National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

CHAP. XXII. p. 132.

TUTIA ARBRE SEC.

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there of this metal, which, a little later on, is also said to come

from a State in the Cashmeer region. K'ang-hi's seventeenth-

century dictionary is more explicit : it states that Termed pro-

duces this ore, but that ` the true sort comes from Persia, and

looks like gold, but on being heated it turns carnation, and not

black.' As the Toba Emperors added woo new characters to

the Chinese stock, we may assume this one to have been invented

for the specific purpose indicated.' " (E. H. PARKER, Asiatic

Quart. Rev., Jan., 1904, pp. 135--6.) Prof. Parker adds the follow-

ing note, l.c., p. 149: " Since writing the above, I have come

across a passage in the ` History of the Sung Dynasty '

(chap. 490, p. 17) stating that an Arab junk-master brought to

Canton in A.D. 99o, and sent on thence to the Chinese Emperor

in Ho Nan, ` one vitreous bottle of tutia.' The two words mean

` metropolis-father,' and are therefore without any signification,

except as a foreign word. According to Yule's notes (I., p. 126),

tútiá, or dudhá, in one of its forms was used as an eye-ointment or

collyrium."

XXII., pp. 127-139. The Province of Tonocain " contains an

immense plain on which is found the ARBRE SOL, which we Christians

call the Arbre 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 produces a rough husk like that of a chestnut, but without anything

in it. The wood is yellow like box, and very strong, and there are no

other trees near it nor within a hundred miles of it, except on one side,

where you find trees within about ten miles distance."

In a paper published in the Journal of the R. As. Soc., Jan.,

1909, Gen. Houtum-Schindler comes to the conclusion, p. 157,

that Marco Polo's tree is not the " Sun Tree," but the Cypress

of Zoroaster ; " Marco Polo's arbre sol and arbre seul stand for

the Persian dirakkt i sol, i.e. the cypress-tree." If General

Houtum Schindler had seen the third edition of the Book of Ser

Marco Polo, I., p. 113, he would have found that I read his paper

of the J. R. A. S., of January, 1898.

XXII., p. 132, 1. 22. The only current coin is millstones.

Mr. T. B. CLARKE-THORNHILL wrote to me in 1906:

" Though I can hardly imagine that there can be any connection

between the Caroline Islands and the ` Amiral d'Outre l'Arbre

Sec,' still it may interest you to know that the currency of ` mill-

stones ' existed up to a short time ago, and may do so still, in

the island of Yap, in that group. It consisted of various-sized