is probably the Tigado of Hayton, of which he thus speaks: "The Assassins had an impregnable castle called Tigado, which was furnished with all necessaries, and was so strong that it had no fear of attack on any side. Howbeit, Haloön commanded a certain captain of his that he should take 10,000 Tartars who had been left in garrison in Persia, and with them lay siege to the said castle, and not leave it till he had taken it. Wherefore the said Tartars continued besieging it for seven whole years, winter and summer, without being able to take it. At last the Assassins surrendered, from sheer want of clothing, but not of victuals or other necessaries." This is Ramusio's version, but in other copies the length of siege is called 27 years, and in any case it is a general confirmation of the fact that Girdkuh was said to have held out for an extraordinary length of time. If Rashiduddin is right in naming 1270 as the date of its surrender, it would be quite a recent event when the Polo party passed, and draw special attention to the spot. (J. As. ser. 4, tom. xiii. 48; Ilch. I. 93, 104, 274; Q. R. p. 278; Ritter, VIII. 336.) CHAPTER XXVI. CONCERNING THE CITY OF SAPURGAN. ON leaving the Castle, you ride over fine plains and beautiful valleys, and pretty hillsides producing excellent grass-pasture, and abundance of fruits, and all other products. Armies are glad to take up their quarters here on account of the plenty that exists. This kind of country extends for six days' journey, with a goodly number of towns and villages, in which the people are worshippers of Mahommet. Sometimes also you meet with a tract of desert extending for 50 or 60 miles, or somewhat less, and in these deserts you find no water, but have to carry it along with you. The beasts do without drink until you have got across the desert tract and come to watering places. So after travelling for six days as I have told you, you come to a city called SAPURGAN. It has great plenty of everything, but especially of the very best melons in the world. They preserve them by paring them round and When round into strips, and drying them in the sun. dry they are sweeter than honey, and are carried off for sale all over the country. There is also abundance of game here, both of birds and beasts.' Note 1.—SAPURGAN probably closely expresses the pronunciation of the name of the city which the old Arabic writers call Sabúrkán and Shabúrkán, now called Shibrgán, lying some 90 miles west of Balkh; containing now some 12,000 inhabitants, and situated in a plain still richly cultivated. But I have seen no satisfactory solution of the difficulties as to the time assigned. This in the G. T. and in Ramusio is clearly six days. The point of departure is indeed uncertain, but even if we were to place that at Sharakhs on the extreme verge of cultivated Khorasan, which would be quite inconsistent with other data, it would have taken the travellers something like double the time to reach Shibrgan. Where I have followed the G. T. in its reading “quant l'en a chevauches six jornée tel che je vos ai contés, adunc treuve l'en une cité," &c., Pauthier's text has "Et quant l'en a chevauchié les vi cités si treuve l'en une cité qui a nom Sapurgan," and to this that editor adheres. But I suspect that cités is a mere lapsus for journées, as in the reading in one of his three MSS. What could be meant by "les vi cités"? What kind of French, old or new, is "chevauchier vi cités"? Whether the true route be, as I suppose, by Nishapur and Meshid, or, as Khanikoff supposes, by Herat and Badghis, it is strange that no one of those famous cities is mentioned. And we feel constrained to assume that something has been misunderstood in the dictation, or has dropt out of it. As a probable conjecture I should apply the six days to the extent of pleasing country described in the first lines of the chapter, and identify it with the tract between Sabzawur and the cessation of fertile country beyond Meshid. The distance would agree well, and a comparison with Fraser or Ferrier will show that even now the description, allowing for the compression of an old recollection, would be well founded; e.g. on the first march beyond Nishapur: "Fine villages, with plentiful gardens full of trees, that bear fruit of the highest flavour, may be seen all along the foot of the hills, and in the little recesses formed by the ravines whence issues the water that irrigates them. It was a rich and pleasing scene, and out of question by far the most populous and cultivated tract that I had seen in Persia. . . . Next morning we quitted Derrood . . . by a very indifferent but interesting road, the glen being finely wooded with walnut, mulberry, poplar, and willow-trees, and fruit-tree gardens rising one above the other upon the mountain-side, watered by little rills. . . . These gardens extended for several miles up the glen; beyond them the bank of the stream continued to be fringed with white sycamore, willow, ash, mulberry, poplar, and woods that love a moist situation," and so on, describing a style of scenery not common in Persia, and expressing diffusely (as it seems to me) the same picture as Polo's two lines. (See Fraser, 405, 432-3, 434, 436.) With reference to the dried melons of Shibrgan, Quatremère cites a history of Herat, which speaks of them almost in Polo's words. Ibn Batuta gives a like account of the melons of Khwarizm: "The surprising thing about these melons is the way the people have of slicing them, drying them in the sun, and then packing them in baskets, just as Malaga figs are treated in our part of the world. In this state they are sent to the remotest parts of India and China. There is no dried fruit so delicious, and all the while I lived at Dehli, when the travelling dealers came in, I never missed sending for these dried strips of melon.” (Q. R. 169; I. B. III. 15.) CHAPTER XXVII. OF THE CITY OF BALC. BALC is a noble city and a great, though it was much greater in former days. But the Tartars and other nations have greatly ravaged and destroyed it. There were formerly many fine palaces and buildings of marble, and the ruins of them still remain. The people of the city tell that it was here that Alexander took to wife the daughter of Darius. Here, you should be told, is the end of the empire of the Tartar Lord of the Levant. And this city is also the limit of Persia in the direction between east and north-east.' Now, let us quit this city, and I will tell you of another country called DOGANA.2 When you have quitted the city of which I have been speaking, you ride some 12 days between north-east and east, without finding any human habitation, for the people have all taken refuge in fastnesses among the mountains, on account of the banditti and armies that harassed them. There is plenty of water on the road, and abundance of game; there are lions too. You can get no provisions on the road, and must carry with you all that these 12 days.❜ you require for Note 1.—Balkh, "the mother of cities," suffered mercilessly from Chinghiz. Though the city had yielded without resistance, the whole population was marched by companies into the plain, on the usual Mongol pretext of counting them, and then brutally massacred. The city and its gardens were fired, and all buildings capable of defence were levelled. The province long continued to be harried by the Chaghataian inroads. Ibn Batuta, sixty years after Marco's visit, describes the city as still in ruins, and as uninhabited: "The remains of its mosques and colleges," he says, "are still to be seen, and the painted walls traced with azure." It is no doubt the Vaeq (Valq) of Clavijo, "very large, and surrounded by a broad earthen wall, thirty paces across, but breached in many parts." He describes a large portion of the area within as sown with cotton. The account of its modern state in Burnes and Ferrier is much the same as Ibn Batuta's, except that there is now some population, two separate towns within the walls according to the latter. Burnes estimates the circuit of the ruins at twenty miles. (Erdmann, 404-5; I. B. III. 59; Clavijo, p. 117; Burnes, II. 204-6; Ferrier, 206-7.) According to the legendary history of Alexander, the beautiful Roxana was the daughter of Darius, and her father in a dying interview with Alexander requested the latter to make her his wife : “Une fille ai mult bele; se prendre le voles, Vus en seres de l'mont tout li mius maries," &c. NOTE 2. The country called Dogana in the G. Text is a puzzle. At one time I supposed it might be Kataghan, the name sometimes applied to the country round Kunduz. But there seems reason to believe this to be a modern Uzbek appellation. Wassáf says that in the year 700 (A.D. 1300) an invasion of Chaghataian Mongols subjugated all Ghazni, Sistan, and Balkh, with its dependencies Shaburgan, Jusgana, Badakhshan, Kishm, Taikan, &c. This juxtaposition certainly looks very like our traveller's Sapurgan, Bale, Dogana, Taican, Casem, Badashan. Juzgán, JUZGáná, or Juzjáná, the Hushikien of the Chinese traveller Hwen Thsang, was a part of the province of Balkh, which included Andkhoi, Shibrgan, and apparently the hill-country south of Balkh. It was not, therefore, the country traversed by the traveller on leaving Balkh for Badakhshan. But it is possible that, having said "Now let us tell of another country called Dogana," he does no such thing, but breaks off and proceeds with his journey. Something like this occurs in Book III. (ch. ix.) with reference to the Island of Gavenispola, and 'tis an easy accident of dictation. But it is a confessed difficulty, and these are merely suggestions of a possible solution. I may add that I believe Juzgana to be the Tagiguinea of Clavijo. (Sprenger, P. und R. Route, p. 39 and Map; Anderson in J. A. S. B. XXII. 161; Ilch. II. 93.) NOTE 3.-Though Burnes speaks of a part of the road that we suppose necessarily to have been here followed from Balkh towards Taican, as barren and dreary, he adds that the ruins of aqueducts and houses proved that the land had at one time been peopled, though now destitute of water, and consequently of inhabitants. The country would seem to have reverted at the time of Burnes' journey, from like causes, nearly to the state in which Marco found it after the Mongol devastations. Lions seem to mean here the real kings of beasts, and not tigers, as hereafter in the book. Tigers, though found on the S. and W. shores of the Caspian, do not seem to exist in the Oxus valley. On the other hand, Rashiduddin tells us that, when Hulaku was reviewing his army after the passage of the river, several lions were started, and two were killed. The lions are also mentioned by Sidi 'Ali, the Turkish Admiral, further down the valley towards Hazárasp: "We were obliged to fight with the lions day and night, and no man dared to go alone for water." And Moorcroft says of the plain between Kunduz and the Oxus: “Deer, foxes, wolves, hogs, and lions are numerous, the latter resembling those in the vicinity of Hariana" (in Upper India). Q. Curtius tells how Alexander killed a great lion in the country north of the Oxus towards Samarkand. (Burnes, II. 200; Q. R. 155; Ilch. I. 90 ; J. As. IX. 217; Moore, II. 430; Q. C. VII. 2.) CHAPTER XXVIII. OF TAICAN, AND THE MOUNTAINS OF SALT. ALSO OF THE PROVINCE OF CASEM. AFTER those twelve days' journey you come to a fortified. place called TAICAN, where there is a great corn market.' It is a fine place, and the mountains that you see towards the south are all composed of salt. People from all the countries round, to some thirty days' journey, come to fetch this salt, which is the best in the world, and is so hard that it can only be broken with iron picks. 'Tis in such abun |