The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 | Page 9

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, Ta?-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 Ta��-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 Ta?-yuan on the 12th, and arrived at Si-ngan on the 30th (_Von Peking nach Ch'ang-an_). Mr. Rockhill left Peking on the 17th December, 1888, reached T'a?-yuan on the 26th, crossed the Yellow River on the 5th January, and arrived at Si-ngan fu on the 8th January, 1889, in twenty-two days, a distance of 916 miles. (_Land of the Lamas_, pp. 372-374.) M. Grenard left Si-ngan on the 10th November and reached Peking on the 16th December, 1894 = thirty-six days; he reckons 1389 kilometres = 863 miles. (See _Rev. C. Holcombe, Tour through Shan-hsi and Shen-hsi_ in _Jour. North China Br.R.A.S.N.S._ X. pp. 54-70.)--H.C.]
[Illustration: The Bridge of Pulisanghin. (From the Livre des Merveilles.)]
NOTE 2.--_Pul-i-Sang��n_, the name which Marco gives the _River_, means in Persian simply (as Marsden noticed) "The Stone Bridge." In a very different region the same name often occurs in the history of Timur applied to a certain bridge, in the country north of Badakhshan, over the Wakhsh branch of the Oxus. And the Turkish admiral Sidi 'Ali, travelling that way from India in the 16th century, applies the name, as it is applied here, to the river; for his journal tells us that beyond Kul��b he crossed "the River Pulisangin."
We may easily suppose, therefore, that near Cambaluc also, the Bridge, first, and then the River, came to be known to the Persian-speaking foreigners of the court and city by this name. This supposition is however a little perplexed by the circumstance that Rashiduddin calls the River the _Sang��n_ and that _Sangkan_-Ho appears from the maps or citations of Martini, Klaproth, Neumann, and Pauthier to have been one of the Chinese names of the river, and indeed, Sankang is still the name of one of the confluents forming the Hwan Ho.
[By _Sanghin_, Polo renders the Chinese _Sang-kan_, by which name the River Hun-ho is already mentioned, in the 6th century of our era. _Hun-ho_ is also an ancient name; and the same river in ancient books is often called _Lu-Kou_ River also. All these names are in use up to the present time; but on modern Chinese maps, only the upper part of the river is termed _Sang-Kan ho_, whilst south of the inner Great Wall, and in the