the usual term of respect which is used in addressing any young man of the higher ranks, and when prefixed to Kahlon it means the younger or deputy minister. Moorcroft (I. p. 334-5) gives the term without the title, as the usual designation of the deputy minister, just as we should say the deputy,' instead of 'the deputy chairman.'" And again (p. 352): "No-no is the title given to a younger brother. Nono Sungnam was the younger brother of Chang Raphtan the Kahlon of Bazgo." There is a slight error in the reference to Moorcroft; for though the latter speaks of the Nuna-Khalun, I cannot find that he uses Nuna simply (see I. 248, 253, 334). But I have recently encountered the word used independently, and precisely in Marco's application of it. An old friend. in speaking of a journey that he had made in our Tibetan provinces, said incidentally that he had accompanied the commissioner to the installation of a new NONO (I think in Spiti). The term here corresponds so precisely with the explanation which Marco gives of None as a Count subject to a superior sovereign, that it is difficult to regard the coincidence as accidental. The Yuechi or Indo-Scyths who long ruled the Oxus countries are said to have been of Tibetan origin. Can this title have been a trace of their rule? Or is it rather Indian? for Gen. Cun ningham writes to me that he regards the word as "the same as the Hindi Nannú" (qu. Nannhá of J. Shakespear, "small, diminutive"?). NOTE 2. This chapter is one of the most interesting in the book, and contains one of its most splendid anticipations of modern exploration, whilst conversely Captain John Wood's narrative presents the most brilliant confirmation in detail of Marco's narrative. We have very old testimony to the recognition of the great altitude of the Plateau of PAMER (the name which Marco gives it and which it still retains), and to the existence of the lake upon its surface. The Chinese pilgrims Hwui Seng and Sung Yun, who passed this way, A.D. 518, inform us that these high lands of the Tsung Ling were commonly said to be midway between heaven and earth. The more celebrated Hwen Thsang, who came this way nearly 120 years later (about 644) on his return to China, "after crossing the mountains for 700 li, arrived at the valley of Pomilo (Pamer). This valley is 1000 li (about 200 miles) from east to west, and 100 li (20 m.) from north to south, and lies between two snowy ranges in the centre of the Tsung Ling mountains. The traveller is annoyed by sudden gusts of wind, and the snow-drifts never cease, spring or summer. As the soil is almost constantly frozen, you see but a few miserable plants, and no crops can live. The whole tract is but a dreary waste, without a trace of human kind. In the middle of the valley is a great lake 300 li (60 m.) from east to west, and 500 li from north to south. This stands in the centre of Jambudwipa (the Buddhist oikovμérn) on a plateau of prodigious elevation. An endless variety of creatures peoples its waters. When you hear the murmur and clash of its waves you think you are listening to the noisy hum of a great market in which vast crowds of people are mingling in excitement. . . The lake discharges to the west, and a river runs out of it in that direction and joins the Potsu (Oxus). . . . The lake likewise discharges to the east, and a great river runs out, which flows eastward to the western frontier of Kiesha (Káshgar) where it joins the river Sita, and runs eastward with it into the sea." The story of an eastern outflow from the lake is no doubt legend, connected with an ancient Hindu belief (see Cathay, p. 347), but Burnes in modern times heard much the same story. "After quitting the (frozen) surface of the river," says Wood, "we ascended a low hill which apparently bounded the valley to the eastward. On surmounting this, at 3 P.M. of the 19th February, 1838, we stood, to use a native expression, upon the Bám-i-Duniah or 'Roof of the World,' while before us lay stretched a noble, but frozen sheet of water, from whose western end issued the infant river of the Oxus. This fine lake (Sirikul) lies in the form of a crescent, about 14 miles long from east to west, by an average breadth of one mile. On three sides it is bordered by swelling hills about 500 feet high, while along its southern bank they rise into mountains 3500 feet above the lake, or 19,000 feet above the sea, and covered with perpetual snow, from which never-failing source the lake is supplied. . . . Its elevation, measured by the temperature of boiling water, is 15,600 feet." The absence of birds, noticed by Marco, probably shows that he passed very late or early in the season. Hwen Thsang, we see, gives a different account; Wood was there in winter, but heard that in summer the lake swarmed with water-fowl. The Pamer Steppe was crossed by Benedict Goës late in the autumn of 1603, and the narrative speaks of the great cold and desolation, and the difficulty of breathing. We have also an abstract of the journey of Abdul Mejid, a British agent, who passed Pamer on his way to Kokan in 1861-"Fourteen weary days were occupied in crossing the steppe; the marches were long, depending on uncertain supplies of grass and water, which sometimes wholly failed them; food for man and beast had to be carried with the party, for not a trace of human habitation is to be met with in those inhospitable wilds. . . . The steppe is interspersed with tamarisk jungle and the wild willow, and in the summer with tracts of high grass." (Neumann, Pilgerfahrten Buddh. Priester, p. 50; V. et V. de H. T. 271-2; Wood, 354; Proc. R. G. S., X. 150). We may observe that Severtsof asserts Pamer to be a generic term, applied to all high plateaux in the Thian Shan. Wood speaks of the numerous wolves in this region. And the great sheep is that to which Blyth, in honour of our traveller, has given the name of Ovis Poli. A pair of horns, sent by Wood to the Royal Asiatic Society, and of which a representation is given below, affords the following dimensions:-Length of one horn on the curve, 4 feet 8 inches; round the base 14 inches; distance of tips apart 3 feet 9 inches. This sheep appears to be the same as the Rass, of which Burnes heard that the horns were so big that a man could not lift a pair, and that foxes bred in them; also that the carcase formed a load for two horses. Wood says that these horns supply shoes for the Kirghiz horses, and also a good substitute for stirrup-irons. "We saw numbers of horns strewed about in every direction, the spoils of the Kirghiz hunter. Some of these were of an astonishingly large size, and belonged to an animal of a species between a goat and a sheep, inhabiting the steppes of Pamir. The ends of the horns projecting above the snow often indicated the direction of the road; and wherever they were heaped in large quantities and disposed in a semicircle, there our escort recognized the site of a Kirghiz summer encampment. . . . We came in sight of a rough-looking building, decked out with the horns of the wild sheep, and all but buried amongst the snow. It was a Kirghiz burying-ground." (pp. 340, 350, 353.) In 1867 this great sheep was shot by M. Severtsof on the Plateau of Aksai in the western Thianshan. He reports these animals to go in great herds, and to be very difficult to kill. However he brought back Horns of Ovis Poli. two specimens. The Narin River is stated to be the northern limit of the species. Severtsof also states that the enemies of the Ovis Poli are the wolves. As to the pasture, Timkowski heard that "the pasturage of Pamir is so luxuriant and nutritious, that if horses are left on it for more than forty days they die of repletion" (I. 421). And Wood: "The grass of Pamer, they tell you, is so rich that a sorry horse is here brought into good condition in less than twenty days; and its nourishing qualities are evidenced in the productiveness of their ewes, which almost invariably bring forth two lambs at a birth" (p. 365). With regard to the effect upon fire ascribed to the "great cold," Ramusio's version inserts the expression "gli fu affermato per miracolo," "it was asserted to him as a wonderful circumstance." And Humboldt thinks it so strange that Marco should not have observed this personally that he doubts whether Polo himself passed the Pamer. "How is it that he does not say that he himself had seen how the flames disperse and leap about, as I myself have so often experienced at similar altitudes in the Cordilleras of the Andes, especially when investigating the boilingpoint of water?" (Cent. Asia, Germ. Transl. I. 588.) But the words quoted from Ramusio do not exist in the old texts, and they are probably an editorial interpolation indicating disbelief in the statement. Major Montgomerie, R. E., of the Indian Survey, who has probably passed more time nearer the heavens than any man living, sends me the following note on this passage: "What Marco Polo says as to fire at great altitudes not cooking so effectually as usual is perfectly correct as far as anything boiled is concerned, but I doubt if it is as to anything roasted. The want of brightness in a fire at great altitudes is I think altogether attributable to the poorness of the fuel, which consists of either small sticks or bits of roots, or of argols of dung, all of which give out a good deal of smoke, more especially the latter if not quite dry ; but I have often seen a capital blaze made with the argols when perfectly dry. As to cooking, we found that rice, dál, and potatoes would never soften properly, no matter how long they were boiled. This of course was due to the boiling-point being only from 170° to 180°. Our tea, moreover, suffered from the same cause, and was never good when we were over 15,000 feet. This was very marked. Some of my natives made dreadful complaints about the rice and dál that they got from the village-heads in the valleys, and vowed that they only gave them what was very old and hard, as they could not soften it !" NOTE 3.-According to Gen. Cunningham the Tibetan kingdom of Balti is called Balor by the Dards of Gilgit, and the same high authority considers Balti to be the Polulo or Bolor of Hwen Thsang, and the Bolor of Polo. I cannot concur as to the latter, though very possibly (as indeed Gen. Cunningham seems to intimate) the term Bolor had at one time an extension which included both Balti and the mountains adjoining Pamer. Some corroboration of this supposed wide extension of the term is found in the account which the Tárikh Rashidi, a work written in Eastern Turkestan in the 16th century, gives of Malaur (Balaur or Bolor): "It is a country with few level spots. It has a circuit of four months' march. The eastern frontier borders on Kashgar and Yarkand; it has Badakhshan to the north, Kabul to the west, and Kashmir to the south." Also in a Pushtu poem of the 17th century, translated by Raverty, we find the mountains of Bilaur-istan assigned as the northern boundary of Swat. But there can, I think, be no reasonable doubt of the existence of a place and small mountain state called Bolor (perhaps a relic of the extension just alluded to) immediately west of Pamer. This, according to V. St. Martin, is the Puliho of Hwen Thsang; it appears as a geographical position in the Tables of Nasiruddin, and reappears in the Chinese tables of last century with precisely the same latitude. These last I fancy form the chief authority for the position assigned in our modern maps to a place called Bolor, which the questionable traveller George Ludwig Von claims to have visited. The state of Bolor is described in the great Chinese geography, of which |