Thinae of Claudius Ptolemy, as it was certainly the Khumdan[3] of the early Mahomedans, and the site of flourishing Christian Churches in the 7th century, as well as of the remarkable monument, the discovery of which a thousand years later disclosed their forgotten existence.[4] Kingchao-fu was the name which the city bore when the Mongol invasions brought China into communication with the west, and Klaproth supposes that this was modified by the Mongols into KENJANFU.  Under the latter name it is mentioned by Rashiduddin as the seat of one of the Twelve Sings or great provincial administrations, and we find it still known by this name in Sharifuddin’s history of Timur.  The same name is traceable in the Kansan of Odoric, which he calls the second best province in the world, and the best populated Whatever may have been the origin of the name Kenjanfu, Baron v.  Richthofen was, on the spot, made aware of its conservation in the exact form of the Ramusian Polo.  The Roman Catholic missionaries there emphatically denied that Marco could ever have been at Si-ngan fu, or that the city had ever been known by such a name as Kenjan-fu.  On this the Baron called in one of the Chinese pupils of the Mission, and asked him directly what had been the name of the city under the Yuen Dynasty.  He replied at once with remarkable clearness:  “QUEN-ZAN-FU.”  Everybody present was struck by the exact correspondence of the Chinaman’s pronunciation of the name with that which the German traveller had adopted from Ritter.