R PULISANGHIN.

Now you must know that the Emperor sent the aforesaid Messer Marco Polo,
who is the author of this whole story, on business of his into the Western
Provinces. On that occasion he travelled from Cambaluc a good four months'
journey towards the west.[NOTE 1] And so now I will tell you all that he
saw on his travels as he went and returned.

[Illustration: The Bridge of Pulisanghin. (Reduced from a Chinese
original.)

"--et desus cest flum a un mout biaus pont de pieres: car sachiez qe pont
n'a en tout le monde de si biaus ne son pareil."]

When you leave the City of Cambaluc and have ridden ten miles, you come to
a very large river which is called PULISANGHIN, and flows into the ocean,
so that merchants with their merchandise ascend it from the sea. Over this
River there is a very fine stone bridge, so fine indeed, that it has very
few equals. The fashion of it is this: it is 300 paces in length, and it
must have a good eight paces of width, for ten mounted men can ride across
it abreast. It has 24 arches and as many water-mills, and 'tis all of very
fine marble, well built and firmly founded. Along the top of the bridge
there is on either side a parapet of marble slabs and columns, made in this
way. At the beginning of the bridge there is a marble column, and under it
a marble lion, so that the column stands upon the lion's loins, whilst on
the top of the column there is a second marble lion, both being of great
size and beautifully executed sculpture. At the distance of a pace from
this column there is another precisely the same, also with its two lions,
and the space between them is closed with slabs of grey marble to prevent
people from falling over into the water. And thus the columns run from
space to space along either side of the bridge, so that altogether it is a
beautiful object.[NOTE 2]

NOTE 1.--[When Marco leaves the capital, he takes the main road, the
"Imperial Highway," from Peking to Si-ngan fu, via Pao-ting, Cheng-ting,
Hwai-luh, Tai-yuan, Ping-yang, and T'ung-kwan, on the Yellow River. Mr. G.
F. Eaton, writing from Han-chung (_Jour. China Br. R. As. Soc._ XXVIII.
No. 1) says it is a cart-road, except for six days between Tai-yuan and
Hwai-luh, and that it takes twenty-nine days to go from Peking to Si-ngan,
a figure which agrees well with Polo's distances; it is also the time
which Dr. Forke's journey lasted; he left Peking on the 1st May, 1892,
reached Tai-yuan on the 12th, and