they are likely to be useful in skin-diseases; indeed, Hamilton speaks of their efficacy in these (I. 95). The salt-streams are numerous on this line, and dates are abundant. The bitterness of the bread was however in all probability due to another cause, as Major Smith has kindly pointed out to me: "Throughout the mountains in the south of Persia, which are generally covered with dwarf oak, the people are in the habit of making bread of the acorns, or of the acorns mixed with wheat or barley. It is dark in colour, and very hard, bitter, and unpalatable.”

if

CHAPTER XX.

OF THE WEARISOME AND DESERT ROAD THAT HAS NOW TO BE

TRAVELLED.

ON departing from the city of Kerman you find the road for seven days most wearisome; and I will tell you how this is. The first three days you meet with no water, or next to none. And what little you do meet with is bitter green stuff, so salt that no one can drink it; and in fact you drink a drop of it, it will set you purging ten times at least by the way. It is the same with the salt which is made from those streams; no one dares to make use of it, because of the excessive purging which it occasions. Hence it is necessary to carry water for the people to last these three days; as for the cattle, they must needs drink of the bad water I have mentioned, as there is no help for it, and their great thirst makes them do so. But it scours them to such a degree that sometimes they die of it. In all those three days you meet with no human habitation; it is all desert, and the extremity of drought. Even of wild beasts there are none, for there is nothing for them to eat.'

After those three days of desert [you arrive at a stream of fresh water running underground, but along which there are holes broken in here and there, perhaps undermined by the stream, at which you can get sight of it. It has an abundant supply, and travellers worn with the hardships of the desert here rest and refresh themselves and their beasts.]2

You then enter another desert which extends for four days; it is very much like the former except that you do see some wild asses. And at the termination of these four days of desert you find another city which is called Cobinan.

NOTE 1. This description of the Desert of Kerman, says M. Khanikoff, "is very correct. As the only place in the Desert of Lút where water is found is the dirty, salt, bitter, and green water of the rivulet called Shor-Rúd (the Salt River) we can have no doubt of the direction of Marco Polo's route from Kerman so far." Nevertheless I do not agree with Khanikoff that the route lay N.E. in the direction of Ambar and Kain, for a reason which will appear under the next chapter. I imagine the route to have been nearly due north from Kerman, in the direction of Tabbas or of Tún. And even such a route would, according to Khanikoff's own map, pass the Shor-Rúd, though at a higher point.

I extract a few lines from Khanikoff's own narrative: "In proportion as we got deeper into the desert, the soil became more and more arid ; at daybreak I could still discover a few withered plants of Caligonum and Salsola, and not far from the same spot I saw a lark and another bird of a whitish colour, the last living things that we beheld in this dismal solitude. . . . The desert had now completely assumed the character of a land accursed, as the natives call it. Not the smallest blade of grass, no indication of animal life vivified the prospect; no sound but such as came from our own caravan broke the dreary silence of the void." (Mém. p. 176.)

NOTE 2.-I can have no doubt of the genuineness of this passage from Ramusio. Indeed some such passage is necessary; otherwise why distinguish between three days of desert and four days more of desert? The underground stream was probably a subterraneous canal (called Kanát or Kárez), such as is common in Persia; often conducted from a great distance. Here it may have been a relic of abandoned cultivation. Khanikoff, on the road between Kerman and Yezd, not far west of that which I suppose Marco to be travelling, says: "At the fifteen inhabited spots marked upon the map, they have water which has been brought from a great distance, and at considerable cost, by means of subterranean galleries to which you descend by large and deep wells. Although the water flows at some depth, its course is tracked upon the surface by a line of more abundant vegetation " (Ib. p. 200). Elphinstone says he has heard of such subterranean conduits thirty-six miles in length (I. 398).

CHAPTER XXI.

CONCERNING THE CITY OF COBINAN AND THE THINGS THAT ARE

MADE THERE.

COBINAN is a large town.' The people worship Mahommet. There is much Iron and Steel and Ondanique, and they make steel mirrors of great size and beauty. They also prepare both Tutia (a thing very good for the eyes) and Spodium; and I will tell you the process.

They have a vein of a certain earth which has the required quality, and this they put into a great flaming furnace, whilst over the furnace there is an iron grating. The smoke and moisture expelled from the earth of which I speak, adhere to the iron grating, and thus form Tutia, whilst the slag that is left after burning is the Spodium.

NOTE 1.-KOH-BANÁN is mentioned by Mokaddasi (A.D. 985) as one of the cities of Bardesir, the most northerly of the five circles into which he divides Kerman (see Sprenger, Post- und Reise-Route des Orients, p. 77). It is the subject of an article in the Geog. Dictionary of Yákút, though it has been there mistranscribed into Kubiyán and Kukiyán (see Leipzig ed. 1869, iv. p. 316, and Barbier de Meynard, Dict. de la Perse, p. 498). And it is also indicated by Mr. Abbott (J. R. G. S. XXV. 25) as the name of a district of Kerman, lying some distance to the east of his route when somewhat less than halfway between Yezd and Kerman. It would thus, I apprehend, be on or near the route between Kerman and Tabbas; one which I believe has been traced by no modern traveller. We may be certain that there is now no place at Kuh-Banan deserving the title of une cité grant, nor is it easy to believe that there was in Polo's time; he applies such terms too profusely. The meaning of the name is perhaps 'Hill of the Terebinths, or Wild Pistachioes,' " a tree which grows abundantly in the recesses of bleak, stony and desert mountains, e.g. about Shamakhi, about Shiraz, and in the deserts of Luristan and Lar." (Kämpfer, 409, 413.)

I had thought my identification of Cobinan original, but a communication from Mr. Abbott, and the opportunity which this procured me of seeing his MS. Report already referred to, showed that he had anticipated me many years ago. The following is an extract: "Districts of Kerman *** Kooh Benan. This is a hilly district abounding in fruits, such as grapes, peaches, pomegranates, sinjid (sweet-willow), wal

nuts, melons. A great deal of madder and some assafoetida is produced there. This is no doubt the country alluded to by Marco Polo, under the name of Cobinam, as producing iron, brass, and tutty, and which is still said to produce iron, copper, and tootea." There appear to be leadmines also in the district, as well as asbestos and sulphur. Mr. Abbott adds the names of nine villages, which he was not able to verify by comparison. These are Pooz, Terz, Goojerd, Aspuj, Kooh-e-Guevre, Dehneh, Boogheen, Bassab, Radk. The position of Kuh Banán is stated to lie between Bahabád (a place also mentioned by Yakut as producing Tutia) and Rávee, but this does not help us, and for approximate position we can only fall back on the note in Mr. Abbott's field-book as published in the J. R. G. S., viz. that the District lay in the mountains E.S. E. from a caravanserai ten miles S. E. of Gudran. To get the seven marches of Polo's itinerary we must carry the Town of Kuh Banán as far north as this indication can possibly admit, for Abbott made only five and a half marches from the spot where this observation was made to Kerman. Perhaps Polo's route deviated for the sake of the fresh water. That a district, such as Mr. Abbott's Report speaks of, should lie unnoticed, in a tract which our maps represent as part of the Great Desert, shows how very defective our geography of Persia still is.

NOTE 2.-Tutty (i.e. Tutia) is in modern English an impure oxide of zinc, collected from the flues where brass is made; and this appears to be precisely what Polo describes, unless it be that in his account the production of tutia from an ore of zinc is represented as the object and not an accident of the process. What he says reads almost like a condensed translation of Galen's account of Pompholyx and Spodos: "Pompholyx is produced in copper-smelting as Cadmia is; and it is also produced from Cadmia (carbonate of zinc) when put in the furnace, as is done (for instance) in Cyprus. The master of the works there, having no copper ready for smelting, ordered some pompholyx to be prepared from cadmia in my presence. Small pieces of cadmia were thrown into the fire in front of the copper-blast. The furnace-top was covered, with no vent at the crown, and intercepted the soot of the roasted cadmia. This, when collected, constitutes Pompholyx, whilst that which falls on the hearth is called Spodos, a great deal of which is got in copper-smelting." Pompholyx, he adds, is an ingredient in salves for eye-discharges and pustules (Galen, De Simpl. Medic. p. ix. in Latin ed., Venice, 1576). Matthioli, after quoting this, says that Pompholyx was commonly known in the laboratories by the Arabic name of Tutia. I see that pure oxide of zinc is stated to form in modern practice a valuable eye-ointment. Zinc is called in the Aín Akbari Rúh-i-Tútiya "Spirit of Tutty."

Teixeira speaks of tutia as found only in Kerman, in a range of mountains twelve parasangs from the capital. The ore got here was kneaded with water, and set to bake in crucibles in a potter's kiln. When well baked the crucibles were lifted and emptied, and the tutia

carried in boxes to Hormuz for sale. This corresponds with a modern account in Milburne, which says that the tutia imported to India from the Gulf is made from an argillaceous ore of zinc which is moulded into tubular cakes, and baked to a moderate hardness. The accurate Garcias da Horto is wrong for once, in saying that the tutia of Kerman is no mineral, but the ash of a certain tree called Goan.

(Matth. on Dioscorides, Ven. 1565, p. 1338-40; Teixeira, Relacion de Persia, p. 121; Milburne's Or. Commerce, I. 139; Garcias, f. 21 v.; Eng. Cyc., art. Zine; Aín Akbari, Bl. 40, 41).

CHAPTER XXII.

OF A CERTAIN DESERT THAT CONTINUES FOR EIGHT DAYS' JOURNEY.

WHEN you depart from this City of Cobinan, you find yourself again in a Desert of surpassing aridity which lasts for some eight days; here are neither fruits nor trees to be seen, and what water there is is bitter and bad, so that you have to carry both food and water. The cattle must needs drink the bad water, will they nill they, because of their great thirst. At the end of those eight days you arrive at a Province which is called TONOCAIN. It has a good many towns and villages, and forms the extremity of Persia towards the North.' It also contains an immense plain on which is found the ARBRE SOL, which we Christians call the Arbre Sec; and I will tell you what it is like. It is a tall and thick tree, having the bark on one side green and the other white; and it produces a rough husk like that of a chesnut, but without anything in it. The wood is yellow like box, and very strong, and there are no other trees near it nor within a hundred miles of it, except on one side where you find trees within about ten miles' distance. And there, the people of the country tell you, was fought the battle between Alexander and King Darius.2

The towns and villages have great abundance of everything good, for the climate is extremely temperate, being