CHAPTER LV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER LVI.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Syrrhaptes Pallasii.

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

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

CHAPTER LVII.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“For Him the large Yaks in his cold plains that bide

Whisk here and there, playful, their tails’ bushy pride,

And evermore flapping those fans of long hair

Which borrowed moonbeams have made splendid and fair,

Proclaim at each stroke (what our flapping men sing)

His title of Honour, ‘The Dread Mountain King.’”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reeves’s Pheasant.

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

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

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

CHAPTER LVIII.