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; Mas'udi tells of the Ghúls, 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 Ghúls vanish. Thus also Apollonius of Tyana and his companions, in a desert near the Indus by moonlight, see an Empusa or Ghúl, 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 Ghúl-i-Beában 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 Nesnás 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 these 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; Beal's Fah-hian; Campbell's Popu lar 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.)

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. 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 Ruwán 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 Nakús or "Hill of the Bell" in the Sinai Desert; Wadi Hamade in the vicinity of the same Desert; the Jibal-ul-Thabil, 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. (See Cathay, p. ccxliv, 156, 398; Ritter, II. 204; Aus der Natur, Leipzig, No. 47 [of 1868], p. 752.)

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.' 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. 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.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.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.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."

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.-Tangut (Tangkút) is a name very conspicuous in the Mongol era. The word (Tanggod) is properly a Mongol plural, designating certain tribes of Tibetan blood, called by the Chinese Tanghiang, who established an independent kingdom on the N.W. frontier of China, with their capital at Ninghia on the Yellow River, during the confusion that prevailed at the end of the 10th century. This kingdom, called by the Chinese Hia, and by the Mongols TANGUT, was several times invaded by Chinghiz, and it was on the campaign of its final conquest that he died in 1227. In a general way Tangut corresponded to the modern province of Kansuh, and, indeed, as Pauthier shews, the latter name was under the Mongol emperors the official Chinese designation of the provincial government popularly called Tangut. It was sometimes considered to embrace Kamul and Turfan on the one hand and Singanfu on the other. The name is no longer used in China, but is still known to the Mongols, who, however, now apply it to Tibet. In this sense it is often used by Pallas and other Russian or quasi-Russian writers.

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

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 note 4). The Nestorians in Tangut must have been tolerably numerous, 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, are 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-maché figures of slaves, horses, &c., at the tomb. Chinese settlers were very numerous at Shachau and the neighbouring Kwachau, even in the 10th century (Ritter, II. 213). 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. 93-5, 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, &c., see also Medhurst, p. 213, and Kidd, 177-8. The manufacture of mock money is a large business in Chinese cities. In Fuhchau there are more than 30 large establishments where it is kept for sale (Doolittle, 541). There can be little doubt that these latter customs are symbols of the ancient sacrifices of human beings and valuable property on such occasions. Even when the present Manchu dynasty first occupied the throne of China, they still retained such practices. 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