The Return Journey In
Autumn Followed The Same Route As Far As Chaghan-Nor, Where Some Days Were
Spent In Fowling On The Lakes, And Thence By Siuen-Hwa Fu ("Sindachu,"
Supra, P. 295) And The Present Post-Road To Cambaluc.
CHAPTER XXII.
CONCERNING THE CITY OF CAMBALUC, AND ITS GREAT TRAFFIC AND POPULATION.
You must know that the city of Cambaluc hath such a multitude of houses,
and such a vast population inside the walls and outside, that it seems
quite past all possibility. There is a suburb outside each of the gates,
which are twelve in number;[NOTE 1] and these suburbs are so great that
they contain more people than the city itself [for the suburb of one gate
spreads in width till it meets the suburb of the next, whilst they extend
in length some three or four miles]. In those suburbs lodge the foreign
merchants and travellers, of whom there are always great numbers who have
come to bring presents to the Emperor, or to sell articles at Court, or
because the city affords so good a mart to attract traders. [There are in
each of the suburbs, to a distance of a mile from the city, numerous fine
hostelries[NOTE 2] for the lodgment of merchants from different parts of
the world, and a special hostelry is assigned to each description of
people, as if we should say there is one for the Lombards, another for the
Germans, and a third for the Frenchmen.] And thus there are as many good
houses outside of the city as inside, without counting those that belong
to the great lords and barons, which are very numerous.
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