Imagine this guard
is kept up for fear of any attack, but only as a guard of honour for the
Sovereign, who resides there, and to prevent thieves from doing mischief
in the town.[NOTE 7]
NOTE 1. - + The history of the city on the site of Peking goes back to
very old times, for it had been [under the name of Ki] the capital of
the kingdom of Yen, previous to B.C. 222, when it was captured by the
Prince of the T'sin Dynasty. [Under the T'ang dynasty (618-907) it was
known under the name of Yu-chau.] It became one of the capitals of the
Khitans in A.D. 936, and of the Kin sovereigns, who took it in 1125, in
1151 under the name of Chung-tu. Under the name of Yenking, [given to this
city in 1013] it has a conspicuous place in the wars of Chinghiz against
the latter dynasty. He captured it in 1215. In 1264, Kublai adopted it as
his chief residence, and founded in 1267, the new city of TATU ("Great
Court"), called by the Mongols TAIDU or DAITU since 1271 (see Bk. I. ch.
lxi. note 1), at a little distance - Odoric says half a mile - to the
north-east of the old Yenking. Tatu was completed in the summer of 1267.
Old Yenking had, when occupied by the Kin, a circuit of 27 li (commonly
estimated at 9 miles, but in early works the li is not more than 1/5 of
a mile), afterwards increased to 30 li. But there was some kind of outer
wall about the city and its suburbs, the circuit of which is called 75
li. ["At the time of the Yuen the walls still existed, and the ancient
city of the Kin was commonly called Nan-ch'eng (Southern city), whilst the
Mongol capital was termed the northern city." Bretschneider, Peking,
10. - H. C.] (Lockhart; and see Amyot, II. 553, and note 6 to last
chapter.)
Polo correctly explains the name Cambaluc, i.e. Kaan-baligh, "The City
of the Kaan."
NOTE 2. - The river that ran between the old and new city must have been
the little river Yu, which still runs through the modern Tartar city,
and fills the city ditches.
[Dr. Bretschneider (Peking, 49) thinks that there is a strong
probability that Polo speaks of the Wen-ming ho, a river which,
according to the ancient descriptions, ran near the southern wall of the
Mongol capital. - H. C.]
[Illustration: South Gate of Imperial City at Peking.
"Elle a donze portes, et sor chascune porte a une grandisme palais et
biaus."]
NOTE 3.
