CHAPTER XLI.

OF THE PROVINCE OF CAMUL.

CAMUL is a province which in former days was a kingdom. It contains numerous towns and villages, but the chief city bears the name of CAMUL. The province lies between two deserts; for on the one side is the Great Desert of Lop, and on the other side is a small desert of three days' journey in extent.' The people are all Idolaters, and have a peculiar language. They live by the fruits of the earth, which they have in plenty, and dispose of to travellers. They are a people who take things very easily, for they mind nothing but playing and singing, and dancing and enjoying themselves.

And it is the truth that if a foreigner comes to the house of one of these people to lodge, the host is delighted, and desires his wife to put herself entirely at the guest's disposal, whilst he himself gets out of the way, and comes back no more until the stranger shall have taken his departure. The guest may stay and enjoy the wife's society as long as he lists, whilst the husband has no shame in the matter, but indeed considers it an honour. And all the men of this province are made wittols of by their wives in this way.' The women themselves are fair and wanton.

Now it came to pass during the reign of MANGU KAAN, that as lord of this province he came to hear of this custom, and he sent forth an order commanding them under grievous penalties to do so no more [but to provide public hostelries for travellers]. And when they heard this order they were much vexed thereat. [For about three years' space they carried it out. But then they found that their lands were no longer fruitful, and that many mishaps befel them.] So they collected together and prepared a grand present which they sent to their Lord, praying him gra

ciously to let them retain the custom which they had inherited from their ancestors; for it was by reason of this usage that their gods bestowed upon them all the good things that they possessed, and without it they saw not how they could continue to exist. When the Prince had heard their petition his reply was: "Since ye must needs. keep your shame, keep it then," and so he left them at liberty to maintain their naughty custom. And they always have kept it up, and do so still.

Now let us quit Camul and I will tell you of another province which lies between north-west and north, and belongs to the Great Kaan.

NOTE 1.-Kamul (or Komul) does not fall into the great line of travel towards Cathay which Marco is following. His notice of it, and of the next province, forms a digression like that which he has already made to Samarkand. It appears very doubtful if Marco himself had visited it; his father and uncle may have done so on their first journey, as one of the chief routes to Northern China from Western Asia lies through this city, and has done so for many centuries. This was the route described by Pegolotti as that of the Italian traders in the century following Polo; it was that followed by Marignolli, by the envoys of Shah Rukh at a later date, and at a much later by Benedict Goës. The people were in Polo's time apparently Buddhist, as the Uighurs inhabiting this region had been from an old date; in Shah Rukh's time (1420) we find a mosque and a great Buddhist Temple cheek by jowl ; whilst Ramusio's friend Hajji Mahomed (circa. 1550) speaks of Kamul as the first Mahomedan city met with in travelling from China.

Kamul stands on an oasis carefully cultivated by aid of reservoirs for irrigation, and is noted in China for its rice and for some of its fruits, especially melons and grapes. It is still a place of some consequence, standing near the bifurcation of two great roads from China, one passing north and the other south of the Thian Shan, and it was the site of the Chinese commissariat depots for the garrisons to the westward. It was lost to the Chinese in 1865.

Kamul appears to have been the see of a Nestorian bishop. A Bishop of Kamul is mentioned as present at the inauguration of the Catholicos Denha in 1266. (Russians in Cent. Asia, 129; Ritter, II. 357 seqq.; Cathay, passim; Assemani, II. 455-6.)

NOTE 2.-Expressed almost in the same words is the characte attributed by a Chinese writer to the people of Kuché in the same

region. (Chin. Repos. IX. 126.) In fact the character seems to be generally applicable to the people of E. Turkestan, but sorely kept down by the rigid Islam that is now enforced. See Shaw, passim, and especially the Mahrambáshi's lamentations over the jolly days that were no more (pp. 319, 376).

NOTE 3.-Pauthier's text has "sont si honni de leur moliers comme vous avez ouy." Here the Crusca has "sono bozzi delle loro moglie,” and the Lat. Geog. "sunt bezzi de suis uxoribus." The Crusca Vocab. has inserted bozzo with the meaning we have given, on the strength of this passage. It occurs also in Dante, Paradiso, xix. 137, in the general sense of disgraced.

The shameful custom here spoken of is ascribed by Polo also to a province of Eastern Tibet, and by popular report in modern times to the Hazaras of the Hindu Kush, a people of Mongolian blood, as well as to certain nomade tribes of Persia, to say nothing of the like accusation against our own ancestors which has been drawn from Laonicus Chalcondylas. The old Arab traveller Ibn Muhalhal (10th century) also relates the same of the Hazlakh (probably Kharlikh) Turks : "Ducis alicujus uxor vel filia vel soror, quum mercatorum agmen in terram venit, eos adit, eorumque lustrat faciem. Quorum siquis earum afficit admiratione hunc domum suam ducit, eumque apud se hospitio excipit, eique benigne facit. Atque marito suo et filio fratrique rerum necessariarum curam demandat; neque dum hospes apud eam habitat, nisi necessarium est, maritus eam adit." A like custom prevails among the Chukchis and Koryaks in the vicinity of Kamtchatka. (Elphinstone's Caubul; Wood, p. 201; Burnes, who discredits, II. 153, III. 195; Laon. Chalcond. 1650, p. 48-49; Kurd de Schloezer, p. 13; Erman, II. 530.)

NOTE 4. So the Jewish rabble to Jeremiah: "Since we left off to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings to her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by famine." (Jerem. xliv. 18.)

CHAPTER XLII.

OF THE PROVINCE OF CHINGINTALAS.

CHINGINTALAS is also a province at the verge of the Desert, and lying between north-west and north. It has an extent of sixteen days' journey, and belongs to and contains numerous towns and villages.

the Great Kaan,

There are three

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different races of people in it-Idolaters, Saracens, and some Nestorian Christians.1 At the northern extremity of this province there is a mountain in which are excellent veins of steel and ondanique. And you must know that in the same mountain there is a vein of the substance from which Salamander is made. For the real truth is that the Salamander is,no beast, as they allege in our part of the world, but is a substance found in the earth; and I will tell you about it.

2

Everybody must be aware that it can be no animal's nature to live in fire, seeing that every animal is composed of all the four elements.3 Now I, Marco Polo, had a Turkish acquaintance of the name of Zurficar, and he was a very clever fellow. And this Turk related to Messer Marco Polo how he had lived three years in that region on behalf of the Great Kaan, in order to procure those Salamanders for him." He said that the way they got them was by digging in that mountain till they found a certain vein. The substance of this vein was then taken and crushed, and when so treated it divides as it were into fibres of wool, which they set forth to dry. When dry, these fibres were pounded in a great copper mortar, and then washed, so as to remove all the earth and to leave only the fibres like fibres of wool. These were then spun, and made into napkins. When first made these napkins are not very white, but by putting them into the fire for a while they come out as white as snow. And so again whenever they become dirty they are bleached by being put in the fire.

Now this, and nought else, is the truth about the Salamander, and the people of the country all say the same. Any other account of the matter is fabulous nonsense. And I may add that they have at Rome a napkin of this stuff, which the Grand Kaan sent to the Pope to make a wrapper for the Holy Sudarium of Jesus Christ."

We will now quit this subject, and I will proceed with

my account of the countries lying in the direction between north-east and east.

NOTE 1.—The identification of this province is a difficulty, because the geographical definition is vague, and the name assigned to it has not been traced in other authors. It is said to lie between north-west and north, whilst Kamul was said to lie towards the north-west. The account of both provinces forms a digression, as is clear from the last words of the present chapter, where the traveller returns to take up his regular route "in the direction between north-east and east." The point from which he digresses, and to which he reverts, is Shachau, and 'tis presumably from Shachau that he assigns bearings to the two provinces forming the subject of the digression. Hence, as Kamul lies vers maistre, i.e. north-west, and Chingintalas entre maistre et tramontaine, i.e. nor'-nor'-west, Chingintalas can scarcely lie due west of Kamul, as M. Pauthier would place it, in identifying it with an obscure place called Saiyintala, in the territory of Urumtsi. Moreover, the province is said to belong to the Great Kaan. Now, Urumtsi or Bishbalik seems to have belonged, not to the Great Kaan, but to the empire of Chagatai, or possibly at this time to Kaidu. Rashiduddin, speaking of the frontier between the Kaan and Kaidu, says :-" From point to point are posted bodies of troops under the orders of princes of the blood or other generals, and they often come to blows with the troops of Kaidu. Five of these are cantoned on the verge of the Desert; a sixth in Tangut, near Chagan-Naur (White Lake); a seventh in the vicinity of Karakhoja, a city of the Uighurs, which lies between the two States, and maintains neutrality."

Karakhoja, this neutral town, is near Turfan, to the south-east of Urumtsi, which thus would lie without the Kaan's boundary; Kamul and the country north-east of it would lie within it. This country, to the north and north-east of Kamul has remained till quite recently unexplored by any modern traveller, unless we put faith in Mr. Atkinson's somewhat hazy narrative. But it is here that I would seek for Chingintalas.

Several possible explanations of this name have suggested themselves or been suggested to me. I will mention two.

1. Klaproth states that the Mongols applied to Tibet the name of Baron-tala, signifying the "Right Side," i.e. the south-west or south quarter, whilst Mongolia was called Dzöhn (or Dzegun) Tala, i.e. the "Left," or north-east side. It is possible that Chigin-talas might represent Dsegun Tala in some like application. The etymology of Dzungaria, a name which in modern times covers the territory of which we are speaking, is similar.

2. Professor Vámbéry thinks that it is probably Chingin Tala, "The Vast Plain." But nothing can be absolutely satisfactory in such a case except historical evidence of the application of the name.