After those seven days' journey you
arrive at a city called PIANFU, a large and important place, with a number
of traders living by commerce and industry. It is a place too where silk is
largely produced.[NOTE 4]
So we will leave it and tell you of a great city called Cachanfu. But
stay - first let us tell you about the noble castle called Caichu.
NOTE 1. - Marsden translates the commencement of this passage, which is
peculiar to Ramusio, and runs "E in capo di cinque giornate delle predette
dieci," by the words "At the end of five days' journey beyond the ten,"
but this is clearly wrong.[1] The place best suiting in position, as
halfway between Cho-chau and T'ai-yuan fu, would be CHENG-TING FU, and I
have little doubt that this is the place intended. The title of Ak-Baligh
in Turki,[2] or Chaghan Balghasun in Mongol, meaning "White City," was
applied by the Tartars to Royal Residences; and possibly Cheng-ting fu may
have had such a claim, for I observe in the Annales de la Prop. de la Foi
(xxxiii. 387) that in 1862 the Chinese Government granted to the R.C.
Vicar-Apostolic of Chihli the ruined Imperial Palace at Cheng-ting fu for
his cathedral and other mission establishments. Moreover, as a matter of
fact, Rashiduddin's account of Chinghiz's campaign in northern China in
1214, speaks of the city of "Chaghan Balghasun which the Chinese call
Jintzinfu." This is almost exactly the way in which the name of
Cheng-ting fu is represented in 'Izzat Ullah's Persian Itinerary
(Jigdzinfu, evidently a clerical error for Jingdzinfu), so I think
there can be little doubt that Cheng-ting fu is the place intended. The
name of Hwai-luh'ien (see Note 2), which is the first stage beyond
Cheng-ting fu, is said to mean the "Deer-lair," pointing apparently to the
old character of the tract as a game-preserve. The city of Cheng-ting is
described by Consul Oxenham as being now in a decayed and dilapidated
condition, consisting only of two long streets crossing at right angles. It
is noted for the manufacture of images of Buddha from Shan-si iron.
(Consular Reports, p. 10; Erdmann, 331.)
[The main road turns due west at Cheng-ting fu, and enters Shan-si through
what is known among Chinese travellers as the Ku-kwan, Customs'
Barrier. - H.C.]
Between Cheng-ting fu and T'ai-yuan fu the traveller first crosses a high
and rugged range of mountains, and then ascends by narrow defiles to the
plateau of Shan-si. But of these features Polo's excessive condensation
takes no notice.
The traveller who quits the great plain of Chihli [which terminates at
Fu-ch'eng-i, a small market-town, two days from Pao-ting. - H.C.] for "the
kingdom of Taianfu," i.e. Northern Shan-si, enters a tract in which
predominates that very remarkable formation called by the Chinese
Hwang-tu and to which the German name Loess has been attached. With this
formation are bound up the distinguishing characters of Northern Interior
China, not merely in scenery but in agricultural products, dwellings, and
means of transport. This Loess is a brownish-yellow loam, highly porous,
spreading over low and high ground alike, smoothing over irregularities
of surface, and often more than 1000 feet in thickness. It has no
stratification, but tends to cleave vertically, and is traversed in every
direction by sudden crevices, almost glacier-like, narrow, with vertical
walls of great depth, and infinite ramification. Smooth as the loess basin
looks in a bird's-eye view, it is thus one of the most impracticable
countries conceivable for military movements, and secures extraordinary
value to fortresses in well-chosen sites, such as that of Tung-kwan
mentioned in Note 2 to chap. xli.
Agriculture may be said in N. China to be confined to the alluvial plains
and the loess; as in S. China to the alluvial plains and the terraced
hill-sides. The loess has some peculiar quality which renders its productive
power self-renewing without manure (unless it be in the form of a surface
coat of fresh loess), and unfailing in returns if there be sufficient rain.
This singular formation is supposed by Baron Richthofen, who has studied it
more extensively than any one, to be no subaqueous deposit, but to be the
accumulated residue of countless generations of herbaceous plants combined
with a large amount of material spread over the face of the ground by the
winds and surface waters.
[I do not agree with the theory of Baron von Richthofen, of the almost
exclusive Eolian formation of loess; water has something to do with it as
well as wind, and I think it is more exact to say that loess in China is
due to a double action, Neptunian as well as Eolian. The climate was
different in former ages from what it is now, and rain was plentiful and to
its great quantity was due the fertility of this yellow soil. (Cf. A. de
Lapparent, Lecons de Geographie Physique, 2'e ed. 1898, p. 566.) - H.C.]
Though we do not expect to find Polo taking note of geological features, we
are surprised to find no mention of a characteristic of Shan-si and the
adjoining districts, which is due to the loess; viz. the practice of
forming cave dwellings in it; these in fact form the habitations of a
majority of the people in the loess country. Polo has noticed a similar
usage in Badakhshan (I. p. 161), and it will be curious if a better
acquaintance with that region should disclose a surface formation analogous
to the loess.
