s, and he commanded all the Kathayans to remove from
the old city into the new one. The walls are of earth, ten paces thick at
the bottom, and gradually tapering to three paces thick at the top, with
white battlements. Each side of the square has three principal gates, or
twelve in all, having sumptuous palaces built over each; and there are
pavilions in all the angles of the wall, where the arms of the garrison are
kept, being 1000 men for each gate. The whole buildings of this city are
exactly squared, and all the streets are laid out in straight lines; so
that a free prospect is preserved from gate to gate, through the whole
city; and the houses are built on each side like palaces, with courts and
gardens, divided according to the heads of families. In the middle of the
whole, there is a noble building, in which a great bell is suspended, after
the tolling of which, at a certain hour of the night, no person must go out
of his house till the dawn of next morning, except it be for some urgent
cause, as for assistance to a woman in labour, and even then they must
carry lights. On the outside of the walls there are twelve large suburbs,
extending three or four miles in length, from each gate, and there are more
inhabitants in these suburbs than within the walls. In these, foreign
merchants, and other strangers live, each nation having several storehouses
and bazars, in which they lodge and keep their goods. No dead body is
allowed to be burnt or buried within the city; but the bodies of the
idolaters are burned without the suburbs, and the bodies of all other sects
are buried in the same places. On account of the vast multitude of
Mahometans who inhabit here, there are above 25,000 harlots in the city and
suburbs: Over every 100 and every 1000 of these, there are chiefs or
captains appointed, to keep them in order, and one general inspector over
the whole. When any ambassador or other person, having business with the
khan, comes to Cambalu, his whole charges are defrayed from the imperial
treasury, and the general inspector of the harlots provides the ambassador,
and every man of his family, a change of women every night at free cost.
The guards of the city carry all whom they may find walking in the streets,
after the appointed hour, to prison; and it these persons cannot give a
valid excuse, they are beaten with cudgels, as the Bachsi allege that it is
not right to shed mens blood; yet many persons die of this beating.