["The Palace of canes is probably the Palm Hall, Tsung tien, alias
Tsung mao tien, of the Chinese authors, which was situated in the
western palace garden of Shangtu. Mention is made also in the Altan
Tobchi of a cane tent in Shangtu." (Palladius, p. 27.) - H. C.]
[Illustration: Pavilion at Yuen-ming-Yuen.]
Marco might well say of the bamboo that "it serves also a great variety of
other purposes." An intelligent native of Arakan who accompanied me in
wanderings on duty in the forests of the Burmese frontier in the beginning
of 1853, and who used to ask many questions about Europe, seemed able to
apprehend almost everything except the possibility of existence in a
country without bamboos! "When I speak of bamboo huts, I mean to say that
posts and walls, wall-plates and rafters, floor and thatch, and the withes
that bind them, are all of bamboo. In fact, it might almost be said that
among the Indo-Chinese nations the staff of life is a bamboo!
Scaffolding and ladders, landing-jetties, fishing apparatus, irrigation
wheels and scoops, oars, masts, and yards [and in China, sails, cables,
and caulking, asparagus, medicine, and works of fantastic art], spears and
arrows, hats and helmets, bow, bowstring and quiver, oil-cans,
water-stoups and cooking-pots, pipe-sticks [tinder and means of producing
fire], conduits, clothes-boxes, pawn-boxes, dinner-trays, pickles,
preserves, and melodious musical instruments, torches, footballs, cordage,
bellows, mats, paper; these are but a few of the articles that are made
from the bamboo;" and in China, to sum up the whole, as Barrow observes, it
maintains order throughout the Empire! (Ava Mission, p. 153; and see also
Wallace, Ind. Arch. I. 120 seqq.)
NOTE 5. - "The Emperor ... began this year (1264) to depart from Yenking
(Peking) in the second or third month for Shangtu, not returning until the
eighth month. Every year he made this passage, and all the Mongol emperors
who succeeded him followed his example." (Gaubil, p. 144.)
["The Khans usually resorted to Shangtu in the 4th moon and returned to
Peking in the 9th. On the 7th day of the 7th moon there were libations
performed in honour of the ancestors; a shaman, his face to the north,
uttered in a loud voice the names of Chingiz Khan and of other deceased
Khans, and poured mare's milk on the ground. The propitious day for the
return journey to Peking was also appointed then." (Palladius,
p. 26.) - H. C.]
NOTE 6. - White horses were presented in homage to the Kaan on New Year's
Day (the White Feast), as we shall see below. (Bk. II. ch. xv.) Odoric
also mentions this practice; and, according to Huc, the Mongol chiefs
continued it at least to the time of the Emperor K'ang-hi. Indeed
Timkowski speaks of annual tributes of white camels and white horses from
the Khans of the Kalkas and other Mongol dignitaries, in the present
century. (Huc's Tartary, etc.; Tim.
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