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 again 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. 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 Garcia da Horta 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; Garcia, f. 21 v.; Eng. Cyc., art. Zinc.)

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 chestnut, 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 neither very hot no: very cold. The natives all worship Mahommet, and are a very fine-looking people, especially the women, who are surpassingly beautiful.

NOTE 1.-All that region has been described as a country divided into deserts that are salt, and deserts that are not salt" (Vigne, I. 16). Tonocain, as we have seen (chap. xv. note 1), is the Eastern Kuhistan of Persia, but extended by Polo, it would seem, to include the whole of Persian Khorasan. No city in particular is indicated as visited by the

traveller, but the view I take of the position of the Arbre Sec, as well as his route through Koh-Banan, would lead me to suppose that he reached the Province of TUN-O-KAIN about Tabbas.

NOTE 2. This is another subject on which a long and somewhat discursive note is inevitable.

One of the Bulletins of the Soc. de Géographie (ser. 3. tom. iii. p. 187) contains a perfectly inconclusive endeavour, by M. Roux de Rochelle, to identify the Arbre Sec or Arbre Sol with a manna-bearing oak alluded to by Q. Curtius as growing in Hyrcania. There can be no doubt that the tree described is, as Marsden points out, a Chínár or Oriental Plane. Mr. Ernst Meyer, in his learned Geschichte der Botanik (Königsberg, 1854–57, IV. 123), objects that Polo's description of the wood does not answer to that tree. But, with due allowance, compare with his whole account that which Olearius gives of the Chinar, and say if the same tree be not meant. "The trees are as tall as the pine, and have very large leaves, closely resembling those of the vine. The fruit looks like a chestnut, but has no kernel, so it is not eatable. The wood is of a very brown colour, and full of veins; the Persians employ it for doors and window-shutters, and when these are rubbed with oil they are incomparably handsomer than our walnut-wood joinery" (I. 526). The Chinar-wood is used in Kashmir for gunstocks.

The whole tenor of the passage seems to imply that some eminent individual Chinar is meant. The appellations given to it vary in the different texts. In the G. T. it is styled in this passage "The Arbre Scule which the Christians call the Arbre Sec," whilst in ch. cci. of the same (infra Book IV. chap. v.) it is called "L'Arbre Sol, which in the Book of Alexander is called L'Arbre Seche." Pauthier has here "L'Arbre Solque, que nous appelons L'Arbre Sec," and in the later passage "L'Arbre Seul, que le Livre Alexandre apelle Arbre Sec;" whilst Ramusio has here "L'Albero del Sole che si chiama per i Cristiani L'Albor Secco," and does not contain the later passage. So also I think all the old Latin and French printed texts, which are more or less based on Pipino's version, have "The Tree of the Sun, which the Latins call the Dry Tree."

Pauthier, building as usual on the reading of his own text (Solque), endeavours to show that this odd word represents Thoulk, the Arabic name of a tree to which Forskal gave the title of Ficus Vasta, and this Ficus Vasta he will have to be the same as the Chinar. Ficus Vasta would be a strange name surely to give to a Plane-tree, but Forskal may be acquitted of such an eccentricity. The Tholak (for that seems to be the proper vocalisation) is a tree of Arabia Felix, very different from the Chinar, for it is the well-known Indian Banyan, or a closely-allied species, as may be seen in Forskal's description. The latter indeed says that the Arab botanists called it Delb, and that (or Dulb) is really a synonyme for the Chinar. But De Sacy has already commented upon

this supposed application of the name Delb to the Tholak as erroneous (see Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica, p. cxxiv and 179; Abdallatif, Rel. de Egypte, p. 80; J. R. G. S. VIII. 275; Ritter, VI. 662, 679).

The fact is that the Solque of M. Pauthier's text is a mere copyist's error in the reduplication of the pronoun que. In his chief MS. which he cites as A (No. 10,260 of Bibl. Impériale, now Fr. 5631) we can even see how this might easily happen, for one line ends with Solque and the next begins with que. The true reading is I doubt not that which this MS. points to, and which the G. Text gives us in the second passage quoted above, viz., Arbre SOL, occurring in Ramusio as Albero del SOLE. To make this easier of acceptation I must premise two remarks: first, that Sol is "the Sun" in both Venetian and Provençal; and, secondly, that in the French of that age the prepositional sign is not necessary to the genitive. Thus, in Pauthier's own text we find in one of the passages quoted above, "Le Livre Alexandre, i.e. Liber Alexandri ;" elsewhere, "Cazan le fils Argon," "à la mère sa femme," "Le corps Monseigneur Saint Thomas si est en ceste Province;" in Joinville, "le commandemant Mahommet," ceux de la Haulequa estoient logiez entour les héberges le soudanc, et establiz pour le cors le soudance garder;" in Baudouin de Sebourg, " "De l'amour Bauduin esprise et enflambée."

99.66

Moreover it is the TREE OF THE SUN that is prominent in the legendary History of Alexander, a fact sufficient in itself to rule the reading. A character in an old English play says:—

Had left a passage ope to Travellers

That now is kept and guarded by Wild Beasts."

-Broome's Antipodes, in Lamb's Specimens.

The same trees are alluded to in an ancient Low German poem in honour of St. Anno of Cologne. Speaking of the Four Beasts of Daniel's Vision:

"The third Beast was a Libbard ;

Four Eagle's Wings he had;

This signified the Grecian Alexander,

Who with four Hosts went forth to conquer lands

Even to the World's End,

Known by its Golden Pillars.

In India he the Wilderness broke through

With Trees twain he there did speak," &c.

-In Schilteri Thesaurus Antiq. Teuton. tom. i.*

* "Daz dritte Dier was ein Lebarte

Vier arin Vederich her havite;

Der beceichnote den Criechiskin Alexanderin,

These oracular Trees of the Sun and Moon, somewhere on the confines of India, appear in all the fabulous histories of Alexander from the Pseudo-Callisthenes downwards. Thus Alexander is made to tell the story in a letter to Aristotle: "Then came some of the townspeople and said, 'We have to show thee something passing strange, O King, and worth thy visiting; for we can show thee trees that talk with human speech.' So they led me to a certain park, in the midst of which were the Sun and Moon, and round about them a guard of priests of the Sun and Moon. And there stood the two trees of which they had spoken, like unto cypress trees; and round about them were trees like the myrobolans of Egypt, and with similar fruit. And I addressed the two trees that were in the midst of the park, the one which was male in the Masculine gender, and the one that was female in the Feminine gender. And the name of the Male Tree was the Sun, and of the female Tree the Moon, names which were in that language Muthu and Emausac.* And the stems were clothed with the skins of animals; the male tree with the skins of he-beasts, and the female tree with the skins of she-beasts. . . . . And at the setting of the Sun, a voice, speaking in the Indian tongue, came forth from the (Sun) Tree; and I ordered the Indians who were with me to interpret it. But they were afraid and would not," &c. (Pseudo-Callisth. ed. Müller, III. 17.)

The story as related by Firdusi keeps very near to the Greek as just quoted, but does not use the term "Tree of the Sun." The chapter of the Shah Námeh containing it is entitled Didan Sikandar dirakht-igoyárá, "Alexander's interview with the Speaking Tree." (Livre des Rois, V. 229.) In the Chanson d'Alixandre of Lambert le Court and Alex. Bernay, these trees are introduced as follows:

Der mit vier Herin vür aftir Landin,

Unz her die Werilt einde,

Bi guldinin Siulin bikante.

In India her die Wusti durchbrach,

Mit zwein Boumin her sich da gesprach," &c.

It is odd how near the word Emausae comes to the E. African Mwezi; and perhaps more odd that "the elders of U-nya-Mwezi ('the Land of the Moon') declare that their patriarchal ancestor became after death the first Tree, and afforded shade to his children and descendants. According to the Arabs the people still perform pilgrimage to a holy tree, and believe that the penalty of sacrilege in cutting off a twig would be visited by sudden and mysterious death." (Burton in J.R.G.S. XXIX. 167-168.)