When Hunted
With Dogs, Several Of Them Will Get Together And Huddle Close, Shooting
Their Quills At The Dogs, Which Get Many A Serious Wound Thereby.[NOTE 5]
This town of Casem is at the head of a very great province, which is also
called Casem.
The people have a peculiar language. The peasants who keep
cattle abide in the mountains, and have their dwellings in caves, which
form fine and spacious houses for them, and are made with ease, as the
hills are composed of earth.[NOTE 6]
After leaving the town of Casem, you ride for three days without finding
a single habitation, or anything to eat or drink, so that you have to
carry with you everything that you require. At the end of those three days
you reach a province called Badashan, about which we shall now tell
you.[NOTE 7]
NOTE 1. - The Taican of Polo is the still existing TALIKAN in the
province of Kataghan or Kunduz, but it bears the former name (Thaikan)
in the old Arab geographies. Both names are used by Baber, who says it lay
in the Ulugh Bagh, or Great Garden, a name perhaps acquired by the
Plains of Talikan in happier days, but illustrating what Polo says of the
next three days' march. The Castle of Talikan resisted Chinghiz for seven
months, and met with the usual fate (1221). [In the Travels of Sidi Ali,
son of Housain (Jour. Asiat., October, 1826, p. 203), "Talikan, in the
country of Badakhschan" is mentioned. - H. C.] Wood speaks of Talikan in
1838 as a poor place of some 300 or 400 houses, mere hovels; a recent
account gives it 500 families. Market days are not usual in Upper India or
Kabul, but are universal in Badakhshan and the Oxus provinces. The bazaars
are only open on those days, and the people from the surrounding country
then assemble to exchange goods, generally by barter. Wood chances to
note: "A market was held at Talikan.... The thronged state of the roads
leading into it soon apprised us that the day was no ordinary one."
(Abulf. in Buesching, V. 352; Sprenger, p. 50; P. de la Croix, I.
63; Baber, 38, 130; Burnes, III. 8; Wood, 156; Pandit Manphul's
Report.)
The distance of Talikan from Balkh is about 170 miles, which gives very
short marches, if twelve days be the correct reading. Ramusio has two
days, which is certainly wrong. XII. is easily miswritten for VII., which
would be a just number.
NOTE 2. - In our day, as I learn from Pandit Manphul, the mines of rock
salt are at Ak Bulak, near the Lataband Pass, and at Daruna, near the
Kokcha, and these supply the whole of Badakhshan, as well as Kunduz and
Chitral. These sites are due east of Talikan, and are in Badakhshan. But
there is a mine at Chal, S.E. or S.S.E. of Talikan and within the same
province. There are also mines of rock-salt near the famous "stone bridge"
in Kulab, north of the Oxus, and again on the south of the Alai steppe.
(Papers by Manphul and by Faiz Baksh; also Notes by Feachenko.)
Both pistachioes and wild almonds are mentioned by Pandit Manphul; and see
Wood (p. 252) on the beauty and profusion of the latter.
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