There is another thing I should mention; to wit, that for 20 days’ journey round the spot nobody is allowed, be he who he may, to keep hawks or hounds, though anywhere else whosoever list may keep them.  And furthermore throughout all the Emperor’s territories, nobody however audacious dares to hunt any of these four animals, to wit, hare, stag, buck, and roe, from the month of March to the month of October.  Anybody who should do so would rue it bitterly.  But those people are so obedient to their Lord’s command, that even if a man were to find one of those animals asleep by the roadside he would not touch it for the world!  And thus the game multiplies at such a rate that the whole country swarms with it, and the Emperor gets as much as he could desire.  Beyond the term I have mentioned, however, to wit that from March to October, everybody may take these animals as he list.[NOTE 9]

After the Emperor has tarried in that place, enjoying his sport as I have related, from March to the middle of May, he moves with all his people, and returns straight to his capital city of Cambaluc (which is also the capital of Cathay, as you have been told), but all the while continuing to take his diversion in hunting and hawking as he goes along.

NOTE 1.—­“Vait vers midi jusques a la Mer Occeane, ou il y a deux journees.” It is not possible in any way to reconcile this description as it stands with truth, though I do not see much room for doubt as to the direction of the excursion.  Peking is 100 miles as the crow flies from the nearest point of the coast, at least six or seven days’ march for such a camp, and the direction is south-east, or nearly so.  The last circumstance would not be very material as Polo’s compass-bearings are not very accurate.  We shall find that he makes the general line of bearing from Peking towards Kiangnan, Sciloc or S. East, hence his Midi ought in consistency to represent S.  West, an impossible direction for the Ocean.  It is remarkable that Ramusio has Greco or N.  East, which would by the same relative correction represent East.  And other circumstances point to the frontier of Liao-tong as the direction of this excursion.  Leaving the two days out of question, therefore, I should suppose the “Ocean Sea” to be struck at Shan-hai-kwan near the terminus of the Great Wall, and that the site of the standing hunting-camp is in the country to the north of that point.  The Jesuit Verbiest accompanied the Emperor Kanghi on a tour in this direction in 1682, and almost immediately after passing the Wall the Emperor and his party seem to have struck off to the left for sport.  Kublai started on the “1st of March,” probably however the 1st of the second Chinese month.  Kanghi started from Peking on the 23rd of March, on the hunting-journey just referred to.

NOTE 2.—­We are told that Bajazet had 7000 falconers and 6000 dog-keepers; whilst Sultan Mahomed Tughlak of India in the generation following Polo’s, is said to have had 10,000 falconers, and 3000 other attendants as beaters. (Not. et Ext. XIII. p. 185.)