[Illustration: Stone Chwang, Or Umbrella Column, On Site Of "Brahma's Temple," Hang-Chau.]

[Illustration: South Part of KING-SZE, with the SUNG PALACE, from a Chinese reprint of a Plan dated circa A.D. 1270]

Friar Odoric (in China about 1324-1327): - "Departing thence I came unto the city of CANSAY, a name which signifieth the 'City of Heaven.' And 'tis the greatest city in the whole world, so great indeed that I should scarcely venture to tell of it, but that I have met at Venice people in plenty who have been there. It is a good hundred miles in compass, and there is not in it a span of ground which is not well peopled. And many a tenement is there which shall have 10 or 12 households comprised in it. And there be also great suburbs which contain a greater population than even the city itself.... This city is situated upon lagoons of standing water, with canals like the city of Venice. And it hath more than 12,000 bridges, on each of which are stationed guards, guarding the city on behalf of the Great Kaan. And at the side of this city there flows a river near which it is built, like Ferrara by the Po, for it is longer than it is broad," and so on, relating how his host took him to see a great monastery of the idolaters, where there was a garden full of grottoes, and therein many animals of divers kinds, which they believed to be inhabited by the souls of gentlemen.

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