The Walls, Of Earth
Faced With Brick And Unhewn Stone, Still Stand, Forming, As In The Tartar
City Of Peking, A Double Enceinte, Of Which The Inner Line No Doubt
Represents The Area Of The "Marble Palace" Of Which Polo Speaks.
This
forms a square of about 2 li (2/3 of a mile) to the side, and has three
gates - south, east, and west, of which the southern one still stands
intact, a perfect arch, 20 ft.
High and 12 ft. wide. The outer wall forms
a square of 4 li (1-1/3 mile) to the side, and has six gates. The
foundations of temples and palace-buildings can be traced, and both
enclosures are abundantly strewn with blocks of marble and fragments of
lions, dragons, and other sculptures, testifying to the former existence
of a flourishing city, but exhibiting now scarcely one stone upon another.
A broken memorial tablet was found, half buried in the ground, within the
north-east angle of the outer rampart, bearing an inscription in an
antique form of the Chinese character, which proves it to have been
erected by Kublai, in honour of a Buddhist ecclesiastic called Yun-Hien.
Yun-Hien was the abbot of one of those great minsters and abbeys of
Bacsis, of which Marco speaks, and the exact date (no longer visible) of
the monument was equivalent to A.D. 1288.[2]
[Illustration: Heading In the Old Chinese Seal-Character, of an
INSCRIPTION on a Memorial raised by KUBLAI-KAAN to a Buddhist Ecclesiastic
in the vicinity of his SUMMER-PALACE at SHANG-TU in Mongolia.
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