Grenard (III. pp. 194-195) discusses the Lob-nor question and the formation of four new lakes by the Koncheh-daria called by the natives beginning at the north; Kara Kul, Tayek Kul, Sugut Kul, Tokum Kul. He does not accept Baron v. Richthofen's theory, and believes that the old Lob is the lake seen by Prjevalsky.

He says (p. 149): "Lop must be looked for on the actual road from Charchan to Charkalyk. Ouash Shahri, five days from Charchan, and where small ruins are to be found, corresponds well to the position of Lop according to Marco Polo, a few degrees of the compass near. But the stream which passes at this spot could never be important enough for the wants of a considerable centre of habitation and the ruins of Ouash Shahri are more of a hamlet than of a town. Moreover, Lop was certainly the meeting point of the roads of Kashgar, Urumtsi, Shachau, L'Hasa, and Khotan, and it is to this fact that this town, situated in a very poor country, owed its relative importance. Now, it is impossible that these roads crossed at Ouash Shahri. I believe that Lop was built on the site of Charkalyk itself. The Venetian traveller gives five days' journey between Charchan and Lop, whilst Charkalyk is really seven days from Charchan; but the objection does not appear sufficient to me: Marco Polo may well have made a mistake of two days." (III. pp. 149-150.)

The Chinese Governor of Urumtsi found some years ago to the north-west of the Lob-nor, on the banks of the Tarim, and within five days of Charkalyk, a town bearing the same name, though not on the same site as the Lop of Marco Polo.—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—"The waste and desert places of the Earth are, so to speak, the characters which sin has visibly impressed on the outward creation; its signs and symbols there.... Out of a true feeling of this, men have ever conceived of the Wilderness as the haunt of evil spirits. In the old Persian religion Ahriman and his evil Spirits inhabit the steppes and wastes of Turan, to the north of the happy Iran, which stands under the dominion of Ormuzd; exactly as with the Egyptians, the evil Typhon is the Lord of the Libyan sand-wastes, and Osiris of the fertile Egypt." (Archbp. Trench, Studies in the Gospels, p. 7.) Terror, and the seeming absence of a beneficent Providence, are suggestions of the Desert which must have led men to associate it with evil spirits, rather than the figure with which this passage begins; no spontaneous conception surely, however appropriate as a moral image.

"According to the belief of the nations of Central Asia," says I. J. Schmidt, "the earth and its interior, as well as the encompassing atmosphere, are filled with Spiritual Beings, which exercise an influence, partly beneficent, partly malignant, on the whole of organic and inorganic nature.... Especially are Deserts and other wild or uninhabited tracts, or regions in which the influences of nature are displayed on a gigantic and terrible scale, regarded as the chief abode or rendezvous of evil Spirits.... And hence the steppes of Turan, and in particular the great sandy Desert of Gobi have been looked on as the dwelling-place of malignant beings, from days of hoar antiquity."

The Chinese historian Ma Twan-lin informs us that there were two roads from China into the Uighur country (towards Karashahr). The longest but easiest road was by Kamul. The other was much shorter, and apparently corresponded, as far as Lop, to that described in this chapter. "By this you have to cross a plain of sand, extending for more than 100 leagues. You see nothing in any direction but the sky and the sands, without the slightest trace of a road; and travellers find nothing to guide them but the bones of men and beasts and the droppings of camels. During the passage of this wilderness you hear sounds, sometimes of singing, sometimes of wailing; and it has often happened that travellers going aside to see what those sounds might be have strayed from their course and been entirely lost; for they were voices of spirits and goblins. 'Tis for these reasons that travellers and merchants often prefer the much longer route by Kamul." (Visdelou, p. 139.)

"In the Desert" (this same desert), says Fa-hian, "there are a great many evil demons; there are also sirocco winds, which kill all who encounter them. There are no birds or beasts to be seen; but so far as the eye can reach, the route is marked out by the bleached bones of men who have perished in the attempt to cross."

["The Lew-sha was the subject of various most exaggerated stories. We find more trustworthy accounts of it in the Chow shu; thus it is mentioned in that history, that there sometimes arises in this desert a 'burning wind,' pernicious to men and cattle; in such cases the old camels of the caravan, having a presentiment of its approach, flock shrieking to one place, lie down on the ground and hide their heads in the sand. On this signal, the travellers also lie down, close nose and mouth, and remain in this position until the hurricane abates. Unless these precautions are taken, men and beasts inevitably perish." (Palladius, l.c. p. 4.)

A friend writes to me that he thinks that the accounts of strange noises in the desert would find a remarkable corroboration in the narratives of travellers through the central desert of Australia. They conjecture that they are caused by the sudden falling of cliffs of sand as the temperature changes at night time.—H. C.]

Hiuen Tsang, in his passage of the Desert, both outward and homeward, speaks of visual illusions; such as visions of troops marching and halting with gleaming arms and waving banners, constantly shifting, vanishing, and reappearing, "imagery created by demons." A voice behind him calls, "Fear not! fear not!" Troubled by these fantasies on one occasion, he prays to Kwan-yin (a Buddhist divinity); still he could not entirely get rid of them; but as soon as he had pronounced a few words from the Prajna (a holy book), they vanished in the twinkling of an eye.

These Goblins are not peculiar to the Gobi, though that appears to be their most favoured haunt. The awe of the vast and solitary Desert raises them in all similar localities. Pliny speaks of the phantoms that appear and vanish in the deserts of Africa; Aethicus, the early Christian cosmographer, speaks, though incredulous, of the stories that were told of the voices of singers and revellers in the desert; Mas'udi tells of the Ghuls, which in the deserts appear to travellers by night and in lonely hours; the traveller, taking them for comrades, follows and is led astray. But the wise revile them and the Ghuls vanish. Thus also Apollonius of Tyana and his companions, in a desert near the Indus by moonlight, see an Empusa or Ghul taking many forms. They revile it, and it goes off uttering shrill cries. Mas'udi also speaks of the mysterious voices heard by lone wayfarers in the Desert, and he gives a rational explanation of them. Ibn Batuta relates a like legend of the Western Sahara: "If the messenger be solitary, the demons sport with him and fascinate him, so that he strays from his course and perishes." The Afghan and Persian wildernesses also have their Ghul-i-Beaban or Goblin of the Waste, a gigantic and fearful spectre which devours travellers; and even the Gael of the West Highlands have the Direach Ghlinn Eitidh, the Desert Creature of Glen Eiti, which, one-handed, one-eyed, one-legged, seems exactly to answer to the Arabian Nesnas or Empusa. Nicolo Conti in the Chaldaean desert is aroused at midnight by a great noise, and sees a vast multitude pass by. The merchants tell him that these are demons who are in the habit of traversing the deserts. (Schmidt's San. Setzen, p. 352; V. et V. de H. T. 23, 28, 289; Pliny, VII. 2; Philostratus, Bk. II. ch. iv.; Prairies d'Or, III. 315, 324; Beale's Fahian; Campbell's Popular Tales of the W. Highlands, IV. 326; I. B. IV. 382; Elphinstone, I. 291; Chodzko's Pop. Poetry of Persia, p. 48; Conti, p. 4; Forsyth, J. R. G. S. XLVII. 1877, p. 4.)

The sound of musical instruments, chiefly of drums, is a phenomenon of another class, and is really produced in certain situations among sandhills when the sand is disturbed. [See supra.] A very striking account of a phenomenon of this kind regarded as supernatural is given by Friar Odoric, whose experience I fancy I have traced to the Reg Ruwan or "Flowing Sand" north of Kabul. Besides this celebrated example, which has been described also by the Emperor Baber, I have noted that equally well-known one of the Jibal Nakus, or "Hill of the Bell," in the Sinai Desert; Wadi Hamade, in the vicinity of the same Desert; the Jibal-ul-Thabul, or "Hill of the Drums," between Medina and Mecca; one on the Island of Eigg, in the Hebrides, discovered by Hugh Miller; one among the Medanos or Sandhills of Arequipa, described to me by Mr. C. Markham; the Bramador or rumbling mountain of Tarapaca; one in hills between the Ulba and the Irtish, in the vicinity of the Altai, called the Almanac Hills, because the sounds are supposed to prognosticate weather-changes; and a remarkable example near Kolberg on the shore of Pomerania. A Chinese narrative of the 10th century mentions the phenomenon as known near Kwachau, on the eastern border of the Lop Desert, under the name of the "Singing Sands"; and Sir F. Goldsmid has recently made us acquainted with a second Reg Ruwan, on a hill near the Perso-Afghan frontier, a little to the north of Sistan. The place is frequented in pilgrimage. (See Cathay, pp. ccxliv. 156, 398; Ritter, II. 204; Aus der Natur, Leipzig, No. 47 [of 1868], p. 752; Remusat, H. de Khotan, p. 74; Proc. R. G. S. XVII. 91.)

NOTE 3.—[We learn from Joseph Martin, quoted by Grenard, p. 170 (who met this unfortunate French traveller at Khotan, on his way from Peking to Marghelan, where he died), that from Shachau to Abdal, on the Lob-nor, there are twelve days of desert, sandy only during the first two days, stony afterwards. Occasionally a little grass is to be found for the camels; water is to be found everywhere. M. Bonin went from Shachau to the north-west towards the Kara-nor, then to the west, but lack of water compelled him to go back to Shachau. Along this road, every five lis, are to be found towers built with clay, and about 30 feet high, abandoned by the Chinese, who do not seem to have kept a remembrance of them in the country; this route seems to be a continuation of the Kan Suh Imperial highway. A wall now destroyed connected these towers together. "There is no doubt," writes M. Bonin, "that all these remains are those of the great route, vainly sought after till now, which, under the Han Dynasty, ran to China through Bactria. Pamir, Eastern Turkestan, the Desert of Gobi, and Kan Suh: it is in part the route followed by Marco Polo, when he went from Charchan to Shachau, by the city of Lob." The route of the Han has been also looked for, more to the south, and it was believed that it was the same as that of the Astyn Tagh, followed by Mr. Littledale in 1893, who travelled one month from Abdal (Lob-nor) to Shachau; M. Bonin, who explored also this route, and was twenty-three days from Shachau to Lob-nor, says it could not be a commercial road. Dr. Sven Hedin saw four or five towers eastward of the junction of the Tarim and the Koncheh-daria; it may possibly have been another part of the road seen by M. Bonin. (See La Geographie, 15th March, 1901, p. 173.)—H. C.]



CHAPTER XL.

CONCERNING THE GREAT PROVINCE OF TANGUT.

After you have travelled thirty days through the Desert, as I have described, you come to a city called SACHIU, lying between north-east and east; it belongs to the Great Kaan, and is in a province called TANGUT.[NOTE 1] The people are for the most part Idolaters, but there are also some Nestorian Christians and some Saracens. The Idolaters have a peculiar language, and are no traders, but live by their agriculture.[NOTE 2] They have a great many abbeys and minsters full of idols of sundry fashions, to which they pay great honour and reverence, worshipping them and sacrificing to them with much ado. For example, such as have children will feed up a sheep in honour of the idol, and at the New Year, or on the day of the Idol's Feast, they will take their children and the sheep along with them into the presence of the idol with great ceremony. Then they will have the sheep slaughtered and cooked, and again present it before the idol with like reverence, and leave it there before him, whilst they are reciting the offices of their worship and their prayers for the idol's blessing on their children. And, if you will believe them, the idol feeds on the meat that is set before it! After these ceremonies they take up the flesh and carry it home, and call together all their kindred to eat it with them in great festivity [the idol-priests receiving for their portion the head, feet, entrails, and skin, with some part of the meat]. After they have eaten, they collect the bones that are left and store them carefully in a hutch.[NOTE 3]

And you must know that all the Idolaters in the world burn their dead. And when they are going to carry a body to the burning, the kinsfolk build a wooden house on the way to the spot, and drape it with cloths of silk and gold. When the body is going past this building they call a halt and set before it wine and meat and other eatables; and this they do with the assurance that the defunct will be received with the like attentions in the other world. All the minstrelsy in the town goes playing before the body; and when it reaches the burning-place the kinsfolk are prepared with figures cut out of parchment and paper in the shape of men and horses and camels, and also with round pieces of paper like gold coins, and all these they burn along with the corpse. For they say that in the other world the defunct will be provided with slaves and cattle and money, just in proportion to the amount of such pieces of paper that has been burnt along with him.[NOTE 4]

But they never burn their dead until they have [sent for the astrologers, and told them the year, the day, and the hour of the deceased person's birth, and when the astrologers have ascertained under what constellation, planet, and sign he was born, they declare the day on which, by the rules of their art, he ought to be burnt]. And till that day arrive they keep the body, so that 'tis sometimes a matter of six months, more or less, before it comes to be burnt.[NOTE 5]

Now the way they keep the body in the house is this: They make a coffin first of a good span in thickness, very carefully joined and daintily painted. This they fill up with camphor and spices, to keep off corruption [stopping the joints with pitch and lime], and then they cover it with a fine cloth. Every day as long as the body is kept, they set a table before the dead covered with food; and they will have it that the soul comes and eats and drinks: wherefore they leave the food there as long as would be necessary in order that one should partake. Thus they do daily. And worse still! Sometimes those soothsayers shall tell them that 'tis not good luck to carry out the corpse by the door, so they have to break a hole in the wall, and to draw it out that way when it is taken to the burning.[NOTE 6] And these, I assure you, are the practices of all the Idolaters of those countries.

However, we will quit this subject, and I will tell you of another city which lies towards the north-west at the extremity of the desert.

NOTE 1.—[The Natives of this country were called by the Chinese T'ang-hiang, and by the Mongols T'angu or T'ang-wu, and with the plural suffix Tangut. The kingdom of Tangut, or in Chinese, Si Hia (Western Hia), or Ho si (West of the Yellow River), was declared independent in 982 by Li Chi Ch'ien, who had the dynastic title or Miao Hao of Tai Tsu. "The rulers of Tangut," says Dr. Bushell, "were scions of the Toba race, who reigned over North China as the Wei Dynasty (A.D. 386- 557), as well as in some of the minor dynasties which succeeded. Claiming descent from the ancient Chinese Hsia Dynasty of the second millennium B.C., they adopted the title of Ta Hsia ('Great Hsia'), and the dynasty is generally called by the Chinese Hsi Hsia, or Western Hsia." This is a list of the Tangut sovereigns, with the date of their accession to the throne: Tai Tsu (982), Tai Tsung (1002), Ching Tsung (1032), Yi Tsung (1049), Hui Tsung (1068), Ch'ung Tsung (1087), Jen Tsung (1140), Huan Tsung (1194), Hsiang Tsung (1206), Shen Tsung (1213), Hien Tsung (1223), Mo Chu (1227). In fact, the real founder of the Dynasty was Li Yuan-hao, who conquered in 1031, the cities of Kanchau and Suhchau from the Uighur Turks, declaring himself independent in 1032, and who adopted in 1036 a special script of which we spoke when mentioning the archway at Kiuyung Kwan. His capital was Hia chau, now Ning hia, on the Yellow River. Chinghiz invaded Tangut three times, in 1206, 1217, and at last in 1225; the final struggle took place the following year, when Kanchau, Liangchau, and Suhchau fell into the hands of the Mongols. After the death of Chinghiz (1227), the last ruler of Tangut, Li H'ien, who surrendered the same year to Okkodai, son of the conqueror, was killed. The dominions of Tangut in the middle of the 11th century, according to the Si Hia Chi Shih Pen Mo, quoted by Dr. Bushell, "were bounded, according to the map, by the Sung Empire on the south and east, by the Liao (Khitan) on the north-east, the Tartars (Tata) on the north, the Uighur Turks (Hui-hu) on the west, and the Tibetans on the south-west. The Alashan Mountains stretch along the northern frontier, and the western extends to the Jade Gate (Yue Men Kwan) on the border of the Desert of Gobi." Under the Mongol Dynasty, Kan Suh was the official name of one of the twelve provinces of the Empire, and the popular name was Tangut.

(Dr. S. W. Bushell: Inscriptions in the Juchen and Allied Scripts and The Hsi Hsia Dynasty of Tangut. See above, p. 29.)

"The word Tangutan applied by the Chinese and by Colonel Prjevalsky to a Tibetan-speaking people around the Koko-nor has been explained to me in a variety of ways by native Tangutans. A very learned lama from the Gserdkog monastery, south-east of the Koko-nor, told me that Tangutan, Amdoans, and Sifan were interchangeable terms, but I fear his geographical knowledge was a little vague. The following explanation of the term Tangut is taken from the Hsi-tsang-fu. 'The Tangutans are descendants of the Tang-tu-chueeh. The origin of this name is as follows: In early days, the Tangutans lived in the Central Asian Chin-shan, where they were workers of iron. They made a model of the Chin-shan, which, in shape, resembled an iron helmet. Now, in their language, "iron helmet" is Tang-kueeh, hence the name of the country. To the present day, the Tangutans of the Koko-nor wear a hat shaped like a pot, high crowned and narrow, rimmed with red fringe sewn on it, so that it looks like an iron helmet, and this is a proof of [the accuracy of the derivation].' Although the proof is not very satisfactory, it is as good as we are often offered by authors with greater pretension to learning.

"If I remember rightly, Prjevalsky derives the name from two words meaning 'black tents.'" (W. W. Rockhill, China Br. R. As. Soc., XX. pp. 278-279.)

"Chinese authorities tell us that the name [Tangut] was originally borne by a people living in the Altai', and that the word is Turkish.... The population of Tangut was a mixture of Tibetans, Turks, Uighurs, Tukuhuns, Chinese, etc." (Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 150, note.—H. C.)]

Sachiu is SHACHAU, "Sand-district," an outpost of China Proper, at the eastern verge of the worst part of the Sandy Desert. It is recorded to have been fortified in the 1st century as a barrier against the Hiongnu.

[The name of Shachau dates from A.D. 622, when it was founded by the first emperor of the T'ang Dynasty. Formerly, Shachau was one of the Chinese colonies established by the Han, at the expense of the Hiongnu; it was called T'ung hoang (B.C. 111), a name still given to Shachau; the other colonies were Kiu-kaan (Suhchau, B.C. 121) and Chang-ye (Kanchau, B.C. 111). (See Bretschneider, Med. Res. II. 18.)

"Sha-chow, the present Tun-hwang-hien (a few li east of the ancient town).... In 1820, or about that time, an attempt was made to re-establish the ancient direct way between Sha-chow and Khotan. With this object in view, an exploring party of ten men was sent from Khotan towards Sha-chow; this party wandered in the desert over a month, and found neither dwellings nor roads, but pastures and water everywhere. M. Polo omits to mention a remarkable place at Sha-chow, a sandy hillock (a short distance south of this town) known under the name of Ming-sha shan—the 'rumbling sandhill.' The sand, in rolling down the hill, produces a particular sound, similar to that of distant thunder. In M. Polo's time (1292), Khubilai removed the inhabitants of Sha-chow to the interior of China; fearing, probably, the aggression of the seditious princes; and his successor, in 1303, placed there a garrison of ten thousand men." (Palladius, l.c. p. 5.)

"Sha-chau is one of the best oases of Central Asia. It is situated at the foot of the Nan-shan range, at a height of 3700 feet above the sea, and occupies an area of about 200 square miles, the whole of which is thickly inhabited by Chinese. Sha-chau is interesting as the meeting-place of three expeditions started independently from Russia, India, and China. Just two months before Prjevalsky reached this town, it was visited by Count Szechenyi [April, 1879], and eighteen months afterwards Pundit A-k, whose report of it agrees fairly well with that of our traveller, also stayed here. Both Prejevalsky and Szechenyi remark on some curious caves in a valley near Sha-chau containing Buddhistic clay idols.[1] These caves were in Marco Polo's time the resort of numerous worshippers, and are said to date back to the Han Dynasty." (Prejevalsky's Journeys ... by E. Delmar Morgan, Proc. R. G. S. IX. 1887, pp. 217-218.)—H. C.]

(Ritter, II. 205; Neumann, p. 616; Cathay, 269, 274; Erdmann, 155; Erman, II. 267; Mag. Asiat. II. 213.)

NOTE 2.—By Idolaters, Polo here means Buddhists, as generally. We do not know whether the Buddhism here was a recent introduction from Tibet, or a relic of the old Buddhism of Khotan and other Central Asian kingdoms, but most probably it was the former, and the "peculiar language" ascribed to them may have been, as Neumann supposes, Tibetan. This language in modern Mongolia answers to the Latin of the Mass Book, indeed with a curious exactness, for in both cases the holy tongue is not that of the original propagators of the respective religions, but that of the hierarchy which has assumed their government. In the Lamaitic convents of China and Manchuria also the Tibetan only is used in worship, except at one privileged temple at Peking. (Koeppen, II. 288.) The language intended by Polo may, however, have been a Chinese dialect. (See notes 1 and 4.) The Nestorians must have been tolerably numerous in Tangut, for it formed a metropolitan province of their Church.

NOTE 3.—A practice resembling this is mentioned by Pallas as existing among the Buddhist Kalmaks, a relic of their old Shaman superstitions, which the Lamas profess to decry, but sometimes take part in. "Rich Kalmaks select from their flock a ram for dedication, which gets the name of Tengri Tockho, 'Heaven's Ram.' It must be a white one with a yellow head. He must never be shorn or sold, but when he gets old, and the owner chooses to dedicate a fresh one, then the old one must be sacrificed. This is usually done in autumn, when the sheep are fattest, and the neighbours are called together to eat the sacrifice. A fortunate day is selected, and the ram is slaughtered amid the cries of the sorcerer directed towards the sunrise, and the diligent sprinkling of milk for the benefit of the Spirits of the Air. The flesh is eaten, but the skeleton with a part of the fat is burnt on a turf altar erected on four pillars of an ell and a half high, and the skin, with the head and feet, is then hung up in the way practised by the Buraets." (Sammlungen, II. 346.)

NOTE 4.—Several of the customs of Tangut mentioned in this chapter are essentially Chinese, and are perhaps introduced here because it was on entering Tangut that the traveller first came in contact with Chinese peculiarities. This is true of the manner of forming coffins, and keeping them with the body in the house, serving food before the coffin whilst it is so kept, the burning of paper and papier-mache figures of slaves, horses, etc., at the tomb. Chinese settlers were very numerous at Shachau and the neighbouring Kwachau, even in the 10th century. (Ritter, II. 213.) ["Keeping a body unburied for a considerable time is called khng koan, 'to conceal or store away a coffin,' or thing koan, 'to detain a coffin.' It is, of course, a matter of necessity in such cases to have the cracks and fissures, and especially the seam where the case and the lid join, hermetically caulked. This is done by means of a mixture of chunam and oil. The seams, sometimes even the whole coffin, are pasted over with linen, and finally everything is varnished black, or, in case of a mandarin of rank, red. In process of time, the varnishing is repeated as many times as the family think desirable or necessary. And in order to protect the coffin still better against dust and moisture, it is generally covered with sheets of oiled paper, over which comes a white pall." (De Groot, I. 106.)—H. C.] Even as regards the South of China many of the circumstances mentioned here are strictly applicable, as may be seen in Doolittle's Social Life of the Chinese. (See, for example, p. 135; also Astley, IV. 93-95, or Marsden's quotations from Duhalde.) The custom of burning the dead has been for several centuries disused in China, but we shall see hereafter that Polo represents it as general in his time. On the custom of burning gilt paper in the form of gold coin, as well as of paper clothing, paper houses, furniture, slaves, etc., see also Medhurst, p. 213, and Kidd, 177-178. No one who has read Pere Huc will forget his ludicrous account of the Lama's charitable distribution of paper horses for the good of disabled travellers. The manufacture of mock money is a large business in Chinese cities. In Fuchau there are more than thirty large establishments where it is kept for sale. (Doolittle, 541.) [The Chinese believe that sheets of paper, partly tinned over on one side, are, "according to the prevailing conviction, turned by the process of fire into real silver currency available in the world of darkness, and sent there through the smoke to the soul; they are called gun-tsoa, 'silver paper.' Most families prefer to previously fold every sheet in the shape of a hollow ingot, a 'silver ingot,' gun-kho as they call it. This requires a great amount of labour and time, but increases the value of the treasure immensely." (De Groot, I. 25.) "Presenting paper money when paying a visit of condolence is a custom firmly established, and accordingly complied with by everybody with great strictness.... The paper is designed for the equipment of the coffin, and, accordingly, always denoted by the term koan-thao-tsoa, 'coffin paper.' But as the receptacle of the dead is, of course, not spacious enough to hold the whole mass offered by so many friends, it is regularly burned by lots by the side of the corpse, the ashes being carefully collected to be afterwards wrapped in paper and placed in the coffin, or at the side of the coffin, in the tomb." (De Groot, I. 31-32.)—H. C.] There can be little doubt that these latter customs are symbols of the ancient sacrifices of human beings and valuable property on such occasions; so Manetho states that the Egyptians in days of yore used human sacrifices, but a certain King Amosis abolished them and substituted images of wax. Even when the present Manchu Dynasty first occupied the throne of China, they still retained the practice of human sacrifice. At the death of Kanghi's mother, however, in 1718, when four young girls offered themselves for sacrifice on the tomb of their mistress, the emperor would not allow it, and prohibited for the future the sacrifice of life or the destruction of valuables on such occasions. (Deguignes, Voy. I. 304.)

NOTE 5.—Even among the Tibetans and Mongols burning is only one of the modes of disposing of the dead. "They sometimes bury their dead: often they leave them exposed in their coffins, or cover them with stones, paying regard to the sign under which the deceased was born, his age, the day and hour of his death, which determine the mode in which he is to be interred (or otherwise disposed of). For this purpose they consult some books which are explained to them by the Lamas." (Timk. II. 312.) The extraordinary and complex absurdities of the books in question are given in detail by Pallas, and curiously illustrate the paragraph in the text. (See Sammlungen, II. 254 seqq.) ["The first seven days, including that on which the demise has taken place, are generally deemed to be lucky for the burial, especially the odd ones. But when they have elapsed, it becomes requisite to apply to a day-professor.... The popular almanac which chiefly wields sway in Amoy and the surrounding country, regularly stigmatises a certain number of days as ting-sng jit: 'days of reduplication of death,' because encoffining or burying a dead person on such a day will entail another loss in the family shortly afterwards." (De Groot, I. 103, 99-100.)—H. C.]

NOTE 6.—The Chinese have also, according to Duhalde, a custom of making a new opening in the wall of a house by which to carry out the dead; and in their prisons a special hole in the wall is provided for this office. This same custom exists among the Esquimaux, as well as, according to Sonnerat, in Southern India, and it used to exist in certain parts both of Holland and of Central Italy. In the "clean village of Broek," near Amsterdam, those special doors may still be seen. And in certain towns of Umbria, such as Perugia, Assisi, and Gubbio, this opening was common, elevated some feet above the ground, and known as the "Door of the Dead."

I find in a list, printed by Liebrecht, of popular French superstitions, amounting to 479 in number, condemned by Maupas du Tour, Bishop of Evreux in 1664, the following: "When a woman lies in of a dead child, it must not be taken out by the door of the chamber but by the window, for if it were taken out by the door the woman would never lie in of any but dead children." The Samoyedes have the superstition mentioned in the text, and act exactly as Polo describes.

["The body [of the Queen of Bali, 17th century] was drawn out of a large aperture made in the wall to the right hand side of the door, in the absurd opinion of cheating the devil, whom these islanders believe to lie in wait in the ordinary passage." (John Crawfurd, Hist. of the Indian Archipelago, II. p. 245.)—H. C.]

And the Rev. Mr. Jaeschke writes to me from Lahaul, in British Tibet: "Our Lama (from Central Tibet) tells us that the owner of a house and the members of his family when they die are carried through the house-door; but if another person dies in the house his body is removed by some other aperture, such as a window, or the smokehole in the roof, or a hole in the wall dug expressly for the purpose. Or a wooden frame is made, fitting into the doorway, and the body is then carried through; it being considered that by this contrivance the evil consequences are escaped that might ensue, were it carried through the ordinary, and, so to say, undisguised house-door! Here, in Lahaul and the neighbouring countries, we have not heard of such a custom."

(Duhalde, quoted by Marsden; Semedo, p. 175; Mr. Sala in N. and Q., 2nd S. XI. 322; Lubbock, p. 500; Sonnerat I. 86; Liebrecht's Gervasius of Tilbury, Hanover, 1856, p. 224; Mag. Asiat. II. 93.)

[1] M. Bonin visited in 1899 these caves which he calls "Grottoes of Thousand Buddhas" (Tsien Fo tung). (La Geographie, 15th March, 1901, p. 171.) He found a stele dated 1348, bearing a Buddhist prayer in six different scripts like the inscription at Kiu Yung Kwan. (Rev. Hist. des Religions, 1901, p. 393.)—H. C.



CHAPTER XLI.

OF THE PROVINCE OF CAMUL.

Camul is a province which in former days was a kingdom. It contains numerous towns and villages, but the chief city bears the name of CAMUL. The province lies between the two deserts; for on the one side is the Great Desert of Lop, and on the other side is a small desert of three days' journey in extent.[NOTE 1] The people are all Idolaters, and have a peculiar language. They live by the fruits of the earth, which they have in plenty, and dispose of to travellers. They are a people who take things very easily, for they mind nothing but playing and singing, and dancing and enjoying themselves.[NOTE 2]

And it is the truth that if a foreigner comes to the house of one of these people to lodge, the host is delighted, and desires his wife to put herself entirely at the guest's disposal, whilst he himself gets out of the way, and comes back no more until the stranger shall have taken his departure. The guest may stay and enjoy the wife's society as long as he lists, whilst the husband has no shame in the matter, but indeed considers it an honour. And all the men of this province are made wittols of by their wives in this way.[NOTE 3] The women themselves are fair and wanton.

Now it came to pass during the reign of MANGU KAAN, that as lord of this province he came to hear of this custom, and he sent forth an order commanding them under grievous penalties to do so no more [but to provide public hostelries for travellers]. And when they heard this order they were much vexed thereat. [For about three years' space they carried it out. But then they found that their lands were no longer fruitful, and that many mishaps befell them.] So they collected together and prepared a grand present which they sent to their Lord, praying him graciously to let them retain the custom which they had inherited from their ancestors; for it was by reason of this usage that their gods bestowed upon them all the good things that they possessed, and without it they saw not how they could continue to exist.[NOTE 4] When the Prince had heard their petition his reply was "Since ye must needs keep your shame, keep it then," and so he left them at liberty to maintain their naughty custom. And they always have kept it up, and do so still.

Now let us quit Camul, and I will tell you of another province which lies between north-west and north, and belongs to the Great Kaan.

NOTE 1.—Kamul (or Komul) does not fall into the great line of travel towards Cathay which Marco is following. His notice of it, and of the next province, forms a digression like that which he has already made to Samarkand. It appears very doubtful if Marco himself had visited it; his father and uncle may have done so on their first journey, as one of the chief routes to Northern China from Western Asia lies through this city, and has done so for many centuries. This was the route described by Pegolotti as that of the Italian traders in the century following Polo; it was that followed by Marignolli, by the envoys of Shah Rukh at a later date, and at a much later by Benedict Goes. The people were in Polo's time apparently Buddhist, as the Uighurs inhabiting this region had been from an old date: in Shah Rukh's time (1420) we find a mosque and a great Buddhist Temple cheek by jowl; whilst Ramusio's friend Hajji Mahomed (circa 1550) speaks of Kamul as the first Mahomedan city met with in travelling from China.

Kamul stands on an oasis carefully cultivated by aid of reservoirs for irrigation, and is noted in China for its rice and for some of its fruits, especially melons and grapes. It is still a place of some consequence, standing near the bifurcation of two great roads from China, one passing north and the other south of the Thian Shan, and it was the site of the Chinese Commissariat depots for the garrisons to the westward. It was lost to the Chinese in 1867.

Kamul appears to have been the see of a Nestorian bishop. A Bishop of Kamul is mentioned as present at the inauguration of the Catholicos Denha in 1266. (Russians in Cent. Asia, 129; Ritter, II. 357 seqq.; Cathay, passim; Assemani, II. 455-456.)

[Kamul is the Turkish name of the province called by the Mongols Khamil, by the Chinese Hami; the latter name is found for the first time in the Yuen Shi, but it is first mentioned in Chinese history in the 1st century of our Era under the name of I-wu-lu or I-wu (Bretschneider, Med. Res. II. p. 20); after the death of Chinghiz, it belonged to his son Chagatai. From the Great Wall, at the Pass of Kia Yue, to Hami there is a distance of 1470 li. (C. Imbault-Huart. Le Pays de Hami ou Khamil ... d'apres les auteurs chinois, Bul. de Geog. hist. et desc., Paris, 1892, pp. 121-195.) The Chinese general Chang Yao was in 1877 at Hami, which had submitted in 1867 to the Athalik Ghazi, and made it the basis of his operations against the small towns of Chightam and Pidjam, and Yakub Khan himself stationed at Turfan. The Imperial Chinese Agent in this region bears the title of K'u lun Pan She Ta Ch'en and resides at K'urun (Urga); of lesser rank are the agents (Pan She Ta Ch'en) of Kashgar, Kharashar, Kuche, Aksu, Khotan, and Hami. (See a description of Hami by Colonel M. S. Bell, Proc. R. G. S. XII. 1890, p. 213.)—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—Expressed almost in the same words is the character attributed by a Chinese writer to the people of Kuche in the same region. (Chin. Repos. IX. 126.) In fact, the character seems to be generally applicable to the people of East Turkestan, but sorely kept down by the rigid Islam that is now enforced. (See Shaw, passim, and especially the Mahrambashi's lamentations over the jolly days that were no more, pp. 319, 376.)

NOTE 3.—Pauthier's text has "sont si honni de leur moliers comme vous avez ouy." Here the Crusca has "sono bozzi delle loro moglie," and the Lat. Geog. "sunt bezzi de suis uxoribus." The Crusca Vocab. has inserted bozzo with the meaning we have given, on the strength of this passage. It occurs also in Dante (Paradiso, XIX. 137), in the general sense of disgraced.

The shameful custom here spoken of is ascribed by Polo also to a province of Eastern Tibet, and by popular report in modern times to the Hazaras of the Hindu-Kush, a people of Mongolian blood, as well as to certain nomad tribes of Persia, to say nothing of the like accusation against our own ancestors which has been drawn from Laonicus Chalcondylas. The old Arab traveller Ibn Muhalhal (10th century) also relates the same of the Hazlakh (probably Kharlikh) Turks: "Ducis alicujus uxor vel filia vel soror, quum mercatorum agmen in terram venit, eos adit, eorumque lustrat faciem. Quorum siquis earum afficit admiratione hunc domum suam ducit, eumque apud se hospitio excipit, eique benigne facit. Atque marito suo et filio fratrique rerum necessariarum curam demandat; neque dum hospes apud eam habitat, nisi necessarium est, maritus eam adit." A like custom prevails among the Chukchis and Koryaks in the vicinity of Kamtchatka. (Elphinstone's Caubul; Wood, p. 201; Burnes, who discredits, II. 153, III. 195; Laon. Chalcond. 1650, pp. 48-49; Kurd de Schloezer, p. 13; Erman, II. 530.)

["It is remarkable that the Chinese author, Hung Hao, who lived a century before M. Polo, makes mention in his memoirs nearly in the same words of this custom of the Uighurs, with whom he became acquainted during his captivity in the kingdom of the Kin. According to the chronicle of the Tangut kingdom of Si-hia, Hami was the nursery of Buddhism in Si-hia, and provided this kingdom with Buddhist books and monks." (Palladius, l.c. p. 6.)—H. C.]

NOTE 4.—So the Jewish rabble to Jeremiah: "Since we left off to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings to her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by famine." (Jerem. xliv. 18.)



CHAPTER XLII.

OF THE PROVINCE OF CHINGINTALAS.

Chingintalas is also a province at the verge of the Desert, and lying between north-west and north. It has an extent of sixteen days' journey, and belongs to the Great Kaan, and contains numerous towns and villages. There are three different races of people in it—Idolaters, Saracens, and some Nestorian Christians.[NOTE 1] At the northern extremity of this province there is a mountain in which are excellent veins of steel and ondanique.[NOTE 2] And you must know that in the same mountain there is a vein of the substance from which Salamander is made.[NOTE 3] For the real truth is that the Salamander is no beast, as they allege in our part of the world, but is a substance found in the earth; and I will tell you about it.

Everybody must be aware that it can be no animal's nature to live in fire, seeing that every animal is composed of all the four elements.[NOTE 4] Now I, Marco Polo, had a Turkish acquaintance of the name of Zurficar, and he was a very clever fellow. And this Turk related to Messer Marco Polo how he had lived three years in that region on behalf of the Great Kaan, in order to procure those Salamanders for him.[NOTE 5] He said that the way they got them was by digging in that mountain till they found a certain vein. The substance of this vein was then taken and crushed, and when so treated it divides as it were into fibres of wool, which they set forth to dry. When dry, these fibres were pounded in a great copper mortar, and then washed, so as to remove all the earth and to leave only the fibres like fibres of wool. These were then spun, and made into napkins. When first made these napkins are not very white, but by putting them into the fire for a while they come out as white as snow. And so again whenever they become dirty they are bleached by being put in the fire.

Now this, and nought else, is the truth about the Salamander, and the people of the country all say the same. Any other account of the matter is fabulous nonsense. And I may add that they have at Rome a napkin of this stuff, which the Grand Kaan sent to the Pope to make a wrapper for the Holy Sudarium of Jesus Christ.[NOTE 6]

We will now quit this subject, and I will proceed with my account of the countries lying in the direction between north-east and east.

NOTE 1.—The identification of this province is a difficulty, because the geographical definition is vague, and the name assigned to it has not been traced in other authors. It is said to lie between north-west and north, whilst Kamul was said to lie towards the north-west. The account of both provinces forms a digression, as is clear from the last words of the present chapter, where the traveller returns to take up his regular route "in the direction between north-east and east." The point from which he digresses, and to which he reverts, is Shachau, and 'tis presumably from Shachau that he assigns bearings to the two provinces forming the subject of the digression. Hence, as Kamul lies vers maistre, i.e. north-west, and Chingintalas entre maistre et tramontaine, i.e. nor'-nor'-west, Chingintalas can scarcely lie due west of Kamul, as M. Pauthier would place it, in identifying it with an obscure place called Saiyintala, in the territory of Urumtsi. Moreover, the province is said to belong to the Great Kaan. Now, Urumtsi or Bishbalik seems to have belonged, not to the Great Kaan, but to the empire of Chagatai, or possibly at this time to Kaidu. Rashiduddin, speaking of the frontier between the Kaan and Kaidu, says:—"From point to point are posted bodies of troops under the orders of princes of the blood or other generals, and they often come to blows with the troops of Kaidu. Five of these are cantoned on the verge of the Desert; a sixth in Tangut, near Chagan-Nor (White Lake); a seventh in the vicinity of Karakhoja, a city of the Uighurs, which lies between the two States, and maintains neutrality."

Karakhoja, this neutral town, is near Turfan, to the south-east of Urumtsi, which thus would lie without the Kaan's boundary; Kamul and the country north-east of it would lie within it. This country, to the north and north-east of Kamul, has remained till quite recently unexplored by any modern traveller, unless we put faith in Mr. Atkinson's somewhat hazy narrative. But it is here that I would seek for Chingintalas.

Several possible explanations of this name have suggested themselves or been suggested to me. I will mention two.

1. Klaproth states that the Mongols applied to Tibet the name of Baron-tala, signifying the "Right Side," i.e. the south-west or south quarter, whilst Mongolia was called Dzoehn (or Dzegun) Tala, i.e. the "Left," or north-east side. It is possible that Chigin-talas might represent Dzegun Tala in some like application. The etymology of Dzungaria, a name which in modern times covers the territory of which we are speaking, is similar.

2. Professor Vambery thinks that it is probably Chingin Tala, "The Vast Plain." But nothing can be absolutely satisfactory in such a case except historical evidence of the application of the name.

I have left the identity of this name undecided, though pointing to the general position of the region so-called by Marco, as indicated by the vicinity of the Tangnu-Ola Mountains (p. 215). A passage in the Journey of the Taouist Doctor, Changchun, as translated by Dr. Bretschneider (Chinese Recorder and Miss. Journ., Shanghai, Sept.-Oct., 1874, p. 258), suggests to me the strong probability that it may be the Kem-kem-jut of Rashiduddin, called by the Chinese teacher Kien-kien-chau.

Rashiduddin couples the territory of the Kirghiz with Kemkemjut, but defines the country embracing both with some exactness: "On one side (south-east?), it bordered on the Mongol country; on a second (north-east?), it was bounded by the Selenga; on a third (north), by the 'great river called Angara, which flows on the confines of Ibir-Sibir' (i.e. of Siberia); on a fourth side by the territory of the Naimans. This great country contained many towns and villages, as well as many nomad inhabitants." Dr. Bretschneider's Chinese Traveller speaks of it as a country where good iron was found, where (grey) squirrels abounded, and wheat was cultivated. Other notices quoted by him show that it lay to the south-east of the Kirghiz country, and had its name from the Kien or Ken R. (i.e. the Upper Yenisei).

The name (Kienkien), the general direction, the existence of good iron ("steel and ondanique"), the many towns and villages in a position where we should little look for such an indication, all point to the identity of this region with the Chingintalas of our text. The only alteration called for in the Itinerary Map (No. IV.) would be to spell the name Hinkin, or Ghinghin (as it is in the Geographic Text), and to shift it a very little further to the north.

(See Chingin in Kovalevski's Mongol Dict., No. 2134; and for Baron-tala, etc., see Della Penna, Breve Notizia del Regno del Thibet, with Klaproth's notes, p. 6; D'Avezac, p. 568; Relation prefixed to D'Anville's Atlas, p. 11; Alphabetum Tibetanum, 454; and Kircher, China Illustrata, p. 65.)

Since the first edition was published, Mr. Ney Elias has traversed the region in question from east to west; and I learn from him that at Kobdo he found the most usual name for that town among Mongols, Kalmaks, and Russians to be SANKIN-hoto. He had not then thought of connecting this name with Chinghin-talas, and has therefore no information as to its origin or the extent of its application. But he remarks that Polo's bearing of between north and north-west, if understood to be from Kamul, would point exactly to Kobdo. He also calls attention to the Lake Sankin-dalai, to the north-east of Uliasut'ai, of which Atkinson gives a sketch. The recurrence of this name over so wide a tract may have something to do with the Chinghin-talas of Polo. But we must still wait for further light.[1]

["Supposing that M. Polo mentions this place on his way from Sha-chow to Su-chow, it is natural to think that it is Chi-kin-talas, i.e. 'Chi-kin plain' or valley; Chi-kin was the name of a lake, called so even now, and of a defile, which received its name from the lake. The latter is on the way from Kia-yue kwan to Ansi chow." (Palladius, l.c. p. 7.) "Chikin, or more correctly Chigin, is a Mongol word meaning 'ear.'" (Ibid.) Palladius (p. 8) adds: "The Chinese accounts of Chi-kin are not in contradiction to the statements given by M. Polo regarding the same subject; but when the distances are taken into consideration, a serious difficulty arises; Chi-kin is two hundred and fifty or sixty li distant from Su-chow, whilst, according to M. Polo's statement, ten days are necessary to cross this distance. One of the three following explanations of this discrepancy must be admitted: either Chingintalas is not Chi-kin, or the traveller's memory failed, or, lastly, an error crept into the number of days' journey. The two last suppositions I consider the most probable; the more so that similar difficulties occur several times in Marco Polo's narrative." (L.c. p. 8.)—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—[Ondanique.—We have already referred to this word, Kerman, p. 90. Cobinan, p. 124. La Curne de Sainte-Palaye (Dict.), F. Godefroy (Dict.), Du Cange (Gloss.), all give to andain the meaning of enjambee, from the Latin andare. Godefroy, s.v. andaine, calls it sorte d'acier ou de fer, and quotes besides Marco Polo:

"I. espiel, ou ot fer d'andaine, Dont la lamele n'iert pas trouble."

(Huon de Mery, Le Tornoiement de l'Antechrist, p. 3, Tarbe.)

There is a forest in the department of Orne, arrondissement of Domfront, which belonged to the Crown before 1669, and is now State property, called Foret d'Andaine; it is situated near some bed of iron. Is this the origin of the name?—H. C.]

NOTE 3.—The Altai, or one of its ramifications, is probably the mountain of the text, but so little is known of this part of the Chinese territory that we can learn scarcely anything of its mineral products. Still Martini does mention that asbestos is found "in the Tartar country of Tangu," which probably is the Tangnu Oola branch of the Altai to the south of the Upper Yenisei, and in the very region we have indicated as Chingintalas. Mr. Elias tells me he inquired for asbestos by its Chinese name at Uliasut'ai, but without success.

NOTE 4.—

"Degli elementi quattro principali, Che son la Terra, e l'Acqua, e l'Aria, e'l Foco, Composti sono gli universi Animali, Pigliando di ciascuno assai o poco." (Dati, La Sfera, p. 9.)

Zurficar in the next sentence is a Mahomedan name, Zu'lfikar, the title of [the edge of] Ali's sword.

NOTE 5.—Here the G. Text adds: "Et je meisme le vi," intimating, I conceive, his having himself seen specimens of the asbestos—not to his having been at the place.

NOTE 6.—The story of the Salamander passing unhurt through fire is at least as old as Aristotle. But I cannot tell when the fable arose that asbestos was a substance derived from the animal. This belief, however, was general in the Middle Ages, both in Asia and Europe. "The fable of the Salamander," says Sir Thomas Browne, "hath been much promoted by stories of incombustible napkins and textures which endure the fire, whose materials are called by the name of Salamander's wool, which many, too literally apprehending, conceive some investing part or integument of the Salamander.... Nor is this Salamander's wool desumed from any animal, but a mineral substance, metaphorically so called for this received opinion."

Those who knew that the Salamander was a lizard-like animal were indeed perplexed as to its woolly coat. Thus the Cardinal de Vitry is fain to say the creature "profert ex cute quasi quamdam lanam de qua zonae contextae comburi non possunt igne." A Bestiary, published by Cahier and Martin, says of it: "De lui naist une cose qui n'est ne soie ne lin ne laine." Jerome Cardan looked in vain, he says, for hair on the Salamander! Albertus Magnus calls the incombustible fibre pluma Salamandri; and accordingly Bold Bauduin de Sebourc finds the Salamander in the Terrestrial Paradise a kind of bird covered with the whitest plumage; of this he takes some, which he gets woven into a cloth; this he presents to the Pope, and the Pontiff applies it to the purpose mentioned in the text, viz. to cover the holy napkin of St. Veronica.

Gervase of Tilbury writes: "I saw, when lately at Rome, a broad strap of Salamander skin, like a girdle for the loins, which had been brought thither by Cardinal Peter of Capua. When it had become somewhat soiled by use, I myself saw it cleaned perfectly, and without receiving harm, by being put in the fire."

In Persian the creature is called Samandar, Samandal, etc., and some derive the word from Sam, "fire," and Andar, "within." Doubtless it is a corruption of the Greek [Greek: Salamandra], whatever be the origin of that. Bakui says the animal is found at Ghur, near Herat, and is like a mouse. Another author, quoted by D'Herbelot, says it is like a marten.

[Sir T. Douglas Forsyth, in his Introductory Remarks to Prjevalsky's Travels to Lob-nor (p. 20), at Aksu says: "The asbestos mentioned by Marco Polo as a utilized product of this region is not even so known in this country."—H. C.]

+ Interesting details regarding the fabrication of cloth and paper from amianth or asbestos are contained in a report presented to the French Institute by M. Sage (Mem. Ac. Sciences, 2e Sem., 1806, p. 102), of which large extracts are given in the Diction. general des Tissus, par M. Bezon, 2e ed. vol. ii. Lyon, 1859, p. 5. He mentions that a Sudarium of this material is still shown at the Vatican; we hope it is the cover which Kublai sent.

[This hope is not to be realized. Mgr. Duchesne, of the Institut de France, writes to me from Rome, from information derived from the keepers of the Vatican Museum, that there is no sudarium from the Great Khan, that indeed part of a sudarium made of asbestos is shown (under glass) in this Museum, about 20 inches long, but it is ancient, and was found in a Pagan tomb of the Appian Way.—H. C.]

M. Sage exhibited incombustible paper made from this material, and had himself seen a small furnace of Chinese origin made from it. Madame Perpente, an Italian lady, who experimented much with asbestos, found that from a crude mass of that substance threads could be elicited which were ten times the length of the mass itself, and were indeed sometimes several metres in length, the fibres seeming to be involved, like silk in a cocoon. Her process of preparation was much like that described by Marco. She succeeded in carding and reeling the material, made gloves and the like, as well as paper, from it, and sent to the Institute a work printed on such paper.

The Rev. A. Williamson mentions asbestos as found in Shantung. The natives use it for making stoves, crucibles, and so forth.

(Sir T. Browne, I. 293; Bongars, I. 1104; Cahier et Martin, III. 271; Cardan, de Rer. Varietate, VII. 33; Alb. Mag. Opera, 1551, II. 227, 233; Fr. Michel, Recherches, etc., II. 91; Gerv. of Tilbury, p. 13; N. et E. II. 493; D. des Tissus, II. 1-12; J. N. China Branch R. A. S., December, 1867, p. 70.) [Berger de Xivrey, Traditions teratologiques, 457-458, 460-463.—H. C.]

[1] The late Mr. Atkinson has been twice alluded to in this note. I take the opportunity of saying that Mr. Ney Elias, a most competent judge, who has travelled across the region in question whilst admitting, as every one must, Atkinson's vagueness and sometimes very careless statements, is not at all disposed to discredit the truth of his narrative.



CHAPTER XLIII.

OF THE PROVINCE OF SUKCHUR.

On leaving the province of which I spoke before,[NOTE 1] you ride ten days between north-east and east, and in all that way you find no human dwelling, or next to none, so that there is nothing for our book to speak of.

At the end of those ten days you come to another province called SUKCHUR, in which there are numerous towns and villages. The chief city is called SUKCHU.[NOTE 2] The people are partly Christians and partly Idolaters, and all are subject to the Great Kaan.

The great General Province to which all these three provinces belong is called TANGUT.

Over all the mountains of this province rhubarb is found in great abundance, and thither merchants come to buy it, and carry it thence all over the world.[NOTE 3] [Travellers, however, dare not visit those mountains with any cattle but those of the country, for a certain plant grows there which is so poisonous that cattle which eat it lose their hoofs. The cattle of the country know it and eschew it.[NOTE 4]] The people live by agriculture, and have not much trade. [They are of a brown complexion. The whole of the province is healthy.]

NOTE 1.—Referring apparently to Shachau; see Note 1 and the closing words of last chapter.

NOTE 2.—There is no doubt that the province and city are those of SUHCHAU, but there is a great variety in the readings, and several texts have a marked difference between the name of the province and that of the city, whilst others give them as the same. I have adopted those to which the resultants of the readings of the best texts seem to point, viz. Succiur and Succiu, though with considerable doubt whether they should not be identical. Pauthier declares that Suctur, which is the reading of his favourite MS., is the exact pronunciation, after the vulgar Mongol manner, of Suh-chau-lu, the Lu or circuit of Suhchau; whilst Neumann says that the Northern Chinese constantly add an euphonic particle or to the end of words. I confess to little faith in such refinements, when no evidence is produced.

[Suhchau had been devastated and its inhabitants massacred by Chinghiz Khan in 1226.—H. C.]

Suhchau is called by Rashiduddin, and by Shah Rukh's ambassadors, Sukchu, in exact correspondence with the reading we have adopted for the name of the city, whilst the Russian Envoy Boikoff, in the 17th century, calls it "Suktsey, where the rhubarb grows"; and Anthony Jenkinson, in Hakluyt, by a slight metathesis, Sowchick. Suhchau lies just within the extreme north-west angle of the Great Wall. It was at Suhchau that Benedict Goes was detained, waiting for leave to go on to Peking, eighteen weary months, and there he died just as aid reached him.

NOTE 3.—The real rhubarb [Rheum palmatum] grows wild, on very high mountains. The central line of its distribution appears to be the high range dividing the head waters of the Hwang-Ho, Yalung, and Min-Kiang. The chief markets are Siningfu (see ch. lvii.), and Kwan-Kian in Szechwan. In the latter province an inferior kind is grown in fields, but the genuine rhubarb defies cultivation. (See Richthofen, Letters, No. VII. p. 69.) Till recently it was almost all exported by Kiakhta and Russia, but some now comes via Hankau and Shanghai.

["See, on the preparation of the root in China, Gemelli-Careri. (Churchill's Collect., Bk. III. ch. v. 365.) It is said that when Chinghiz Khan was pillaging Tangut, the only things his minister, Yeh-lue Ch'u-ts'ai, would take as his share of the booty were a few Chinese books and a supply of rhubarb, with which he saved the lives of a great number of Mongols, when, a short time after, an epidemic broke out in the army." (D'Ohsson, I. 372.—Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 193, note.)

"With respect to rhubarb ... the Suchowchi also makes the remark, that the best rhubarb, with golden flowers in the breaking, is gathered in this province (district of Shan-tan), and that it is equally beneficial to men and beasts, preserving them from the pernicious effects of the heat." (Palladius, l.c. p. 9.)—H. C.]

NOTE 4.—Erba is the title applied to the poisonous growth, which may be either "plant" or "grass." It is not unlikely that it was a plant akin to the Andromeda ovalifolia, the tradition of the poisonous character of which prevails everywhere along the Himalaya from Nepal to the Indus.

It is notorious for poisoning sheep and goats at Simla and other hill sanitaria; and Dr. Cleghorn notes the same circumstance regarding it that Polo heard of the plant in Tangut, viz. that its effects on flocks imported from the plains are highly injurious, whilst those of the hills do not appear to suffer, probably because they shun the young leaves, which alone are deleterious. Mr. Marsh attests the like fact regarding the Kalmia angustifolia of New England, a plant of the same order (Ericaceae). Sheep bred where it abounds almost always avoid browsing on its leaves, whilst those brought from districts where it is unknown feed upon it and are poisoned.

Firishta, quoting from the Zafar-Namah, says: "On the road from Kashmir towards Tibet there is a plain on which no other vegetable grows but a poisonous grass that destroys all the cattle that taste of it, and therefore no horsemen venture to travel that route." And Abbe Desgodins, writing from E. Tibet, mentions that sheep and goats are poisoned by rhododendron leaves. (Dr. Hugh Cleghorn in J. Agricultural and Hortic. Society of India, XIV. part 4; Marsh's Man and Nature, p. 40; Briggs Firishta, IV. 449; Bul. de la Soc. de Geog. 1873, I. 333.)

["This poisonous plant seems to be the Stipa inebrians described by the late Dr. Hance in the Journal of Bot. 1876, p. 211, from specimens sent to me by Belgian Missionaries from the Ala Shan Mountains, west of the Yellow River." (Bretschneider, Hist. of Bot. Disc. I. p. 5.)

"M. Polo notices that the cattle not indigenous to the province lose their hoofs in the Suh-chau Mountains; but that is probably not on account of some poisonous grass, but in consequence of the stony ground." (Palladius, l.c. p. 9.)—H. C.]



CHAPTER XLIV.

OF THE CITY OF CAMPICHU.

Campichu is also a city of Tangut, and a very great and noble one. Indeed it is the capital and place of government of the whole province of Tangut.[NOTE 1] The people are Idolaters, Saracens, and Christians, and the latter have three very fine churches in the city, whilst the Idolaters have many minsters and abbeys after their fashion. In these they have an enormous number of idols, both small and great, certain of the latter being a good ten paces in stature; some of them being of wood, others of clay, and others yet of stone. They are all highly polished, and then covered with gold. The great idols of which I speak lie at length.[NOTE 2] And round about them there are other figures of considerable size, as if adoring and paying homage before them.

Now, as I have not yet given you particulars about the customs of these Idolaters, I will proceed to tell you about them.

You must know that there are among them certain religious recluses who lead a more virtuous life than the rest. These abstain from all lechery, though they do not indeed regard it as a deadly sin; howbeit if any one sin against nature they condemn him to death. They have an Ecclesiastical Calendar as we have; and there are five days in the month that they observe particularly; and on these five days they would on no account either slaughter any animal or eat flesh meat. On those days, moreover, they observe much greater abstinence altogether than on other days.[NOTE 3]

Among these people a man may take thirty wives, more or less, if he can but afford to do so, each having wives in proportion to his wealth and means; but the first wife is always held in highest consideration. The men endow their wives with cattle, slaves, and money, according to their ability. And if a man dislikes any one of his wives, he just turns her off and takes another. They take to wife their cousins and their fathers' widows (always excepting the man's own mother), holding to be no sin many things that we think grievous sins, and, in short, they live like beasts.[NOTE 4]

Messer Maffeo and Messer Marco Polo dwelt a whole year in this city when on a mission.[NOTE 5]

Now we will leave this and tell you about other provinces towards the north, for we are going to take you a sixty days' journey in that direction.

NOTE 1.—Campichiu is undoubtedly Kanchau, which was at this time, as Pauthier tells us, the chief city of the administration of Kansuh corresponding to Polo's Tangut. Kansuh itself is a name compounded of the names of the two cities Kan-chau and Suh-chau.

[Kanchau fell under the Tangut dominion in 1208. (Palladius, p. 10.) The Musulmans mentioned by Polo at Shachau and Kanchau probably came from Khotan.—H. C.]

The difficulties that have been made about the form of the name Campiciou, etc., in Polo, and the attempts to explain these, are probably alike futile. Quatremere writes the Persian form of the name after Abdurrazzak as Kamtcheou, but I see that Erdmann writes it after Rashid, I presume on good grounds, as Ckamidschu, i.e. Kamiju or Kamichu. And that this was the Western pronunciation of the name is shown by the form which Pegolotti uses, Camexu, i.e. Camechu. The p in Polo's spelling is probably only a superfluous letter, as in the occasional old spelling of dampnum, contempnere, hympnus, tirampnus, sompnour, Dampne Deu. In fact, Marignolli writes Polo's Quinsai as Campsay.

It is worthy of notice that though Ramusio's text prints the names of these two cities as Succuir and Campion, his own pronunciation of them appears to have been quite well understood by the Persian traveller Hajji Mahomed, for it is perfectly clear that the latter recognized in these names Suhchau and Kanchau. (See Ram. II. f. 14v.) The second volume of the Navigationi, containing Polo, was published after Ramusio's death, and it is possible that the names as he himself read them were more correct (e.g. Succiur, Campjou).



NOTE 2.—This is the meaning of the phrase in the G. T.: "Ceste grande ydre gigent," as may be seen from Ramusio's giaciono distesi. Lazari renders the former expression, "giganteggia un idolo," etc., a phrase very unlike Polo. The circumstance is interesting, because this recumbent Colossus at Kanchau is mentioned both by Hajji Mahomed and by Shah Rukh's people. The latter say: "In this city of Kanchu there is an Idol-Temple 500 cubits square. In the middle is an idol lying at length which measures 50 paces. The sole of the foot is nine paces long, and the instep is 21 cubits in girth. Behind this image and overhead are other idols of a cubit (?) in height, besides figures of Bakshis as large as life. The action of all is hit off so admirably that you would think they were alive." These great recumbent figures are favourites in Buddhist countries still, e.g. in Siam, Burma, and Ceylon. They symbolise Sakya Buddha entering Nirvana. Such a recumbent figure, perhaps the prototype of these, was seen by Hiuen Tsang in a Vihara close to the Sal Grove at Kusinagara, where Sakya entered that state, i.e. died. The stature of Buddha was, we are told, 12 cubits; but Brahma, Indra, and the other gods vainly tried to compute his dimensions. Some such rude metaphor is probably embodied in these large images. I have described one 69 feet long in Burma (represented in the cut), but others exist of much greater size, though probably none equal to that which Hiuen Tsang, in the 7th century, saw near Bamian, which was 1000 feet in length! I have heard of but one such image remaining in India, viz. in one of the caves at Dhamnar in Malwa. This is 15 feet long, and is popularly known as "Bhim's Baby." (Cathay, etc., pp. cciii., ccxviii.; Mission to Ava, p. 52; V. et V. de H. T., p. 374: Cunningham's Archael. Reports, ii. 274; Tod, ii. 273.)

["The temple, in which M. Polo saw an idol of Buddha, represented in a lying position, is evidently Wo-fo-sze, i.e. 'Monastery of the lying Buddha.' It was built in 1103 by a Tangut queen, to place there three idols representing Buddha in this posture, which have since been found in the ground on this very spot." (Palladius, l.c. p. 10.)

Rubruck (p. 144) says, "A Nestorian, who had come from Cathay told me that in that country there is an idol so big that it can be seen from two days off." Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 144, note) writes, "The largest stone image I have seen is in a cave temple at Yung kan, about 10 miles north-west of Ta t'ung Fu in Shan-si. Pere Gerbillon says the Emperor K'ang hsi measured it himself and found it to be 57 chih high (61 feet). (Duhalde, Description, IV. 352.) I have seen another colossal statue in a cave near Pinchou in north-west Shan-si, and there is another about 45 miles south of Ning hsia Fu, near the left bank of the Yellow River. (Rockhill, Land of the Lamas, 26, and Diary, 47.) The great recumbent figure of the 'Sleeping Buddha' in the Wo Fo ssu, near Peking, is of clay."

King Haython (Brosset's ed. p. 181) mentions the statue in clay, of an extraordinary height, of a God (Buddha) aged 3040 years, who is to live 370,000 years more, when he will be superseded by another god called Madri (Maitreya).—H. C.]



NOTE 3.—Marco is now speaking of the Lamas, or clergy of Tibetan Buddhism. The customs mentioned have varied in details, both locally and with the changes that the system has passed through in the course of time.

The institutes of ancient Buddhism set apart the days of new and full moon to be observed by the Sramanas or monks, by fasting, confession, and listening to the reading of the law. It became usual for the laity to take part in the observance, and the number of days was increased to three and then to four, whilst Hiuen Tsang himself speaks of "the six fasts of every month," and a Chinese authority quoted by Julien gives the days as the 8th, 14th, 15th, 23rd, 29th, and 30th. Fabian says that in Ceylon preaching took place on the 8th, 14th, and 15th days of the month. Four is the number now most general amongst Buddhist nations, and the days may be regarded as a kind of Buddhist Sabbath. In the southern countries and in Nepal they occur at the moon's changes. In Tibet and among the Mongol Buddhists they are not at equal intervals, though I find the actual days differently stated by different authorities. Pallas says the Mongols observed the 13th, 14th, and 15th, the three days being brought together, he thought, on account of the distance many Lamas had to travel to the temple—just as in some Scotch country parishes they used to give two sermons in one service for like reason! Koeppen, to whose work this note is much indebted, says the Tibetan days are the 14th, 15th, 29th, 30th, and adds as to the manner of observance: "On these days, by rule, among the Lamas, nothing should be tasted but farinaceous food and tea; the very devout refrain from all food from sunrise to sunset. The Temples are decorated, and the altar tables set out with the holy symbols, with tapers, and with dishes containing offerings in corn, meal, tea, butter, etc., and especially with small pyramids of dough, or of rice or clay, and accompanied by much burning of incense-sticks. The service performed by the priests is more solemn, the music louder and more exciting, than usual. The laity make their offerings, tell their beads, and repeat Om mani padma hom," etc. In the concordat that took place between the Dalai-Lama and the Altun Khaghan, on the reconversion of the Mongols to Buddhism in the 16th century, one of the articles was the entire prohibition of hunting and the slaughter of animals on the monthly fast days. The practice varies much, however, even in Tibet, with different provinces and sects—a variation which the Ramusian text of Polo implies in these words: "For five days, or four days, or three in each month, they shed no blood," etc.

In Burma the Worship Day, as it is usually called by Europeans, is a very gay scene, the women flocking to the pagodas in their brightest attire. (H. T. Memoires, I. 6, 208; Koeppen, I. 563-564, II. 139, 307-308; Pallas, Samml. II. 168-169).

NOTE 4.—These matrimonial customs are the same that are afterwards ascribed to the Tartars, so we defer remark.

NOTE 5.—So Pauthier's text, "en legation." The G. Text includes Nicolo Polo, and says, "on business of theirs that is not worth mentioning," and with this Ramusio agrees.



CHAPTER XLV.

OF THE CITY OF ETZINA.

When you leave the city of Campichu you ride for twelve days, and then reach a city called ETZINA, which is towards the north on the verge of the Sandy Desert; it belongs to the Province of Tangut.[NOTE 1] The people are Idolaters, and possess plenty of camels and cattle, and the country produces a number of good falcons, both Sakers and Lanners. The inhabitants live by their cultivation and their cattle, for they have no trade. At this city you must needs lay in victuals for forty days, because when you quit Etzina, you enter on a desert which extends forty days' journey to the north, and on which you meet with no habitation nor baiting-place.[NOTE 2] In the summer-time, indeed, you will fall in with people, but in the winter the cold is too great. You also meet with wild beasts (for there are some small pine-woods here and there), and with numbers of wild asses.[NOTE 3] When you have travelled these forty days across the Desert you come to a certain province lying to the north. Its name you shall hear presently.



NOTE 1.—Deguignes says that YETSINA is found in a Chinese Map of Tartary of the Mongol era, and this is confirmed by Pauthier, who reads it Itsinai, and adds that the text of the Map names it as one of the seven Lu or Circuits of the Province of Kansuh (or Tangut). Indeed, in D'Anville's Atlas we find a river called Etsina Pira, running northward from Kanchau, and a little below the 41st parallel joining another from Suhchau. Beyond the junction is a town called Hoa-tsiang, which probably represents Etzina. Yetsina is also mentioned in Gaubil's History of Chinghiz as taken by that conqueror in 1226, on his last campaign against Tangut. This capture would also seem from Petis de la Croix to be mentioned by Rashiduddin. Gaubil says the Chinese Geography places Yetsina north of Kanchau and north-east of Suhchau, at a distance of 120 leagues from Kanchau, but observes that this is certainly too great. (Gaubil, p. 49.)

[I believe there can be no doubt that Etzina must be looked for on the river Hei-shui, called Etsina by the Mongols, east of Suhchau. This river empties its waters into the two lakes Soho-omo and Sopo-omo. Etzina would have been therefore situated on the river on the border of the Desert, at the top of a triangle whose bases would be Suhchau and Kanchau. This river was once part of the frontier of the kingdom of Tangut. (Cf. Deveria, Notes d'epigraphie mongolo-chinoise, p. 4.) Reclus (Geog. Univ., Asie Orientale, p. 159) says: "To the east [of Hami], beyond the Chukur Gobi, are to be found also some permanent villages and the remains of cities. One of them is perhaps the 'cite d'Etzina' of which Marco Polo speaks, and the name is to be found in that of the river Az-sind."

"Through Kanchau was the shortest, and most direct and convenient road to I-tsi-nay.... I-tsi-nay, or Echine, is properly the name of a lake. Khubilai, disquieted by his factious relatives on the north, established a military post near lake I-tsi-nay, and built a town, or a fort on the south-western shore of this lake. The name of I-tsi-nay appears from that time; it does not occur in the chronicle of the Tangut kingdom; the lake had then another name. Vestiges of the town are seen to this day; the buildings were of large dimensions, and some of them were very fine. In Marco Polo's time there existed a direct route from I-tsi-nay to Karakorum; traces of this road are still noticeable, but it is no more used. This circumstance, i.e. the existence of a road from I-tsi-nay to Karakorum, probably led Marco Polo to make an excursion (a mental one, I suppose) to the residence of the Khans in Northern Mongolia." (Palladius, l.c. pp. 10-11.)—H. C.]

NOTE 2.—"Erberge" (G. T.). Pauthier has Herbage.

NOTE 3.—The Wild Ass of Mongolia is the Dshiggetai of Pallas (Asinus hemionus of Gray), and identical with the Tibetan Kyang of Moorcroft and Trans-Himalayan sportsmen. It differs, according to Blyth, only in shades of colour and unimportant markings from the Ghor Khar of Western India and the Persian Deserts, the Kulan of Turkestan, which Marco has spoken of in a previous passage (supra, ch. xvi.; J. A. S. B. XXVIII. 229 seqq.). There is a fine Kyang in the Zoological Gardens, whose portrait, after Wolf, is given here. But Mr. Ney Elias says of this animal that he has little of the aspect of his nomadic brethren. [The wild ass (Tibetan Kyang, Mongol Holu or Hulan) is called by the Chinese yeh ma, "wild horse," though "every one admits that it is an ass, and should be called yeh lo-tzu." (Rockhill, Land of the Lamas, 151, note.)—H. C.]

[Captain Younghusband (1886) saw in the Altai Mountains "considerable numbers of wild asses, which appeared to be perfectly similar to the Kyang of Ladak and Tibet, and wild horses too—the Equus Prejevalskii—roaming about these great open plains." (Proc. R. G. S. X. 1888, p. 495.) Dr. Sven Hedin says the habitat of the Kulan is the heights of Tibet as well as the valley of the Tarim; it looks like a mule with the mane and tail of an ass, but shorter ears, longer than those of a horse; he gives a picture of it.—H. C.]



CHAPTER XLVI.

OF THE CITY OF CARACORON.

Caracoron is a city of some three miles in compass. [It is surrounded by a strong earthen rampart, for stone is scarce there. And beside it there is a great citadel wherein is a fine palace in which the Governor resides.] 'Tis the first city that the Tartars possessed after they issued from their own country. And now I will tell you all about how they first acquired dominion and spread over the world.[NOTE 1]

Originally the Tartars[NOTE 2] dwelt in the north on the borders of CHORCHA.[NOTE 3] Their country was one of great plains; and there were no towns or villages in it, but excellent pasture-lands, with great rivers and many sheets of water; in fact it was a very fine and extensive region. But there was no sovereign in the land. They did, however, pay tax and tribute to a great prince who was called in their tongue UNC CAN, the same that we call Prester John, him in fact about whose great dominion all the world talks.[NOTE 4] The tribute he had of them was one beast out of every ten, and also a tithe of all their other gear.

Now it came to pass that the Tartars multiplied exceedingly. And when Prester John saw how great a people they had become, he began to fear that he should have trouble from them. So he made a scheme to distribute them over sundry countries, and sent one of his Barons to carry this out. When the Tartars became aware of this they took it much amiss, and with one consent they left their country and went off across a desert to a distant region towards the north, where Prester John could not get at them to annoy them. Thus they revolted from his authority and paid him tribute no longer. And so things continued for a time.

NOTE 1.—KARAKORUM, near the upper course of the River Orkhon, is said by Chinese authors to have been founded by Buku Khan of the Hoei-Hu or Uigurs, in the 8th century, In the days of Chinghiz, we are told that it was the headquarters of his ally, and afterwards enemy, Togrul Wang Khan, the Prester John of Polo. ["The name of this famous city is Mongol, Kara, 'black,' and Kuren, 'a camp,' or properly 'pailing.'" It was founded in 1235 by Okkodai, who called it Ordu Balik, or "the City of the Ordu," otherwise "The Royal City." Mohammedan authors say it took its name of Karakorum from the mountains to the south of it, in which the Orkhon had its source. (D'Ohsson, ii. 64.) The Chinese mention a range of mountains from which the Orkhon flows, called Wu-te kien shan. (T'ang shu, bk. 43b.) Probably these are the same. Rashiduddin speaks of a tribe of Utikien Uigurs living in this country. (Bretschneider, Med. Geog. 191; D'Ohsson, i. 437. Rockhill, Rubruck, 220, note.)—Karakorum was called by the Chinese Ho-lin and was chosen by Chinghiz, in 1206, as his capital; the full name of it, Ha-la Ho-lin, was derived from a river to the west. (Yuen shi, ch. lviii.) Gaubil (Holin, p. 10) says that the river, called in his days in Tartar Karoha, was, at the time of the Mongol Emperors, named by the Chinese Ha-la Ho-lin, in Tartar language Ka la Ko lin, or Cara korin, or Kara Koran. In the spring of 1235, Okkodai had a wall raised round Ho-lin and a palace called Wang an, built inside the city. (Gaubil, Gentchiscan, 89.) After the death of Kublai, Ho-lin was altered into Ho-Ning, and, in 1320, the name of the province was changed into Ling-pe (mountainous north, i.e. the Yin-shan chain, separating China Proper from Mongolia). In 1256, Mangu Kaan decided to transfer the seat of government to Kaiping-fu, or Shangtu, near the present Dolonnor, north of Peking. (Supra in Prologue, ch. xiii. note 1.) In 1260, Kublai transferred his capital to Ta-Tu (Peking).

Plano Carpini (1246) is the first Western traveller to mention it by name which he writes Caracoron; he visited the Sira Orda, at half a day's journey from Karakorum, where Okkodai used to pass the summer; it was situated at a place Ormektua. (Rockhill, Rubruck, 21, III.) Rubruquis (1253) visited the city itself; the following is his account of it: "As regards the city of Caracoron, you must understand that if you set aside the Kaan's own Palace, it is not as good as the Borough of St. Denis; and as for the Palace, the Abbey of St. Denis is worth ten of it! There are two streets in the town; one of which is occupied by the Saracens, and in that is the marketplace. The other street is occupied by the Cathayans, who are all craftsmen. Besides these two streets there are some great palaces occupied by the court secretaries. There are also twelve idol temples belonging to different nations, two Mahummeries in which the Law of Mahomet is preached, and one church of the Christians at the extremity of the town. The town is enclosed by a mud-wall and has four gates. At the east gate they sell millet and other corn, but the supply is scanty; at the west gate they sell rams and goats; at the south gate oxen and waggons; at the north gate horses.... Mangu Kaan has a great Court beside the Town Rampart, which is enclosed by a brick wall, just like our priories. Inside there is a big palace, within which he holds a drinking-bout twice a year;... there are also a number of long buildings like granges, in which are kept his treasures and his stores of victual" (345-6; 334).

Where was Karakorum situated?

The Archimandrite Palladius is very prudent (l.c. p. 11): "Everything that the studious Chinese authors could gather and say of the situation of Karakhorum is collected in two Chinese works, Lo fung low wen kao (1849), and Mungku yew mu ki (1859). However, no positive conclusion can be derived from these researches, chiefly in consequence of the absence of a tolerably correct map of Northern Mongolia."

Abel Remusat (Mem. sur Geog. Asie Centrale, p. 20) made a confusion between Karabalgasun and Karakorum which has misled most writers after him.

Sir Henry Yule says: "The evidence adduced in Abel Remusat's paper on Karakorum (Mem. de l' Acad. R. des Insc. VII. 288) establishes the site on the north bank of the Orkhon, and about five days' journey above the confluence of the Orkhon and Tula. But as we have only a very loose knowledge of these rivers, it is impossible to assign the geographical position with accuracy. Nor is it likely that ruins exist beyond an outline perhaps of the Kaan's Palace walls."

In the Geographical Magazine for July, 1874 (p. 137), Sir Henry Yule has been enabled, by the kind aid of Madame Fedtchenko in supplying a translation from the Russian, to give some account of Mr. Paderin's visit to the place, in the summer of 1873, along with a sketch-map.

"The site visited by Mr. Paderin is shown, by the particulars stated in that paper, to be sufficiently identified with Karakorum. It is precisely that which Remusat indicated, and which bears in the Jesuit maps, as published by D'Anville, the name of Talarho Hara Palhassoun (i.e. Kara Balghasun), standing 4 or 5 miles from the left bank of the Orkhon, in lat. (by the Jesuit Tables) 47 deg. 32' 24". It is now known as Kara-Kharam (Rampart) or Kara Balghasun (city). The remains consist of a quadrangular rampart of mud and sun-dried brick, of about 500 paces to the side, and now about 9 feet high, with traces of a higher tower, and of an inner rampart parallel to the other. But these remains probably appertain to the city as re-occupied by the descendants of the Yuen in the end of the 14th century, after their expulsion from China."

Dr. Bretschneider (Med. Res. I. p. 123) rightly observes: "It seems, however, that Paderin is mistaken in his supposition. At least it does not agree with the position assigned to the ancient Mongol residence in the Mongol annals Erdenin erikhe, translated into Russian, in 1883, by Professor Pozdneiev. It is there positively stated (p. 110, note 2) that the monastery of Erdenidsu, founded in 1585, was erected on the ruins of that city, which once had been built by order of Ogotai Khan, and where he had established his residence; and where, after the expulsion of the Mongols from China, Togontemur again had fixed the Mongol court. This vast monastery still exists, one English mile, or more, east of the Orkhon. It has even been astronomically determined by the Jesuit missionaries, and is marked on our maps of Mongolia. Pozdneiev, who visited the place in 1877, obligingly informs me that the square earthen wall surrounding the monastery of Erdenidsu, and measuring about an English mile in circumference, may well be the very wall of ancient Karakorum."

Recent researches have fully confirmed the belief that the Erdeni Tso, or Eideni Chao, Monastery occupies the site of Karakorum, near the bank of the Orkhon, between this river and the Kokchin (old) Orkhon. (See map in Inscriptions de l'Orkhon, Helsingfors, 1892; a plan of the vicinity and of the Erdeni Tso is given (plate 36) in W. Radloff's Atlas der Alterthuemer der Mongolei, St. Pet., 1892.)



According to a work of the 13th century quoted by the late Professor G. Deveria, the distance between the old capital of the Uighur, Kara Balgasun, on the left bank of the Orkhon, north of Erdeni Tso, and the Ho-lin or Karakorum of the Mongols, would be 70 li (about 30 miles), and such is the space between Erdeni Tso and Kara Balgasun. M. Marcel Monnier (Itineraires, p. 107) estimates the bird's-eye distance from Erdeni Tso to Kara Balgasun at 33 kilom. (about 20-1/2 miles). "When the brilliant epoch of the power of the Chinghizkhanides," says Professor Axel Heikel, "was at an end, the city of Karakorum fell into oblivion, and towards the year 1590 was founded, in the centre of this historically celebrated region of the Orkhon, the most ancient of Buddhist monasteries of Mongolia, this of Erdeni Tso [Erdeni Chao]. It was built, according to a Mongol chronicle, on the ruins of the town built by Okkodai, son of Chinghiz Khan, that is to say, on the ancient Karakorum. (Inscriptions de l'Orkhon.)" So Professor Heikel, like Professor Pozdneiev, concludes that Erdeni Tso was built on the site of Karakorum and cannot be mistaken for Karabalgasun. Indeed it is highly probable that one of the walls of the actual convent belonged to the old Mongol capital. The travels and researches by expeditions from Finland and Russia have made these questions pretty clear. Some most interesting inscriptions have been brought home and have been studied by a number of Orientalists: G. Schlegel, O. Donner, G. Deveria, Vasiliev, G. von der Gabelentz, Dr. Hirth, G. Huth, E. H. Parker, W. Bang, etc., and especially Professor Vilh. Thomsen, of Copenhagen, who deciphered them (Dechiffrement des Inscriptions de l'Orkhon et de l'Ienissei, Copenhague, 1894, 8vo; Inscriptions de l'Orkhon dechiffrees, par V. Thomsen, Helsingfors, 1894, 8vo), and Professor W. Radloff of St. Petersburg (Atlas der Alterthumer der Mongolei, 1892-6, fol.; Die alttuerkischen Inschriften der Mongolei, 1894-7, etc.). There is an immense literature on these inscriptions, and for the bibliography, I must refer the reader to H. Cordier, Etudes Chinoises (1891-1894), Leide, 1895, Id. (1895-1898), Leide, 1898, 8vo. The initiator of these discoveries was N. Iarindsev, of Irkutsk, who died at Barnaoul in 1894, and the first great expedition was started from Finland in 1890, under the guidance of Professor Axel Heikel. (Inscriptions de l'Orkhon recueillies par l'expedition finnoise, 1890, et publiees par la Societe Finno-Ougrienne, Helsingfors, 1892, fol.) The Russian expedition left the following year, 1891, under the direction of the Academician W. Radloff.

M. Chaffanjon (Nouv. Archiv. des Missions Scient. IX., 1899, p. 81), in 1895, does not appear to know that there is a difference between Kara Korum and Kara Balgasun, as he writes: "Forty kilometres south of Kara Korum or Kara Balgasun, the convent of Erdin Zoun."

A plan of Kara Balgasun is given (plate 27) in Radloff's Atlas. See also Henri Cordier et Gaubil, Situation de Holin en Tartarie, Leide, 1893.

In Rubruquis's account of Karakorum there is one passage of great interest: "Then master William [Guillaume L'Orfevre] had made for us an iron to make wafers ... he made also a silver box to put the body of Christ in, with relics in little cavities made in the sides of the box." Now M. Marcel Monnier, who is one of the last, if not the last traveller who visited the region, tells me that he found in the large temple of Erdeni Tso an iron (the cast bore a Latin cross; had the wafer been Nestorian, the cross should have been Greek) and a silver box, which are very likely the objects mentioned by Rubruquis. It is a new proof of the identity of the sites of Erdeni Tso and Karakorum.—H. C.]



NOTE 2.—[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, 113, note) says: "The earliest date to which I have been able to trace back the name Tartar is A.D. 732. We find mention made in a Turkish inscription found on the river Orkhon and bearing that date, of the Tokuz Tatar, or 'Nine (tribes of) Tatars,' and of the Otuz Tatar, or 'Thirty (tribes of) Tatars.' It is probable that these tribes were then living between the Oguz or Uigur Turks on the west, and the Kitan on the east. (Thomsen, Inscriptions de l'Orkhon, 98, 126, 140.) Mr. Thos. Watters tells me that the Tartars are first mentioned by the Chinese in the period extending from A.D. 860 to 874; the earliest mention I have discovered, however, is under date of A.D. 880. (Wu tai shih, Bk. 4.) We also read in the same work (Bk. 74, 2) that 'The Ta-ta were a branch of the Mo-ho (the name the Nu-chen Tartars bore during the Sui and T'ang periods: Ma Tuan-lin, Bk. 327, 5). They first lived to the north of the Kitan. Later on they were conquered by this people, when they scattered, a part becoming tributaries of the Kitan, another to the P'o-hai (a branch of the Mo-ho), while some bands took up their abode in the Yin Shan in Southern Mongolia, north of the provinces of Chih-li and Shan-si, and took the name of Ta-ta.' In 981 the Chinese ambassador to the Prince of Kao-chang (Karakhodjo, some 20 miles south-east of Turfan) traversed the Ta-ta country. They then seem to have occupied the northern bend of the Yellow River. He gives the names of some nine tribes of Ta-ta living on either side of the river. He notes that their neighbours to the east were Kitan, and that for a long time they had been fighting them after the occupation of Kan-chou by the Uigurs. (Ma Tuan-lin, Bk. 336, 12-14.) We may gather from this that these Tartars were already settled along the Yellow River and the Yin Shan (the valley in which is now the important frontier mart of Kwei-hua Ch'eng) at the beginning of the ninth century, for the Uigurs, driven southward by the Kirghiz, first occupied Kan-chou in north-western Kan-suh, somewhere about A.D. 842."]

NOTE 3.—CHORCHA (Ciorcia) is the Manchu country, whose people were at that time called by the Chinese Yuche or Niuche, and by the Mongols Churche, or as it is in Sanang Setzen, Jurchid. The country in question is several times mentioned by Rashiduddin as Churche. The founders of the Kin Dynasty, which the Mongols superseded in Northern China, were of Churche race. [It was part of Nayan's appanage. (See Bk. II. ch. v.)—H. C.]

NOTE 4.—The idea that a Christian potentate of enormous wealth and power, and bearing this title, ruled over vast tracts in the far East, was universal in Europe from the middle of the 12th to the end of the 13th century, after which time the Asiatic story seems gradually to have died away, whilst the Royal Presbyter was assigned to a locus in Abyssinia; the equivocal application of the term India to the East of Asia and the East of Africa facilitating this transfer. Indeed I have a suspicion, contrary to the view now generally taken, that the term may from the first have belonged to the Abyssinian Prince, though circumstances led to its being applied in another quarter for a time. It appears to me almost certain that the letter of Pope Alexander III., preserved by R. Hoveden, and written in 1177 to the Magnificus Rex Indorum, Sacerdotum sanctissimus, was meant for the King of Abyssinia.

Be that as it may, the inordinate report of Prester John's magnificence became especially diffused from about the year 1165, when a letter full of the most extravagant details was circulated, which purported to have been addressed by this potentate to the Greek Emperor Manuel, the Roman Emperor Frederick, the Pope, and other Christian sovereigns. By the circulation of this letter, glaring fiction as it is, the idea of this Christian Conqueror was planted deep in the mind of Europe, and twined itself round every rumour of revolution in further Asia. Even when the din of the conquests of Chinghiz began to be audible in the West, he was invested with the character of a Christian King, and more or less confounded with the mysterious Prester John.

The first notice of a conquering Asiatic potentate so styled had been brought to Europe by the Syrian Bishop of Gabala (Jibal, south of Laodicea in Northern Syria), who came, in 1145, to lay various grievances before Pope Eugene III. He reported that not long before a certain John, inhabiting the extreme East, king and Nestorian priest, and claiming descent from the Three Wise Kings, had made war on the Samiard Kings of the Medes and Persians, and had taken Ecbatana their capital. He was then proceeding to the deliverance of Jerusalem, but was stopped by the Tigris, which he could not cross, and compelled by disease in his host to retire.