Marco Polo’s rectified Itinerary from Khotan
to Nia.
[Illustration: MARCO POLO in the Prison of Genoa]
HERE BEGINS THE DESCRIPTION OF THE INTERIOR OF CATHAY,
AND FIRST OF THE RIVER PULISANGHIN.
Now you must know that the Emperor sent the aforesaid
Messer Marco Polo, who is the author of this whole
story, on business of his into the Western Provinces.
On that occasion he travelled from Cambaluc a good
four months’ journey towards the west.[NOTE
1] And so now I will tell you all that he saw on his
travels as he went and returned.
[Illustration: The Bridge of Pulisanghin. (Reduced
from a Chinese original.)
“—et desus cest flum a un mout biaus
pont de pieres: car sachiez qe pont n’a
en tout le monde de si biaus ne son pareil.”]
When you leave the City of Cambaluc and have ridden
ten miles, you come to a very large river which is
called PULISANGHIN, and flows into the ocean, so that
merchants with their merchandise ascend it from the
sea. Over this River there is a very fine stone
bridge, so fine indeed, that it has very few equals.
The fashion of it is this: it is 300 paces in
length, and it must have a good eight paces of width,
for ten mounted men can ride across it abreast.
It has 24 arches and as many water-mills, and ’tis
all of very fine marble, well built and firmly founded.
Along the top of the bridge there is on either side
a parapet of marble slabs and columns, made in this
way. At the beginning of the bridge there is a
marble column, and under it a marble lion, so that
the column stands upon the lion’s loins, whilst
on the top of the column there is a second marble
lion, both being of great size and beautifully executed
sculpture. At the distance of a pace from this
column there is another precisely the same, also with
its two lions, and the space between them is closed
with slabs of grey marble to prevent people from falling
over into the water. And thus the columns run
from space to space along either side of the bridge,
so that altogether it is a beautiful object.[NOTE
2]
NOTE 1.—[When Marco leaves the capital,
he takes the main road, the “Imperial Highway,”
from Peking to Si-ngan fu, via Pao-ting, Cheng-ting,
Hwai-luh, Tai-yuan, Ping-yang, and T’ung-kwan,
on the Yellow River. Mr. G. F. Eaton, writing
from Han-chung (Jour. China Br. R. As.
Soc. XXVIII. No. 1) says it is a cart-road,
except for six days between Tai-yuan and Hwai-luh,
and that it takes twenty-nine days to go from Peking
to Si-ngan, a figure which agrees well with Polo’s
distances; it is also the time which Dr. Forke’s
