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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
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CHAP. XX.
HOW THE EMPEROR-GOES HUNTING
409
NOTE 7. —I suppose the best accessible illustration of the Kaan's great tent may be that in which the Emperor Kienlung received Lord Macartney in the same region in 1793, of which one view is given in Staunton's plates. Another exists in the Staunton Collection in the B. M., of which I give a reduced sketch.
Kúblái's great tent, after all, was but a fraction of the size of Akbar's audience-tents, the largest of which held io,000 people, and took Too0 farráshes a week's work to pitch it, with machines. But perhaps the manner of holding people is differently
estimated. (Ain Akb. 53.)
In the description of the tent-poles, Pauthier's text has "trois coulombes de fust de pieces moult bien encuierées," etc. The G. T. has " de leing d'especies snout bien curés," etc. The Crusca, " di spezie molto belle," and Ramusio going off at a tangent, " di legno intagliate con grandissimo art'cio e indorate." I believe the translation in the text to indicate the true reading. It might mean camphor-wood, or the like. The tent-covering of tiger-skins is illustrated by a passage in Sanang Setzen, which speaks of a tent covered with panther-skins, sent to Chinghiz by the Khan of the Solongos (p. 77).
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The Tents of the Emperor Kienlung.
[Grenard (pp. 160-162) gives us his experience of Tents in Central Asia (Khotan). " These Tents which we had purchased at Tashkent were the ` tentes-abris ' which are used in campaign by Russian military workshops, only we made them larger by a third. They were made of grey Kirghiz felt, which cannot be procured at Khotan. The felt manufactured in this town not having enough consistency or solidity, we took Aksu felt, which is better than this of Khotan, though inferior to the felt of Russian Turkestan. These felt tents are extremely heavy, and, once damp, are dried with difficulty. These drawbacks are not compensated by any important advantage ; it would be an illusion to believe that they preserve from the cold any better than other tents. In fact, I prefer the Manchu tent in use in the Chinese army, which is, perhaps, of all military tents the most practical and comfortable. It is made of a single piece of double cloth of cotton, very strong, waterproof for a long time, white inside, blue outside, and weighs with its three tipped sticks and its wooden poles, 25 kilog. Set up, it forms a ridge roof 7 feet high and shelters fully ten men. It suits servants perfectly well. For the master who wants to work, to write, to draw, occasionally to receive officials, the ideal tent would be one of the sane material, but of larger proportions, and comprising two parallel vertical partitions and surmounted by a ridge roof. The round form of Kirghiz and Mongol tents is also very comfortable, but it requires a complidated and inconvenient wooden frame-work, owing to which it takes
some considerable time to raise up the tent."—H. C.]
NOTES.— The expressions about the sable run in the G. T., " et l'apellent les
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