(See Chingin in Kovalefski's Mongol Dict., No. 2134; and for Barontala, &c., see Della Penna, Breve Notizia del Regno del Thibet, with Klaproth's notes, p. 6 ; D'Avezac, p. 568; Relation prefixed to D'Anville's Atlas, p. 11; Alphabetum Tibetanum, 454; and Kircher, China Illustrata, p. 65.)

Since the first edition was published, Mr. Ney Elias has traversed the region in question from east to west; and I learn from him that at Kobdo he found the most usual name for that town among Mongols, Kalmaks, and Russians to be SANKIN-hoto. He had not then thought of connecting this name with Chinghin-talas, and has therefore no information as to its origin or the extent of its application. But he remarks that Polo's bearing of between N. and N.W., if understood to be from Kamul, would point exactly to Kobdo. He also calls attention to the Lake Sankin-dalai to the N.E. of Ulius-sutai, of which Atkinson gives a sketch. The recurrence of this name over so wide a tract may have something to do with the Chinghin-talas of Polo. But we must still wait for further light.*

NOTE 2.-The Altai, or one of its ramifications, is probably the mountain of the text, but so little is known of this part of the Chinese territory that we can learn scarcely anything of its mineral products. Still Martini does mention that asbestos is found "in the Tartar country of Tangu," which probably is the Tangnu Oola branch of the Altai to the south of the Upper Yenisei, and in the very region we have indicated as Chingintalas. Mr. Elias tells me he inquired for asbestos by its Chinese name at Ulius-sutai, but without success.

NOTE 3.

Degli elementi quattro principali,

Che son la Terra, e l'Acqua, e l'Aria, e 'l Foco,
Composti sono gli universi Animali,

Pigliando di ciascuno assai o poco."

-Dati, La Sfera, p. 9.

Zurficar in the next sentence is a Mahomedan name, Zulfikár, the title of Ali's sword.

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NOTE 4.-Here the G. Text adds: Et je meisme le vi," intimating I conceive, his having himself seen specimens of the asbestos-not to his having been at the place.

NOTE 5.-The story of the Salamander passing unhurt through fire is at least as old as Aristotle. But I cannot tell when the fable arose that asbestos was a substance derived from the animal. This belief, however, was general in the Middle Ages, both in Asia and Europe.

The late Mr. Atkinson has been twice alluded to in this note. I take the opportunity of saying that Mr. Ney Elias, a most competent judge, who has travelled across the region in question, whilst admitting, as everyone must, Atkinson's vagueness and sometimes very careless statements, is not at all disposed to discredit the truth of his narrative.

"The fable of the Salamander," says Sir Thomas Browne, "hath been much promoted by stories of incombustible napkins and textures which endure the fire, whose materials are called by the name of Salamander's wool, which many, too literally apprehending, conceive some investing. part or integument of the Salamander. . . . . Nor is this Salamander's wool desumed from any animal, but a mineral substance, metaphorically so called for this received opinion."

Those who knew that the Salamander was a lizard-like animal were indeed perplexed as to its woolly coat. Thus the Cardinal de Vitry is fain to say the creature "profert ex cute quasi quamdam lanam de quâ zonae contextae comburi non possunt igne." A Bestiary, published by Cahier and Martin, says of it: "De lui naist une cose qui n'est ne soie ne lin ne laine." Jerome Cardan looked in vain, he says, for hair on the Salamander! Albertus Magnus calls the incombustible fibre pluma Salamandri; and accordingly Bold Baudouin de Sebourg finds the Salamander in the Terrestrial Paradise a kind of bird covered with the whitest plumage; of this he takes some, which he gets woven into a cloth; this he presents to the Pope, and the Pontiff applies it to the purpose mentioned in the text, viz., to cover the holy napkin of St. Veronica. Gervase of Tilbury writes: "I saw, when lately at Rome, a broad strap of Salamander skin, like a girdle for the loins, which had been brought thither by Cardinal Peter of Capua. When it had become somewhat soiled by use, I myself saw it cleaned perfectly, and without receiving harm, by being put in the fire."

In Persian the creature is called Samandar, Samandal, &c., and some derive the word from Sam, "fire," and Andar, "within." Doubtless it is a corruption of the Greek Zadaμávdpa, whatever be the origin of that. Bakui says the animal is found at Ghur, near Herat, and is like a mouse. Another author, quoted by D'Herbelot, says it is like a marten.

Interesting details regarding the fabrication of cloth and paper from amianth or asbestos are contained in a report presented to the French Institute by M. Sage (date not stated), of which large extracts are given in the Diction, des Tissus. He mentions that a Sudarium of this material is still shown at the Vatican; we hope it is the cover which Kublai sent.

M. Sage exhibited incombustible paper made from this material, and had himself seen a small furnace of Chinese origin made from it. Madame Perpenté, an Italian lady, who experimented much with asbestos, found that from a crude mass of that substance threads could be elicited which were ten times the length of the mass itself, and were indeed sometimes several metres in length, the fibres seeming to be involved, like silk in a cocoon. Her process of preparation was much

like that described by Marco. She succeeded in carding and reeling the material, made gloves and the like, as well as paper, from it, and sent to the Institute a work printed on such paper.

The Rev. A. Williamson mentions asbestos as found in Shantung. The natives use it for making stoves, crucibles, and so forth.

(Sir T. Browne, I. 293; Bongars, I. 1104; Cahier et Martin, III. 271; Cardan, de Rer. Varietate, VII. 33; Alb. Mag. Opera, 1551, II. 227, 233; Fr. Michel, Recherches, &c., II. 91; Gerv. of Tilbury, p. 13; N. et E. II. 493; D. des Tissus, II. 1-12 ; J. N. China Branch, R.A.S., Dec. 1867, p. 70.)

CHAPTER XLIII.

OF THE PROVINCE OF SUKCHUR.

ON leaving the province of which I spoke before,' you ride ten days between north-east and east, and in all that way you find no human dwelling, or next to none, so that there is nothing for our book to speak of.

At the end of those ten days you come to another province called SUKCHUR, in which there are numerous towns and villages. The chief city is called SUKCHU." The people are partly Christians and partly Idolaters, and all are subject to the Great Kaan.

The great General Province to which all these three provinces belong is called TANGUT.

Over all the mountains of this province rhubarb is found in great abundance, and thither merchants come to buy it, and carry it thence all over the world.3 [Travellers, however, dare not visit those mountains with any cattle but those of the country, for a certain plant grows there which is so poisonous that cattle which eat it lose their hoofs. The cattle of the country know it and eschew it.] The people live by agriculture, and have not much trade. [They are of a brown complexion. The whole of the province is healthy.]

NOTE 1.-Referring apparently to Shachau; see Note 1 and the closing words of last chapter.

NOTE 2.-There is no doubt that the province and city are those of SUHCHAU, but there is a great variety in the readings, and several texts have a marked difference between the name of the province and that of the city, whilst others give them as the same. I have adopted those to which the resultants of the readings of the best texts seem to point, viz., Succiur and Succiu, though with considerable doubt whether they should not be identical. Pauthier declares that Suctur, which is the reading of his favourite MS., is the exact pronunciation, after the vulgar Mongol manner, of Suh-chau-lu, the Lu or circuit of Suhchau; whilst Neumann says that the Northern Chinese constantly add an euphonic particle or to the end of words. I confess to little faith in such refinements, when no evidence is produced.

Suhchau is called by Rashiduddin, and by Shah Rukh's ambassadors, Sukchú, in exact correspondence with the reading we have adopted for the name of the city, whilst the Russian Envoy Boikoff, in the 17th century, calls it "Suktsey, where the rhubarb grows ;" and Anthony Jenkinson, in Hakluyt, by a slight metathesis, Sowchick. Suhchau lies just within the extreme N.W. angle of the Great Wall. It was at Suhchau that Benedict Goës was detained, waiting for leave to go on to Peking, eighteen weary months, and there he died just as aid reached him.

NOTE 3. The real rhubarb grows wild, on very high mountains. The central line of its distribution appears to be the high range dividing the head waters of the Hwang-Ho, Yalung, and Min-Kiang. The chief markets are Siningfu (see chap. lvii.), and Kwan-Kian in Szechwan. In the latter province an inferior kind is grown in fields, but the genuine rhubarb defies cultivation. (See Richthofen, Letters, No. VII., p. 69.) Till recently it was almost all exported by Kiakhta and Russia, but some now comes viâ Hankau and Shanghai.

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NOTE 4.-Erba is the title applied to the poisonous growth, which may be either "plant" or grass." It is not unlikely that it was a plant akin to the Andromeda ovalifolia, the tradition of the poisonous character of which prevails everywhere along the Himalaya from Nepal to the Indus. It is notorious for poisoning sheep and goats at Simla and other hill sanitaria; and Dr. Cleghorn notes the same circumstance regarding it that Polo heard of the plant in Tangut, viz., that its effects on flocks imported from the plains are highly injurious, whilst those of the hills do not appear to suffer, probably because they shun the young leaves, which alone are deleterious. Mr. Marsh attests the like fact regarding the Kalmia angustifolia of New England, a plant of the same order (Ericaceae). Sheep bred where it abounds almost always avoid browsing on its leaves, whilst those brought from districts where it is unknown feed upon it and are poisoned.

Firishta, quoting from the Zafar-Námah, says: "On the road from Kashmir towards Tibet there is a plain on which no other vegetable

grows but a poisonous grass that destroys all the cattle that taste of it, and therefore no horsemen venture to travel that route." And Abbé Desgodins, writing from E. Tibet, mentions that sheep and goats are poisoned by rhododendron leaves. (Dr. Hugh Cleghorn in J. Agricultural and Hortic. Society of India, XIV. Part 4; Marsh's Man and Nature, p. 40; Brigg's Firishta, IV. 449; Bull. de la Soc. de Geog. 1873, I. 333.)

CHAPTER XLIV.

OF THE CITY OF CAMPICHU.

CAMPICHU is also a city of Tangut, and a very great and noble one. Indeed it is the capital and place of government of the whole province of Tangut.' The people are Idolaters, Saracens, and Christians, and the latter have three very fine churches in the city, whilst the Idolaters have many minsters and abbeys after their fashion. In these they have an enormous number of idols, both small and great, certain of the latter being a good ten paces in stature; some of them being of wood, others of clay, and others yet of stone. They are all highly polished, and then covered with gold. The great idols of which I speak lie at length. And round about them there are other figures of considerable size, as if adoring and paying homage before them.

Now, as I have not yet given you particulars about the customs of these Idolaters, I will proceed to tell you about them.

You must know that there are among them certain religious recluses who lead a more virtuous life than the rest. These abstain from all lechery, though they do not indeed regard it as a deadly sin; howbeit if any one sin against nature they condemn him to death. They have an Ecclesiastical Calendar as we have; and there are five days in the month that they observe particularly; and on these five days they would on no account either slaughter any