- E.
[11] This Either Implies That Bengal On The Borders Of India Is To The
South Of Thibet; Or South Is Here An Error For East, Bengal Being
The Eastern Frontier Province Of India Proper.
- E.
[12] The difficulty, or rather impossibility of tracing the steps of Marco
Polo, may proceed from various causes. The provinces or kingdoms,
mostly named from their chief cities, have suffered infinite changes
from perpetual revolutions. The names he gives, besides being
corrupted in the various transcriptions and editions, he probably set
down orally, as given to him in the Tartar or Mogul dialect, very
different from those which have been adopted into modern geography
from various sources. 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.
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