M. Pauthier assumes as a mean 400,000 yin, at 18 taels, which will give 7,200,000 taels; or, at 6s. 7d. to the tael, 2,370,000/. But this amount being in chao or paper-currency, which at its highest valuation was worth only 50 per cent. of the nominal value of the notes, we must halve the sum, giving the salt revenue on Pauthier's assumptions 1,185,000/

=

Pauthier has also endeavoured to present a table of the whole revenue of Kiangché under the Mongols, amounting to 12,955,710 paper taels, or 2,132,294l., including the salt revenue. This would leave only 947,294. for the other sources of revenue, but the fact is that several of these are left blank, and among others one so important as the sea-customs. However, even making the extravagant supposition that the sea-customs and other omitted items were equal in amount to the whole of the other sources of revenue, salt included, the total would be only 4,264,5857.

Marco's amount, as he gives it, is, I think, unquestionably a huge exaggeration, though I do not suppose an intentional one. In spite of his professed rendering of the amounts in gold, I have little doubt that his tomans really represent paper-currency, and that to get a valuation in gold, his total has to be divided at the very least by two. We may then compare his total of 290 tomans of paper ting with Pauthier's 130 tomans of paper ting, excluding sea-customs and some other items. No nearer comparison is practicable; and besides the sources of doubt already indicated, it remains uncertain what in either calculation are the limits of the province intended. For the bounds of Kiangché seem to have varied greatly, sometimes including and sometimes excluding Fokien.

I may observe that Rashiduddin reports, on the authority of the Mongol minister Pulad Chingsang, that the whole of Manzi brought in a revenue of " 900 tomans." This Quatremère renders "nine million pieces of gold," presumably meaning dinars. It is unfortunate that there should be uncertainty here again as to the unit. If it were the dinar the whole revenue of Manzi would be about 5,850,000l., whereas if the unit were, as in the case of Polo's toman, the ting, the revenue would be nearly 30 millions sterling!

It does appear that in China a toman of some denomination of money near the dinar was known in account. For Friar Odoric states the revenue of Yangchau in tomans of Balish, the latter unit being, as he explains, a sum in paper-currency equivalent to a florin and a half (or something more than a dinar); perhaps, however, only the liang or tael (see vol. i. p. 413).

It is this calculation of the Kinsay revenue which Marco is supposed to be expounding to his fellow-prisoner on the title-page of this volume.

CHAPTER LXXIX.

OF THE CITY OF TANPIJU AND OTHERS.

WHEN you leave Kinsay and travel a day's journey to the south-east, through a plenteous region, passing a succession of dwellings and charming gardens, you reach the city of TANPIJU, a great, rich, and fine city, under Kinsay. The people are subject to the Kaan, and have paper-money, and are Idolaters, and burn their dead in the way described before. They live by trade and manufactures and handicrafts, and have all necessaries in great plenty and cheapness.'

But there is no more to be said about it, so we proceed, and I will tell you of another city called VUJU at three days' distance from Tanpiju. The people are Idolaters, &c., and the city is under Kinsay. They live by trade and manufactures.

Travelling through a succession of towns and villages that look like one continuous city, two days further on to the south-east, you find the great and fine city of GHIUJU which is under Kinsay. The people are Idolaters, &c. They have plenty of silk, and live by trade and handicrafts, and have all things necessary in abundance. At this city you find the largest and longest canes that are in all Manzi; they are full four palms in girth and 15 paces in length.❜

When you have left Ghiuju you travel four days S.E. through a beautiful country, in which towns and villages are very numerous. There is abundance of game both in beasts and birds; and there are very large and fierce lions. After those four days you come to the great and fine city of CHANSHAN. It is situated upon a hill which divides the River, so that the one portion flows up country and the other down.* It is still under the government of Kinsay.

* "Est sus un mont que parte le Flum, que le une moitié ala en sus e l'autre moitié en jus" (G. T.).

I should tell you that in all the country of Manzi they have no sheep, though they have beeves and kine, goats and kids and swine in abundance. The people are Idolaters here, &c.

When you leave Changshan you travel three days through a very fine country with many towns and villages, traders and craftsmen, and abounding in game of all kinds, and arrive at the city of CUJU. The people are Idolaters, &c., and live by trade and manufactures. It is a fine, noble, and rich city, and is the last of the government of Kinsay in this direction.3 The other kingdom which we now enter, called Fuju, is also one of the nine great divisions of Manzi as Kinsay is.

NOTE 1.—The traveller's route proceeds from Kinsay or Hang-chau southward to the mountains of Fokien, ascending the valley of the Tsien Tang, commonly called by Europeans the Green River. The general line, directed as we shall see upon Kienningfu in Fokien, is clear enough, but some of the details are very obscure, owing partly to vague indications and partly to the excessive uncertainty in the reading of some of the proper names.

No name resembling Tanpiju (G. T., Tanpigui; Pauthier, Tacpiguy, Carpiguy, Capiguy; Ram., Tapinzu) belongs, so far as has yet been shown, to any considerable town in the position indicated.* Both Pauthier and Mr. Kingsmill identify the place with Shaohingfu, a large and busy town, compared by Fortune, as regards population, to Shanghai. Shaohing is across the broad river, and somewhat further down than Hang-chau: it is out of the traveller's general direction; and it seems unnatural that he should commence his journey by passing this wide river, and yet not mention it.

For these reasons I formerly rejected Shaohing, and looked rather to Fuyang as the representative of Tanpiju. But my opinion is shaken when I find both Mr. Elias and Baron Richthofen decidedly opposed to Fuyang, and the latter altogether in favour of Shaohing. "The journey through a plenteous region, passing a succession of dwellings and charming gardens; the epithets great, rich, and fine city;' the trade, manufactures, and handicrafts,' and the 'necessaries in great plenty and

One of the Hien, forming the special districts of Hangchau itself, now called Tsien-tang, was formerly called Tang-wei-tang. But it embraces the castern part of the district, and can, I think, have nothing to do with Tanpiju (see Biot, p. 257, and Chin. Repos. for Feb. 1842, p. 109).

cheapness,' appear to apply rather to the populous plain and the large city of ancient fame, than to the small Fuyang-hien . . . shut in by a spur from the hills, which would hardly have allowed it in former days to have been a great city" (Note by Baron R.). The after route, as elucidated by the same authority, points with even more force to Shaohing.

NOTE 2.--Chekiang produces bamboos more abundantly than any province of Eastern China. Dr. Medhurst mentions meeting, on the waters near Hangchau, with numerous rafts of bamboos, one of which was one-third of a mile in length (Glance at Int. of China, p. 53).

NOTE 3.-Assuming Tanpiju to be Shaohing, the remaining places as far as the Fokien Frontier run thus :

3 days to Vuju (P. Vugui, G. T. Vugui, Vuigui, Ram. Uguiu).

2

to Ghiuju (P. Guiguy, G. T. Ghingui, Ghengui, Chengui, Ram. Gengui).

4 to Chanshan (P. Ciancian, G. T. Cianscian, Ram. Zengian).

3 to Cuju or Chuju (P. Cinguy, G. T. Cugui, Ram. Gieza).

First as regards Chanshan, which, with the notable circumstances about the waters there, constitutes the key to the route, I extract the following remarks from a note which Mr. Fortune has kindly sent me: "When we get to Chanshan the proof as to the route is very strong. This is undoubtedly my Changshan. The town is near the head of the Green River (the Tsien Tang) which flows in a N. E. direction and falls into the Bay of Hangchau. At Changshan the stream is no longer navigable even for small boats. Travellers going west or south-west walk or are carried in sedan-chairs across country in a westerly direction for about 30 miles to a town named Yuhshan. Here there is a river which flows westward (the other half goes down'), taking the traveller rapidly in that direction, and passing en route the towns of Kwansinfu, Hokow or Hokeu, and onward to the Poyang Lake." From the careful study of Mr. Fortune's published narrative I had already arrived at the conclusion that this was the correct explanation of the remarkable expressions about the division of the waters, which are closely analogous to those used by the traveller in ch. lxii. of this book when speaking of the watershed of the Great Canal at Sinjumatu. Paraphrased the words might run: "At Changshan you reach high ground, which interrupts the continuity of the River; from one side of this ridge it flows up country towards the north, from the other it flows down towards the south." The expression "The River" will be elucidated in note 4 to ch. lxxxii. below.

This route by the Tsientang and the Changshan portage, which turns the dangers involved in the navigation of the Yangtsze and the Poyang Lake, was formerly a thoroughfare to the south much followed; though now almost abandoned through one of the indirect results (as Baron Richthofen points out) of steam navigation.

The portage from Changshan to Yukshan was passed by the English and Dutch embassies in the end of last century, on their journeys from

Hangchau to Canton, and by Mr. Fortune on his way from Ningpo to the Bohea country of Fokien. It is probable that Polo on some occasion made the ascent of the Tsien Tang by water, and that this leads him to notice the interruption of the navigation.

Kinhwafu, as Pauthier has observed, bore at this time the name of WUCHAU, which Polo would certainly write Vugiu. And between Shaohing and Kinhwa there exists, as Baron Richthofen has pointed out, a line of depression which affords an easy connexion between Shaohing and Lanki-hien or Kinhwa-fu. This line is much used by travellers, and forms just 3 short stages. Hence Kinhwa, a fine city destroyed by the Taepings, is satisfactorily identified with Vugiu.

The journey from Vugui to Ghiuju is said to be through a succession of towns and villages, looking like a continuous city. Fortune, whose journey occurred before the Taeping devastations, speaks of the approach to Kiuchau as a vast and beautiful garden. And Mr. Milne's map of this route shows an incomparable density of towns in the Tsien Tang valley from Yenchau up to Kiuchau. Ghiuju then will be KIUCHAU. But between Kiuchau and Changshan it is impossible to make four days; barely possible to make two. My map (Itineraries, No. VI.), based on D'Anville and Fortune, makes the direct distance 24 miles; Milne's map barely 18; whilst from his book we deduce the distance travelled by water to be about 30. On the whole, it seems probable that there is a mistake in the figure here.

From the head of the great Chekiang valley I find two roads across the mountains into Fokien described.

One leads from Kiangshan (not Changshan) by a town called Chinghu, and then, nearly due south, across the mountains to Puching in Upper Fokien. This is specified by Martini (p. 113): it seems to have been followed by the Dutch Envoy, Van Hoorn, in 1665 (see Astley, III. 463), and it was travelled by Fortune on his return from the Bohea country to Ningpo (II. 247, 271).

The other route follows the portage spoken of above from Changshan to Yuhshan, and descends the river on that side to Hokeu, whence it strikes south-east across the mountains to Tsung-ngan-hien in Fokien. This route was followed by Fortune on his way to the Bohea country.

Both from Puching on the former route, and from near Tsung-ngan on the latter, the waters are navigable down to Kienningfu and so to Fuchau.

Mr. Fortune judges the first to have been Polo's route. There does not, however, seem to be on this route any place that can be identified with his Cuju or Chuju. Chinghu seems to be insignificant and the name has no resemblance. On the other route followed by Mr. Fortune himself from that side we have Kwansinfu, Hokeu, Yenshan, and (last town passed on that side) Chuchu. The latter, as to both name and position, is quite satisfactory, but it is described as a small poor town. Hokeu would be represented in Polo's spelling as Caghiu or Cughiu. It