And there, the people of the country
tell you, was fought the battle between Alexander and King Darius.[NOTE 2]
The towns and villages have great abundance of everything good, for the
climate is extremely temperate, being neither very hot nor very cold. The
natives all worship Mahommet, and are a very fine-looking people,
especially the women, who are surpassingly beautiful.
NOTE 1. - All that region has been described as "a country divided into
deserts that are salt, and deserts that are not salt." (Vigne, I. 16.)
Tonocain, as we have seen (ch. xv. note 1), is the Eastern Kuhistan of
Persia, but extended by Polo, it would seem to include the whole of
Persian Khorasan. No city in particular is indicated as visited by the
traveller, but the view I take of the position of the Arbre Sec, as well
as his route through Kuh-Banan, would lead me to suppose that he reached
the Province of TUN-O-KAIN about Tabbas.
["Marco Polo has been said to have traversed a portion of (the
Dash-i-Kavir, great Salt Desert) on his supposed route from Tabbas to
Damghan, about 1272; although it is more probable that he marched further
to the east, and crossed the northern portion of the Dash-i-Lut, Great Sand
Desert, separating Khorasan in the south-east from Kerman, and occupying a
sorrowful parallelogram between the towns of Neh and Tabbas on the north,
and Kerman and Yezd on the south." (Curzon, Persia, II.
