- 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.
Kublai's great tent, after all, was but a fraction of the size of Akbar's
audience-tents, the largest of which held 10,000 people, and took 1000
farrashes 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 encuierees," etc. The G. T. has
"de leing d'especies mout bien cures," etc. The Crusca, "di spezie
molto belle," and Ramusio going off at a tangent, "di legno intagliate
con grandissimo artificio 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).
[Illustration: 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 same 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 complicated and inconvenient wooden frame-work, owing to which it takes
some considerable time to raise up the tent." - H. C.]
NOTE 8.
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