Kaan has a great Court beside
the Town Rampart, which is enclosed by a brick wall, just like our
priories. Inside there is a big palace, within which he holds a
drinking-bout twice a year;... there are also a number of long buildings
like granges, in which are kept his treasures and his stores of victual"
(345-6; 334).

Where was Karakorum situated?

The Archimandrite Palladius is very prudent (l.c. p. 11): "Everything that
the studious Chinese authors could gather and say of the situation of
Karakhorum is collected in two Chinese works, _Lo fung low wen kao_
(1849), and _Mungku yew mu ki_ (1859). However, no positive conclusion can
be derived from these researches, chiefly in consequence of the absence of
a tolerably correct map of Northern Mongolia."

Abel Remusat (_Mem. sur Geog. Asie Centrale_, p. 20) made a confusion
between Karabalgasun and Karakorum which has misled most writers after
him.

Sir Henry Yule says: "The evidence adduced in Abel Remusat's paper on
Karakorum (_Mem. de l' Acad. R. des Insc._ VII. 288) establishes the site
on the north bank of the Orkhon, and about five days' journey above the
confluence of the Orkhon and Tula. But as we have only a very loose
knowledge of these rivers, it is impossible to assign the geographical
position with accuracy. Nor is it likely that ruins exist beyond an
outline perhaps of the Kaan's Palace walls."

In the _Geographical Magazine_ for July, 1874 (p. 137), Sir Henry Yule has
been enabled, by the kind aid of Madame Fedtchenko in supplying a
translation from the Russian, to give some account of Mr. Paderin's visit
to the place, in the summer of 1873, along with a sketch-map.

"The site visited by Mr. Paderin is shown, by the particulars stated in
that paper, to be sufficiently identified with Karakorum. It is precisely
that which Remusat indicated, and which bears in the Jesuit maps, as
published by D'Anville, the name of _Talarho Hara Palhassoun_ (i.e. Kara
Balghasun), standing 4 or 5 miles from the left bank of the Orkhon, in
lat. (by the Jesuit Tables) 47 deg. 32' 24". It is now known as Kara-Kharam
(Rampart) or Kara Balghasun (city). The remains consist of a quadrangular
rampart of mud and sun-dried brick, of about 500 paces to the side, and
now about 9 feet high, with traces of a higher tower, and of an inner
rampart parallel to the other. But these remains probably appertain to the
city as re-occupied by the descendants of the Yuen in the end of the 14th