Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller, who visited China about the year 1200, speaks of it, as "pre-eminent above all other cities in the world, in point of grandeur and beauty, as well as from its abundant delights, which might lead an inhabitant to imagine himself in paradise;" and in another place describing Si-wu or West Lake, an artificial sheet of water just without the city wall, he says: "All around the lake are beautiful palaces and houses, so wonderfully built that nothing can possibly surpass them; they belong to the great and noble men of the city. In the middle of the lake are two islands, on one of which stands a palace so wonderfully adorned that it seems worthy of belonging to the emperor."