De la Chine, III. ch. x. Audience
Imperiale.]
["It seems Polo took the three gateways in the middle gate (Ta-ming men)
for three gates, and thus speaks of five gates instead of three in the
southern wall." (Bretschneider, Peking, 27, note.) - H. C.]
NOTE 6. - Ramusio's version here diverges from the old MSS. It makes the
inner enclosure a mile square; and the second (the city of Taidu) six
miles square, as here, but adds, at a mile interval, a third of eight
miles square. Now it is remarkable that Mr. A. Wylie, in a letter dated
4th December 1873, speaking of a recent visit to Peking, says: "I found
from various inquiries that there are several remains of a very much
larger city wall, inclosing the present city; but time would not allow me
to follow up the traces."
Pauthier's text (which I have corrected by the G. T.), after describing
the outer inclosure to be a mile every way, says that the inner
inclosure lay at an interval of a mile within it!
[Dr. Bretschneider observes "that in the ancient Chinese works, three
concentric inclosures are mentioned in connection with the palace. The
innermost inclosed the Ta-nei, the middle inclosure, called
Kung-ch'eng or Huang-ch'eng, answering to the wall surrounding the
present prohibited city, and was about 6 li in circuit. Besides this
there was an outer wall (a rampart apparently) 20 li in circuit,
answering to the wall of the present imperial city (which now has 18 li
in circuit)." The Huang-ch'eng of the Yuen was measured by imperial
order, and found to be 7 li in circuit; the wall of the Mongol palace was
6 li in circuit, according to the Ch'ue keng lu. (Bretschneider,
Peking, 24.) - Marco Polo's mile could be approximately estimated = 2.77
Chinese li. (Ibid. 24, note.) The common Chinese li = 360 pu, or 180
chang, or 1800 ch'i (feet); 1 li = 1894 English feet or 575 metres; at
least according to the old Venice measures quoted in Yule's Marco Polo,
II., one pace = 5 feet. Besides the common li, the Chinese have another
li, used for measuring fields, which has only 240 pu or 1200 ch'i.
This is the li spoken of in the Ch'ue keng lu. (Ibid. 13, note.) - H.
C.]
NOTE 7. - ["Near the southern face of the wall are barracks for the Life
Guards." (Ch'ue keng lu, translated by Bretschneider, 25.) - H. C.]
NOTE 8. - This description of palace (see opposite cut), an elevated
basement of masonry with a superstructure of timber (in general carved and
gilded), is still found in Burma, Siam, and Java, as well as in China. If
we had any trace of the palaces of the ancient Asokas and Vikramadityas of
India, we should probably find that they were of the same character. It
seems to be one of those things that belonged to some ancient Panasiatic
fashion, as the palaces of Nineveh were of a somewhat similar construction.
In the Audience Halls of the Moguls at Delhi and Agra we can trace the
ancient form, though the superstructure has there become an arcade of
marble instead of a pavilion on timber columns.
