The People Are All Idolaters.[NOTE 4]

When you leave this city you travel for five days across a country of plains and valleys, finding plenty of villages and hamlets, and the people of which live by husbandry.

There are numbers of wild beasts, lions, and bears, and such like.

I should have mentioned that the people of Sindu itself live by manufactures, for they make fine sendals and other stuffs.[NOTE 5]

After travelling those five days' march, you reach a province called Tebet, which has been sadly laid waste; we will now say something of it.

NOTE 1. - We are on firm ground again, for SINDAFU is certainly CH'ENG-TU FU, the capital of Sze-ch'wan. Probably the name used by Polo was Sindu-fu, as we find Sindu in the G.T. near the end of the chapter. But the same city is, I observe, called Thindafu by one of the Nepalese embassies, whose itineraries Mr. Hodgson has given in the J.A.S.B. XXV. 488.

The modern French missions have a bishop in Ch'eng-tu fu, and the city has been visited of late years by Mr. T.T. Cooper, by Mr. A. Wylie, by Baron v. Richthofen, [Captain Gill, Mr. Baber, Mr. Hosie, and several other travellers]. Mr. Wylie has kindly favoured me with the following note: - "My notice all goes to corroborate Marco Polo. The covered bridge with the stalls is still there, the only difference being the absence of the toll-house. I did not see any traces of a tripartite division of the city, nor did I make any enquiries on the subject during the 3 or 4 days I spent there, as it was not an object with me at the time to verify Polo's account. The city is indeed divided, but the division dates more than a thousand years back. It is something like this, I should say [see diagram]".[1]

[Illustration: | - - - - - - | | | | - -| | - -| | | B | | C | A | || || | | | ||

A. The Great City. B. The Little City. C. The Imperial City.]

"The Imperial City (Hwang Ching) was the residence of the monarch Lew Pe (i.e. Liu Pei of p. 32) during the short period of the 'Three Kingdoms' (3rd century), and some relics of the ancient edifice still remain. I was much interested in looking over it. It is now occupied by the Public Examination Hall and its dependencies."

I suspect Marco's story of the Three Kings arose from a misunderstanding about this historical period of the San-Kwe or Three Kingdoms (A.D. 222-264). And this tripartite division of the city may have been merely that which we see to exist at present.

[Mr. Baber, leaving Ch'eng-tu, 26th July, 1877, writes (Travels, p. 28): "We took ship outside the East Gate on a rapid narrow stream, apparently the city moat, which soon joins the main river, a little below the An-shun Bridge, an antiquated wooden structure some 90 yards long. This is in all probability the bridge mentioned by Marco Polo.

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