This lake and also
its name _T'ai-yi ch'i_ date from the twelfth century, at which time an
Emperor of the Kin first gave orders to collect together the water of some
springs in the hills, where now the summer palaces stand, and to conduct
it to a place north of his capital, where pleasure gardens were laid out.
The river which enters the lake and issues from it exists still, under its
ancient name _Kin-shui_." (_Bretschneider, Peking_, 34.)--H. C.]

NOTE 12.--The expression here is in the Geog. 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 standi