Suhchau is called by Rashiduddin, and by Shah Rukh's ambassadors,
Sukchu, in exact correspondence with the reading we have adopted for the
name of the city, whilst the Russian Envoy Boikoff, in the 17th century,
calls it "Suktsey, where the rhubarb grows"; and Anthony Jenkinson, in
Hakluyt, by a slight metathesis, Sowchick. Suhchau lies just within the
extreme north-west angle of the Great Wall. It was at Suhchau that
Benedict Goes was detained, waiting for leave to go on to Peking, eighteen
weary months, and there he died just as aid reached him.
NOTE 3. - The real rhubarb [Rheum palmatum] grows wild, on very high
mountains. The central line of its distribution appears to be the high
range dividing the head waters of the Hwang-Ho, Yalung, and Min-Kiang. The
chief markets are Siningfu (see ch. lvii.), and Kwan-Kian in Szechwan. In
the latter province an inferior kind is grown in fields, but the genuine
rhubarb defies cultivation. (See Richthofen, Letters, No. VII. p. 69.)
Till recently it was almost all exported by Kiakhta and Russia, but some
now comes via Hankau and Shanghai.
["See, on the preparation of the root in China, Gemelli-Careri.
(Churchill's Collect., Bk. III. ch. v. 365.) It is said that when
Chinghiz Khan was pillaging Tangut, the only things his minister, Yeh-lue
Ch'u-ts'ai, would take as his share of the booty were a few Chinese books
and a supply of rhubarb, with which he saved the lives of a great number
of Mongols, when, a short time after, an epidemic broke out in the army."
(D'Ohsson, I. 372.