general bearing of his explanation of the passage, and I conceive that the two classes of people whom Marco tries to identify with Gog and Magog do substantially represent the two genera or species, TURKS and MONGOLS, or, according to another nomenclature used by Rashiduddin, the White and Black Tartars. To the latter class belonged Chinghiz and his MONGOLS proper, with a number of other tribes detailed by Rashiduddin, and these I take to be in a general way the MUNGUL of our text. The Ung on the other hand are the UNG-ķut, the latter form being presumably only the Mongol plural of UNG. The Ung-kút were a Turk tribe who were vassals of the Kin Emperors of Cathay, and were intrusted with the defence of the Wall of China, or an important portion of it, which was called by the Monguls Ungu, a name which some connect with that of the tribe. Erdmann indeed asserts that the wall by which the Ung-kut dwelt was not the Great Wall, but some other. There are traces of other great ramparts in the steppes north of the present wall. But Erdmann's arguments seem to me weak in the extreme.

Vincent of Beauvais has got from some of his authorities a conception of the distinction of the Tartars into two races, to which however he assigns no names: "Sunt autem duo genera Tartarorum, diversa quidem habentia idiomata, sed unicam legem ac ritum, sicut Franci et Theutonici." But the result of his effort to find a realisation of Gog and Magog is that he makes Guyuk Kaan into Gog, and Mangu Kaan into Magog. Even the intelligent Friar Ricold says of the Tartars: "They say themselves that they are descended from Gog and Magog: and on this account they are called Mogoli, as if from a corruption of Magogoli." (Abulfeda in Büsching, IV. 140, 274-5; I. B. IV. 274; Golden Horde, 34, 68; Erdmann, 241-2, 257-8; Timk. I. 259, 263, 268; Vinc. Bellov. Spec. Hist. XXIX. 73, XXXI. 32-34; Pereg. Quat. 118.)

NOTE 6. The towns and villages were probably those immediately north of the Great Wall, between 112° and 115° E. long., of which many remains exist, ascribed to the time of the Yuan or Mongol dynasty. This tract, between the Great Wall and the volcanic plateau of Mongolia, is extensively colonised by Chinese, and has resumed the flourishing aspect that Polo describes. It is known now as the Kuwei, or extramural region.

Of the cloths called nakh and nasij we have spoken before (suprà, chap. vi. note 4). These stuffs, or some such as these, were, I believe, what the medieval writers called Tartary cloth, not because they were made in Tartary, but because they were brought from China and its borders through the Tartar dominions; as we find that for like reason they were sometimes called stuffs of Russia. Dante alludes to the supposed skill of Turks and Tartars in weaving gorgeous stuffs, and Boccaccio, commenting thereon, says that Tartarian cloths are so skilfully woven that no painter with his brush could equal them.

Maundevile often speaks of cloths of Tartary (e. g., p. 175, 247). So also Chaucer :

"On every trumpe hanging a broad banere

Of fine Tartarium."

Again, in the French inventory of the Garde-Meuble of 1353 we find two pieces of Tartary, one green and the other red, priced at 15 crowns each. (Flower and Leaf, 211; Dante, Inf. XVII. 17, and Longfellow, p. 159; Douet d'Arcq, p. 328; Fr.-Michel, Rech. I. 315, II. 166 segg.)

NOTE 7. SINDACHU (Sindacui, Suidatui, &c., of the MSS) is SIWANHWA-FU, called under the Kin dynasty Siwante-chau, more than once besieged and taken by Chinghiz. It is said to have been a summer residence of the later Mongol Emperors, and fine parks full of grand trees remain on the western side. It is still a large town and the capital of a Fu, about 25 m. south of the Gate on the Great Wall at Chang Kia Kau, which the Mongols and Russians call Kalgan. There is still a manufacture of felt and woollen articles here.

Ydifu has not been identified. But Baron Richthofen saw old mines N.E. of Kalgan, which used to yield argentiferous galena; and Pumpelly heard of silver-mines near Yuchau, in the same department.

CHAPTER LX.

CONCERNING THE KAAN'S PALACE OF CHAGANNOR.

At the end of those three days you find a city called CHAGAN NOR [which is as much as to say White Pool], at which there is a great Palace of the Grand Kaan's; and he likes much to reside there on account of the Lakes and Rivers in the neighbourhood, which are the haunt of swans and of a great variety of other birds. The adjoining plains too abound with cranes, partridges, pheasants, and other game birds, so that the Emperor takes all the more delight in staying there, in order to go a-hawking with his gerfalcons and other falcons, a sport of which he is very fond.2

There are five different kinds of cranes found in those tracts, as I shall tell you. First, there is one which is very big, and all over as black as a crow; the second kind again

is all white, and is the biggest of all; its wings are really beautiful, for they are adorned with round eyes like those of a peacock, but of a resplendent golden colour, whilst the head is red and black on a white ground. The third kind is the same as ours. The fourth is a small kind, having at the ears beautiful long pendent feathers of red and black. The fifth kind is grey all over and of great size, with a handsome head, red and black.3

Near this city there is a valley in which the Emperor has had several little houses erected in which he keeps in mew a huge number of cators, which are what we call the Great Partridge. You would be astonished to see what a quantity there are, with men to take charge of them. So whenever the Kaan visits the place he is furnished with as many as he wants.*

NOTE 1.- "Ou demeurent sesnes." Sesnes, Cesnes, Cecini, Cesanae, is a medieval form of cygnes, cigni, which seems to have escaped the dictionary-makers. It occurs in the old Italian version of Brunetto Latini's Tresor, Bk. V. ch. xxv., as cecino; and for other examples see Cathay, p. 125.

NOTE 2. The city called by Polo CHAGAN-NOR (meaning in Mongol, as he says, "White Lake") is the Chaghan Balghassun mentioned by Timkowski as an old city of the Mongol era, the ruined rampart of which he passed about 30 m. north of the Great Wall at Kalgan, and some 55 m. from Siwanhwa, adjoining the Imperial pastures. It stands near a lake still called Chaghan-Nor, and is called by the Chinese Pe-ching-tzu, or White City, a translation of Chaghan Balghassun. Dr. Bushell says of one of the lakes (Ichi-Nor), a few miles east of Chaghan-Nor: "We . . . . found the water black with waterfowl, which rose in dense flocks, and filled the air with discordant noises. Swans, geese, and ducks predominated, and three different species of cranes were distinguished."

66

It is also, I

The town appears as Tchahan Toloho in D'Anville. imagine, the Arulun Tsaghan Balghassun which S. Setzen says Kublai built about the same time with Shangtu and another city on the shady side of the Altai," by which here he seems to mean the Khingan range adjoining the Great Wall. (Timk. II. 374, 378-9; J. R. G. S. vol. xliii. ; S. Setz. 115.) I see Ritter has made the same identification of ChaghanNor (II. 141).

NOTE 3.-The following are the best results I can arrive at in the identification of these five cranes.

1. Radde mentions as a rare crane in South Siberia Grus monachus, called by the Buraits Kará Togorü, or "Black Crane." Atkinson also speaks of " a beautiful black variety of crane," probably the same. The Grus monachus is not, however, jet black, but brownish rather. (Radde, Reisen, Bd. II. p. 318; Atkinson. Or. and W. Sib. 548.)

2. Grus leucogeranus (?) whose chief habitat is Siberia, but which sometimes comes as far south as the Punjab. It is the largest of the genus, snowy white, with red face and beak; the ten largest quills are black, but this barely shows as a narrow black line when the wings are closed. The resplendent golden eyes on the wings remain unaccounted for; no naturalist whom I have consulted has any knowledge of a crane or crane-like bird with such decorations. When 'tis discovered, let it be the Grus Poli!

Pauthier's and

4. The colour of the pendants varies in the texts. the G. Text have red and black; the Lat. S. G. black only, the Crusca black and white, Ramusio feathers red and blue (not pendants). The red and black may have slipt in from the preceding description. I incline to believe it to be the Demoiselle, Anthropoides Virgo, which is frequently seen as far north as Lake Baikal. It has a tuft of pure white from the eye, and a beautiful black pendant ruff or collar; the general plumage purplish-grey.

5. Certainly the Indian Sáras (vulgo Cyrus), or Grus antigone, which answers in colours and grows to 52 inches high.

NOTE 4. Cator occurs only in the G. Text and the Crusca, in the latter with the interpolated explanation "cioè contornici" (i. e. quails), whilst the S. G. Latin has coturnices only. I suspect this impression has assisted to corrupt the text, and that it was originally written or dictated ciacor or çacor, viz. chakór, a term applied in the East to more than one kind of "Great Partridge." Its most common application in India is to the Himalayan red-legged partridge, much resembling on a somewhat larger scale the bird so called in Europe. It is the "Francolin" of Moorcroft's Travels, and the Caccabis Chukor of Gray. According to Cunningham the name is applied in Ladak to the bird sometimes called the Snow-pheasant, Jerdan's Snow-cock, Tetraogallus himalayensis of Gray. And it must be the latter which Moorcroft speaks of as "the gigantic Chukor, much larger than the common partridge, found in large coveys on the edge of the snow; . . . . one plucked and drawn weighed 5 lbs;" described by Vigne as "a partridge as large as a hen-turkey;" the original perhaps of that partridge "larger than a vulture" which formed one of the presents from an Indian King to Augustus Caesar. From the extensive diffusion of the term, which seems to be common to

....