Dadu

Um, so I'll read a little bit from it.

Marco Polo relates, "The fact is that the emperor's mint is in the city of Khanbaliq, and it is set up in such a way that you might well say he has mastered the art of alchemy, as I will now prove to you.

Now, you should know that he has money made for him in the following way.

He has the bark stripped from trees, to be precise from the mulberry trees whose leaves are eaten by silkworms.

Quasi-French at least was still spoken half a century later by the numerous Christians settled at Aleppo, as John Marignoli testifies, and if we may trust Sir John Mandeville, the Soldan of Egypt himself and four of his chief lords spake French right well.

Ghazan Khan, the accomplished Mongol sovereign of Persia, to whom our traveller conveyed a bride from Cambaluc, is said by the historian Rashiduddin to have known something of the Frank tongue, probably French.

Nay, if we may trust the author of the romance of Richard Coeur de Lion, French was in his day the language of still higher spheres.

Nor was Polo's case an exceptional one even among writers on the East who were not Frenchmen.

Thus also Polo is made to describe Ormuz as on an island contrary to the old texts and to the fact, for the city of Hormuz was not transferred to the island afterwards so famous till some years after Polo's return from the East.

It is probably also the editor who in the notice of the oil springs of Caucasus, volume one page forty-six, has substituted camel loads for ship loads in ignorance that the site of those alluded to was probably Baku on the Caspian.

Other erroneous statements, such as the introduction of window glass as one of the embellishments of the palace at Cambaluc, are probably due only to accidental misunderstanding.

Of circumstances certainly genuine, which are peculiar to this edition of Polo's work, and which it is difficult to assign to anyone but himself, we may note the specification of the woods east of Yezd as composed of date trees, volume one pages eighty-eight and eighty-nine, the unmistakable allusion to the subterranean irrigation channels of Persia, page one twenty-three, the accurate explanation of the term Mulahet, applied to the sect of assassins, page one thirty-nine to one forty-two, the mention of the lake, Sirakul, on the plateau of Pamir, of the wolves that prey on the wild sheep, and of the piles of wild ram's horns used as landmarks in the snow, pages one seventy-one to one seventy-seven.

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 traveled from Cambaluc a good four months' journey towards the west.

And so now I will tell you all that he saw on his travels as he went and returned.

When you leave the city of Cambaluc and have ridden ten miles, you come to a very large river which is called Pulissangin, 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.

The people are subject to the Great Khan and have paper money.

It stands upon the river before mentioned.

I then called to mind the words of the Sheikh that an infidel king should take it, and my wonder was increased.

After a year had elapsed I entered the palace of the king of China at Khanbalik.

My object was to visit the cell of the Sheikh Burhanuddin of Sagirj.

I did so and found him reading, and the very goat's hair garment I have been mentioning was on him.