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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
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CHAP. XXII.
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THE ARBRE SEC I 2 7
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Kúbenán, Páríz, and others, Surmah is the soot of the Gavän plant (Garcia's goan). This plant, a species of Astragalus, is on those mountains very fat and succulent ; from it also exudes the Tragacanth gum. The soot is used dry as an eye-powder, or, mixed with tallow, as an eye-salve. It is occasionally collected on iron gratings.
" Tútíá is the Arabicised word dúdhá, Persian for smokes.
" The Shems-ul-loghát calls Tútfá a medicine for eyes, and a stone used for the fabrication of Surmah. The Tohfeh says Tútfá is of three kinds—yellow and blue mineral Tútfá, Tútíá-i-qalam (collyrium) made from roots, and Tútfá resulting from the process of smelting copper ore. ` The best Tútfá-i-qalam comes from Kermán.' It adds, ` Some authors say Surmah is sulphuret of antimony, others say it is a composition of iron' ; I should say any black composition used for the eyes is Surmah, be it lampblack, antimony, iron, or a mixture of all.
" Teixeira's Tútfá was an impure oxide of zinc, perhaps the above-mentioned Tútíái-safíd, baked into cakes ; it was probably the East India Company's Lapis Tútfá, also called Tutty. The Company's Tutenague and Tutenage, occasionally confounded with Tutty, was the so-called ` Chinese Copper,' an alloy of copper, zinc, and iron, brought from China."
Major Sykes (ch. xxiii.) writes : " I translated Marco's description of tutia (which is also the modern Persian name), to a khán of Kubenán, and he assured nie that the process was the same to-day ; spodium he knew nothing about, but the sulphate of zinc is found in the hills to the east of Kubenán."
Heyd (Com. II. p. 675) says in a note : " Il résulte de l'ensemble de ce passage que les matiéres désignées par Marco Polo sous le nom de ` espodie (spodium) étaient des scories métalliques ; en général, le mot spodium désigne les résidus de la combustion des matiéres végétales ou des os (de l'ivoire)."—H. C.]
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 ARBRI,, SOL, which
we Christians call the Arhrc 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
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