View looking along rows of instruments in the Peking Observatory. Norman (1895, p. 203) provides this description: A walk of a mile along the top of the wall brings you to the famous Observatory, and the marvellous bronzes of the Jesuit Father Verbiest, who made and eerected them in 1668. Below the wall, in a shady garden, are the much older ones which Marco Polo saw, less accurate astronomically, but even more beautiful for their grace and delicacy, and linking ones imagination closely with the romantic past; for this great globe and sextant and armillary zodiacal sphere were constructed in 1279 by the astronomer of Khublai Khan. Either the climate or their own intrinsic excellence has preserved them so well that every line and bit of tracery is as perfect to our eyes as it was to those of the great Khan himself.