The Travels of Marco Polo, by Marco Polo and Rustichello of

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CHAPTER LII. CONCERNING THE CUSTOMS OF THE TARTARS.

Now that we have begun to speak of the Tartars, I have plenty to tell you on that subject. The Tartar custom is to spend the winter in warm plains, where they find good pasture for their cattle, whilst in summer they betake themselves to a cool climate among the mountains and valleys, where water is to be found as well as woods and pastures.

Their houses are circular, and are made of wands covered with felts.[NOTE 1] These are carried along with them whithersoever they go; for the wands are so strongly bound together, and likewise so well combined, that the frame can be made very light. Whenever they erect these huts the door is always to the south. They also have waggons covered with black felt so efficaciously that no rain can get in. These are drawn by oxen and camels, and the women and children travel in them.[NOTE 2] The women do the buying and selling, and whatever is necessary to provide for the husband and household; for the men all lead the life of gentlemen, troubling themselves about nothing but hunting and hawking, and looking after their goshawks and falcons, unless it be the practice of warlike exercises.

They live on the milk and meat which their herds supply, and on the produce of the chase; and they eat all kinds of flesh, including that of horses and dogs, and Pharaoh's rats, of which last there are great numbers in burrows on those plains.[NOTE 3] Their drink is mare's milk.

They are very careful not to meddle with each other's wives, and will not do so on any account, holding that to be an evil and abominable thing. The women too are very good and loyal to their husbands, and notable housewives withal.[NOTE 4] [Ten or twenty of them will dwell together in charming peace and unity, nor shall you ever hear an ill word among them.]

The marriage customs of Tartars are as follows. Any man may take a hundred wives an he so please, and if he be able to keep them. But the first wife is ever held most in honour, and as the most legitimate [and the same applies to the sons whom she may bear]. The husband gives a marriage payment to his wife's mother, and the wife brings nothing to her husband. They have more children than other people, because they have so many wives. They may marry their cousins, and if a father dies, his son may take any of the wives, his own mother always excepted; that is to say the eldest son may do this, but no other. A man may also take the wife of his own brother after the latter's death. Their weddings are celebrated with great ado.[NOTE 5]

NOTE 1.—The word here in the G. T. is "fennes," which seems usually to mean ropes, and in fact Pauthier's text reads: "Il ont mesons de verges et les cueuvrent de cordes." Ramusio's text has feltroni, and both Muller and the Latin of the S. G. have filtro. This is certainly the right reading. But whether fennes was ever used as a form of feltres (as pennes means peltry) I cannot discover. Perhaps some words have dropped out. A good description of a Kirghiz hut (35 feet in diameter), and exactly corresponding to Polo's account, will be found in Atkinson's Siberia, and another in Vámbéry's Travels. How comfortable and civilised the aspect of such a hut may be, can be seen also in Burnes's account of a Turkoman dwelling of this kind. This description of hut or tent is common to nearly all the nomade tribes of Central Asia. The trellis-work forming the skeleton of the tent-walls is (at least among the Turkomans) loosely pivoted, so as to draw out and compress like "lazy-tongs."

[Illustration: Dressing up a tent.]

Rubruquis, Pallas, Timkowski, and others, notice the custom of turning the door to the south; the reason is obvious. (Atkinson, 285; Vámb. 316; Burnes, III. 51; Conolly, I. 96) But throughout the Altai, Mr. Ney Elias informs me, K'alkas, Kirghiz, and Kalmaks all pitch their tents facing east. The prevailing winter wind is there westerly.

[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 56, note) says that he has often seen Mongol tents facing east and south-east. He adds: "It is interesting to find it noted in the Chou Shu (Bk. 50, 3) that the Khan of the Turks, who lived always on the Tu-kin mountains, had his tent invariably facing south, so as to show reverence to the sun's rising place."—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—Aeschylus already knows the

"wandering Scyths who dwell
In latticed huts high-poised on easy wheels."
(Prom. Vinct. 709-710.)

And long before him Hesiod says Phineus was carried by the Harpies—

"To the Land of the Milk-fed nations, whose houses are waggons."
(Strabo, vii. 3-9.)

Ibn Batuta describes the Tartar waggon in which he travelled to Sarai as mounted on four great wheels, and drawn by two or more horses:—

"On the waggon is put a sort of pavilion of wands laced together with narrow thongs. It is very light, and is covered with felt or cloth, and has latticed windows, so that the person inside can look out without being seen. He can change his position at pleasure, sleeping or eating, reading or writing, during the journey." These waggons were sometimes of enormous size. Rubruquis declares that he measured between the wheel-tracks of one and found the interval to be 20 feet. The axle was like a ship's mast, and twenty-two oxen were yoked to the waggon, eleven abreast. (See opposite cut.) He describes the huts as not usually taken to pieces, but carried all standing. The waggon just mentioned carried a hut of 30 feet diameter, for it projected beyond the wheels at least 5 feet on either side. In fact, Carpini says explicitly, "Some of the huts are speedily taken to pieces and put up again; such are packed on the beasts. Others cannot be taken to pieces, but are carried bodily on the waggons. To carry the smaller tents on a waggon one ox may serve; for the larger ones three oxen or four, or even more, according to the size." The carts that were used to transport the Tartar valuables were covered with felt soaked in tallow or ewe's milk, to make them waterproof. The tilts of these were rectangular, in the form of a large trunk. The carts used in Kashgar, as described by Mr. Shaw, seem to resemble these latter. (I. B. II. 381-382; Rub. 221; Carp. 6, 16.)

The words of Herodotus, speaking generally of the Scyths, apply perfectly to the Mongol hordes under Chinghiz: "Having neither cities nor forts, and carrying their dwellings with them wherever they go; accustomed, moreover, one and all, to shoot from horseback; and living not by husbandry but on their cattle, their waggons the only houses that they possess, how can they fail of being unconquerable?" (Bk. IV. ch. 46, p. 41, Rawlins.) Scythian prisoners in their waggons are represented on the Column of Theodosius at Constantinople; but it is difficult to believe that these waggons, at least as figured in Banduri, have any really Scythian character.

It is a curious fact that the practice of carrying these yurts or felt tents upon waggons appears to be entirely obsolete in Mongolia. Mr. Ney Elias writes: "I frequently showed your picture [that opposite] to Mongols, Chinese, and Russian border-traders, but none had ever seen anything of the kind. The only cart I have ever seen used by Mongols is a little low, light, roughly-made bullock-dray, certainly of Chinese importation." The old system would, however, appear to have been kept up to our own times by the Nogai Tartars, near the Sea of Azof. (See note from Heber, in Clark's Travels, 8vo ed. I. 440, and Dr. Clark's vignette at p. 394 in the same volume.)

[Illustration: Mediaeval Tartar Huts and Waggons.]

NOTE 3.—Pharaoh's Rat was properly the Gerboa of Arabia and North Africa, which the Arabs also regard as a dainty. There is a kindred animal in Siberia, called Alactaga, and a kind of Kangaroo-rat (probably the same) is mentioned as very abundant on the Mongolian Steppe. There is also the Zieselmaus of Pallas, a Dormouse, I believe, which he says the Kalmaks, even of distinction, count a delicacy, especially cooked in sour milk. "They eat not only the flesh of all their different kinds of cattle, including horses and camels, but also that of many wild animals which other nations eschew, e.g. marmots and zieselmice, beavers, badgers, otters, and lynxes, leaving none untouched except the dog and weasel kind, and also (unless very hard pressed) the flesh of the fox and the wolf." (Pallas, Samml. I. 128; also Rubr. 229-230.)

["In the Mongol biography of Chinghiz Khan (Mongol text of the Yuan ch'ao pi shi), mention is made of two kinds of animals (mice) used for food; the tarbagat (Aritomys Bobac) and kuchugur." (Palladius, l.c. p. 14.) Regarding the marmots called Sogur by Rubruquis, Mr. Rockhill writes (p. 69): "Probably the Mus citillus, the Suslik of the Russians…. M. Grenard tells me that Soghur, more usually written sour in Turki, is the ordinary name of the marmot."—H. C.]

NOTE 4.—"Their wives are chaste; nor does one ever hear any talk of their immodesty," says Carpini;—no Boccaccian and Chaucerian stories.

NOTE 5.—"The Mongols are not prohibited from having a plurality of wives; the first manages the domestic concerns, and is the most respected." (Timk. II. 310.) Naturally Polygamy is not so general among the Mongols as when Asia lay at their feet. The Buraets, who seem to retain the old Mongol customs in great completeness, are polygamists, and have as many wives as they choose. Polygamy is also very prevalent among the Yakuts, whose lineage seems to be Eastern Turk. (Ritter, III. 125; Erman, II. 346.)

Of the custom that entitled the son on succeeding to take such as he pleased of his deceased father's wives, we have had some illustration (see Prologue, ch. xvii. note 2), and many instances will be found in Hammer's or other Mongol Histories. The same custom seems to be ascribed by Herodotus to the Scyths (IV. 78). A number of citations regarding the practice are given by Quatremère. (Q. R. p. 92.) A modern Mongol writer in the Mélanges Asiatiques of the Petersburg Academy, states that the custom of taking a deceased brother's wives is now obsolete, but that a proverb preserves its memory (II. 656). It is the custom of some Mahomedan nations, notably of the Afghans, and is one of those points that have been cited as a supposed proof of their Hebrew lineage.

"The Kalin is a present which the Bridegroom or his parents make to the parents of the Bride. All the Pagan nations of Siberia have this custom; they differ only in what constitutes the present, whether money or cattle." (Gmelin, I. 29; see also Erman, II. 348.)

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CHAPTER LIII. CONCERNING THE GOD OF THE TARTARS.

This is the fashion of their religion. [They say there is a Most High God of Heaven, whom they worship daily with thurible and incense, but they pray to Him only for health of mind and body. But] they have [also] a certain [other] god of theirs called NATIGAY, and they say he is the god of the Earth, who watches over their children, cattle, and crops. They show him great worship and honour, and every man hath a figure of him in his house, made of felt and cloth; and they also make in the same manner images of his wife and children. The wife they put on the left hand, and the children in front. And when they eat, they take the fat of the meat and grease the god's mouth withal, as well as the mouths of his wife and children. Then they take of the broth and sprinkle it before the door of the house; and that done, they deem that their god and his family have had their share of the dinner.[NOTE 1]

Their drink is mare's milk, prepared in such a way that you would take it for white wine; and a right good drink it is, called by them Kemiz.[NOTE 2]

The clothes of the wealthy Tartars are for the most part of gold and silk stuffs, lined with costly furs, such as sable and ermine, vair and fox-skin, in the richest fashion.

NOTE 1.—There is no reference here to Buddhism, which was then of recent introduction among the Mongols; indeed, at the end of the chapter, Polo speaks of their new adoption of the Chinese idolatry, i.e. Buddhism. We may add here that the Buddhism of the Mongols decayed and became practically extinct after their expulsion from China (1368-1369). The old Shamanism then apparently revived; nor was it till 1577 that the great reconversion of Mongolia to Lamaism began. This reconversion is the most prominent event in the Mongol history of Sanang Setzen, whose great-grandfather Khutuktai Setzen, Prince of the Ordos, was a chief agent in the movement.

The Supreme Good Spirit appears to have been called by the Mongols Tengri (Heaven), and Khormuzda, and is identified by Schmidt with the Persian Hormuzd. In Buddhist times he became identified with Indra.

Plano Carpini's account of this matter is very like Marco's: "They believe in one God, the Maker of all things, visible and invisible, and the Distributor of good and evil in this world; but they worship Him not with prayers or praises or any kind of service. Natheless, they have certain idols of felt, imitating the human face, and having underneath the face something resembling teats; these they place on either side of the door. These they believe to be the guardians of the flocks, from whom they have the boons of milk and increase. Others they fabricate of bits of silk, and these are highly honoured;… and whenever they begin to eat or drink, they first offer these idols a portion of their food or drink."

The account agrees generally with what we are told of the original Shamanism of the Tunguses, which recognizes a Supreme Power over all, and a small number of potent spirits called Ongot. These spirits among the Buraets are called, according to one author, Nougait or Nogat, and according to Erman Ongotui. In some form of this same word, Nogait, Ongot, Onggod, Ongotui, we are, I imagine, to trace the Natigay of Polo. The modern representative of this Shamanist Lar is still found among the Buraets, and is thus described by Pallas under the name of Immegiljin: "He is honoured as the tutelary god of the sheep and other cattle. Properly, the divinity consists of two figures, hanging side by side, one of whom represents the god's wife. These two figures are merely a pair of lanky flat bolsters with the upper part shaped into a round disk, and the body hung with a long woolly fleece; eyes, nose, breasts, and navel, being indicated by leather knobs stitched on. The male figure commonly has at his girdle the foot-rope with which horses at pasture are fettered, whilst the female, which is sometimes accompanied by smaller figures representing her children, has all sorts of little nicknacks and sewing implements." Galsang Czomboyef, a recent Russo-Mongol writer already quoted, says also: "Among the Buryats, in the middle of the hut and place of honour, is the Dsaiagaçhi or 'Chief Creator of Fortune.' At the door is the Emelgelji, the Tutelary of the Herds and Young Cattle, made of sheepskins. Outside the hut is the Chandaghatu, a name implying that the idol was formed of a white hare-skin, the Tutelary of the Chase and perhaps of War. All these have been expelled by Buddhism except Dsaiagachi, who is called Tengri, and introduced among the Buddhist divinities."

[Illustration: Tartar Idols and Kumis Churn.]

[Dorji Banzaroff, in his dissertation On the Black Religion, i.e. Shamanism, 1846, "is disposed to see in Natigay of M. Polo, the Ytoga of other travellers, i.e. the Mongol Etugen—'earth,' as the object of veneration of the Mongol Shamans. They look upon it as a divinity, for its power as Delegei in echen, i.e. 'the Lord of Earth,' and on account of its productiveness, Altan delegei, i.e. 'Golden Earth.'" Palladius (l.c. pp. 14-16) adds one new variant to what the learned Colonel Yule has collected and set forth with such precision, on the Shaman household gods. "The Dahurs and Barhus have in their dwellings, according to the number of the male members of the family, puppets made of straw, on which eyes, eyebrows, and mouth are drawn; these puppets are dressed up to the waist. When some one of the family dies, his puppet is taken out of the house, and a new puppet is made for every newly-born member of the family. On New Year's Day offerings are made to the puppets, and care is taken not to disturb them (by moving them, etc.), in order to avoid bringing sickness upon the family." (He lung kiang wai ki.)

(Cf. Rubruck, 58-59, and Mr. Rockhill's note, 59-60.)—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—KIMIZ or KUMIZ, the habitual drink of the Mongols, as it still is of most of the nomads of Asia. It is thus made. Fresh mare's milk is put in a well-seasoned bottle-necked vessel of horse-skin; a little kurút (see note 5, ch. liv.) or some sour cow's milk is added; and when acetous fermentation is commencing it is violently churned with a peculiar staff which constantly stands in the vessel. This interrupts fermentation and introduces a quantity of air into the liquid. It is customary for visitors who may drop in to give a turn or two at the churn-stick. After three or four days the drink is ready.

Kumiz keeps long; it is wonderfully tonic and nutritious, and it is said that it has cured many persons threatened with consumption. The tribes using it are said to be remarkably free from pulmonary disease; and indeed I understand there is a regular Galactopathic establishment somewhere in the province of Orenburg for treating pulmonary patients with Kumiz diet.

It has a peculiar fore- and after-taste which, it is said, everybody does not like. Yet I have found no confession of a dislike to Kumiz. Rubruquis tells us it is pungent on the tongue, like vinum raspei (vin rapé of the French), whilst you are drinking it, but leaves behind a pleasant flavour like milk of almonds. It makes a man's inside feel very cosy, he adds, even turning a weak head, and is strongly diuretic. To this last statement, however, modern report is in direct contradiction. The Greeks and other Oriental Christians considered it a sort of denial of the faith to drink Kumiz. On the other hand, the Mahomedan converts from the nomad tribes seem to have adhered to the use of Kumiz even when strict in abstinence from wine; and it was indulged in by the early Mamelukes as a public solemnity. Excess on such an occasion killed Bibars Bundukdari, who was passionately fond of this liquor.

The intoxicating power of Kumiz varies according to the brew. The more advanced is the vinous fermentation the less acid is the taste and the more it sparkles. The effect, however, is always slight and transitory, and leaves no unpleasant sensation, whilst it produces a strong tendency to refreshing sleep. If its good qualities amount to half what are ascribed to it by Dr. W. F. Dahl, from whom we derive some of these particulars, it must be the pearl of all beverages. "With the nomads it is the drink of all from the suckling upwards, it is the solace of age and illness, and the greatest of treats to all!"

There was a special kind called Kará Kumiz, which is mentioned both by Rubruquis and in the history of Wassáf. It seems to have been strained and clarified. The modern Tartars distil a spirit from Kumiz of which Pallas gives a detailed account. (Dahl, Ueber den Kumyss in Baer's Beiträge, VII.; Lettres sur le Caucase et la Crimée, Paris, 1859, p. 81; Makrizi, II. 147; J. As. XI. 160; Levchine, 322-323; Rubr. 227-228, 335; Gold. Horde, p. 46; Erman, I. 296; Pallas, Samml. I. 132 seqq.)

[In the Si yu ki, Travels to the West of Ch'ang ch'un, we find a drink called tung lo. "The Chinese characters, tung lo," says Bretschneider (Med. Res. I. 94), "denote according to the dictionaries preparations from mare's or cow's milk, as Kumis, sour milk, etc. In the Yuan shi (ch. cxxviii.) biography of the Kipchak prince Tú-tú-ha, it is stated that 'black mare's milk' (evidently the cara cosmos of Rubruck), very pleasant to the taste, used to be sent from Kipchak to the Mongol court in China." (On the drinks of the Mongols, see Mr. Rockhill's note, Rubruck, p. 62.)—The Mongols indulge in sour milk (tarak) and distilled mare's milk (arreki), but Mr. Rockhill (Land of the Lamas, 130) says he never saw them drink kumiz.—H. C.]

The mare's-milk drink of Scythian nomads is alluded to by many ancient authors. But the manufacture of Kumiz is particularly spoken of by Herodotus. "The (mare's) milk is poured into deep wooden casks, about which the blind slaves are placed, and then the milk is stirred round. That which rises to the top is drawn off, and considered the best part; the under portion is of less account." Strabo also speaks of the nomads beyond the Cimmerian Chersonesus, who feed on horse-flesh and other flesh, mare's-milk cheese, mare's milk, and sour milk ([Greek: óxygalakta]) "which they have a particular way of preparing." Perhaps Herodotus was mistaken about the wooden tubs. At least all modern attempts to use anything but the orthodox skins have failed. Priscus, in his narrative of the mission of himself and Maximin to Attila, says the Huns brought them a drink made from barley which they called [Greek: Kámos]. The barley was, no doubt, a misapprehension of his. (Herod. Bk. iv. p. 2, in Rawl.; Strabo, VII. 4, 6; Excerpta de Legationibus, in Corp. Hist. Byzant. I. 55.)

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CHAPTER LIV. CONCERNING THE TARTAR CUSTOMS OF WAR.

All their harness of war is excellent and costly. Their arms are bows and arrows, sword and mace; but above all the bow, for they are capital archers, indeed the best that are known. On their backs they wear armour of cuirbouly, prepared from buffalo and other hides, which is very strong.[NOTE 1] They are excellent soldiers, and passing valiant in battle. They are also more capable of hardships than other nations; for many a time, if need be, they will go for a month without any supply of food, living only on the milk of their mares and on such game as their bows may win them. Their horses also will subsist entirely on the grass of the plains, so that there is no need to carry store of barley or straw or oats; and they are very docile to their riders. These, in case of need, will abide on horseback the livelong night, armed at all points, while the horse will be continually grazing.

Of all troops in the world these are they which endure the greatest hardship and fatigue, and which cost the least; and they are the best of all for making wide conquests of country. And this you will perceive from what you have heard and shall hear in this book; and (as a fact) there can be no manner of doubt that now they are the masters of the biggest half of the world. Their troops are admirably ordered in the manner that I shall now relate.

You see, when a Tartar prince goes forth to war, he takes with him, say, 100,000 horse. Well, he appoints an officer to every ten men, one to every hundred, one to every thousand, and one to every ten thousand, so that his own orders have to be given to ten persons only, and each of these ten persons has to pass the orders only to other ten, and so on; no one having to give orders to more than ten. And every one in turn is responsible only to the officer immediately over him; and the discipline and order that comes of this method is marvellous, for they are a people very obedient to their chiefs. Further, they call the corps of 100,000 men a Tuc; that of 10,000 they call a Toman; the thousand they call…; the hundred Guz; the ten….[NOTE 2] And when the army is on the march they have always 200 horsemen, very well mounted, who are sent a distance of two marches in advance to reconnoitre, and these always keep ahead. They have a similar party detached in the rear, and on either flank, so that there is a good look-out kept on all sides against a surprise. When they are going on a distant expedition they take no gear with them except two leather bottles for milk; a little earthenware pot to cook their meat in, and a little tent to shelter them from rain.[NOTE 3] And in case of great urgency they will ride ten days on end without lighting a fire or taking a meal. On such an occasion they will sustain themselves on the blood of their horses, opening a vein and letting the blood jet into their mouths, drinking till they have had enough, and then staunching it.[NOTE 4]

They also have milk dried into a kind of paste to carry with them; and when they need food they put this in water, and beat it up till it dissolves, and then drink it. [It is prepared in this way; they boil the milk, and when the rich part floats on the top they skim it into another vessel, and of that they make butter; for the milk will not become solid till this is removed. Then they put the milk in the sun to dry. And when they go on an expedition, every man takes some ten pounds of this dried milk with him. And of a morning he will take a half pound of it and put it in his leather bottle, with as much water as he pleases. So, as he rides along, the milk-paste and the water in the bottle get well churned together into a kind of pap, and that makes his dinner.[NOTE 5]]

When they come to an engagement with the enemy, they will gain the victory in this fashion. [They never let themselves get into a regular medley, but keep perpetually riding round and shooting into the enemy. And] as they do not count it any shame to run away in battle, they will [sometimes pretend to] do so, and in running away they turn in the saddle and shoot hard and strong at the foe, and in this way make great havoc. Their horses are trained so perfectly that they will double hither and thither, just like a dog, in a way that is quite astonishing. Thus they fight to as good purpose in running away as if they stood and faced the enemy, because of the vast volleys of arrows that they shoot in this way, turning round upon their pursuers, who are fancying that they have won the battle. But when the Tartars see that they have killed and wounded a good many horses and men, they wheel round bodily, and return to the charge in perfect order and with loud cries; and in a very short time the enemy are routed. In truth they are stout and valiant soldiers, and inured to war. And you perceive that it is just when the enemy sees them run, and imagines that he has gained the battle, that he has in reality lost it; for the Tartars wheel round in a moment when they judge the right time has come. And after this fashion they have won many a fight.[NOTE 6]

All this that I have been telling you is true of the manners and customs of the genuine Tartars. But I must add also that in these days they are greatly degenerated; for those who are settled in Cathay have taken up the practices of the Idolaters of the country, and have abandoned their own institutions; whilst those who have settled in the Levant have adopted the customs of the Saracens.[NOTE 7]

NOTE 1.—The bow was the characteristic weapon of the Tartars, insomuch that the Armenian historians often call them "The Archers." (St. Martin, II. 133.) "CUIRBOULY, leather softened by boiling, in which it took any form or impression required, and then hardened." (Wright's Dict.) The English adventurer among the Tartars, whose account of them is given by Archbishop Ivo of Narbonne, in Matthew Paris (sub. 1243), says: "De coriis bullitis sibi arma levia quidem, sed tamen impenetrabilia coaptarunt." This armour is particularly described by Plano Carpini (p. 685). See the tail-piece to Book IV.

[Mr. E. H. Parker (China Review, XXIV. iv. p. 205) remarks that "the first coats of mail were made in China in 1288: perhaps the idea was obtained from the Malays or Arabs."—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—M. Pauthier has judiciously pointed out the omissions that have occurred here, perhaps owing to Rusticiano's not properly catching the foreign terms applied to the various grades. In the G. Text the passage runs: "Et sachiés que les cent mille est apellé un Tut (read tuc) et les dix mille un Toman, et les por milier et por centenier et por desme." In Pauthier's (uncorrected) text one of the missing words is supplied: "Et appellent les C.M. un Tuc; et les X.M. un Toman; et un millier Guz por centenier et por disenier." The blanks he supplies thus from Abulghazi: "Et un millier: [un Miny]; Guz, por centenier et [Un] por disenier." The words supplied are Turki, but so is the Guz, which appears already in Pauthier's text, whilst Toman and Tuc are common to Turki and Mongol. The latter word, Túk or Túgh, is the horse-tail or yak-tail standard which among so many Asiatic nations has marked the supreme military command. It occurs as Taka in ancient Persian, and Cosmas Indicopleustes speaks of it as Tupha. The Nine Orloks or Marshals under Chinghiz were entitled to the Tuk, and theirs is probably the class of command here indicated as of 100,000, though the figure must not be strictly taken. Timur ordains that every Amir who should conquer a kingdom or command in a victory should receive a title of honour, the Tugh and the Nakkárá. (Infra, Bk. II. ch. iv. note 3.) Baber on several occasions speaks of conferring the Tugh upon his generals for distinguished service. One of the military titles at Bokhara is still Tokhsabai, a corruption of Túgh-Sáhibi, (Master of the Tugh).

We find the whole gradation except the Tuc in a rescript of Janibeg, Khan of Sarai, in favour of Venetian merchants dated February 1347. It begins in the Venetian version: "La parola de Zanibeck allo puovolo di Mogoli, alli Baroni di Thomeni,[1] delli miera, delli centenera, delle dexiene." (Erdmann, 576; D'Avezac, 577-578; Rémusat, Langues Tartares, 303; Pallas, Samml. I. 283; Schmidt, 379, 381; Baber, 260, etc.; Vámbéry, 374; Timour Inst. pp. 283 and 292-293; Bibl. de l'Ec. des Chartes, tom. lv. p. 585.)

The decimal division of the army was already made by Chinghiz at an early period of his career, and was probably much older than his time. In fact we find the Myriarch and Chiliarch already in the Persian armies of Darius Hystaspes. From the Tartars the system passed into nearly all the Musulman States of Asia, and the titles Min-bashi or Bimbashi, Yuzbashi, Onbashi, still subsist not only in Turkestan, but also in Turkey and Persia. The term Tman or Tma was, according to Herberstein, still used in Russia in his day for 10,000. (Ramus. II. 159.)

[The King of An-nam, Dinh Tiên-hòang (A.D. 968) had an army of 1,000,000 men forming 10 corps of 10 legions; each legion forming 10 cohorts of 10 centuries; each century forming 10 squads of 10 men.—H. C.]

NOTE 3.—Ramusio's edition says that what with horses and mares there will be an average of eighteen beasts (?) to every man.

NOTE 4.—See the Oriental account quoted below in Note 6.

So Dionysius, combining this practice with that next described, relates of the Massagetae that they have no delicious bread nor native wine:

"But with horse's blood
And white milk mingled set their banquets forth."
(Orbis Desc. 743-744.)

And Sidonius:

"Solitosque cruentum
Lac potare Getas, et pocula tingere venis."
(Parag. ad Avitum.)

["The Scythian soldier drinks the blood of the first man he overthrows in battle." (Herodotus, Rawlinson, Bk. IV. ch. 64, p. 54.)—H. C.] "When in lack of food, they bleed a horse and suck the vein. If they need something more solid, they put a sheep's pudding full of blood under the saddle; this in time gets coagulated and cooked by the heat, and then they devour it." (Georg. Pachymeres, V. 4.) The last is a well-known story, but is strenuously denied and ridiculed by Bergmann. (Streifereien, etc. I. 15.) Joinville tells the same story. Hans Schiltberger asserts it very distinctly: "Ich hon och gesehen wann sie in reiss ylten, das sie ein fleisch nemen, und es dunn schinden und legents unter den sattel, und riten doruff; und essents wann sie hungert" (ch. 35). Botero had "heard from a trustworthy source that a Tartar of Perekop, travelling on the steppes, lived for some days on the blood of his horse, and then, not daring to bleed it more, cut off and ate its ears!" (Relazione Univers. p. 93.) The Turkmans speak of such practices, but Conolly says he came to regard them as hyperbolical talk (I. 45).

[Abul-Ghazi Khan, in his History of Mongols, describing a raid of Russian (Ourous) Cossacks, who were hemmed in by the Uzbeks, says: "The Russians had in continued fighting exhausted all their water. They began to drink blood; the fifth day they had not even blood remaining to drink." (Transl. by Baron Des Maisons, St. Petersburg, II. 295.)]

NOTE 5.—Rubruquis thus describes this preparation, which is called Kurút: "The milk that remains after the butter has been made, they allow to get as sour as sour can be, and then boil it. In boiling, it curdles, and that curd they dry in the sun; and in this way it becomes as hard as iron-slag. And so it is stored in bags against the winter. In the winter time, when they have no milk, they put that sour curd, which they call Griut, into a skin, and pour warm water on it, and they shake it violently till the curd dissolves in the water, to which it gives an acid flavour; that water they drink in place of milk. But above all things they eschew drinking plain water." From Pallas's account of the modern practice, which is substantially the same, these cakes are also made from the leavings of distillation in making milk-arrack. The Kurút is frequently made of ewe-milk. Wood speaks of it as an indispensable article in the food of the people of Badakhshan, and under the same name it is a staple food of the Afghans. (Rubr. 229; Samml. I. 136; Dahl, u.s.; Wood, 311.)

[It is the ch'ura of the Tibetans. "In the Kokonor country and Tibet, this krut or chura is put in tea to soften, and then eaten either alone or mixed with parched barley meal (tsamba)." (Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 68, note.)—H. C.]

NOTE 6.—Compare with Marco's account the report of the Mongols, which was brought by the spies of Mahomed, Sultan of Khwarizm, when invasion was first menaced by Chinghiz: "The army of Chinghiz is countless, as a swarm of ants or locusts. Their warriors are matchless in lion-like valour, in obedience, and endurance. They take no rest, and flight or retreat is unknown to them. On their expeditions they are accompanied by oxen, sheep, camels, and horses, and sweet or sour milk suffices them for food. Their horses scratch the earth with their hoofs and feed on the roots and grasses they dig up, so that they need neither straw nor oats. They themselves reck nothing of the clean or the unclean in food, and eat the flesh of all animals, even of dogs, swine, and bears. They will open a horse's vein, draw blood, and drink it…. In victory they leave neither small nor great alive; they cut up women great with child and cleave the fruit of the womb. If they come to a great river, as they know nothing of boats, they sew skins together, stitch up all their goods therein, tie the bundle to their horses' tails, mount with a hard grip of the mane, and so swim over." This passage is an absolute abridgment of many chapters of Carpini. Still more terse was the sketch of Mongol proceedings drawn by a fugitive from Bokhara after Chinghiz's devastations there. It was set forth in one unconscious hexameter:

"Ámdand u khandand u sokhtand u kushtand u burdand u raftand!" "They came and they sapped, they fired and they slew, trussed up their loot and were gone!"

Juwaini, the historian, after telling the story, adds: "The cream and essence of whatever is written in this volume might be represented in these few words."

A Musulman author quoted by Hammer, Najmuddin of Rei, gives an awful picture of the Tartar devastations, "Such as had never been heard of, whether in the lands of unbelief or of Islam, and can only be likened to those which the Prophet announced as signs of the Last Day, when he said: 'The Hour of Judgment shall not come until ye shall have fought with the Turks, men small of eye and ruddy of countenance, whose noses are flat, and their faces like hide-covered shields. Those shall be Days of Horror!' 'And what meanest thou by horror?' said the Companions; and he replied, 'SLAUGHTER! SLAUGHTER!' This beheld the Prophet in vision 600 years ago. And could there well be worse slaughter than there was in Rei, where I, wretch that I am, was born and bred, and where the whole population of five hundred thousand souls was either butchered or dragged into slavery?"

Marco habitually suppresses or ignores the frightful brutalities of the Tartars, but these were somewhat less, no doubt, in Kúblái's time.

The Hindustani poet Amir Khosru gives a picture of the Mongols more forcible than elegant, which Elliot has translated (III. 528).

This is Hayton's account of the Parthian tactics of the Tartars: "They will run away, but always keeping their companies together; and it is very dangerous to give them chase, for as they flee they shoot back over their heads, and do great execution among their pursuers. They keep very close rank, so that you would not guess them for half their real strength." Carpini speaks to the same effect. Baber, himself of Mongol descent, but heartily hating his kindred, gives this account of their military usage in his day: "Such is the uniform practice of these wretches the Moghuls; if they defeat the enemy they instantly seize the booty; if they are defeated, they plunder and dismount their own allies, and, betide what may, carry off the spoil." (Erdmann, 364, 383, 620; Gold. Horde, 77, 80; Elliot, II. 388; Hayton in Ram. ch. xlviii.; Baber, 93; Carpini, p. 694.)

NOTE 7.—"The Scythians" (i.e. in the absurd Byzantine pedantry, Tartars), says Nicephorus Gregoras, "from converse with the Assyrians, Persians, and Chaldaeans, in time acquired their manners and adopted their religion, casting off their ancestral atheism…. And to such a degree were they changed, that though in former days they had been wont to cover the head with nothing better than a loose felt cap, and for other clothing had thought themselves well off with the skins of wild beasts or ill-dressed leather, and had for weapons only clubs and slings, or spears, arrows, and bows extemporised from the oaks and other trees of their mountains and forests, now, forsooth, they will have no meaner clothing than brocades of silk and gold! And their luxury and delicate living came to such a pitch that they stood far as the poles asunder from their original habits" (II. v. 6).

_______________

Notes:

[1] This is Chomeni in the original, but I have ventured to correct it.

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CHAPTER LV. CONCERNING THE ADMINISTERING OF JUSTICE AMONG THE TARTARS.

The way they administer justice is this. When any one has committed a petty theft, they give him, under the orders of authority, seven blows of a stick, or seventeen, or twenty-seven, or thirty-seven, or forty-seven, and so forth, always increasing by tens in proportion to the injury done, and running up to one hundred and seven. Of these beatings sometimes they die.[NOTE 1] But if the offence be horse-stealing, or some other great matter, they cut the thief in two with a sword. Howbeit, if he be able to ransom himself by paying nine times the value of the thing stolen, he is let off. Every Lord or other person who possesses beasts has them marked with his peculiar brand, be they horses, mares, camels, oxen, cows, or other great cattle, and then they are sent abroad to graze over the plains without any keeper. They get all mixt together, but eventually every beast is recovered by means of its owner's brand, which is known. For their sheep and goats they have shepherds. All their cattle are remarkably fine, big, and in good condition.[NOTE 2]

They have another notable custom, which is this. If any man have a daughter who dies before marriage, and another man have had a son also die before marriage, the parents of the two arrange a grand wedding between the dead lad and lass. And marry them they do, making a regular contract! And when the contract papers are made out they put them in the fire, in order (as they will have it) that the parties in the other world may know the fact, and so look on each other as man and wife. And the parents thenceforward consider themselves sib to each other, just as if their children had lived and married. Whatever may be agreed on between the parties as dowry, those who have to pay it cause to be painted on pieces of paper and then put these in the fire, saying that in that way the dead person will get all the real articles in the other world.[NOTE 3]

Now I have told you all about the manners and customs of the Tartars; but you have heard nothing yet of the great state of the Grand Kaan, who is the Lord of all the Tartars and of the Supreme Imperial Court. All that I will tell you in this book in proper time and place, but meanwhile I must return to my story which I left off in that great plain when we began to speak of the Tartars.[NOTE 4]

NOTE 1.—The cudgel among the Mongols was not confined to thieves and such like. It was the punishment also of military and state offences, and even princes were liable to it without fatal disgrace. "If they give any offence," says Carpini, "or omit to obey the slightest beck, the Tartars themselves are beaten like donkeys." The number of blows administered was, according to Wassáf, always odd, 3, 5, and so forth, up to 77. (Carp. 712; Ilchan. I. 37.)

["They also punish with death grand larceny, but as for petty thefts, such as that of a sheep, so long has one has not repeatedly been taken in the act, they beat him cruelly, and if they administer an hundred blows they must use an hundred sticks." (Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 80.)—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—"They have no herdsmen or others to watch their cattle, because the laws of the Turks (i.e. Tartars) against theft are so severe…. A man in whose possession a stolen horse is found is obliged to restore it to its owner, and to give nine of the same value; if he cannot, his children are seized in compensation; if he have no children, he is slaughtered like a mutton." (Ibn Batuta, II. 364.)

NOTE 3.—This is a Chinese custom, though no doubt we may trust Marco for its being a Tartar one also. "In the province of Shansi they have a ridiculous custom, which is to marry dead folks to each other. F. Michael Trigault, a Jesuit, who lived several years in that province, told it us whilst we were in confinement. It falls out that one man's son and another man's daughter die. Whilst the coffins are in the house (and they used to keep them two or three years, or longer) the parents agree to marry them; they send the usual presents, as if the pair were alive, with much ceremony and music. After this they put the two coffins together, hold the wedding dinner in their presence, and, lastly, lay them together in one tomb. The parents, from this time forth, are looked on not merely as friends but as relatives—just as they would have been had their children been married when in life." (Navarrete, quoted by Marsden.) Kidd likewise, speaking of the Chinese custom of worshipping at the tombs of progenitors, says: "So strongly does veneration for this tribute after death prevail that parents, in order to secure the memorial of the sepulchre for a daughter who has died during her betrothal, give her in marriage after her decease to her intended husband, who receives with nuptial ceremonies at his own house a paper effigy made by her parents, and after he has burnt it, erects a tablet to her memory—an honour which usage forbids to be rendered to the memory of unmarried persons. The law seeks without effect to abolish this absurd custom." (China, etc., pp. 179-180.)

[Professor J. J. M. de Groot (Religious System of China) gives several instances of marriages after death; the following example (II. 804-805) will illustrate the custom: "An interesting account of the manner in which such post-mortem marriages were concluded at the period when the Sung Dynasty governed the Empire, is given by a contemporary work in the following words: 'In the northern parts of the Realm it is customary, when an unmarried youth and an unmarried girl breathe their last, that the two families each charge a match-maker to demand the other party in marriage. Such go-betweens are called match-makers for disembodied souls. They acquaint the two families with each other's circumstances, and then cast lots for the marriage by order of the parents on both sides. If they augur that the union will be a happy one, (wedding) garments for the next world are cut out, and the match-makers repair to the grave of the lad, there to set out wine and fruit for the consummation of the marriage. Two seats are placed side by side, and a small streamer is set up near each seat. If these streamers move a little after the libation has been performed, the souls are believed to approach each other; but if one of them does not move, the party represented thereby is considered to disapprove of the marriage. Each family has to reward its match-maker with a present of woven stuffs. Such go-betweens make a regular livelihood out of these proceedings.'"—H. C.]

The Ingushes of the Caucasus, according to Klaproth, have the same custom: "If a man's son dies, another who has lost his daughter goes to the father and says, 'Thy son will want a wife in the other world; I will give him my daughter; pay me the price of the bride.' Such a demand is never refused, even though the purchase of the bride amount to thirty cows." (Travels, Eng. Trans. 345.)

NOTE 4.—There is a little doubt about the reading of this last paragraph. The G. T. has—"Mès desormès volun retorner à nostre conte en la grant plaingne où nos estion quant nos comechames des fais des Tartars," whilst Pauthier's text has "Mais desormais vueil retourner à mon conte que Je lessai d'or plain quant nous commençames des faiz des Tatars." The former reading looks very like a misunderstanding of one similar to the latter, where d'or plain seems to be an adverbial expression, with some such meaning as "just now," "a while ago." I have not, however, been able to trace the expression elsewhere. Cotgrave has or primes, "but even now," etc.; and has also de plain, "presently, immediately, out of hand." It seems quite possible that d'or plain should have had the meaning suggested.

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CHAPTER LVI. SUNDRY PARTICULARS OF THE PLAIN BEYOND CARACORON.

And when you leave Caracoron and the Altay, in which they bury the bodies of the Tartar Sovereigns, as I told you, you go north for forty days till you reach a country called the PLAIN OF BARGU.[NOTE 1] The people there are called MESCRIPT; they are a very wild race, and live by their cattle, the most of which are stags, and these stags, I assure you, they used to ride upon. Their customs are like those of the Tartars, and they are subject to the Great Kaan. They have neither corn nor wine.[They get birds for food, for the country is full of lakes and pools and marshes, which are much frequented by the birds when they are moulting, and when they have quite cast their feathers and can't fly, those people catch them. They also live partly on fish.[NOTE 2]]

And when you have travelled forty days over this great plain you come to the ocean, at the place where the mountains are in which the Peregrine falcons have their nests. And in those mountains it is so cold that you find neither man or woman, nor beast nor bird, except one kind of bird called Barguerlac, on which the falcons feed. They are as big as partridges, and have feet like those of parrots and a tail like a swallow's, and are very strong in flight. And when the Grand Kaan wants Peregrines from the nest, he sends thither to procure them.[NOTE 3] It is also on islands in that sea that the Gerfalcons are bred. You must know that the place is so far to the north that you leave the North Star somewhat behind you towards the south! The gerfalcons are so abundant there that the Emperor can have as many as he likes to send for. And you must not suppose that those gerfalcons which the Christians carry into the Tartar dominions go to the Great Kaan; they are carried only to the Prince of the Levant.[NOTE 4]

Now I have told you all about the provinces northward as far as the Ocean Sea, beyond which there is no more land at all; so I shall proceed to tell you of the other provinces on the way to the Great Kaan. Let us, then, return to that province of which I spoke before, called Campichu.

NOTE 1.—The readings differ as to the length of the journey. In Pauthier's text we seem to have first a journey of forty days from near Karakorúm to the Plain of Bargu, and then a journey of forty days more across the plain to the Northern Ocean. The G. T. seems to present only one journey of forty days (Ramusio, of sixty days), but leaves the interval from Karakorúm undefined. I have followed the former, though with some doubt.

NOTE 2.—This paragraph from Ramusio replaces the following in Pauthier's text: "In the summer they got abundance of game, both beasts and birds, but in winter, there is none to be had because of the great cold."

Marco is here dealing, I apprehend, with hearsay geography, and, as is common in like cases, there is great compression of circumstances and characteristics, analogous to the like compression of little-known regions in mediaeval maps.

The name Bargu appears to be the same with that often mentioned in Mongol history as BARGUCHIN TUGRUM or BARGUTI, and which Rashiduddin calls the northern limit of the inhabited earth. This commenced about Lake Baikal, where the name still survives in that of a river (Barguzin) falling into the Lake on the east side, and of a town on its banks (Barguzinsk). Indeed, according to Rashid himself, BARGU was the name of one of the tribes occupying the plain; and a quotation from Father Hyacinth would seem to show that the country is still called Barakhu.

[The Archimandrite Palladius (Elucidations, 16-17) writes:—"In the Mongol text of Chingis Khan's biography, this country is called Barhu and Barhuchin; it is to be supposed, according to Colonel Yule's identification of this name with the modern Barguzin, that this country was near Lake Baikal. The fact that Merkits were in Bargu is confirmed by the following statement in Chingis Khan's biography: 'When Chingis Khan defeated his enemies, the Merkits, they fled to Barhuchin tokum.' Tokum signifies 'a hollow, a low place,' according to the Chinese translation of the above-mentioned biography, made in 1381; thus Barhuchin tokum undoubtedly corresponds to M. Polo's Plain of Bargu. As to M. Polo's statement that the inhabitants of Bargu were Merkits, it cannot be accepted unconditionally. The Merkits were not indigenous to the country near Baikal, but belonged originally,—according to a division set forth in the Mongol text of the Yuan ch'ao pi shi,—to the category of tribes living in yurts, i.e. nomad tribes, or tribes of the desert. Meanwhile we find in the same biography of Chingis Khan, mention of a people called Barhun, which belonged to the category of tribes living in the forests; and we have therefore reason to suppose that the Barhuns were the aborigines of Barhu. After the time of Chingis Khan, this ethnographic name disappears from Chinese history; it appears again in the middle of the 16th century. The author of the Yyu (1543-1544), in enumerating the tribes inhabiting Mongolia and the adjacent countries, mentions the Barhu, as a strong tribe, able to supply up to several tens of thousands (?) of warriors, armed with steel swords; but the country inhabited by them is not indicated. The Mongols, it is added, call them Black Ta-tze (Khara Mongols, i.e. 'Lower Mongols').

"At the close of the 17th century, the Barhus are found inhabiting the western slopes of the interior Hing'an, as well as between Lake Kulon and River Khalkha, and dependent on a prince of eastern Khalkhas, Doro beile. (Manchu title.)

"At the time of Galdan Khan's invasion, a part of them fled to Siberia with the eastern Khalkhas, but afterwards they returned. [Mung ku yew mu ki and Lung sha ki lio.] After their rebellion in 1696, quelled by a Manchu General, they were included with other petty tribes (regarding which few researches have been made) in the category butkha, or hunters, and received a military organisation. They are divided into Old and New Barhu, according to the time when they were brought under Manchu rule. The Barhus belong to the Mongolian, not to the Tungusian race; they are sometimes considered even to have been in relationship with the Khalkhas. (He lung kiang wai ki and Lung sha ki lio.)

"This is all the substantial information we possess on the Barhu. Is there an affinity to be found between the modern Barhus and the Barhuns of Chingis Khan's biography?—and is it to be supposed, that in the course of time, they spread from Lake Baikal to the Hing'an range? Or is it more correct to consider them a branch of the Mongol race indigenous to the Hing'an Mountains, and which received the general archaic name of Bargu, which might have pointed out the physical character of the country they inhabited [Kin Shi], just as we find in history the Urianhai of Altai and the Urianhai of Western Manchuria? It is difficult to solve this question for want of historical data."—H. C.]

Mescript, or Mecri, as in G. T. The Merkit, a great tribe to the south-east of the Baikal, were also called Mekrit and sometimes Megrin. The Mekrit are spoken of also by Carpini and Rubruquis. D'Avezac thinks that the Kerait, and not the Merkit, are intended by all three travellers. As regards Polo, I see no reason for this view. The name he uses is Mekrit, and the position which he assigns to them agrees fairly with that assigned on good authority to the Merkit or Mekrit. Only, as in other cases, where he is rehearsing hearsay information, it does not follow that the identification of the name involves the correctness of all the circumstances that he connects with that name. We saw in ch. xxx. that under Pashai he seemed to lump circumstances belonging to various parts of the region from Badakhshan to the Indus; so here under Mekrit he embraces characteristics belonging to tribes extending far beyond the Mekrit, and which in fact are appropriate to the Tunguses. Rashiduddin seems to describe the latter under the name of Uriangkut of the Woods, a people dwelling beyond the frontier of Barguchin, and in connection with whom he speaks of their Reindeer obscurely, as well as of their tents of birch bark, and their hunting on snow-shoes.

The mention of the Reindeer by Polo in this passage is one of the interesting points which Pauthier's text omits. Marsden objects to the statement that the stags are ridden upon, and from this motive mis-renders "li qual' anche cavalcano," as, "which they make use of for the purpose of travelling." Yet he might have found in Witsen that the Reindeer are ridden by various Siberian Tribes, but especially by the Tunguses. Erman is very full on the reindeer-riding of the latter people, having himself travelled far in that way in going to Okhotsk, and gives a very detailed description of the saddle, etc., employed. The reindeer of the Tunguses are stated by the same traveller to be much larger and finer animals than those of Lapland. They are also used for pack-carriage and draught. Old Richard Eden says that the "olde wryters" relate that "certayne Scythians doe ryde on Hartes." I have not traced to what he refers, but if the statement be in any ancient author it is very remarkable. Some old editions of Olaus Magnus have curious cuts of Laplanders and others riding on reindeer, but I find nothing in the text appropriate. We hear from travellers of the Lapland deer being occasionally mounted, but only it would seem in sport, not as a practice. (Erdmann, 189, 191; D'Ohsson, I. 103; D'Avezac, 534 seqq.; J. As. sér. II. tom. xi.; sér. IV. tom. xvii. 107; N. et E. XIII. i. 274-276; Witsen, II. 670, 671, 680; Erman, II. 321, 374, 429, 449 seqq., and original German, II. 347 seqq.; Notes on Russia, Hac. Soc. II. 224; J. A. S. B. XXIX. 379.)

The numerous lakes and marshes swarming with water-fowl are very characteristic of the country between Yakutsk and the Kolyma. It is evident that Marco had his information from an eye-witness, though the whole picture is compressed. Wrangell, speaking of Nijni Kolyma, says: "It is at the moulting season that the great bird-hunts take place. The sportsmen surround the nests, and slip their dogs, which drive the birds to the water, on which they are easily knocked over with a gun or arrow, or even with a stick…. This chase is divided into several periods. They begin with the ducks, which moult first; then come the geese; then the swans…. In each case the people take care to choose the time when the birds have lost their feathers." The whole calendar with the Yakuts and Russian settlers on the Kolyma is a succession of fishing and hunting seasons which the same author details. (I. 149, 150; 119-121.)

NOTE 3.—What little is said of the Barguerlac points to some bird of the genus Pterocles, or Sand Grouse (to which belong the so-called Rock Pigeons of India), or to the allied Tetrao paradoxus of Pallas, now known as Syrrhaptes Pallasii. Indeed, we find in Zenker's Dictionary that Boghurtlák (or Baghírtlák, as it is in Pavet de Courteille's) in Oriental Turkish is the Kata, i.e. I presume, the Pterocles alchata of Linnaeus, or Large Pin-tailed Sand Grouse. Mr. Gould, to whom I referred the point, is clear that the Syrrhaptes is Marco's bird, and I believe there can be no question of it.

[Passing through Ch'ang-k'ou, Mr. Rockhill found the people praying for rain. "The people told me," he says, in his Journey (p. 9), "that they knew long ago the year would be disastrous, for the sand grouse had been more numerous of late than for years, and the saying goes Sha-ch'i kuo, mai lao-po, 'when the sand grouse fly by, wives will be for sale.'"—H. C.]

The chief difficulty in identification with the Syrrhaptes or any known bird, would be "the feet like a parrot's." The feet of the Syrrhaptes are not indeed like a parrot's, though its awkward, slow, and waddling gait on the ground, may have suggested the comparison; and though it has very odd and anomalous feet, a circumstance which the Chinese indicate in another way by calling the bird (according to Hue) Lung Kio, or "Dragon-foot." [Mr. Rockhill (Journey) writes in a note (p. 9): "I, for my part, never heard any other name than sha-ch'i, 'sand-fowl,' given them. This name is used, however, for a variety of birds, among others the partridge."—H. C.] The hind-toe is absent, the toes are unseparated, recognisable only by the broad flat nails, and fitted below with a callous couch, whilst the whole foot is covered with short dense feathers like hair, and is more like a quadruped's paw than a bird's foot.

The home of the Syrrhaptes is in the Altai, the Kirghiz Steppes, and the country round Lake Baikal, though it also visits the North of China in great flights. "On plains of grass and sandy deserts," says Gould (Birds of Great Britain, Part IV.), "at one season covered with snow, and at another sun-burnt and parched by drought, it finds a congenial home; in these inhospitable and little-known regions it breeds, and when necessity compels it to do so, wings its way … over incredible distances to obtain water or food." Hue says, speaking of the bird on the northern frontier of China: "They generally arrive in great flights from the north, especially when much snow has fallen, flying with astonishing rapidity, so that the movement of their wings produces a noise like hail." It is said to be very delicate eating. The bird owes its place in Gould's Birds of Great Britain to the fact—strongly illustrative of its being moult volant, as Polo says it is—that it appeared in England in 1859, and since then, at least up to 1863, continued to arrive annually in pairs or companies in nearly all parts of our island, from Penzance to Caithness. And Gould states that it was breeding in the Danish islands. A full account by Mr. A. Newton of this remarkable immigration is contained in the Ibis for April, 1864, and many details in Stevenson's Birds of Norfolk, I. 376 seqq. There are plates of Syrrhaptes in Radde's Reisen im Süden von Ost-Sibirien, Bd. II.; in vol. v. of Temminck, Planches Coloriées, Pl. 95; in Gould, as above; in Gray, Genera of Birds, vol. iii. p. 517 (life size); and in the Ibis for April, 1860. From the last our cut is taken.

[See A. David et Oustalet, Oiseaux de la Chine, 389, on Syrrhaptes Pallasii or Syrrhaptes Paradoxus.—H. C.]

[Illustration: Syrrhaptes Pallasii.]

NOTE 4.—Gerfalcons (Shonkár) were objects of high estimation in the Middle Ages, and were frequent presents to and from royal personages. Thus among the presents sent with an embassy from King James II. of Aragon to the Sultan of Egypt, in 1314, we find three white gerfalcons. They were sent in homage to Chinghiz and to Kúblái, by the Kirghiz, but I cannot identify the mountains where they or the Peregrines were found. The Peregrine falcon was in Europe sometimes termed Faucon Tartare. (See Ménage s. v. Sahin.) The Peregrine of Northern Japan, and probably therefore that of Siberia, is identical with that of Europe. Witsen speaks of an island in the Sea of Tartary, from which falcons were got, apparently referring to a Chinese map as his authority; but I know nothing more of it. (Capmany, IV. 64-65; Ibis, 1862, p. 314; Witsen, II. 656.)

[On the Falco peregrinus, Lin., and other Falcons, see Ed. Blanc's paper mentioned on p. 162. The Falco Saker is to be found all over Central Asia; it is called by the Pekingese Hwang-yng (yellow falcon), (David et Oustalet, Oiseaux de la Chine, 31-32.)—H. C.]

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CHAPTER LVII. OF THE KINGDOM OF ERGUIUL, AND PROVINCE OF SINJU.

On leaving Campichu, then, you travel five days across a tract in which many spirits are heard speaking in the night season; and at the end of those five marches, towards the east, you come to a kingdom called ERGUIUL, belonging to the Great Kaan. It is one of the several kingdoms which make up the great Province of Tangut. The people consist of Nestorian Christians, Idolaters, and worshippers of Mahommet.[NOTE 1]

There are plenty of cities in this kingdom, but the capital is ERGUIUL. You can travel in a south-easterly direction from this place into the province of Cathay. Should you follow that road to the south-east, you come to a city called SINJU, belonging also to Tangut, and subject to the Great Kaan, which has under it many towns and villages.[NOTE 2] The population is composed of Idolaters, and worshippers of Mahommet, but there are some Christians also. There are wild cattle in that country [almost] as big as elephants, splendid creatures, covered everywhere but on the back with shaggy hair a good four palms long. They are partly black, partly white, and really wonderfully fine creatures [and the hair or wool is extremely fine and white, finer and whiter than silk. Messer Marco brought some to Venice as a great curiosity, and so it was reckoned by those who saw it]. There are also plenty of them tame, which have been caught young. [They also cross these with the common cow, and the cattle from this cross are wonderful beasts, and better for work than other animals.] These the people use commonly for burden and general work, and in the plough as well; and at the latter they will do full twice as much work as any other cattle, being such very strong beasts.[NOTE 3]

In this country too is found the best musk in the world; and I will tell you how 'tis produced. There exists in that region a kind of wild animal like a gazelle. It has feet and tail like the gazelle's, and stag's hair of a very coarse kind, but no horns. It has four tusks, two below and two above, about three inches long, and slender in form, one pair growing upwards, and the other downwards. It is a very pretty creature. The musk is found in this way. When the creature has been taken, they find at the navel between the flesh and the skin something like an impostume full of blood, which they cut out and remove with all the skin attached to it. And the blood inside this impostume is the musk that produces that powerful perfume. There is an immense number of these beasts in the country we are speaking of. [The flesh is very good to eat. Messer Marco brought the dried head and feet of one of these animals to Venice with him.[NOTE 4]]

The people are traders and artizans, and also grow abundance of corn. The province has an extent of 26 days' journey. Pheasants are found there twice as big as ours, indeed nearly as big as a peacock, and having tails of 7 to 10 palms in length; and besides them other pheasants in aspect like our own, and birds of many other kinds, and of beautiful variegated plumage.[NOTE 5] The people, who are Idolaters, are fat folks with little noses and black hair, and no beard, except a few hairs on the upper lip. The women too have very smooth and white skins, and in every respect are pretty creatures. The men are very sensual, and marry many wives, which is not forbidden by their religion. No matter how base a woman's descent may be, if she have beauty she may find a husband among the greatest men in the land, the man paying the girl's father and mother a great sum of money, according to the bargain that may be made.

NOTE 1.—No approximation to the name of Erguiul in an appropriate position has yet been elicited from Chinese or other Oriental sources. We cannot go widely astray as to its position, five days east of Kanchau. Klaproth identifies it with Liangchau-fu; Pauthier with the neighbouring city of Yungchang, on the ground that the latter was, in the time of Kúblái, the head of one of the Lús, or Circles, of Kansuh or Tangut, which he has shown some reason for believing to be the "kingdoms" of Marco.

It is probable, however, that the town called by Polo Erguiul lay north of both the cities named, and more in line with the position assigned below to Egrigaya. (See note 1, ch. lviii.)

I may notice that the structure of the name Ergui-ul or Ergiu-ul, has a look of analogy to that of Tang-keu-ul, named in the next note.

["Erguiul is Erichew of the Mongol text of the Yuen ch'ao pi shi, Si-liang in the Chinese history, the modern Liang chow fu. Klaproth, on the authority of Rashid-eddin, has already identified this name with that of Si-liang." (Palladius, p. 18.) M. Bonin left Ning-h'ia at the end of July, 1899, and he crossed the desert to Liangchau in fifteen days from east to west; he is the first traveller who took this route: Prjevalsky went westward, passing by the residence of the Prince of Alashan, and Obrutchev followed the route south of Bonin's.—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—No doubt Marsden is right in identifying this with SINING-CHAU, now Sining-fu, the Chinese city nearest to Tibet and the Kokonor frontier. Grueber and Dorville, who passed it on their way to Lhasa, in 1661, call it urbs ingens. Sining was visited also by Huc and Gabet, who are unsatisfactory, as usually on geographical matters. They also call it "an immense town," but thinly peopled, its commerce having been in part transferred to Tang-keu-ul, a small town closer to the frontier.

[Sining belonged to the country called Hwang chung; in 1198, under the Sung Dynasty, it was subjugated by the Chinese, and was named Si-ning chau; at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty (from 1368), it was named Si-ning wei, and since 1726 Si-ning fu. (Cf. Gueluy, Chine, p. 62.) From Liangchau, M. Bonin went to Sining through the Lao kou kau pass and the Ta-Tung ho. Obrutchev and Grum Grijmaïlo took the usual route from Kanchau to Sining. After the murder of Dutreuil de Rhins at Tung bu _m_do, his companion, Grenard, arrived at Sining, and left it on the 29th July, 1894. Dr. Sven Hedin gives in his book his own drawing of a gate of Sining-fu, where he arrived on the 25th November, 1896.—H. C.]

Sining is called by the Tibetans Ziling or Jiling, by the Mongols Seling Khoto. A shawl wool texture, apparently made in this quarter, is imported into Kashmir and Ladak, under the name of S'ling. I have supposed Sining to be also the Zilm of which Mr. Shaw heard at Yarkand, and am answerable for a note to that effect on p. 38 of his High Tartary. But Mr. Shaw, on his return to Europe, gave some rather strong reasons against this. (See Proc. R. G. S. XVI. 245; Kircher, pp. 64, 66; Della Penna, 27; Davies's Report, App. p. ccxxix.; Vigne, II. 110, 129.) [At present Sining is called by the Tibetans Seling K'ar or Kuar, and by the Mongols, Seling K'utun, K'ar and K'utun meaning "fortified city." (Rockhill, Land of the Lamas, 49, note.)—H. C.]

[Mr. Rockhill (Diary of a Journey, 65) writes: "There must be some Scotch blood in the Hsi-ningites, for I find they are very fond of oatmeal and of cracked wheat. The first is called yen-mei ch'en, and is eaten boiled with the water in which mutton has been cooked, or with neat's-foot oil (yang-t'i yu). The cracked wheat (mei-tzü fan) is eaten prepared in the same way, and is a very good dish."—H. C.]

NOTE 3.—The Dong, or Wild Yak, has till late years only been known by vague rumour. It has always been famed in native reports for its great fierceness. The Haft Iklím says that "it kills with its horns, by its kicks, by treading under foot, and by tearing with its teeth," whilst the Emperor Humáyún himself told Sidi 'Ali, the Turkish admiral, that when it had knocked a man down it skinned him from head to heels by licking him with its tongue! Dr. Campbell states, in the Journal of the As. Soc. of Bengal, that it was said to be four times the size of the domestic Yak. The horns are alleged to be sometimes three feet long, and of immense girth; they are handed round full of strong drink at the festivals of Tibetan grandees, as the Urus horns were in Germany, according to Caesar.

A note, with which I have been favoured by Dr. Campbell (long the respected Superintendent of British Sikkim) says: "Captain Smith, of the Bengal Army, who had travelled in Western Tibet, told me that he had shot many wild Yaks in the neighbourhood of the Mansarawar Lake, and that he measured a bull which was 18 hands high, i.e. 6 feet. All that he saw were black all over. He also spoke to the fierceness of the animal. He was once charged by a bull that he had wounded, and narrowly escaped being killed. Perhaps my statement (above referred to) in regard to the relative size of the Wild and Tame Yak, may require modification if applied to all the countries in which the Yak is found. At all events, the finest specimen of the tame Yak I ever saw, was not in Nepal, Sikkim, Tibet, or Bootan, but in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris; and that one, a male, was brought from Shanghai. The best drawing of a Yak I know is that in Turner's Tibet."

[Lieutenant Samuel Turner gave a very good description of the Yak of Tartary, which he calls Soora-Goy or the Bushy-tailed Bull of Tibet. (Asiat. Researches, No. XXIII, pp. 351-353, with a plate.) He says with regard to the colour: "There is a great variety of colours amongst them, but black or white are the most prevalent. It is not uncommon to see the long hair upon the ridge of the back, the tail, tuft upon the chest, and the legs below the knee white, when all the rest of the animal is jet black." A good drawing of "an enormous" Yak is to be found on p. 183 of Captain Wellby's Unknown Tibet. (See also Captain Deasy's work on Tibet, p. 363.) Prince Henri d'Orléans brought home a fine specimen, which he shot during his journey with Bonvalot; it is now exhibited in the galleries of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. Some Yaks were brought to Paris on the 1st April, 1854, and the celebrated artist, Mme. Rosa Bonheur, made sketches after them. (See Jour. Soc. Acclimatation, June, 1900, 39-40.)—H. C.]

Captain Prjevalsky, in his recent journey (1872-1873), shot twenty wild Yaks south of the Koko Nor. He specifies one as 11 feet in length exclusive of the tail, which was 3 feet more; the height 6 feet. He speaks of the Yak as less formidable than it looks, from apathy and stupidity, but very hard to kill; one having taken eighteen bullets before it succumbed.

[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, 151, note) writes: "The average load carried by a Yak is about 250 lbs. The wild Yak bull is an enormous animal, and the people of Turkestan and North Tibet credit him with extraordinary strength. Mirza Haidar, in the Tarikhi Rashidi, says of the wild Yak or kutás: 'This is a very wild and ferocious beast. In whatever manner it attacks one it proves fatal. Whether it strikes with its horns, or kicks, or overthrows its victim. If it has no opportunity of doing any of these things, it tosses its enemy with its tongue twenty gaz into the air, and he is dead before reaching the ground. One male kutás is a load for twelve horses. One man cannot possibly raise a shoulder of the animal.'" —Captain Deasy (In Tibet, 363) says: "In a few places on lofty ground in Tibet we found Yaks in herds numbering from ten to thirty, and sometimes more. Most of the animals are black, brown specimens being very rare. Their roving herds move with great agility over the steep and stony ground, apparently enjoying the snow and frost and wind, which seldom fail…. Yaks are capable of offering formidable resistance to the sportsman….'"—H. C.]

The tame Yaks are never, I imagine, "caught young," as Marco says; it is a domesticated breed, though possibly, as with buffaloes in Bengal, the breed may occasionally be refreshed by a cross of wild blood. They are employed for riding, as beasts of burden, and in the plough. [Lieutenant S. Turner, l.c., says, on the other hand: "They are never employed in agriculture, but are extremely useful as beasts of burthen."—H. C.] In the higher parts of our Himalayan provinces, and in Tibet, the Yak itself is most in use; but in the less elevated tracts several breeds crossed with the common Indian cattle are more used. They have a variety of names according to their precise origin. The inferior Yaks used in the plough are ugly enough, and "have more the appearance of large shaggy bears than of oxen," but the Yak used for riding, says Hoffmeister, "is an infinitely handsomer animal. It has a stately hump, a rich silky hanging tail nearly reaching the ground, twisted horns, a noble bearing, and an erect head." Cunningham, too, says that the Dso, one of the mixed breeds, is "a very handsome animal, with long shaggy hair, generally black and white." Many of the various tame breeds appear to have the tail and back white, and also the fringe under the body, but black and red are the prevailing colours. Some of the crossbred cows are excellent milkers, better than either parent stock.

Notice in this passage the additional and interesting particulars given by Ramusio, e.g. the use of the mixed breeds. "Finer than silk," is an exaggeration, or say an hyberbole, as is the following expression, "As big as elephants," even with Ramusio's apologetic quasi. Caesar says the Hercynian Urus was magnitudine paullo infra elephantos.

The tame Yak is used across the breadth of Mongolia. Rubruquis saw them at Karakorum, and describes them well. Mr. Ney Elias tells me he found Yaks common everywhere along his route in Mongolia, between the Tui river (long. circa 101°) and the upper valleys of the Kobdo near the Siberian frontier. At Uliasut'ai they were used occasionally by Chinese settlers for drawing carts, but he never saw them used for loads or for riding, as in Tibet. He has also seen Yaks in the neighbourhood of Kwei-hwa-ch'eng. (Tenduc, see ch. lix. note 1.) This may be taken as the eastern limit of the employment of the Yak; the western limit is in the highlands of Khokand.

These animals had been noticed by Cosmas [who calls them agriobous] in the 6th century, and by Aelian in the 3rd. The latter speaks of them as black cattle with white tails, from which fly-flappers were made for Indian kings. And the great Kalidása thus sang of the Yak, according to a learned (if somewhat rugged) version ascribed to Dr. Mill. The poet personifies the Himálaya:—

"For Him the large Yaks in his cold plains that bide
Whisk here and there, playful, their tails' bushy pride,
And evermore flapping those fans of long hair
Which borrowed moonbeams have made splendid and fair,
Proclaim at each stroke (what our flapping men sing)
His title of Honour, 'The Dread Mountain King.'"

Who can forget Père Huc's inimitable picture of the hairy Yaks of their caravan, after passing a river in the depth of winter, "walking with their legs wide apart, and bearing an enormous load of stalactites, which hung beneath their bellies quite to the ground. The monstrous beasts looked exactly as if they were preserved in sugar-candy." Or that other, even more striking, of a great troop of wild Yaks, caught in the upper waters of the Kin-sha Kiang, as they swam, in the moment of congelation, and thus preserved throughout the winter, gigantic "flies in amber."

(N. et E. XIV. 478; J. As. IX. 199; J. A. S. B. IX. 566, XXIV. 235; Shaw, p. 91; Ladak, p. 210; Geog. Magazine, April, 1874; Hoffmeister's Travels, p. 441; Rubr. 288; Ael. de Nat. An. XV. 14; J. A. S. B. I. 342; Mrs. Sinnett's Huc, pp. 228, 235.)

NOTE 4.—Ramusio adds that the hunters seek the animal at New Moon, at which time the musk is secreted.

The description is good except as to the four tusks, for the musk deer has canine teeth only in the upper jaw, slender and prominent as he describes them. The flesh of the animal is eaten by the Chinese, and in Siberia by both Tartars and Russians, but that of the males has a strong musk flavour.

The "immense number" of these animals that existed in the Himalayan countries may be conceived from Tavernier's statement, that on one visit to Patna, then the great Indian mart for this article, he purchased 7673 pods of musk. These presumably came by way of Nepal; but musk pods of the highest class were also imported from Khotan viâ Yarkand and Leh, and the lowest price such a pod fetched at Yarkand was 250 tankas, or upwards of 4_l._ This import has long been extinct, and indeed the trade in the article, except towards China, has altogether greatly declined, probably (says Mr. Hodgson) because its repute as a medicine is becoming fast exploded. In Sicily it is still so used, but apparently only as a sort of decent medical viaticum, for when it is said "the Doctors have given him musk," it is as much as to say that they have given up the patient.

["Here Marco Polo speaks of musk; musk and rhubarb (which he mentions before, Sukchur, ch. xliii.) are the most renowned and valuable of the products of the province of Kansu, which comparatively produces very little; the industry in both these articles is at present in the hands of the Tanguts of that province [Su chow chi]." (Palladius, p. 18.)

Writing under date 15th February, 1892, from Lusar (coming from Sining), Mr. Rockhill says: "The musk trade here is increasing, Cantonese and Ssu-ch'uanese traders now come here to buy it, paying for good musk four times its weight in silver (ssu huan, as they say). The best test of its purity is an examination of the colour. The Tibetans adulterate it by mixing tsamba and blood with it. The best time to buy it is from the seventh to the ninth moon (latter part of August to middle of November)." Mr. Rockhill adds in a note: "Mongols call musk owo; Tibetans call it latsé. The best musk they say is 'white musk,' tsahan owo in Mongol, in Tibetan latsé karpo. I do not know whether white refers to the colour of the musk itself or to that of the hair on the skin covering the musk pouch." (Diary of a Journey, p. 71.)—H. C.]

Three species of the Moschus are found in the Mountains of Tibet, and M. Chrysogaster which Mr. Hodgson calls "the loveliest," and which chiefly supplies the highly-prized pod called Kághazi, or "Thin-as-paper," is almost exclusively confined to the Chinese frontier. Like the Yak, the Moschus is mentioned by Cosmas (circa A.D. 545), and musk appears in a Greek prescription by Aëtius of Amida, a physician practising at Constantinople about the same date.

(Martini, p. 39; Tav., Des Indes, Bk. II. ch. xxiv.; J. A. S. B. XI. 285; Davies's Rep. App. p. ccxxxvii.; Dr. Flückiger in Schweiz. Wochenschr. für Pharmacie, 1867; Heyd, Commerce du Levant, II. 636-640.)

NOTE 5.—The China pheasant answering best to the indications in the text, appears to be Reeves's Pheasant. Mr. Gould has identified this bird with Marco's in his magnificent Birds of Asia, and has been kind enough to show me a specimen which, with the body, measured 6 feet 8 inches. The tail feathers alone, however, are said to reach to 6 and 7 feet, so that Marco's ten palms was scarcely an exaggeration. These tail-feathers are often seen on the Chinese stage in the cap of the hero of the drama, and also decorate the hats of certain civil functionaries.

[Illustration: Reeves's Pheasant]

Size is the point in which the bird fails to meet Marco's description. In that respect the latter would rather apply to the Crossoptilon auritum, which is nearly as big as a turkey, or to the glorious Múnál (Lopophorus impeyanus), but then that has no length of tail. The latter seems to be the bird described by Aelian: "Magnificent cocks which have the crest variegated and ornate like a crown of flowers, and the tail feathers not curved like a cock's, but broad and carried in a train like a peacock's; the feathers are partly golden, and partly azure or emerald-coloured." (Wood's Birds, 610, from which I have copied the illustration; Williams, M. K. I. 261; Ael. De Nat. An. XVI. 2.) A species of Crossoptilon has recently been found by Captain Prjevalsky in Alashan, the Egrigaia (as I believe) of next chapter, and one also by Abbé Armand David at the Koko Nor.

[See on the Phasianidae family in Central and Western Asia, David et Oustalet, Oiseaux de la Chine, 401-421; the Phasianus Reevesii or veneratus is called by the Chinese of Tung-lin, near Peking, Djeu-ky (hen-arrow); the Crossoptilon auritum is named Ma-ky.—H. C.]

[admin]

CHAPTER LVIII. OF THE KINGDOM OF EGRIGAIA.

Starting again from Erguiul you ride eastward for eight days, and then come to a province called EGRIGAIA, containing numerous cities and villages, and belonging to Tangut.[NOTE 1] The capital city is called CALACHAN.[NOTE 2] The people are chiefly Idolaters, but there are fine churches belonging to the Nestorian Christians. They are all subjects of the Great Kaan. They make in this city great quantities of camlets of camel's wool, the finest in the world; and some of the camlets that they make are white, for they have white camels, and these are the best of all. Merchants purchase these stuffs here, and carry them over the world for sale.[NOTE 3]

We shall now proceed eastward from this place and enter the territory that was formerly Prester John's.

NOTE 1.—Chinghiz invaded Tangut in all five times, viz. in 1205, 1207, 1209 (or according to Erdmann, 1210-1211), 1218, and 1226-1227, on which last expedition he died.

A. In the third invasion, according to D'Ohsson's Chinese guide (Father Hyacinth), he took the town of Uiraca, and the fortress of Imen, and laid siege to the capital, then called Chung-sing or Chung-hing, now Ning-hsia.

Rashid, in a short notice of this campaign, calls the first city Erica, Erlaca, or, as Erdmann has it, Artacki. In De Mailla it is Ulahai.

B. On the last invasion (1226), D'Ohsson's Chinese authority says that Chinghiz took Kanchau and Suhchau, Cholo and Khola in the province of Liangcheu, and then proceeded to the Yellow River, and invested Lingchau, south of Ning-hsia.

Erdmann, following his reading of Rashiduddin, says Chinghiz took the cities of Tangut, called Arucki, Kachu, Sichu, and Kamichu, and besieged Deresgai (D'Ohsson, Derssekai), whilst Shidergu, the King of Tangut, betook himself to his capital Artackin.

D'Ohsson, also professing to follow Rashid, calls this "his capital Irghai, which the Mongols call Ircaya." Klaproth, illustrating Polo, reads "Eyircai, which the Mongols call Eyircayá."

Pétis de la Croix, relating the same campaign and professing to follow Fadlallah, i.e. Rashiduddin, says the king "retired to his fortress of Arbaca."

C. Sanang Setzen several times mentions a city called Irghai, apparently in Tangut; but all we can gather as to his position is that it seems to have lain east of Kanchau.

We perceive that the Arbaca of P. de la Croix, the Eyircai of Klaproth, the Uiraca of D'Ohsson, the Artacki or Artackin of Erdmann, are all various readings or forms of the same name, and are the same with the Chinese form Ulahai of De Mailla, and most probably the place is the Egrigaia of Polo.

We see also that Erdmann mentions another place Aruki ([Arabic]) in connection with Kanchau and Suhchau. This is, I suspect, the Erguiul of Polo, and perhaps the Irghai of Sanang Setzen.

Rashiduddin seems wrong in calling Ircayá the capital of the king, a circumstance which leads Klaproth to identify it with Ning-hsia. Pauthier, identifying Ulahai with Egrigaya, shows that the former was one of the circles of Tangut, but not that of Ning-hsia. Its position, he says, is uncertain. Klaproth, however, inserts it in his map of Asia, in the era of Kúblái (Tabl. Hist. pl. 22), as Ulakhai to the north of Ning-hsia, near the great bend eastward of the Hwang-Ho. Though it may have extended in this direction, it is probable, from the name referred to in next note, that Egrigaia or Ulahai is represented by the modern principality of ALASHAN, visited by Prjevalsky in 1871 and 1872.

[New travels and researches enable me to say that there can be no doubt that Egrigaia = Ning-hsia. Palladius (l.c. 18) says: "Egrigaia is Erigaia of the Mongol text. Klaproth was correct in his supposition that it is modern Ning-h'ia. Even now the Eleuths of Alashan call Ning-h'ia, Yargai. In M. Polo's time this department was famous for the cultivation of the Safflower (carthamus tinctorius). [Siu t'ung kien, A.D. 1292.]" Mr. Rockhill (cf. his Diary of a Journey) writes to me that Ning-hsia is still called Irge Khotun by Mongols at the present day. M. Bonin (J. As., 1900. I. 585) mentions the same fact.

Palladius (19) adds: "Erigaia is not to be confounded with Urahai, often mentioned in the history of Chingis Khan's wars with the Tangut kingdom. Urahai was a fortress in a pass of the same name in the Alashan Mountains. Chingis Khan spent five months there (an. 1208), during which he invaded and plundered the country in the neighbourhood. [Si hia shu shi.] The Alashan Mountains form a semicircle 500 li in extent, and have over forty narrow passes leading to the department of Ning-hia; the broadest and most practicable of these is now called Ch'i-mu-K'ow; it is not more than 80 feet broad. [Ning hia ju chi.] It may be that the Urahai fortress existed near this pass."

"From Liang-chow fu, M. Polo follows a special route, leaving the modern postal route on his right; the road he took has, since the time of the Emperor K'ang-hi, been called the courier's route." (Palladius, 18.)—H.C.]

NOTE 2.—Calachan, the chief town of Egrigaia, is mentioned, according to Klaproth, by Rashiduddin, among the cities of Tangut, as KALAJÁN. The name and approximate position suggest, as just noticed, identity with Alashan, the modern capital of which, called by Prjevalsky Dyn-yuan-yin, stands some distance west of the Hwang-Ho, in about lat. 39°. Polo gives no data for the interval between this and his next stage.

[The Dyn-yuan-yin of Prjevalsky is the camp of Ting-yuan-yng or Fu-ma- fu of M. Bonin, the residence of the Si-wang (western prince), of Alashan, an abbreviation of Alade-shan (shan, mountain in Chinese), Alade = Eleuth or Oelöt; the sister of this prince married a son of Prince Tuan, the chief of the Boxers. (La Géographie, 1901. I. 118.) Palladius (l.c. 19) says: "Under the name of Calachan, Polo probably means the summer residence of the Tangut kings, which was 60 li from Ning-hia, at the foot of the Alashan Mountains. It was built by the famous Tangut king Yuen-hao, on a large scale, in the shape of a castle, in which were high terraces and magnificent buildings. Traces of these buildings are visible to this day. There are often found coloured tiles and iron nails 1 foot, and even 2 feet long. The last Tangut kings made this place their permanent residence, and led there an indolent and sensual life. The Chinese name of this residence was Ho-lan shan Li-Kung. There is sufficient reason to suppose that this very residence is named (under the year 1226) in the Mongol text Alashai nuntuh; and in the chronicles of the Tangut Kingdom, Halahachar, otherwise Halachar apparently in the Tangut language. Thus M. Polo's Calachan can be identified with the Halachar of the Si hia shu shi, and can be taken to designate the Alashan residence of the Tangut kings."—H. C.]

NOTE 3.—Among the Buraets and Chinese at Kiakhta snow-white camels, without albino character, are often seen, and probably in other parts of Mongolia. (See Erdmann, II. 261.) Philostratus tells us that the King of Taxila furnished white camels to Apollonius. I doubt if the present King of Taxila, whom Anglo-Indians call the Commissioner of Ráwal Pindi, could do the like.

Cammellotti appear to have been fine woollen textures, by no means what are now called camlets, nor were they necessarily of camel's wool, for those of Angora goat's wool were much valued. M. Douet d'Arcq calls it "a fine stuff of wool approaching to our Cashmere, and sometimes of silk." Indeed, as Mr. Marsh points out, the word is Arabic, and has nothing to do with Camel in its origin; though it evidently came to be associated therewith. Khamlat is defined in F. Johnson's Dict.: "Camelot, silk and camel's hair; also all silk or velvet, especially pily and plushy," and Khaml is "pile or plush." Camelin was a different and inferior material. There was till recently a considerable import of different kinds of woollen goods from this part of China into Ladakh, Kashmir, and the northern Panjáb. [Leaving Ning-hsia, Mr. Rockhill writes (Diary, 1892, 44): "We passed on the road a cart with Jardine and Matheson's flag, coming probably from Chung-Wei Hsien, where camel's wool is sold in considerable quantities to foreigners. This trade has fallen off very much in the last three or four years on account of the Chinese middlemen rolling the wool in the dirt so as to add to its weight, and practising other tricks on buyers."—H. C.] Among the names of these were Sling, Shirum, Gurun, and Khoza, said to be the names of the towns in China where the goods were made. We have supposed Sling to be Sining (note 2, ch. lvii.), but I can make nothing of the others. Cunningham also mentions "camlets of camel's hair," under the name of Suklát, among imports from the same quarter. The term Suklát is, however, applied in the Panjáb trade returns to broadcloth. Does not this point to the real nature of the siclatoun of the Middle Ages? It is, indeed, often spoken of as used for banners, which implies that it was not a heavy woollen:

"There was mony gonfanoun
Of gold, sendel, and siclatoun."
(King Alisaundre, in Weber, I. 85.)

But it was also a material for ladies' robes, for quilts, leggings, housings, pavilions. Franc. Michel does not decide what it was, only that it was generally red and wrought with gold. Dozy renders it "silk stuff brocaded with gold"; but this seems conjectural. Dr. Rock says it was a thin glossy silken stuff, often with a woof of gold thread, and seems to derive it from the Arabic sakl, "polishing" (a sword), which is improbable. Perhaps the name is connected with Sikiliyat, "Sicily."

(Marsh on Wedgwood, and on Webster in N. Y. Nation, 1867; Douet D'Arcq, p. 355; Punjab Trade Rep., App. ccxix.-xx.; Ladak, 242; Fr.-Michel Rech. I. 221 seqq.; Dozy, Dict. des Vêtements, etc.; Dr. Rock's Ken. Catal. xxxix.-xl.)

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CHAPTER LIX. CONCERNING THE PROVINCE OF TENDUC, AND THE DESCENDANTS OF PRESTER JOHN.

Tenduc is a province which lies towards the east, and contains numerous towns and villages; among which is the chief city, also called TENDUC. The king of the province is of the lineage of Prester John, George by name, and he holds the land under the Great Kaan; not that he holds anything like the whole of what Prester John possessed.[NOTE 1] It is a custom, I may tell you, that these kings of the lineage of Prester John always obtain to wife either daughters of the Great Kaan or other princesses of his family.[NOTE 2]

In this province is found the stone from which Azure is made. It is obtained from a kind of vein in the earth, and is of very fine quality.[NOTE 3] There is also a great manufacture of fine camlets of different colours from camel's hair. The people get their living by their cattle and tillage, as well as by trade and handicraft.

The rule of the province is in the hands of the Christians, as I have told you; but there are also plenty of Idolaters and worshippers of Mahommet. And there is also here a class of people called Argons, which is as much as to say in French Guasmul, or, in other words, sprung from two different races: to wit, of the race of the Idolaters of Tenduc and of that of the worshippers of Mahommet. They are handsomer men than the other natives of the country, and having more ability, they come to have authority; and they are also capital merchants.[NOTE 4]

You must know that it was in this same capital city of Tenduc that Prester John had the seat of his government when he ruled over the Tartars, and his heirs still abide there; for, as I have told you, this King George is of his line, in fact, he is the sixth in descent from Prester John.

Here also is what we call the country of GOG and MAGOG; they, however, call it UNG and MUNGUL, after the names of two races of people that existed in that Province before the migration of the Tartars. Ung was the title of the people of the country, and Mungul a name sometimes applied to the Tartars.[NOTE 5]

And when you have ridden seven days eastward through this province you get near the provinces of Cathay. You find throughout those seven days' journey plenty of towns and villages, the inhabitants of which are Mahommetans, but with a mixture also of Idolaters and Nestorian Christians. They get their living by trade and manufactures; weaving those fine cloths of gold which are called Nasich and Naques, besides silk stuffs of many other kinds. For just as we have cloths of wool in our country, manufactured in a great variety of kinds, so in those regions they have stuffs of silk and gold in like variety.[NOTE 6]

All this region is subject to the Great Kaan. There is a city you come to called SINDACHU, where they carry on a great many crafts such as provide for the equipment of the Emperor's troops. In a mountain of the province there is a very good silver mine, from which much silver is got: the place is called YDIFU. The country is well stocked with game, both beast and bird.[NOTE 7]

Now we will quit that province and go three days' journey forward.

NOTE 1.—Marco's own errors led commentators much astray about Tanduc or Tenduc, till Klaproth put the matter in its true light.

Our traveller says that Tenduc had been the seat of Aung Khan's sovereignty; he has already said that it had been the scene of his final defeat, and he tells us that it was still the residence of his descendants in their reduced state. To the last piece of information he can speak as a witness, and he is corroborated by other evidence; but the second statement we have seen to be almost certainly erroneous; about the first we cannot speak positively.

Klaproth pointed out the true position of Tenduc in the vicinity of the great northern bend of the Hwang-Ho, quoting Chinese authorities to show that Thianté or Thianté-Kiun was the name of a district or group of towns to the north of that bend, a name which he supposes to be the original of Polo's Tenduc. The general position entirely agrees with Marco's indications; it lies on his way eastward from Tangut towards Chagannor, and Shangtu (see ch. lx., lxi.), whilst in a later passage (Bk. II. ch. lxiv.), he speaks of the Caramoran or Hwang-Ho in its lower course, as "coming from the lands of Prester John."

M. Pauthier finds severe fault with Klaproth's identification of the name Tenduc with the Thianté of the Chinese, belonging to a city which had been destroyed 300 years before, whilst he himself will have that name to be a corruption of Tathung. The latter is still the name of a city and Fu of northern Shansi, but in Mongol time its circle of administration extended beyond the Chinese wall, and embraced territory on the left of the Hwang-Ho, being in fact the first Lu, or circle, entered on leaving Tangut, and therefore, Pauthier urges, the "Kingdom of Tanduc" of our text.

I find it hard to believe that Marco could get no nearer TATHUNG than in the form of Tanduc or Tenduc. The origin of the last may have been some Mongol name, not recovered. But it is at least conceivable that a name based on the old Thianté-Kiun might have been retained among the Tartars, from whom, and not from the Chinese, Polo took his nomenclature. Thianté had been, according to Pauthier's own quotations, the military post of Tathung; Klaproth cites a Chinese author of the Mongol era, who describes the Hwang-Ho as passing through the territory of the ancient Chinese city of Thianté; and Pauthier's own quotation from the Modern Imperial Geography seems to imply that a place in that territory was recently known as Fung-chau-Thianté-Kiun.

In the absence of preciser indications, it is reasonable to suppose that the Plain of Tenduc, with its numerous towns and villages, was the extensive and well-cultivated plain which stretches from the Hwang-Ho, past the city of Kuku-Khotan, or "Blue Town." This tract abounds in the remains of cities attributed to the Mongol era. And it is not improbable that the city of Tenduc was Kuku-Khotan itself, now called by the Chinese Kwei-hwa Ch'eng, but which was known to them in the Middle Ages as Tsing-chau, and to which we find the Kin Emperor of Northern China sending an envoy in 1210 to demand tribute from Chinghiz. The city is still an important mart and a centre of Lamaitic Buddhism, being the residence of a Khutukhtu, or personage combining the characters of cardinal and voluntarily re-incarnate saint, as well as the site of five great convents and fifteen smaller ones. Gerbillon notes that Kuku Khotan had been a place of great trade and population during the Mongol Dynasty.

[The following evidence shows, I think, that we must look for the city of Tenduc to Tou Ch'eng or Toto Ch'eng, called Togto or Tokto by the Mongols. Mr. Rockhill (Diary, 18) passed through this place, and 5 li south of it, reached on the Yellow River, Ho-k'ou (in Chinese) or Dugus or Dugei (in Mongol). Gerbillon speaks of Toto in his sixth voyage in Tartary. (Du Halde, IV. 345.) Mr. Rockhill adds that he cannot but think that Yule overlooked the existence of Togto when he identified Kwei-hwa Ch'eng with Tenduc. Tou Ch'eng is two days' march west of Kwei-hwa Ch'eng, "On the loess hill behind this place are the ruins of a large camp, Orch'eng, in all likelihood the site of the old town" (l.c. 18). M. Bonin (J. As. XV. 1900, 589) shares Mr. Rockhill's opinion. From Kwei-hwa Ch'eng, M. Bonin went by the valley of the Hei Shui River to the Hwang Ho; at the junction of the two rivers stands the village of Ho-k'au (Ho-k'ou) south of the small town To Ch'eng, surmounted by the ruins of the old square Mongol stronghold of Tokto, the walls of which are still in a good state of preservation.—(La Géographie, I. 1901, p. 116.)

On the other hand, it is but fair to state that Palladius (21) says: "The name of Tenduc obviously corresponds to T'ien-te Kiun, a military post, the position of which Chinese geographers identify correctly with that of the modern Kuku-hoton (Ta tsing y t'ung chi, ch. on the Tumots of Kuku-hoton). The T'ien-te Kiun post existed under this name during the K'itan (Liao) and Kin Dynasties up to Khubilai's time (1267); when under the name of Fung-chow it was left only a district town in the department of Ta-t'ung fu. The Kin kept in T'ien-te Kiun a military chief, Chao-t'ao- shi, whose duty it was to keep an eye on the neighbouring tribes, and to use, if needed, military force against them. The T'ien-te Kiun district was hardly greater in extent than the modern aïmak of Tumot, into which Kuku-hoton was included since the 16th century, i.e. 370 li from north to south, and 400 li from east to west; during the Kin it had a settled population, numbering 22,600 families."

In a footnote, Palladius refers to the geographical parts of the Liao shi, Kin shi, and Yuen shi, and adds: "M. Polo's commentators are wrong in suspecting an anachronism in his statement, or trying to find Tenduc elsewhere."

We find in the North-China Herald (29th April, 1887, p. 474) the following note from the Chinese Times: "There are records that the position of this city [Kwei-hwa Ch'eng] was known to the builder of the Great Wall. From very remote times, it appears to have been a settlement of nomadic tribes. During the last 1000 years it has been alternately possessed by the Mongols and Chinese. About A.D. 1573, Emperor Wan-Li reclaimed it, enclosed a space within walls, and called it Kwei-hwa Ch'êng."

Potanin left Peking on the 13th May, 1884, for Kuku-khoto (or Kwei-hwa-Ch'eng), passing over the triple chain of mountains dividing the Plain of Peking from that on which Kuku-khoto is situate. The southernmost of these three ridges bears the Chinese name of Wu-tai-shan, "the mountain of five sacrificial altars," after the group of five peaks, the highest of which is 10,000 feet above the sea, a height not exceeded by any mountain in Northern China. At its southern foot lies a valley remarkable for its Buddhist monasteries and shrines, one of which, "Shing-tung-tze," is entirely made of brass, whence its name.

"Kuku-Khoto is the depôt for the Mongolian trade with China. It contains two hundred tea-shops, five theatres, fifteen temples, and six Mongol monasteries. Among its sights are the Buddhist convent of Utassa, with its five pinnacles and has-reliefs, the convent of Fing-sung-si, and a temple containing a statue erected in honour of the Chinese general, Pai-jin- jung, who avenged an insult offered to the Emperor of China." (Proc. R. G. S. IX. 1887, p. 233.)—H. C.]

A passage in Rashiduddin does seem to intimate that the Kerait, the tribe of Aung Khan, alias Prester John, did occupy territory close to the borders of Cathay or Northern China; but neither from Chinese nor from other Oriental sources has any illustration yet been produced of the existence of Aung Khan's descendants as rulers in this territory under the Mongol emperors. There is, however, very positive evidence to that effect supplied by other European travellers, to whom the fables prevalent in the West had made the supposed traces of Prester John a subject of strong interest.

Thus John of Monte Corvino, afterwards Archbishop of Cambaluc or Peking, in his letter of January, 1305, from that city, speaks of Polo's King George in these terms: "A certain king of this part of the world, by name George, belonging to the sect of the Nestorian Christians, and of the illustrious lineage of that great king who was called Prester John of India, in the first year of my arrival here [circa 1295-1296] attached himself to me, and, after he had been converted by me to the verity of the Catholic faith, took the Lesser Orders, and when I celebrated mass used to attend me wearing his royal robes. Certain others of the Nestorians on this account accused him of apostacy, but he brought over a great part of his people with him to the true Catholic faith, and built a church of royal magnificence in honour of our God, of the Holy Trinity, and of our Lord, the Pope, giving it the name of the Roman Church. This King George, six years ago, departed to the Lord, a true Christian, leaving as his heir a son scarcely out of the cradle, and who is now nine years old. And after King George's death, his brothers, perfidious followers of the errors of Nestorius, perverted again all those whom he had brought over to the Church, and carried them back to their original schismatical creed. And being all alone, and not able to leave His Majesty the Cham, I could not go to visit the church above-mentioned, which is twenty days' journey distant…. I had been in treaty with the late King George, if he had lived, to translate the whole Latin ritual, that it might be sung throughout the extent of his territory; and whilst he was alive I used to celebrate mass in his church according to the Latin rite." The distance mentioned, twenty days' journey from Peking, suits quite well with the position assigned to Tenduc, and no doubt the Roman Church was in the city to which Polo gives that name.

Friar Odoric, travelling from Peking towards Shensi, about 1326-1327, also visits the country of Prester John, and gives to its chief city the name of Tozan, in which perhaps we may trace Tathung. He speaks as if the family still existed in authority.

King George appears again in Marco's own book (Bk. IV. ch. ii.) as one of Kúblái's generals against Kaidu, in a battle fought near Karakorúm. (Journ. As. IX. 299 seqq.; D'Ohsson, I. 123; Huc's Tartary, etc. I. 55 seqq.; Koeppen, II. 381; Erdmann's Temudschin; Gerbillon in Astley, IV. 670; Cathay, pp. 146 and 199 seqq.)

NOTE 2.—Such a compact is related to have existed reciprocally between the family of Chinghiz and that of the chief of the Kunguráts; but I have not found it alleged of the Kerait family except by Friar Odoric. We find, however, many princesses of this family married into that of Chinghiz. Thus three nieces of Aung Khan became wives respectively of Chinghiz himself and of his sons Juji and Tului; she who was the wife of the latter, Serkukteni Bigi, being the mother of Mangú, Hulaku, and Kúblái. Dukuz Khatun, the Christian wife of Hulaku, was a grand-daughter of Aung Khan.

The name George, of Prester John's representative, may have been actually Jirjis, Yurji, or some such Oriental form of Georgius. But it is possible that the title was really Gurgán, "Son-in-Law," a title of honour conferred on those who married into the imperial blood, and that this title may have led to the statements of Marco and Odoric about the nuptial privileges of the family. Gurgán in this sense was one of the titles borne by Timur.[1]

[The following note by the Archimandrite Palladius (Eluc. 21-23) throws a great light on the relations between the families of Chinghiz Khan and of Prester John.

"T'ien-te Kiun was bounded on the north by the Yn-shan Mountains, in and beyond which was settled the Sha-t'o Tu-K'iu tribe, i.e. Tu-K'iu of the sandy desert. The K'itans, when they conquered the northern borders of China, brought also under their rule the dispersed family of these Tu- K'iu. With the accession of the Kin, a Wang Ku [Ongot] family made its appearance as the ruling family of those tribes; it issued from those Sha- t'o Tu-K'iu, who once reigned in the north of China as the How T'ang Dynasty (923-936 A.D.). It split into two branches, the Wang-Ku of the Yn- shan, and the Wang-Ku of the Lin-t'ao (west of Kan-su). The Kin removed the latter branch to Liao-tung (in Manchuria). The Yn-shan Wang-Ku guarded the northern borders of China belonging to the Kin, and watched their herds. When the Kin, as a protection against the inroads of the tribes of the desert, erected a rampart, or new wall, from the boundary of the Tángut Kingdom down to Manchuria, they intrusted the defence of the principal places of the Yn-shan portion of the wall to the Wang-Ku, and transferred there also the Liao-tung Wang-Ku. At the time Chingiz Khan became powerful, the chief of the Wang-Ku of the Yn-shan was Alahush; and at the head of the Liao-tung Wang-Ku stood Pa-sao-ma-ie-li. Alahush proved a traitor to the Kin, and passed over to Chinghiz Khan; for this he was murdered by the malcontents of his family, perhaps by Pa-sao-ma-ie-li, who remained true to the Kin. Later on, Chingiz Khan married one of his daughters to the son of Alahush, by name Po-yao-ho, who, however, had no children by her. He had three sons by a concubine, the eldest of whom, Kiun-pu-hwa, was married to Kuyuk Khan's daughter. Kiun-pu-hwa's son, Ko- li-ki-sze, had two wives, both of imperial blood. During a campaign against Haidu, he was made prisoner in 1298, and murdered. His title and dignities passed over in A.D. 1310 to his son Chuan. Nothing is known of Alahush's later descendants; they probably became entirely Chinese, like their relatives of the Liao-tung branch.

"The Wang-Ku princes were thus de jure the sons-in-law of the Mongol Khans, and they had, moreover, the hereditary title of Kao-t'ang princes (Kao-t'ang wang); it is very possible that they had their residence in ancient T'ien-te Kiun (although no mention is made of it in history), just as at present the Tumot princes reside in Kuku-hoton.

"The consonance of the names of Wang-Khan and Wang-Ku (Ung-Khan and Ongu) led to the confusion regarding the tribes and persons, which at Marco Polo's time seems to have been general among the Europeans in China; Marco Polo and Johannes de Monte Corvino transfer the title of Prester John from Wang-Khan, already perished at that time, to the distinguished family of Wang-Ku. Their Georgius is undoubtedly Ko-li-ki-sze, Alahush's great-grandson. That his name is a Christian one is confirmed by other testimonies; thus in the Asu (Azes) regiment of the Khan's guards was Ko-li-ki-sze, aliàs Kow-r-ki (d. 1311), and his son Ti-mi-ti-r. There is no doubt that one of them was Georgius, and the other Demetrius. Further, in the description of Chin-Kiang in the time of the Yuen, mention is made of Ko-li-ki-sze Ye-li-ko-wen, i.e. Ko-li-ki-sze, the Christian, and of his son Lu-ho (Luke).

"Ko-li-ki-sze of Wang-ku is much praised in history for his valour and his love for Confucian doctrine; he had in consequence of a special favour of the Khan two Mongol princesses for wives at the same time (which is rather difficult to conciliate with his being a Christian). The time of his death is correctly indicated in a letter of Joannes de M. Corvino of the year 1305: ante sex annos migravit ad Dominum. He left a young son Chu-an, who probably is the Joannes of the letter of Ioannes (Giovani) de M. Corvino, so called propter nomen meum, says the missionary. In another Wang-ku branch, Si-li-ki-sze reminds one also of the Christian name Sergius."—H. C.]

NOTE 3.—"The Lapis Armenus, or Azure,… is produced in the district of Tayton-fu (i.e. Tathung), belonging to Shansi." (Du Halde in Astley, IV. 309; see also Martini, p. 36.)

NOTE 4.—This is a highly interesting passage, but difficult, from being corrupt in the G. Text, and over-curt in Pauthier's MSS. In the former it runs as follows: "Hil hi a une jenerasion de jens que sunt appellés Argon, qe vaut à dire en françois Guasmul, ce est à dire qu'il sunt né del deus generasions de la lengnée des celz Argon Tenduc et des celz reduc et des celz que aorent Maomet. Il sunt biaus homes plus que le autre dou païs et plus sajes et plus mercaant." Pauthier's text runs thus: "Il ont une generation de gens, ces Crestiens qui ont la Seigneurie, qui s'appellent Argon, qui vaut a dire Gasmul; et sont plus beaux hommes que les autres mescreans et plus sages. Et pour ce ont il la seigneurie et sont bons marchans." And Ramusio: "Vi è anche una sorte di gente che si chiamano Argon, per che sono nati di due generazioni, cioè da quella di Tenduc che adorano gl' idoli, e da quella che osservano la legge di Macometto. E questi sono i piu belli uomini che si trovino in quel paese e più savi, e più accorti nella mercanzia."

In the first quotation the definition of the Argon as sprung de la lengnée, etc., is not intelligible as it stands, but seems to be a corruption of the same definition that has been rendered by Ramusio, viz. that the Argon were half-castes between the race of the Tenduc Buddhists and that of the Mahomedan settlers. These two texts do not assert that the Argon were Christians. Pauthier's text at first sight seems to assert this, and to identify them with the Christian rulers of the province. But I doubt if it means more than that the Christian rulers have under them a people called Argon, etc. The passage has been read with a bias, owing to an erroneous interpretation of the word Argon in the teeth of Polo's explanation of it.

Klaproth, I believe, first suggested that Argon represents the term Arkhaiún, which is found repeatedly applied to Oriental Christians, or their clergy, in the histories of the Mongol era.[2] No quite satisfactory explanation has been given of the origin of that term. It is barely possible that it may be connected with that which Polo uses here; but he tells us as plainly as possible that he means by the term, not a Christian, but a half-breed.

And in this sense the word is still extant in Tibet, probably also in Eastern Turkestan, precisely in Marco's form, ARGON. It is applied in Ladak, as General Cunningham tells us, specifically to the mixt race produced by the marriages of Kashmirian immigrants with Bot (Tibetan) women. And it was apparently to an analogous cross between Caucasians and Turanians that the term was applied in Tenduc. Moorcroft also speaks of this class in Ladak, calling them Argands. Mr. Shaw styles them "a set of ruffians called Argoons, half-bred between Toorkistan fathers and Ladak mothers…. They possess all the evil qualities of both races, without any of their virtues." And the author of the Dabistan, speaking of the Tibetan Lamas, says: "Their king, if his mother be not of royal blood, is by them called Arghún, and not considered their true king." [See p. 291, my reference to Wellby's Tibet.—H. C.] Cunningham says the word is probably Turki, [Arabic], Arghún, "Fair," "not white," as he writes to me, "but ruddy or pink, and therefore 'fair.' Arghún is both Turki and Mogholi, and is applied to all fair children, both male and female, as Arghun Beg, Arghuna Khatun," etc.[3] We find an Arghún tribe named in Timur's Institutes, which probably derived its descent from such half-breeds. And though the Arghún Dynasty of Kandahar and Sind claimed their descent and name from Arghún Khan of Persia, this may have had no other foundation.

There are some curious analogies between these Argons of whom Marco speaks and those Mahomedans of Northern China and Chinese Turkestan lately revolted against Chinese authority, who are called Tungani, or as the Russians write it Dungen, a word signifying, according to Professor Vámbéry, in Turki, "a convert."[4] These Tungani are said by one account to trace their origin to a large body of Uighúrs, who were transferred to the vicinity of the Great Wall during the rule of the Thang Dynasty (7th to 10th century). Another tradition derives their origin from Samarkand. And it is remarkable that Rashiduddin speaks of a town to the west or north-west of Peking, "most of the inhabitants of which are natives of Samarkand, and have planted a number of gardens in the Samarkand style."[5] The former tradition goes on to say that marriages were encouraged between the Western settlers and the Chinese women. In after days these people followed the example of their kindred in becoming Mahomedans, but they still retained the practice of marrying Chinese wives, though bringing up their children in Islam. The Tungani are stated to be known in Central Asia for their commercial integrity; and they were generally selected by the Chinese for police functionaries. They are passionate and ready to use the knife; but are distinguished from both Manchus and Chinese by their strength of body and intelligent countenances. Their special feature is their predilection for mercantile speculations.

Looking to the many common features of the two accounts—the origin as a half-breed between Mahomedans of Western extraction and Northern Chinese, the position in the vicinity of the Great Wall, the superior physique, intelligence, and special capacity for trade, it seems highly probable that the Tungani of our day are the descendants of Marco's Argons. Otherwise we may at least point to these analogies as a notable instance of like results produced by like circumstances on the same scene; in fact, of history repeating itself. (See The Dungens, by Mr. H. K. Heins, in the Russian Military Journal for August, 1866, and Western China, in the Ed. Review for April, 1868;[6] Cathay, p. 261.)

[Palladius (pp. 23-24) says that "it is impossible to admit that Polo had meant to designate by this name the Christians, who were called by the Mongols Erkeun [Ye li ke un]. He was well acquainted with the Christians in China, and of course could not ignore the name under which they were generally known to such a degree as to see in it a designation of a cross-race of Mahommetans and heathens." From the Yuen ch'ao pi shi and the Yuen shi, Palladius gives some examples which refer to Mahommedans.

Professor Devéria (Notes d'Épig. 49) says that the word [Greek: Árchon] was used by the Mongol Government as a designation for the members of the Christian clergy at large; the word is used between 1252 and 1315 to speak of Christian priests by the historians of the Yuen Dynasty; it is not used before nor is it to be found in the Si-ngan-fu inscription (l.c. 82). Mr. E. H. Parker (China Review, xxiv. p. 157) supplies a few omissions in Devéria's paper; we note among others: "Ninth moon of 1329. Buddhist services ordered to be held by the Uighúr priests, and by the Christians [Ye li ke un]."

Captain Wellby writes (Unknown Tibet, p. 32): "We impressed into our service six other muleteers, four of them being Argoons, who are really half-castes, arising from the merchants of Turkestan making short marriages with the Ladakhi women."—H. C.]

Our author gives the odd word Guasmul as the French equivalent of Argon. M. Pauthier has first, of Polo's editors, given the true explanation from Ducange. The word appears to have been in use in the Levant among the Franks as a name for the half-breeds sprung from their own unions with Greek women. It occurs three times in the history of George Pachymeres. Thus he says (Mich. Pal. III. 9), that the Emperor Michael "depended upon the Gasmuls, or mixt breeds ([Greek: symmíktoi]), which is the sense of this word of the Italian tongue, for these were born of Greeks and Italians, and sent them to man his ships; for the race in question inherited at once the military wariness and quick wit of the Greeks, and the dash and pertinacity of the Latins." Again (IV. 26) he speaks of these "Gasmuls, whom a Greek would call [Greek: digeneis], men sprung from Greek mothers and Italian fathers." Nicephorus Gregoras also relates how Michael Palaeologus, to oppose the projects of Baldwin for the recovery of his fortunes, manned 60 galleys, chiefly with the tribe of Gasmuls ([Greek: génos tou Gasmoulikou]), to whom he assigns the same characteristics as Pachymeres. (IV. v. 5, also VI. iii. 3, and XIV. x. 2.) One MS. of Nicetas Choniates also, in his annals of Manuel Comnenus (see Paris ed. p. 425), speaks of "the light troops whom we call Basmuls." Thus it would seem that, as in the analogous case of the Turcopuli, sprung from Turk fathers and Greek mothers, their name had come to be applied technically to a class of troops. According to Buchon, the laws of the Venetians in Candia mention, as different races in that island, the Vasmulo, Latino, Blaco, and Griego.

Ducange, in one of his notes on Joinville, says: "During the time that the French possessed Constantinople, they gave the name of Gas-moules to those who were born of French fathers and Greek mothers; or more probably Gaste-moules, by way of derision, as if such children by those irregular marriages … had in some sort debased the wombs of their mothers!" I have little doubt (pace tanti viri) that the word is in a Gallicized form the same with the surviving Italian Guazzabúglio, a hotch-potch, or mish-mash. In Davanzati's Tacitus, the words "Colluviem illam nationum" (Annal. II. 55) are rendered "quello guazzabuglio di nazioni," in which case we come very close to the meaning assigned to Guasmul. The Italians are somewhat behind in matters of etymology, and I can get no light from them on the history of this word. (See Buchon, Chroniques Etrangères, p. xv.; Ducange, Gloss. Graecitatis, and his note on Joinville, in Bohn's Chron. of the Crusades, 466.)

NOTE 5.—It has often been cast in Marco's teeth that he makes no mention of the Great Wall of China, and that is true; whilst the apologies made for the omission have always seemed to me unsatisfactory. [I find in Sir G. Staunton's account of Macartney's Embassy (II. p. 185) this most amusing explanation of the reason why Marco Polo did not mention the wall: "A copy of Marco Polo's route to China, taken from the Doge's Library at Venice, is sufficient to decide this question. By this route it appears that, in fact, that traveller did not pass through Tartary to Pekin, but that after having followed the usual track of the caravans, as far to the eastward from Europe as Samarcand and Cashgar, he bent his course to the south-east across the River Ganges to Bengal (!), and, keeping to the southward of the Thibet mountains, reached the Chinese province of Shensee, and through the adjoining province of Shansee to the capital, without interfering with the line of the Great Wall."—H. C.] We shall see presently that the Great Wall is spoken of by Marco's contemporaries Rashiduddin and Abulfeda. Yet I think, if we read "between the lines," we shall see reason to believe that the Wall was in Polo's mind at this point of the dictation, whatever may have been his motive for withholding distincter notice of it.[7] I cannot conceive why he should say: "Here is what we call the country of Gog and Magog," except as intimating "Here we are beside the GREAT WALL known as the Rampart of Gog and Magog," and being there he tries to find a reason why those names should have been applied to it. Why they were really applied to it we have already seen. (Supra, ch. iv. note 3.) Abulfeda says: "The Ocean turns northward along the east of China, and then expands in the same direction till it passes China, and comes opposite to the Rampart of Yájúj and Májúj;" whilst the same geographer's definition of the boundaries of China exhibits that country as bounded on the west by the Indo-Chinese wildernesses; on the south, by the seas; on the east, by the Eastern Ocean; on the north, by the land of Yájúj and Májúj, and other countries unknown. Ibn Batuta, with less accurate geography in his head than Abulfeda, maugre his travels, asks about the Rampart of Gog and Magog (Sadd Yájúj wa Majúj) when he is at Sin Kalán, i.e. Canton, and, as might be expected, gets little satisfaction.

[Illustration: The Rampart of Gog and Magog]

Apart from this interesting point Marsden seems to be right in the general bearing of his explanation of the passage, and I conceive that the two classes of people whom Marco tries to identify with Gog and Magog do substantially represent the two genera or species, TURKS and MONGOLS, or, according to another nomenclature used by Rashiduddin, the White and Black Tartars. To the latter class belonged Chinghiz and his MONGOLS proper, with a number of other tribes detailed by Rashiduddin, and these I take to be in a general way the MUNGUL of our text. The Ung on the other hand, are the UNG-kut, the latter form being presumably only the Mongol plural of UNG. The Ung-kút were a Turk tribe who were vassals of the Kin Emperors of Cathay, and were intrusted with the defence of the Wall of China, or an important portion of it, which was called by the Mongols Ungu, a name which some connect with that of the tribe. [See note pp. 288-9.] Erdmann indeed asserts that the wall by which the Ung-kut dwelt was not the Great Wall, but some other. There are traces of other great ramparts in the steppes north of the present wall. But Erdmann's arguments seem to me weak in the extreme.

[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 112) writes: "The earliest mention I have found of the name Mongol in Oriental works occurs in the Chinese annals of the After T'ang period (A.D. 923-934), where it occurs in the form Meng-ku. In the annals of the Liao Dynasty (A.D. 916-1125) it is found under the form Meng-ku-li. The first occurrence of the name in the Tung chien kang mu is, however, in the 6th year Shao-hsing of Kao-tsung of the Sung (A.D. 1136). It is just possible that we may trace the word back a little earlier than the After T'ang period, and that the Meng-wa (or ngo as this character may have been pronounced at the time), a branch of the Shih-wei, a Tungusic or Kitan people living around Lake Keule, to the east of the Baikal, and along the Kerulun, which empties into it, during the 7th and subsequent centuries, and referred to in the T'ang shu (Bk. 219), is the same as the later Meng-ku. Though I have been unable to find, as stated by Howorth (History, i. pt. I. 28), that the name Meng-ku occurs in the T'ang shu, his conclusion that the northern Shih-wei of that time constituted the Mongol nation proper is very likely correct…. I. J. Schmidt (Ssanang Setzen, 380) derives the name Mongol from mong, meaning 'brave, daring, bold,' while Rashiduddin says it means 'simple, weak' (d'Ohsson, i. 22). The Chinese characters used to transcribe the name mean 'dull, stupid,' and 'old, ancient,' but they are used purely phonetically…. The Mongols of the present day are commonly called by the Chinese Ta-tzu, but this name is resented by the Mongols as opprobrious, though it is but an abbreviated form of the name Ta-ta-tzu, in which, according to Rubruck, they once gloried."—H. C.]

Vincent of Beauvais has got from some of his authorities a conception of the distinction of the Tartars into two races, to which, however, he assigns no names: "Sunt autem duo genera Tartarorum, diversa quidem habentia idiomata, sed unicam legem ac ritum, sicut Franci et Theutonici." But the result of his effort to find a realisation of Gog and Magog is that he makes Guyuk Kaan into Gog, and Mangu Kaan into Magog. Even the intelligent Friar Ricold says of the Tartars: "They say themselves that they are descended from Gog and Magog: and on this account they are called Mogoli, as if from a corruption of Magogoli." (Abulfeda in Büsching, IV. 140, 274-275; I. B. IV. 274; Golden Horde, 34, 68; Erdmann, 241-242, 257-258; Timk. I. 259, 263, 268; Vinc. Bellov. Spec. Hist. XXIX. 73, XXXI. 32-34; Pereg. Quat. 118; Not. et Ext. II. 536.)

NOTE 6.—The towns and villages were probably those immediately north of the Great Wall, between 112° and 115° East longitude, of which many remains exist, ascribed to the time of the Yuen or Mongol Dynasty. This tract, between the Great Wall and the volcanic plateau of Mongolia, is extensively colonised by Chinese, and has resumed the flourishing aspect that Polo describes. It is known now as the Ku-wei, or extramural region.

[After Kalgan, Captain Younghusband, on the 12th April, 1886, "passed through the [outer] Great Wall … entering what Marco Polo calls the land of Gog and Magog. For the next two days I passed through a hilly country inhabited by Chinese, though it really belongs to Mongolia; but on the 14th I emerged on to the real steppes, which are the characteristic features of Mongolia Proper." (Proc. R. G. S. X., 1888, p. 490.)—H. C.]

Of the cloths called nakh and nasij we have spoken before (supra ch. vi. note 4). These stuffs, or some such as these, were, I believe, what the mediaeval writers called Tartary cloth, not because they were made in Tartary, but because they were brought from China and its borders through the Tartar dominions; as we find that for like reason they were sometimes called stuffs of Russia. Dante alludes to the supposed skill of Turks and Tartars in weaving gorgeous stuffs, and Boccaccio, commenting thereon, says that Tartarian cloths are so skilfully woven that no painter with his brush could equal them. Maundevile often speaks of cloths of Tartary (e.g. pp. 175, 247). So also Chaucer:

"On every trumpe hanging a broad banere Of fine Tartarium."

Again, in the French inventory of the Garde-Meuble of 1353 we find two pieces of Tartary, one green and the other red, priced at 15 crowns each. (Flower and Leaf, 211; Dante, Inf. XVII. 17, and Longfellow, p. 159; Douet d'Arcq, p. 328; Fr.-Michel, Rech. I. 315, II. 166 seqq.)

NOTE 7.—SINDACHU (Sindacui, Suidatui, etc., of the MSS.) is SIUEN-HWA-FU, called under the Kin Dynasty Siuen-te-chau, more than once besieged and taken by Chinghiz. It is said to have been a summer residence of the later Mongol Emperors, and fine parks full of grand trees remain on the western side. It is still a large town and the capital of a Fu, about 25 miles south of the Gate on the Great Wall at Chang Kia Kau, which the Mongols and Russians call Kalgan. There is still a manufacture of felt and woollen articles here.

[Mr. Rockhill writes to me that this place is noted for the manufacture of buckskins.—H. C.]

Ydifu has not been identified. But Baron Richthofen saw old mines north-east of Kalgan, which used to yield argentiferous galena; and Pumpelly heard of silver-mines near Yuchau, in the same department.

[In the Yuen-shi it is "stated that there were gold and silver mines in the districts of Siuen-te-chow and Yuchow, as well as in the Kiming shan Mountains. These mines were worked by the Government itself up to 1323, when they were transferred to private enterprise. Marco Polo's Ydifu is probably a copyist's error, and stands instead of Yuchow." (Palladius, 24, 25.)—H. C.]

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Notes:

[1] Mr. Ney Elias favours me with a curious but tantalising communication on this subject: "An old man called on me at Kwei-hwa Ch'eng (Tenduc), who said he was neither Chinaman, Mongol, nor Mahomedan, and lived on ground a short distance to the north of the city, especially allotted to his ancestors by the Emperor, and where there now exist several families of the same origin. He then mentioned the connection of his family with that of the Emperor, but in what way I am not clear, and said that he ought to be, or had been, a prince. Other people coming in, he was interrupted and went away…. He was not with me more than ten minutes, and the incident is a specimen of the difficulty in obtaining interesting information, except by mere chance…. The idea that struck me was, that he was perhaps a descendant of King George of Tenduc; for I had your M. P. before me, and had been inquiring as much as I dared about subjects it suggested…. At Kwei-hwa Ch'eng I was very closely spied, and my servant was frequently told to warn me against asking too many questions."

I should mention that Oppert, in his very interesting monograph, Der Presbyter Johannes, refuses to recognise the Kerait chief at all in that character, and supposes Polo's King George to be the representative of a prince of the Liao (supra, p. 205), who, as we learn from De Mailla's History, after the defeat of the Kin, in which he had assisted Chinghiz, settled in Liaotung, and received from the conqueror the title of King of the Liao. This seems to me geographically and otherwise quite inadmissible.

[2] The term Arkaiun, or Arkaun, in this sense, occurs in the Armenian History of Stephen Orpelian, quoted by St. Martin. The author of the Tárikh Jahán Kushai, cited by D'Ohsson, says that Christians were called by the Mongols Arkáún. When Hulaku invested Baghdad we are told that he sent a letter to the Judges, Shaikhs, Doctors and Arkauns, promising to spare such as should act peaceably. And in the subsequent sack we hear that no houses were spared except those of a few Arkauns and foreigners. In Rashiduddin's account of the Council of State at Peking, we are told that the four Fanchan, or Ministers of the Second Class, were taken from the four nations of Tájiks, Cathayans, Uighúrs, and Arkaun. Sabadin Arkaun was the name of one of the Envoys sent by Arghun Khan of Persia to the Pope in 1288. Traces of the name appear also in Chinese documents of the Mongol era, as denoting some religious body. Some of these have been quoted by Mr. Wylie; but I have seen no notice taken of a very curious extract given by Visdelou. This states that Kúblái in 1289 established a Board of nineteen chief officers to have surveillance of the affairs of the Religion of the Cross, of the Marha, the Siliepan, and the Yelikhawen. This Board was raised to a higher rank in 1315: and at that time 72 minor courts presiding over the religion of the Yelikhawen existed under its supervision. Here we evidently have the word Arkhaiun in a Chinese form; and we may hazard the suggestion that Marha, Siliepan and Yelikhawen meant respectively the Armenian, Syrian, or Jacobite, and Nestorian Churches. (St. Martin, Mém. II. 133, 143, 279; D'Ohsson, II. 264; Ilchan, I. 150, 152; Cathay, 264; Acad. VII. 359; Wylie in J. As. V. xix. 406. Suppt. to D'Herbelot, 142.)

[3] The word is not in Zenker or Pavet de Courteille.

[4] Mr. Shaw writes Toongânee. The first mention of this name that I know of is in Izzat Ullah's Journal. (Vide J. R. A. S. VII. 310.) The people are there said to have got the name from having first settled in Tungan. Tung-gan is in the same page the name given to the strong city of T'ung Kwan on the Hwang-ho. (See Bk. II. ch. xli. note 1.) A variety of etymologies have been given, but Vámbéry's seems the most probable.

[5] Probably no man could now say what this means. But the following note from Mr. Ney Elias is very interesting in its suggestion of analogy: "In my report to the Geographical Society I have noticed the peculiar Western appearance of Kwei-hwa-ch'eng, and the little gardens of creepers and flowers in pots which are displayed round the porches in the court-yards of the better class of houses, and which I have seen in no other part of China. My attention was especially drawn to these by your quotation from Rashiduddin."

[6] A translation of Heins' was kindly lent me by the author of this
article, the lamented Mr. J. W. S. Wyllie.
[7] I owe the suggestion of this to a remark in Oppert's Presbyter
Johannes, p. 77.

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CHAPTER LX. CONCERNING THE KAAN'S PALACE OF CHAGANNOR.

At the end of those three days you find a city called CHAGAN NOR [which is as much as to say White Pool], at which there is a great Palace of the Grand Kaan's;[NOTE 1] and he likes much to reside there on account of the Lakes and Rivers in the neighbourhood, which are the haunt of swans[NOTE 2] and of a great variety of other birds. The adjoining plains too abound with cranes, partridges, pheasants, and other game birds, so that the Emperor takes all the more delight in staying there, in order to go a-hawking with his gerfalcons and other falcons, a sport of which he is very fond.[NOTE 3]

There are five different kinds of cranes found in those tracts, as I shall tell you. First, there is one which is very big, and all over as black as a crow; the second kind again is all white, and is the biggest of all; its wings are really beautiful, for they are adorned with round eyes like those of a peacock, but of a resplendent golden colour, whilst the head is red and black on a white ground. The third kind is the same as ours. The fourth is a small kind, having at the ears beautiful long pendent feathers of red and black. The fifth kind is grey all over and of great size, with a handsome head, red and black.[NOTE 4]

Near this city there is a valley in which the Emperor has had several little houses erected in which he keeps in mew a huge number of cators which are what we call the Great Partridge. You would be astonished to see what a quantity there are, with men to take charge of them. So whenever the Kaan visits the place he is furnished with as many as he wants. [NOTE 5]

NOTE 1.—[According to the Siu t'ung kien, quoted by Palladius, the palace in Chagannor was built in 1280.—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—"Ou demeurent sesnes." Sesnes, Cesnes, Cecini, Cesanae, is a mediaeval form of cygnes, cigni, which seems to have escaped the dictionary-makers. It occurs in the old Italian version of Brunetto Latini's Tresor, Bk. V. ch. xxv., as cecino; and for other examples, see Cathay, p. 125.

NOTE 3.—The city called by Polo CHAGAN-NOR (meaning in Mongol, as he says, "White Lake") is the Chaghan Balghasun mentioned by Timkowski as an old city of the Mongol era, the ruined rampart of which he passed about 30 miles north of the Great Wall at Kalgan, and some 55 miles from Siuen-hwa, adjoining the Imperial pastures. It stands near a lake still called Chaghan-Nor, and is called by the Chinese Pe-ching-tzu, or White City, a translation of Chaghan Balghasun. Dr. Bushell says of one of the lakes (Ichi-Nor), a few miles east of Chaghan-Nor: "We … found the water black with waterfowl, which rose in dense flocks, and filled the air with discordant noises. Swans, geese, and ducks predominated, and three different species of cranes were distinguished."

The town appears as Tchahan Toloho in D'Anville. It is also, I imagine, the Arulun Tsaghan Balghasun which S. Setzen says Kúblái built about the same time with Shangtu and another city "on the shady side of the Altai," by which here he seems to mean the Khingan range adjoining the Great Wall. (Timk. II. 374, 378-379; J. R. G. S. vol. xliii.; S. Setz. 115.) I see Ritter has made the same identification of Chaghan-Nor (II. 141).

NOTE 4.—The following are the best results I can arrive at in the identification of these five cranes.

1. Radde mentions as a rare crane in South Siberia Grus monachus, called by the Buraits Kará Togorü, or "Black Crane." Atkinson also speaks of "a beautiful black variety of crane," probably the same. The Grus monachus is not, however, jet black, but brownish rather. (Radde, Reisen, Bd. II. p. 318; Atkinson. Or. and W. Sib. 548.)

2. Grus leucogeranus (?) whose chief habitat is Siberia, but which sometimes comes as far south as the Punjab. It is the largest of the genus, snowy white, with red face and beak; the ten largest quills are black, but this barely shows as a narrow black line when the wings are closed. The resplendent golden eyes on the wings remain unaccounted for; no naturalist whom I have consulted has any knowledge of a crane or crane-like bird with such decorations. When 'tis discovered, let it be the Grus Poli!

3. Grus cinerea.

4. The colour of the pendants varies in the texts. Pauthier's and the G. Text have red and black; the Lat. S. G. black only, the Crusca black and white, Ramusio feathers red and blue (not pendants). The red and black may have slipt in from the preceding description. I incline to believe it to be the Demoiselle, Anthropoides Virgo, which is frequently seen as far north as Lake Baikal. It has a tuft of pure white from the eye, and a beautiful black pendent ruff or collar; the general plumage purplish-grey.

5. Certainly the Indian Sáras (vulgo Cyrus), or Grus antigone, which answers in colours and grows to 52 inches high.

NOTE 5.—Cator occurs only in the G. Text and the Crusca, in the latter with the interpolated explanation "cioè contornici" (i.e. quails), whilst the S. G. Latin has coturnices only. I suspect this impression has assisted to corrupt the text, and that it was originally written or dictated ciacor or çacor, viz. chakór, a term applied in the East to more than one kind of "Great Partridge." Its most common application in India is to the Himalayan red-legged partridge, much resembling on a somewhat larger scale the bird so called in Europe. It is the "Francolin" of Moorcroft's Travels, and the Caccabis Chukor of Gray. According to Cunningham the name is applied in Ladak to the bird sometimes called the Snow-pheasant, Jerdan's Snow-cock, Tetraogallus himalayensis of Gray. And it must be the latter which Moorcroft speaks of as "the gigantic Chukor, much larger than the common partridge, found in large coveys on the edge of the snow;… one plucked and drawn weighed 5 lbs."; described by Vigne as "a partridge as large as a hen-turkey"; the original perhaps of that partridge "larger than a vulture" which formed one of the presents from an Indian King to Augustus Caesar. [With reference to the large Tibetan partridge found in the Nan-shan Mountains in the meridian of Sha-chau by Prjevalsky, M. E. D. Morgan in a note (P. R. Geog. S. ix. 1887, p. 219), writes: "Megaloperdrix thibetanus. Its general name in Asia is ullar, a word of Kirghiz or Turkish origin; the Mongols call it hailik, and the Tibetans kung-mo. There are two other varieties of this bird found in the Himalaya and Altai Mountains, but the habits of life and call-note of all three are the same."] From the extensive diffusion of the term, which seems to be common to India, Tibet, and Persia (for the latter, see Abbott in J. R. G. S. XXV. 41), it is likely enough to be of Mongol origin, not improbably Tsokhor, "dappled or pied." (Kovalevsky, No. 2196, and Strahlenberg's Vocabulary; see also Ladak, 205; Moorcr. I. 313, 432; Jerdan's Birds of India, III. 549, 572; Dunlop, Hunting in Himalaya, 178; J. A. S. B. VI. 774.)

The chakór is mentioned by Baber (p. 282); and also by the Hindi poet Chand (Rás Mála, I. 230, and Ind. Antiquary, I. 273). If the latter passage is genuine, it is adverse to my Mongol etymology, as Chand lived before the Mongol era.

The keeping of partridges for the table is alluded to by Chaucer in his portrait of the Franklin, Prologue, Cant. Tales:

"It snewed in his hous of mete and drinke,
Of alle deyntees that men coud of thinke,
After the sondry sesons of the yere,
So changed he his mete and his soupere.
Full many a fat partrich hadde he in mewe,
And many a breme and many a luce in stewe."

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Part 1 of 2

CHAPTER LXI. OF THE CITY OF CHANDU, AND THE KAAN'S PALACE THERE.

And when you have ridden three days from the city last mentioned, between north-east and north, you come to a city called CHANDU,[NOTE 1] which was built by the Kaan now reigning. There is at this place a very fine marble Palace, the rooms of which are all gilt and painted with figures of men and beasts and birds, and with a variety of trees and flowers, all executed with such exquisite art that you regard them with delight and astonishment.[NOTE 2]

Round this Palace a wall is built, inclosing a compass of 16 miles, and inside the Park there are fountains and rivers and brooks, and beautiful meadows, with all kinds of wild animals (excluding such as are of ferocious nature), which the Emperor has procured and placed there to supply food for his gerfalcons and hawks, which he keeps there in mew. Of these there are more than 200 gerfalcons alone, without reckoning the other hawks. The Kaan himself goes every week to see his birds sitting in mew, and sometimes he rides through the park with a leopard behind him on his horse's croup; and then if he sees any animal that takes his fancy, he slips his leopard at it,[NOTE 3] and the game when taken is made over to feed the hawks in mew. This he does for diversion.

Moreover [at a spot in the Park where there is a charming wood] he has another Palace built of cane, of which I must give you a description. It is gilt all over, and most elaborately finished inside. [It is stayed on gilt and lackered columns, on each of which is a dragon all gilt, the tail of which is attached to the column whilst the head supports the architrave, and the claws likewise are stretched out right and left to support the architrave.] The roof, like the rest, is formed of canes, covered with a varnish so strong and excellent that no amount of rain will rot them. These canes are a good 3 palms in girth, and from 10 to 15 paces in length. [They are cut across at each knot, and then the pieces are split so as to form from each two hollow tiles, and with these the house is roofed; only every such tile of cane has to be nailed down to prevent the wind from lifting it.] In short, the whole Palace is built of these canes, which (I may mention) serve also for a great variety of other useful purposes. The construction of the Palace is so devised that it can be taken down and put up again with great celerity; and it can all be taken to pieces and removed whithersoever the Emperor may command. When erected, it is braced [against mishaps from the wind] by more than 200 cords of silk.[NOTE 4]

The Lord abides at this Park of his, dwelling sometimes in the Marble Palace and sometimes in the Cane Palace for three months of the year, to wit, June, July, and August; preferring this residence because it is by no means hot; in fact it is a very cool place. When the 28th day of [the Moon of] August arrives he takes his departure, and the Cane Palace is taken to pieces.[NOTE 5] But I must tell you what happens when he goes away from this Palace every year on the 28th of the August [Moon].

You must know that the Kaan keeps an immense stud of white horses and mares; in fact more than 10,000 of them, and all pure white without a speck. The milk of these mares is drunk by himself and his family, and by none else, except by those of one great tribe that have also the privilege of drinking it. This privilege was granted them by Chinghis Kaan, on account of a certain victory that they helped him to win long ago. The name of the tribe is HORIAD.[NOTE 6]

Now when these mares are passing across the country, and any one falls in with them, be he the greatest lord in the land, he must not presume to pass until the mares have gone by; he must either tarry where he is, or go a half-day's journey round if need so be, so as not to come nigh them; for they are to be treated with the greatest respect. Well, when the Lord sets out from the Park on the 28th of August, as I told you, the milk of all those mares is taken and sprinkled on the ground. And this is done on the injunction of the Idolaters and Idol-priests, who say that it is an excellent thing to sprinkle that milk on the ground every 28th of August, so that the Earth and the Air and the False Gods shall have their share of it, and the Spirits likewise that inhabit the Air and the Earth. And thus those beings will protect and bless the Kaan and his children and his wives and his folk and his gear, and his cattle and his horses, his corn and all that is his. After this is done, the Emperor is off and away.[NOTE 7]

But I must now tell you a strange thing that hitherto I have forgotten to mention. During the three months of every year that the Lord resides at that place, if it should happen to be bad weather, there are certain crafty enchanters and astrologers in his train, who are such adepts in necromancy and the diabolic arts, that they are able to prevent any cloud or storm from passing over the spot on which the Emperor's Palace stands. The sorcerers who do this are called TEBET and KESIMUR, which are the names of two nations of Idolaters. Whatever they do in this way is by the help of the Devil, but they make those people believe that it is compassed by dint of their own sanctity and the help of God.[NOTE 8] [They always go in a state of dirt and uncleanness, devoid of respect for themselves, or for those who see them, unwashed, unkempt, and sordidly attired.]

These people also have a custom which I must tell you. If a man is condemned to death and executed by the lawful authority, they take his body and cook and eat it. But if any one die a natural death then they will not eat the body.[NOTE 9]

There is another marvel performed by those BACSI, of whom I have been speaking as knowing so many enchantments.[NOTE 10] For when the Great Kaan is at his capital and in his great Palace, seated at his table, which stands on a platform some eight cubits above the ground, his cups are set before him [on a great buffet] in the middle of the hall pavement, at a distance of some ten paces from his table, and filled with wine, or other good spiced liquor such as they use. Now when the Lord desires to drink, these enchanters by the power of their enchantments cause the cups to move from their place without being touched by anybody, and to present themselves to the Emperor! This every one present may witness, and there are ofttimes more than 10,000 persons thus present. 'Tis a truth and no lie! and so will tell you the sages of our own country who understand necromancy, for they also can perform it.[NOTE 11]

And when the Idol Festivals come round, these Bacsi go to the Prince and say: "Sire, the Feast of such a god is come" (naming him). "My Lord, you know," the enchanter will say, "that this god, when he gets no offerings, always sends bad weather and spoils our seasons. So we pray you to give us such and such a number of black-faced sheep," naming whatever number they please. "And we beg also, good my lord, that we may have such a quantity of incense, and such a quantity of lignaloes, and"—so much of this, so much of that, and so much of t'other, according to their fancy—"that we may perform a solemn service and a great sacrifice to our Idols, and that so they may be induced to protect us and all that is ours."

The Bacsi say these things to the Barons entrusted with the Stewardship, who stand round the Great Kaan, and these repeat them to the Kaan, and he then orders the Barons to give everything that the Bacsi have asked for. And when they have got the articles they go and make a great feast in honour of their god, and hold great ceremonies of worship with grand illuminations and quantities of incense of a variety of odours, which they make up from different aromatic spices. And then they cook the meat, and set it before the idols, and sprinkle the broth hither and thither, saying that in this way the idols get their bellyful. Thus it is that they keep their festivals. You must know that each of the idols has a name of his own, and a feast-day, just as our Saints have their anniversaries.[NOTE 12]

They have also immense Minsters and Abbeys, some of them as big as a small town, with more than two thousand monks (i.e. after their fashion) in a single abbey.[NOTE 13] These monks dress more decently than the rest of the people, and have the head and beard shaven. There are some among these Bacsi who are allowed by their rule to take wives, and who have plenty of children.[NOTE 14]

Then there is another kind of devotees called SENSIN, who are men of extraordinary abstinence after their fashion, and lead a life of such hardship as I will describe. All their life long they eat nothing but bran,[NOTE 15] which they take mixt with hot water. That is their food: bran, and nothing but bran; and water for their drink. 'Tis a lifelong fast! so that I may well say their life is one of extraordinary asceticism. They have great idols, and plenty of them; but they sometimes also worship fire. The other Idolaters who are not of this sect call these people heretics—Patarins as we should say[NOTE 16]—because they do not worship their idols in their own fashion. Those of whom I am speaking would not take a wife on any consideration.[NOTE 17] They wear dresses of hempen stuff, black and blue,[NOTE 18] and sleep upon mats; in fact their asceticism is something astonishing. Their idols are all feminine, that is to say, they have women's names.[NOTE 19]

Now let us have done with this subject, and let me tell you of the great state and wonderful magnificence of the Great Lord of Lords; I mean that great Prince who is the Sovereign of the Tartars, CUBLAY by name, that most noble and puissant Lord.

NOTE 1.—[There were two roads to go from Peking to Shangtu: the eastern road through Tu-shi-k'ow, and the western (used for the return journey) road by Ye-hu ling. Polo took this last road, which ran from Peking to Siuen-te chau through the same places as now; but from the latter town it led, not to Kalgan as it does now, but more to the west, to a place called now Shan-fang pú where the pass across the Ye-hu ling range begins. "On both these roads nabo, or temporary palaces, were built, as resting-places for the Khans; eighteen on the eastern road, and twenty-four on the western." (Palladius, p. 25.) The same author makes (p. 26) the following remarks: "M. Polo's statement that he travelled three days from Siuen-te chau to Chagannor, and three days also from the latter place to Shang-tu, agrees with the information contained in the 'Researches on the Routes to Shangtu.' The Chinese authors have not given the precise position of Lake Chagannor; there are several lakes in the desert on the road to Shangtu, and their names have changed with time. The palace in Chagannor was built in 1280" (according to the Siu t'ung kien).—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—Chandu, called more correctly in Ramusio Xandu, i.e. SHANDU, and by Fr. Odorico Sandu, viz. SHANG-TU or "Upper Court," the Chinese title of Kúblái's summer residence at Kaipingfu, Mongolicè Keibung (see ch. xiii. of Prologue) [is called also Loan king, i.e. "the capital on the Loan River," according to Palladius, p. 26.—H. C.]. The ruins still exist, in about lat. 40° 22', and a little west of the longitude of Peking. The site is 118 miles in direct line from Chaghan-nor, making Polo's three marches into rides of unusual length.[1] The ruins bear the Mongol name of Chao Naiman Sumé Khotan, meaning "city of the 108 temples," and are about 26 miles to the north-west of Dolon-nor, a bustling, dirty town of modern origin, famous for the manufactory of idols, bells, and other ecclesiastical paraphernalia of Buddhism. The site was visited (though not described) by Père Gerbillon in 1691, and since then by no European traveller till 1872, when Dr. Bushell of the British Legation at Peking, and the Hon. T. G. Grosvenor, made a journey thither from the capital, by way of the Nan-kau Pass (supra p. 26), Kalgan, and the vicinity of Chaghan-nor, the route that would seem to have been habitually followed, in their annual migration, by Kúblái and his successors.

The deserted site, overgrown with rank weeds and grass, stands but little above the marshy bed of the river, which here preserves the name of Shang- tu, and about a mile from its north or left bank. The walls, of earth faced with brick and unhewn stone, still stand, forming, as in the Tartar city of Peking, a double enceinte, of which the inner line no doubt represents the area of the "Marble Palace" of which Polo speaks. This forms a square of about 2 li (2/3 of a mile) to the side, and has three gates—south, east, and west, of which the southern one still stands intact, a perfect arch, 20 ft. high and 12 ft. wide. The outer wall forms a square of 4 li (1-1/3 mile) to the side, and has six gates. The foundations of temples and palace-buildings can be traced, and both enclosures are abundantly strewn with blocks of marble and fragments of lions, dragons, and other sculptures, testifying to the former existence of a flourishing city, but exhibiting now scarcely one stone upon another. A broken memorial tablet was found, half buried in the ground, within the north-east angle of the outer rampart, bearing an inscription in an antique form of the Chinese character, which proves it to have been erected by Kúblái, in honour of a Buddhist ecclesiastic called Yun-Hien. Yun-Hien was the abbot of one of those great minsters and abbeys of Bacsis, of which Marco speaks, and the exact date (no longer visible) of the monument was equivalent to A.D. 1288.[2]

[Illustration: Heading In the Old Chinese Seal-Character, of an INSCRIPTION on a Memorial raised by KÚBLÁI-KAAN to a Buddhist Ecclesiastic in the vicinity of his SUMMER-PALACE at SHANG-TU in Mongolia. Reduced from a facsimile obtained on the spot by Dr. S. W. Bushell, 1872. (About one- Forth the Length and Breadth of Original.)]

This city occupies the south-east angle of a more extensive enclosure, bounded by what is now a grassy mound, and embracing, on Dr. Bushell's estimate, about 5 square miles. Further knowledge may explain the discrepancy from Marco's dimension, but this must be the park of which he speaks.[3] The woods and fountains have disappeared, like the temples and palaces; all is dreary and desolate, though still abounding in the game which was one of Kúblái's attractions to the spot. A small monastery, occupied by six or seven wretched Lamas, is the only building that remains in the vicinity. The river Shangtu, which lower down becomes the Lan [or Loan]-Ho, was formerly navigated from the sea up to this place by flat grain-boats.

[Mgr. de Harlez gave in the T'oung Pao (x. p. 73) an inscription in Chuen character on a stele found in the ruins of Shangtu, and built by an officer with the permission of the Emperor; it is probably a token of imperial favour; the inscription means: Great Longevity.—H. C.]

In the wail which Sanang Setzen, the poetical historian of the Mongols, puts, perhaps with some traditional basis, into the mouth of Toghon Temur, the last of the Chinghizide Dynasty in China, when driven from his throne, the changes are rung on the lost glories of his capital Daïtu (see infra, Book II. ch. xi.) and his summer palace Shangtu; thus (I translate from Schott's amended German rendering of the Mongol):

"My vast and noble Capital, My Daïtu, My splendidly adorned!
And Thou my cool and delicious Summer-seat, my Shangtu-Keibung!
Ye, also, yellow plains of Shangtu, Delight of my godlike Sires!
I suffered myself to drop into dreams,—and lo! my Empire was gone!
Ah Thou my Daïtu, built of the nine precious substances!
Ah my Shangtu-Keibung, Union of all perfections!
Ah my Fame! Ah my Glory, as Khagan and Lord of the Earth!
When I used to awake betimes and look forth, how the breezes blew loaded with fragrance!
And turn which way I would all was glorious perfection of beauty!
* * * * *
Alas for my illustrious name as the Sovereign of the World!
Alas for my Daïtu, seat of Sanctity, Glorious work of the Immortal KÚBLÁI!
All, all is rent from me!"

It was, in 1797, whilst reading this passage of Marco's narrative in old Purchas that Coleridge fell asleep, and dreamt the dream of Kúblái's Paradise, beginning:

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred River, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery."

It would be a singular coincidence in relation to this poem were Klaproth's reading correct of a passage in Rashiduddin which he renders as saying that the palace at Kaiminfu was "called Langtin, and was built after a plan that Kúblái had seen in a dream, and had retained in his memory." But I suspect D'Ohsson's reading is more accurate, which runs: "Kúblái caused a Palace to be built for him east of Kaipingfu, called Lengten; but he abandoned it in consequence of a dream." For we see from Sanang Setzen that the Palaces of Lengten and Kaiming or Shangtu were distinct; "Between the year of the Rat (1264), when Kúblái was fifty years old, and the year of the Sheep (1271), in the space of eight years, he built four great cities, viz. for Summer Residence SHANGTU KEIBUNG Kürdu Balgasun, for Winter Residence Yeke DAÏTU Khotan, and on the shady side of the Altai (see ch. li. note 3, supra) Arulun TSAGHAN BALGASUN, and Erchügin LANGTING Balgasun." A valuable letter from Dr. Bushell enables me now to indicate the position of Langtin: "The district through which the river flows eastward from Shangtu is known to the Mongolians of the present day by the name of Lang-tírh (Lang-ting'rh)…. The ruins of the city are marked on a Chinese map in my possession Pai-dseng-tzu, i.e. 'White City,' implying that it was formerly an Imperial residence. The remains of the wall are 7 or 8 li in diameter, of stone, and situated about 40 li north-north-west from Dolon-nor."

(Gerbillon in Astley, IV. 701-716; Klaproth, in J. As. sèr. II. tom. xi. 345-350; Schott, Die letzten Jahre der Mongolenherrschaft in China (Berl. Acad. d. Wissensch. 1850, pp. 502-503); Huc's Tartary, etc., p. seqq.; Cathay, 134, 261; S. Setzen, p. 115; Dr. S. W. Bushell, Journey outside the Great Wall, in J. R. G. S. for 1874, and MS. notes.)

One of the pavilions of the celebrated Yuen-ming-Yuen may give some idea of the probable style, though not of the scale, of Kúblái's Summer Palace.

Hiuen Tsang's account of the elaborate and fantastic ornamentation of the famous Indian monasteries at Nalanda in Bahár, where Mr. Broadley has lately made such remarkable discoveries, seems to indicate that these fantasies of Burmese and Chinese architecture may have had a direct origin in India, at a time when timber was still a principal material of construction there: "The pavilions had pillars adorned with dragons, and posts that glowed with all the colours of the rainbow, sculptured frets, columns set with jade, richly chiselled and lackered, with balustrades of vermilion, and carved open work. The lintels of the doors were tastefully ornamented, and the roofs covered with shining tiles, the splendours of which were multiplied by mutual reflection and from moment to moment took a thousand forms." (Vie et Voyages, 157.)

NOTE 3.—[Rubruck says, (Rockhill, p. 248): "I saw also the envoy of a certain Soldan of India, who had brought eight leopards and ten greyhounds, taught to sit on horses' backs, as leopards sit."—H. C.]

NOTE 4.—Ramusio's is here so much more lucid than the other texts, that I have adhered mainly to his account of the building. The roof described is of a kind in use in the Indian Archipelago, and in some other parts of Transgangetic India, in which the semi-cylinders of bamboo are laid just like Roman tiles.

Rashiduddin gives a curious account of the way in which the foundations of the terrace on which this palace stood were erected in a lake. He says, too, in accord with Polo: "Inside the city itself a second palace was built, about a bowshot from the first: but the Kaan generally takes up his residence in the palace outside the town," i.e., as I imagine, in Marco's Cane Palace. (Cathay, pp. 261-262.)

["The Palace of canes is probably the Palm Hall, Tsung tien, alias Tsung mao tien, of the Chinese authors, which was situated in the western palace garden of Shangtu. Mention is made also in the Altan Tobchi of a cane tent in Shangtu." (Palladius, p. 27.)—H. C.]

[Illustration: Pavilion at Yuen-ming-Yuen.]

Marco might well say of the bamboo that "it serves also a great variety of other purposes." An intelligent native of Arakan who accompanied me in wanderings on duty in the forests of the Burmese frontier in the beginning of 1853, and who used to ask many questions about Europe, seemed able to apprehend almost everything except the possibility of existence in a country without bamboos! "When I speak of bamboo huts, I mean to say that posts and walls, wall-plates and rafters, floor and thatch, and the withes that bind them, are all of bamboo. In fact, it might almost be said that among the Indo-Chinese nations the staff of life is a bamboo! Scaffolding and ladders, landing-jetties, fishing apparatus, irrigation wheels and scoops, oars, masts, and yards [and in China, sails, cables, and caulking, asparagus, medicine, and works of fantastic art], spears and arrows, hats and helmets, bow, bowstring and quiver, oil-cans, water-stoups and cooking-pots, pipe-sticks [tinder and means of producing fire], conduits, clothes-boxes, pawn-boxes, dinner-trays, pickles, preserves, and melodious musical instruments, torches, footballs, cordage, bellows, mats, paper; these are but a few of the articles that are made from the bamboo;" and in China, to sum up the whole, as Barrow observes, it maintains order throughout the Empire! (Ava Mission, p. 153; and see also Wallace, Ind. Arch. I. 120 seqq.)

NOTE 5.—"The Emperor … began this year (1264) to depart from Yenking (Peking) in the second or third month for Shangtu, not returning until the eighth month. Every year he made this passage, and all the Mongol emperors who succeeded him followed his example." (Gaubil, p. 144.)

["The Khans usually resorted to Shangtu in the 4th moon and returned to Peking in the 9th. On the 7th day of the 7th moon there were libations performed in honour of the ancestors; a shaman, his face to the north, uttered in a loud voice the names of Chingiz Khan and of other deceased Khans, and poured mare's milk on the ground. The propitious day for the return journey to Peking was also appointed then." (Palladius, p. 26.)—H. C.]

NOTE 6.—White horses were presented in homage to the Kaan on New Year's Day (the White Feast), as we shall see below. (Bk. II. ch. xv.) Odoric also mentions this practice; and, according to Huc, the Mongol chiefs continued it at least to the time of the Emperor K'ang-hi. Indeed Timkowski speaks of annual tributes of white camels and white horses from the Khans of the Kalkas and other Mongol dignitaries, in the present century. (Huc's Tartary, etc.; Tim. II. 33.)

By the HORIAD are no doubt intended the UIRAD or OIRAD, a name usually interpreted as signifying the "Closely Allied," or Confederates; but Vámbéry explains it as (Turki) Oyurat, "Grey horse," to which the statement in our text appears to lend colour. They were not of the tribes properly called Mongol, but after their submission to Chinghiz they remained closely attached to him. In Chinghiz's victory over Aung-Khan, as related by S. Setzen, we find Turulji Taishi, the son of the chief of the Oirad, one of Chinghiz's three chief captains; perhaps that is the victory alluded to. The seats of the Oirad appear to have been about the head waters of the Kem, or Upper Yenisei.

In A.D. 1295 there took place a curious desertion from the service of Gházán Khan of Persia of a vast corps of the Oirad, said to amount to 18,000 tents. They made their way to Damascus, where they were well received by the Mameluke Sultan. But their heathenish practices gave dire offence to the Faithful. They were settled in the Sáhil, or coast districts of Palestine. Many died speedily; the rest embraced Islam, spread over the country, and gradually became absorbed in the general population. Their sons and daughters were greatly admired for their beauty. (S. Setz. p. 87; Erdmann, 187; Pallas, Samml. I. 5 seqq.; Makrizi, III. 29; Bretschneider, Med. Res. II. p. 159 seqq.)

[With reference to Yule's conjecture, I may quote Palladius (l.c. p. 27): "It is, however, strange that the Oirats alone enjoyed the privilege described by Marco Polo; for the highest position at the Mongol Khan's court belonged to the Kunkrat tribe, out of which the Khans used to choose their first wives, who were called Empresses of the first ordo."—H. C.]

NOTE 7.—Rubruquis assigns such a festival to the month of May: "On the 9th day of the May Moon they collect all the white mares of their herds and consecrate them. The Christian priests also must then assemble with their thuribles. They then sprinkle new cosmos (kumíz) on the ground, and make a great feast that day, for according to their calendar, it is their time of first drinking new cosmos, just as we reckon of our new wine at the feast of St. Bartholomew (24th August), or that of St. Sixtus (6th August), or of our fruit on the feast of St. James and St. Christopher" (25th July). [With reference to this feast, Mr. Rockhill gives (Rubruck, p. 241, note) extracts from Pallas, Voyages, IV. 579, and Professor Radloff, Aus Siberien, I. 378.—H. C.] The Yakuts also hold such a festival in June or July, when the mares foal, and immense wooden goblets of kumíz are emptied on that occasion. They also pour out kumíz for the Spirits to the four quarters of heaven.

The following passage occurs in the narrative of the Journey of Chang Te-hui, a Chinese teacher, who was summoned to visit the camp of Kúblái in Mongolia, some twelve years before that Prince ascended the throne of the Kaans:[4]

"On the 9th day of the 9th Moon (October), the Prince, having called his subjects before his chief tent, performed the libation of the milk of a white mare. This was the customary sacrifice at that time. The vessels used were made of birch-bark, not ornamented with either silver or gold. Such here is the respect for simplicity….

"At the last day of the year the Mongols suddenly changed their camping-ground to another place, for the mutual congratulation on the 1st Moon. Then there was every day feasting before the tents for the lower ranks. Beginning with the Prince, all dressed themselves in white fur clothing….[5]

"On the 9th day of the 4th Moon (May) the Prince again collected his vassals before the chief tent for the libation of the milk of a white mare. This sacrifice is performed twice a year."

It has been seen (p. 308) that Rubruquis also names the 9th day of the May moon as that of the consecration of the white mares. The autumn libation is described by Polo as performed on the 28th day of the August moon, probably because it was unsuited to the circumstances of the Court at Cambaluc, where the Kaan was during October, and the day named was the last of his annual stay in the Mongolian uplands.

Baber tells that among the ceremonies of a Mongol Review the Khan and his staff took kumiz and sprinkled it towards the standards. An Armenian author of the Mongol era says that it was the custom of the Tartars, before drinking, to sprinkle drink towards heaven, and towards the four quarters. Mr. Atkinson notices the same practice among the Kirghiz: and I found the like in old days among the Kasias of the eastern frontier of Bengal.

The time of year assigned by Polo for the ceremony implies some change. Perhaps it had been made to coincide with the Festival of Water Consecration of the Lamas, with which the time named in the text seems to correspond. On that occasion the Lamas go in procession to the rivers and lakes and consecrate them by benediction and by casting in offerings, attended by much popular festivity.

Rubruquis seems to intimate that the Nestorian priests were employed to consecrate the white mares by incensing them. In the rear of Lord Canning's camp in India I once came upon the party of his Shutr Suwárs, or dromedary-express riders, busily engaged in incensing with frankincense the whole of the dromedaries, which were kneeling in a circle. I could get no light on the practice, but it was very probably a relic of the old Mongol custom. (Rubr. 363; Erman, II. 397; Billings' Journey, Fr. Tr. I. 217; Baber, 103; J. As. sèr. V. tom. xi. p. 249; Atk. Amoor, p. 47; J. A. S. B. XIII. 628; Koeppen, II. 313.)

NOTE 8.—The practice of weather-conjuring was in great vogue among the Mongols, and is often alluded to in their history.

The operation was performed by means of a stone of magical virtues, called Yadah or Jadah-Tásh, which was placed in or hung over a basin of water with sundry ceremonies. The possession of such a stone is ascribed by the early Arab traveller Ibn Mohalhal to the Kímák, a great tribe of the Turks. In the war raised against Chinghiz and Aung Khan, when still allies, by a great confederation of the Naiman and other tribes in 1202, we are told that Sengun, the son of Aung Khan, when sent to meet the enemy, caused them to be enchanted, so that all their attempted movements against him were defeated by snow and mist. The fog and darkness were indeed so dense that many men and horses fell over precipices, and many also perished with cold. In another account of (apparently) the same matter, given by Mir-Khond, the conjuring is set on foot by the Yadachi of Buyruk Khan, Prince of the Naiman, but the mischief all rebounds on the conjurer's own side.

In Tului's invasion of Honan in 1231-1232, Rashiduddin describes him, when in difficulty, as using the Jadah stone with success.

Timur, in his Memoirs, speaks of the Jets using incantations to produce heavy rains which hindered his cavalry from acting against them. A Yadachi was captured, and when his head had been taken off the storm ceased.

Baber speaks of one of his early friends, Khwaja Ka Mulai, as excelling in falconry and acquainted with Yadagarí or the art of bringing on rain and snow by means of enchantment. When the Russians besieged Kazan in 1552 they suffered much from the constant heavy rains, and this annoyance was universally ascribed to the arts of the Tartar Queen, who was celebrated as an enchantress. Shah Abbas believed he had learned the Tartar secret, and put much confidence in it. (P. Delia V. I. 869.)

[Grenard says (II. p. 256) the most powerful and most feared of sorcerers [in Chinese Turkestan] is the djâduger, who, to produce rain or fine weather, uses a jade stone, given by Noah to Japhet. Grenard adds (II. 406-407) there are sorcerers (Ngag-pa-snags-pa) whose specialty is to make rain fall; they are similar to the Turkish Yadachi and like them use a stone called "water cristal," chu shel; probably jade stone.

Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 245, note) writes: "Rashideddin states that when the Urianghit wanted to bring a storm to an end, they said injuries to the sky, the lightning and thunder. I have seen this done myself by Mongol storm-dispellers. (See Diary, 201, 203.) 'The other Mongol people,' he adds, 'do the contrary. When the storm rumbles, they remain shut up in their huts, full of fear.' The subject of storm-making, and the use of stones for that purpose, is fully discussed by Quatremère, Histoire, 438-440." (Cf. also Rockhill, l.c. p. 254.)—H. C.]

An edict of the Emperor Shi-tsung, of the reigning dynasty, addressed in 1724-1725 to the Eight Banners of Mongolia, warns them against this rain-conjuring: "If I," indignantly observes the Emperor, "offering prayer in sincerity have yet room to fear that it may please Heaven to leave MY prayer unanswered, it is truly intolerable that mere common people wishing for rain should at their own caprice set up altars of earth, and bring together a rabble of Hoshang (Buddhist Bonzes) and Taossé to conjure the spirits to gratify their wishes."

["Lamas were of various extraction; at the time of the great assemblies, and of the Khan's festivities in Shangtu, they erected an altar near the Khan's tent and prayed for fine weather; the whistling of shells rose up to heaven." These are the words in which Marco Polo's narrative is corroborated by an eye-witness who has celebrated the remarkable objects of Shangtu (Loan king tsa yung). These Lamas, in spite of the prohibition by the Buddhist creed of bloody sacrifices, used to sacrifice sheep's hearts to Mahakala. It happened, as it seems, that the heart of an executed criminal was also considered an agreeable offering; and as the offerings could be, after the ceremony, eaten by the sacrificing priests, Marco Polo had some reason to accuse the Lamas of cannibalism. (Palladius, 28.)—H. C.]

The practice of weather-conjuring is not yet obsolete in Tartary, Tibet, and the adjoining countries.[6]

Weather-conjuring stories were also rife in Europe during the Middle Ages. One such is conspicuously introduced in connection with a magical fountain in the romance of the Chevalier au Lyon:

"Et s'i pant uns bacins d'or fin
A une si longue chaainne
Qui dure jusqu'a la fontainne,
Lez la fontainne troveras
Un perron tel con tu verras
* * * *
S'au bacin viaus de l'iaue prandre
Et dessor le perron espandre,
La verras une tel tanpeste
Qu'an cest bois ne remandra beste,"
etc. etc.[7]

The effect foretold in these lines is the subject of a woodcut illustrating a Welsh version of the same tale in the first volume of the Mabinogion. And the existence of such a fountain is alluded to by Alexander Neckam. (De Naturis Rerum, Bk. II. ch. vii.)

In the Cento Novelle Antiche also certain necromancers exhibit their craft before the Emperor Frederic (Barbarossa apparently): "The weather began to be overcast, and lo of a sudden rain began to fall with continued thunders and lightnings, as if the world were come to an end, and hailstones that looked like steel-caps," etc. Various other European legends of like character will be found in Liebrecht's Gervasius von Tilbury, pp. 147-148.

Rain-makers there are in many parts of the world; but it is remarkable that those also of Samoa in the Pacific operate by means of a rain-stone.

Such weather conjurings as we have spoken of are ascribed by Ovid to Circe:

"Concipit illa preces, et verba venefica dicit;
Ignotosque Deos ignoto carmine adorat,
* * * *
Tunc quoque cantato densetur carmine caelum,
Et nebulas exhalat humus."—Metam. XIV. 365.

And to Medea:—

—"Quum volui, ripis mirantibus, amnes
In fontes rediere suos … (another feat of the Lamas)
… Nubila pello,
Nubilaque induco; ventos abigoque, vocoque."—Ibid. VII. 199.

And by Tibullus to the Saga (Eleg. I. 2, 45); whilst Empedocles, in verses ascribed to him by Diogenes Laertius, claims power to communicate like secrets of potency:—

"By my spells thou may'st
To timely sunshine turn the purple rains,
And parching droughts to fertilising floods."

(See Cathay, p. clxxxvii.; Erdm. 282; Oppert, 182 seqq.; Erman, I. 153; Pallas, Samml. II. 348 seqq.; Timk. I. 402; J. R. A. S. VII. 305-306; D'Ohsson, II. 614; and for many interesting particulars, Q. R. p. 428 seqq., and Hammers Golden Horde, 207 and 435 seqq.)

NOTE 9.—It is not clear whether Marco attributes this cannibalism to the Tibetans and Kashmirians, or brings it in as a particular of Tartar custom which he had forgotten to mention before.

The accusations of cannibalism indeed against the Tibetans in old accounts are frequent, and I have elsewhere (see Cathay, p. 151) remarked on some singular Tibetan practices which go far to account for such charges. Della Penna, too, makes a statement which bears curiously on the present passage. Remarking on the great use made by certain classes of the Lamas of human skulls for magical cups, and of human thigh bones for flutes and whistles, he says that to supply them with these the bodies of executed criminals were stored up of the disposal of the Lamas; and a Hindu account of Tibet in the Asiatic Researches asserts that when one is killed in a fight both parties rush forward and struggle for the liver, which they eat (vol. xv).

[Carpini says of the people of Tibet: "They are pagans; they have a most astonishing, or rather horrible, custom, for, when any one's father is about to give up the ghost, all the relatives meet together, and they eat him, as was told to me for certain." Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 152, note) writes: "So far as I am aware, this charge [of cannibalism] is not made by any Oriental writer against the Tibetans, though both Arab travellers to China in the ninth century and Armenian historians of the thirteenth century say the Chinese practised cannibalism. The Armenians designate China by the name Nankas, which I take to be Chinese Nan-kuo, 'southern country,' the Manzi country of Marco Polo."—H. C.]

But like charges of cannibalism are brought against both Chinese and Tartars very positively. Thus, without going back to the Anthropophagous Scythians of Ptolemy and Mela, we read in the Relations of the Arab travellers of the ninth century: "In China it occurs sometimes that the governor of a province revolts from his duty to the emperor. In such a case he is slaughtered and eaten. In fact, the Chinese eat the flesh of all men who are executed by the sword." Dr. Rennie mentions a superstitious practice, the continued existence of which in our own day he has himself witnessed, and which might perhaps have given rise to some such statement as that of the Arab travellers, if it be not indeed a relic, in a mitigated form, of the very practice they assert to have prevailed. After an execution at Peking certain large pith balls are steeped in the blood, and under the name of blood-bread are sold as a medicine for consumption. It is only to the blood of decapitated criminals that any such healing power is attributed. It has been asserted in the annals of the Propagation de la Foi that the Chinese executioners of M. Chapdelaine, a missionary who was martyred in Kwang-si in 1856 (28th February), were seen to eat the heart of their victim; and M. Huot, a missionary in the Yun-nan province, recounts a case of cannibalism which he witnessed. Bishop Chauveau, at Ta Ts'ien-lu, told Mr. Cooper that he had seen men in one of the cities of Yun-nan eating the heart and brains of a celebrated robber who had been executed. Dr. Carstairs Douglas of Amoy also tells me that the like practices have occurred at Amoy and Swatau.

[With reference to cannibalism in China see Medical Superstitions an Incentive to Anti-Foreign Riots in China, by D. J. Macgowan, North China Herald, 8th July, 1892, pp. 60-62. Mr. E. H. Parker (China Review, February-March, 1901, 136) relates that the inhabitants of a part of Kwang-si boiled and ate a Chinese officer who had been sent to pacify them. "The idea underlying this horrible act [cannibalism] is, that by eating a portion of the victim, especially the heart, one acquires the valour with which he was endowed." (Dennys' Folk-lore of China, 67.)—H. C.]

Hayton, the Armenian, after relating the treason of a Saracen, called Parwana (he was an Iconian Turk), against Abaka Khan, says: "He was taken and cut in two, and orders were issued that in all the food eaten by Abaka there should be put a portion of the traitor's flesh. Of this Abaka himself ate, and caused all his barons to partake. And this was in accordance with the custom of the Tartars." The same story is related independently and differently by Friar Ricold, thus: "When the army of Abaga ran away from the Saracens in Syria, a certain great Tartar baron was arrested who had been guilty of treason. And when the Emperor Khan was giving the order for his execution the Tartar ladies and women interposed, and begged that he might be made over to them. Having got hold of the prisoner they boiled him alive, and cutting his body up into mince-meat gave it to eat to the whole army, as an example to others." Vincent of Beauvais makes a like statement: "When they capture any one who is at bitter enmity with them, they gather together and eat him in vengeance of his revolt, and like infernal leeches suck his blood," a custom of which a modern Mongol writer thinks that he finds a trace in a surviving proverb. Among more remote and ignorant Franks the cannibalism of the Tartars was a general belief. Ivo of Narbonne, in his letter written during the great Tartar invasion of Europe (1242), declares that the Tartar chiefs, with their dog's head followers and other Lotophagi (!), ate the bodies of their victims like so much bread; whilst a Venetian chronicler, speaking of the council of Lyons in 1274, says there was a discussion about making a general move against the Tartars, "porce qu'il manjuent la char humaine." These latter writers no doubt rehearsed mere popular beliefs, but Hayton and Ricold were both intelligent persons well acquainted with the Tartars, and Hayton at least not prejudiced against them.

The old belief was revived in Prussia during the Seven Years' War, in regard to the Kalmaks of the Russian army; and Bergmann says the old Kalmak warriors confessed to him that they had done what they could to encourage it by cutting up the bodies of the slain in presence of their prisoners, and roasting them! But Levchine relates an act on the part of the Kirghiz Kazaks which was no jest. They drank the blood of their victim if they did not eat his flesh.

There is some reason to believe that cannibalism was in the Middle Ages generally a less strange and unwonted horror than we should at first blush imagine, and especially that it was an idea tolerably familiar in China. M. Bazin, in the second part of Chine Moderne, p. 461, after sketching a Chinese drama of the Mongol era ("The Devotion of Chao-li"), the plot of which turns on the acts of a body of cannibals, quotes several other passages from Chinese authors which indicate this. Nor is this wonderful in the age that had experienced the horrors of the Mongol wars.

That was no doubt a fable which Carpini heard in the camp of the Great Kaan, that in one of the Mongol sieges in Cathay, when the army was without food, one man in ten of their own force was sacrificed to feed the remainder.[8] But we are told in sober history that the force of Tului in Honan, in 1231-1232, was reduced to such straits as to eat grass and human flesh. At the siege of the Kin capital Kaifongfu, in 1233, the besieged were reduced to the like extremity; and the same occurred the same year at the siege of Tsaichau; and in 1262, when the rebel general Litan was besieged in Tsinanfu. The Taiping wars the other day revived the same horrors in all their magnitude. And savage acts of the same kind by the Chinese and their Turk partisans in the defence of Kashgar were related to Mr. Shaw.