Text, "Roze de l'acur,"
and in Pauthier's "de rose et de l'asur." Rose Minerale, in the
terminology of the alchemists, was a red powder produced in the
sublimation of gold and mercury, but I can find no elucidation of the term
Rose of Azure.
The Crusca Italian has in the same place Terra dello
Azzurro. Having ventured to refer the question to the high authority of
Mr. C. W. King, he expresses the opinion that Roze here stands for
Roche, and that probably the term Roche de l'azur may have been used
loosely for blue-stone, i.e. carbonate of copper, which would assume a
green colour through moisture. He adds: "Nero, according to Pliny,
actually used chrysocolla, the siliceous carbonate of copper, in powder,
for strewing the circus, to give the course the colour of his favourite
faction, the prasine (or green). There may be some analogy between this
device and that of Kublai Khan." This parallel is a very happy one.
[Illustration: Mei Shan]
NOTE 13. - Friar Odoric gives a description, short, but closely agreeing in
substance with that in the Text, of the Palace, the Park, the Lake, and
the Green Mount.
A green mount, answering to the description, and about 160 feet in height,
stands immediately in rear of the palace buildings. It is called by the
Chinese King-Shan, "Court Mountain," Wan-su-Shan, "Ten Thousand Year
Mount," and Mei-Shan, "Coal Mount," the last from the material of which
it is traditionally said to be composed (as a provision of fuel in case of
siege).[1] Whether this is Kublai's Green Mount does not seem to be quite
certain. Dr. Lockhart tells me that, according to the information he
collected when living at Peking, it is not so, but was formed by the Ming
Emperors from the excavation of the existing lake on the site which the
Mongol Palace had occupied. There is another mount, he adds, adjoining the
east shore of the lake, which must be of older date even than Kublai, for
a Dagoba standing on it is ascribed to the Kin.
[The "Green Mount" was an island called K'iung-hua at the time of the
Kin; in 1271 it received the name of Wan-sui shan; it is about 100 feet
in height, and is the only hill mentioned by Chinese writers of the Mongol
time who refer to the palace grounds. It is not the present King-shan,
north of the palace, called also Wan-sui-shan under the Ming, and now
the Mei-shan, of more recent formation. "I have no doubt," says
Bretschneider (Peking, l.c. 35), "that Marco Polo's handsome palace on
the top of the Green Mount is the same as the Kuang-han tien" of the
Ch'ue keng lu. It was a hall in which there was a jar of black jade, big
enough to hold more than 30 piculs of wine; this jade had white veins, and
in accordance with these veins, fish and animals have been carved on the
jar.
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