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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
208
MARCO POLO BOOK II,
and there would be waited on by those young ladies.
And thus he passed his life in this constant dalliance
with women, without so much as knowing what arms
meant ! And the result of all this cowardice and
effeminacy was that he lost his dominion to the Great
Kaan in that base and shameful way that you have
heard.11
All this account was given me by a very rich merchant
of Kinsay when I was in that city. He was a very old man,
and had been in familiar intimacy with the King Facfur,
and knew the whole history of his life ; and having seen
the Palace in its glory was pleased to be my guide over
it. As it is occupied by the King appointed by the
Great Kaan, the first pavilions are still maintained as
they used to be, but the apartments of the ladies are all
gone to ruin and can only just be traced. So also the
wall that enclosed the groves and gardens is fallen clown,
and neither trees nor animals are there any longer.12]
NOTE I.—I have, after some consideration, followed the example of Mr. H. Murray, in his edition of Marco Polo, in collecting together in a separate chapter a number of additional particulars concerning the Great City, which are only found in Ramusio. Such of these as could be interpolated in the text of the older form of the narrative have been introduced between brackets in the last chapter. Here I bring together those particulars which could not be so interpolated without taking liberties
with one or both texts. •
The picture in Ramusio, taken as a whole, is so much more brilliant, interesting, and complete than in the older texts, that I thought of substituting it entirely for the other. But so much doubt and difficulty hangs over some passages of the Ramusian version that I could not satisfy myself of the propriety of this, though I feel that the dismemberment inflicted on that version is also objectionable.
w, lit
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NOTE 2. —The tides in the Hang-chau estuary are now so furious, entering in the form of a bore, and running sometimes, by Admiral Collinson's measurement, I I2 knots, that it has been necessary to close by weirs the communication which formerly existed between the River Tsien-tang on the one side and the Lake Si-hu and internal waters of the district on the other. Thus all cargoes are passed through the small city canal in barges, and are subject to transhipment at the river-bank, and at the great canal terminus outside the north gate, respectively. Mr. Kingsmill, to whose notices I am indebted for part of this information, is, however, mistaken in supposing that in Polo's time the tide stopped some 20 miles below the city. We have seen (note 6, eh. lxv. supra) that the tide in the river before Kinsay was the object which first attracted the attention of Bayan, after his triumphant entrance into the city. The tides reach Fuyang, 20 miles higher. (N. and Q., China and Japan,
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