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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
CHAP. LIX. SINDACHU
295
140, 274-275 ; I. B. IV. 274 ; Golden Horde, 34, 68 ; ErdIJza7zlz, 241-242, 257-258 ; Tijiik. I. 259, 263, 268 ; Vine. Belloy. Spec. Hist. XXIX. 73, XXXI. 32-34 ; Pere', Quat. 118 ; Not. et Ext. II. 536.)
NOTE 6.—The towns and villages were probably those immediately north of the Great Wall, between I12° and 115° East longitude, of which many remains exist, ascribed to the time of the Yuen 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 Ku-wei, or extramural region.
[After Kalgan, Captain Younghusband, on the 12th April, 18S6, " passed through the [outer] Great Wall . . . . entering what Marco Polo calls the land of Gog and Magog. For the next two days I passed through a hilly country inhabited by Chinese, though it really belongs to Mongolia ; but on the 14th I emerged on to the real steppes, which are the characteristic features of Mongolia Proper." (Proc. R. G. S. X., 1888, p. 490•)—H. C.]
Of the cloths called naklz and nzasij we have spoken before (supra eh. vi. note 4). These stuffs, or some such as these, were, I believe, what the medizeval writers called Tartary cloth, not because they were made in Tartary, but because they were brought from China and its borders through the Tartar d. minions ; 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. pp. 175, 247). So also Chaucer :
" On every trumpe hanging a broad banere Of fine Tartarium."
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Again, in the French im`entory of the Gardü-11leuble 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 Loin fellow, p. 159 ; Douet d'.rcq, p. 328 ; Fr. Michel, Reek. I. 315, II. i66 seqq.)
NOTE 7.—SINDACHU (Sindacui, Suidatui, etc., of the MSS.) is SIUEN-HWA-FU, called under the Kin Dynasty Siuen-te-clzau, 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 Fit, about 25 miles 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.
[Mr. Rockhill writes to me that this place is noted for the manufacture of buckskins.—H. C.]
Ydifu has not been identified. But Baron Richthofen saw old mines north-east of Kalgan, which used to yield argentiferous galena ; and Pumpelly heard of silver-mines near Yuchau, in the saute department.
[In the Yuen-shi it is " stated that there were gold and silver mines in the districts of Siuen-te-chow and Yuchow, as well as in the Kiming shan Mountains. These mines were worked by the Government itself up to 1323, when they were transferred to private enterprise. Marco Polo's Ydzfu is probably a copyist's error, and stands instead of Yuchow." (Palladius, 24, 25.)—II. C.]
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