"Their gall in a little wine is good for a mad-dog bite; it accelerates the delivery of a child; it is administered for skin diseases, and the flesh is a great delicacy."

So his neighbors, ignorant of crocodiles, tapped their heads meaningly, perhaps a bit pityingly.

Marco seems to have penetrated Burma well down toward Mandalay, and he learned much about Laos and Tonkin from hearsay.

Then he takes another of his casual fresh starts, jumping his narrative back to a crossroad south of Peking, and pictures the country southeast to the coast.

He halts at ancient Yangchow, central salt market, where he "held rule during three years"; visits Chinkiang, overlooking the noble "Golden Island"; broods over the beauty of Soochow, "Paris of the East," city of silk, philosophers, and 6,000 bridges. Such are the riches that, if the Manzi were soldiers, he exclaims, they might subdue the world!

MARCO DAZZLED BY “THE CITY OF
HEAVEN"

But at Hangchow he pauses long and lovingly. Here is the noblest city of them all.

Canals and spacious squares—an eastern Venice. A lake of exquisite beauty, thirty miles around, lined with richest mansions and nobles' palaces, dotted with park islands for marriages, festivals, and "honorable picnics." No cheap amusement resorts these; their pagodas were fit for an emperor, their table service was silver plate. On the lake were pleasure boats and barges, all equipped for feasts, poled "from the roof which forms a level deck."

Marco is telling, of course, of West Lake, whose willows and orioles, whose "Fish-seeing Pavilion" and pagoda of "Day-dawn Bell Sound on Nanping Hill," whose "Ten Sights," or 36, or 72, have been sung by the classic and ultraliteral Chinese poets.

Ashore are broad, paved streets, along which the residents must write their names above their doors, whose hostelry keepers are "bound to register the names and surnames" of all guests.

* See, also, "Ho for the Soochow Ho," by Mabel Craft Deering, in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for June, 1927.

There are ten main market squares, each frequented by from 40,000 to 50,000 persons each week, to buy "meat and game, as of roebuck, red deer, fallow deer, hares, rabbits, partridges, pheasants, francolins, quails, fowls, capons, and of ducks and geese an infinite variety." There also are huge slaughterhouses for oxen, calves, and lambs.

Everyone wears silk; it is so cheap and plentiful. And the women of this city are so "splendidly attired and abundantly perfumed," they are such "dainty and angelical creatures" that strangers "seem to get bewitched" and go back home babbling of the day when they may return to "the City of Heaven."

Provisions were so plentiful that, to Marco's wonder, "they eat fish and flesh. at the same meal!"

There were twelve rich craft guilds, each having "12,000 houses in the occupation of its workmen." To give an example of the "vast consumption" of this city, Marco consulted a customs officer about pepper, and was informed that the daily use was "43 loads, each load being equal to 223 pounds."

The houses were of timber and fires frequent, so that lofty towers of stone afforded what we would term safety-deposit vaults for treasures. The streets were patrolled constantly by the fire watch.

On a high hill was a tower and at its top a slab of wood. Whenever a fire broke out, the keeper beat with his mallet upon the slab, "making a noise that is heard to a great distance."

Ships came from distant parts, especially from India, into the canals with dazzling displays of cloths, curios, gold and silver jewels, pearls, and precious

stones.

This city lacked only one thing, he remarked-courage among its men. So, like Baghdad, it fell to the Tatars.

For 17 years Marco Polo roamed Cathay and its neighbor lands; so that his 82 chapters about China alone tell more of the lives of the people and their customs than we know of many areas of Europe during the same period.

But, comforting fact for the novice, with the passing of the years the world's greatest overland traveler grew homesick. Likewise his father and his uncle. Pleas that they be permitted to return to Venice