IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
ei
UNDER THE MONGOLS. 261
there is another called SEMALI, most of the inhabitants of which are natives of Samarkand, and have planted a number of gardens in the Samarkand style. The third road takes the direction of the Pass of Siking,2 and after traversing this you find only prairies and plains abounding in game until you reach the city of Kaiminfu, where the summer palace is. Formerly the court used to pass the summer in the vicinity of the city of Chtichd, but afterwards the neighbourhood of Kaiminfu was preferred, and on the eastern side of that city a karsi or palace was built called LANGTIN, after a plan which the Kaan had seen in a dream, and retained in his memory.3
The philosophers and architects being consulted gave their advice as to the building of this other palace. They all agreed that the best site for it was a certain lake encompassed with meadows near the city of Kaiminfu, but for this it was necessary to provide a dry foundation. Now there is a kind of stone found in that country which is used instead of fire-wood ; so they collected a great quantity of that stone and likewise of wood,4 and filled up the lake and its springs with a mass of bricks and lime well shaken up together, running over the whole a quantity of melted tin and lead. The platform so formed was as high as a man. The water that was thus imprisoned in the bowels of the earth in the
few miles to the west of Peking, over which stood the bridge which Marco Polo describes (i. 34 of Murray). The Venetian calls the river Pulisangan, which looks very like the Persian Pul-i-sanghin or Stone bridge, as Marsden suggested. But as the name Sangkan-ho (said to mean River of Mulberry trees) is also recognized in Chinese books, the origin of the latter part of Marco's appellation seems doubtful (Kl. and Faut h.)
2 Siking, Sengling, or Sengking. The hills from which the Sangkan-ho emerges are called in Klaproth's map Shy-king-shan. This is perhaps the name in the text.
3 D'Ohsson has read this passage differently : " Kublai caused a palace to be built for him east of Kaipingfu, called Lengten ; but he abandoned it in consequence of a dream."
4 I.e., to burn bricks and lime.
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