Many Of These Places May Have Been Destroyed,
And New Names Imposed.
Upon the whole, his present course appears to
have been from Bengal eastwards, through the provinces of the farther
India, to Mangi or southern China; and Cangigu may possibly be
Chittigong.
Yet Cangigu is said in the text to be an inland country.
- E.
[13] Kathay and Mangi, as formerly mentioned, are Northern and Southern
China, so that the direction of these rivers ought perhaps to have
been described as north and south, instead of east and west. About
seventy miles from the mouth of the Yellow river, or Hoang-ho, there
is a town called Tsingo, near which a canal runs to the north,
communicating with the river on which Pekin is situated, and another
canal, running far south into Mangi or Southern China. Tsingo, though
now an inferior town, may have been formerly Singui-matu, and a place
of great importance. - E.
[14] Caramoran or Hora-moran, is the Hoang-ho, or Yellow river; and it must
be allowed, that the distance which is placed in the text, between
Singui-matu and this river, is quite hostile to the idea mentioned in
the preceding note, of Tsingo and Singui-matu being the same place.
The only other situation in all China which accords with the two
canals, or rivers, communicating both with Kathay and Mangi, is
Yotcheou on the Tong-ting-hou lake, which is on the Kian-ku river, and
at a sufficient distance from the Hoang-ho to agree with the text. In
the absence of all tolerable certainty, conjecture seems allowable.
- E.
[15] There are no Chinese cities, in our maps, that, in the least
appearance of sound, correspond with the names of these towns or
cities near the mouth of the Hoang-ho. Hoain-gin is the only large
city near its mouth, and that is not on its banks. All therefore that
can be said, is, that the two cities in the text must have stood on
opposite sides of the Hoang-ho in the days of Marco Polo. - E.
SECTION XV.
An account of the Kingdom of Mangi, and the manner of its Reduction under
the dominion of the Great Khan; together with some Notices of its various
Provinces and Cities.
The kingdom of Mangi is the richest and most famous of all that are to be
found in the east. In the year 1269, this kingdom was governed by a king
named Fanfur[1], who was richer and more powerful than any who had reigned
there for an hundred years. Fanfur maintained justice and internal peace in
his dominions, so that no one dared to offend his neighbour, or to disturb
the peace, from dread of prompt, severe, and impartial justice; insomuch,
that the artificers would often leave their shops, filled with valuable
commodities, open in the night, yet no one would presume to enter them.
Travellers and strangers travelled in safety through his whole dominions by
day or night.
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