Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/246

234 234 CHEISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. This town contained several buildings appropriated to what we may call public offices, as well as twelve temples of various nations, two mosques, and a Nestorian church. It was surrounded by an earthen rampart, and had four gates, corresponding with the four cardinal points, and near these gates various markets; at the eastern, the one for millet, and all kinds of grain ; at the western, for sheep and goats ; at the northern, for horses ; and at the southern, for oxen and waggons. The Franciscans were much surprised to find here a Parisian goldsmith named Guillaume Boucher, who had been taken prisoner in Hungary by the Tartars, when they captured Belgrade. Along with the goldsmith they had carried off at the same time a Lorraine woman from Metz, named Paqueste, and a Norman bishop, a native of Belleville, near Rouen. The gold- smith had executed an ingenious work in the imperial palace ; a silver tree, intended to be produced at the so- lemn festivals given by the emperor at Easter, and in the summer. At the foot of this tree reposed four lions, from whose jaws wine, mead, and other liquors were spouted into four basins of silver. At the summit of the tree, besides branches, leaves and fruit, all of silver, there was a silver angel with his wings extended, and which by some interior mechanism sounded a trumpet when the time came for the attend- ants to fill the reservoirs that supplied the fountains. This marvellous tree was placed opposite the imperial throne, in a magnificent hall where the Kha-kan took his meals, and received the presents of the ambas- sadors. The industrious Parisian had also fabricated a large