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0339 Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2
Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 / Page 339 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000042
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TO C'ATTTAI'.

5 79

fortified town. Here they stopped another month to refresh themselves and their beasts, being glad to do so at a town which was still within the limits of the kingdom of Cialis, where they had been treated with so much civility.

From Camul they came in nine days to the celebrated northern wall of China, reaching it at the place called CHIAicuoN,' and there they had to wait twenty-five days for an answer from the Viceroy of the province. When they were at last admitted within the wall, they reached, after one more day's travelling, the city of SUCIEU. Here they heard much about Peking and other names with which they were acquainted, and here Benedict parted with his last lingering doubt as to the identity in all but name of Cathay and China.

The country between Cialis and the Chinese frontier has an evil fame on account of its liability to Tartar raids, and therefore this part of the road is traversed by merchants

who, after crossing the Indus, reach Uchh before advancing against Multan, he notes " Outchah, ville à l'orient de l'Indus au nord de Multan," he is simply putting forth his own erroneous deductions from the text as a piece of independent knowledge. And when Pauthier quotes from the same author (Polo, p. 197), a professed extract from the Yasa of Chinghiz as corroborating, with extraordinary minuteness, certain statements of Marco, I suspect it will prove that Petis de la Croix had merely borrowed the said statements from Polo himself (H. de Timur Bec, ii, 46). Shah Rukh's people reach Kara-Khoja in three days from Turfan ; in fourteen days more, Ata-Sufi ; and in two days more, Kamul.

3 Kamil, Kamul, Komul, Hami of the Chinese, and formerly called by them Igu, an ancient city of the Uigur country, has already been spoken of (supra, p. 390). It is the point of departure for crossing the desert into China, and near it the road from China branches, one line going north of the Thian Shan, by Barkul, the Urumtsi district, and Kurkarausu to Ili; the other south of the mountains, by which Goëz came. Kamul is now the seat of the great commissariat depôts of the Chinese for the garrisons of Turkestan. The climate of Kamul appears to be very mild, for oranges are grown there (R. in C. Asia, p. 129).

1 Kia-yu-Koan, or the " Jade Gate," of the Great Wall, the Jaiguouden of Mir Izzet Ullah's route. Koan, in Chinese, is a fort guarding a defile (Ritter, ii, 213 ; D'Ohsson, ii, 625; J. R. As. Soc., vii, 283, segq.).

This place is probably the Karati of Shah Rukh's people.

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