To The
East Of It Is The Route Which Descends The Min River To Siu-Chau, And Then
Passes By Chao-Tong And Tong-Chuan To Yun-Nan Fu:
To the west of the
barrier is a route leading through Kien-ch'ang to Ta-li fu, but throwing
off a branch from Ning-yuan southward in the direction of Yun-nan fu.
This road from Ch'eng-tu fu to Ta-li by Ya-chau and Ning-yuan appears to
be that by which the greater part of the goods for Bhamo and Ava used to
travel before the recent Mahomedan rebellion; it is almost certainly the
road by which Kublai, in 1253, during the reign of his brother Mangku
Kaan, advanced to the conquest of Ta-li, then the head of an independent
kingdom in Western Yun-nan. As far as Ts'ing-k'i hien, 3 marches beyond
Ya-chau, this route coincides with the great Tibet road by Ta-t'sien lu
and Bathang to L'hasa, and then it diverges to the left.
We may now say without hesitation that by this road Marco travelled. His
Tibet commences with the mountain region near Ya-chau; his 20 days'
journey through a devastated and dispeopled tract is the journey to
Ning-yuan fu. Even now, from Ts'ing-k'i onwards for several days, not a
single inhabited place is seen. The official route from Ya-chau to
Ning-yuan lays down 13 stages, but it generally takes from 15 to 18 days.
Polo, whose journeys seem often to have been shorter than the modern
average,[2] took 20.
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