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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
2 I 8 MARCO POLO Book I.
know it and eschew it.4] The people live by agriculture,
and have not much trade. [They are of a brown com-
plexion. The whole of the province is healthy.]
NOTE i.—Referring apparently to Shachau ; see Note I 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 Suhchau-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 had been devastated and its inhabitants massacred by Chinghiz Khan in I226.—H. C.]
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 north-west 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 [Rheumpalmatum] 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 eh. lvii.), and Kwan-Kian in Szechwan. In the latter province an inferior kind is grown in fields, but the genuine rhubarb defies cultivation. (See Richthofeu, Letters, No. VII. p. 69.) Till recently it was almost all exported by Kiakhta and Russia, but some now comes vid Hankau and Shanghai.
[ " See, on the preparation of the root in China, Gemelli-Careri. (Churchill's Collect., Bk. III. eh. v. 365.) It is said that when Chinghiz Khan was pillaging Tangut, the only things his minister, Yeh-lü Ch'u-ts'ai, would take as his share of the booty were a few Chinese books and a supply of rhubarb, with which he saved the lives of a great number of Mongols, when, a short time after, an epidemic broke out in the army." (D' Ohsson, I. 372. —Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 193, note.)
" With respect to rhubarb . . . the Suchowchi also makes the remark, that the best rhubarb, with golden flowers in the breaking, is gathered in this province (district of Shan-tan), and that it is equally beneficial to men and beasts, preserving them from the pernicious effects of the heat." (Palladius, 1. c. p. 9. )—H. C.]
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 AndrQ;neda 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 regard-
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