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.
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