And is always
used by the Chinese when wanting to transcribe the title Khan or Chan.
Marco Polo's Abacan is a clerical error for Alacan."
10. - CHAMPA. (Vol. ii. p. 268.)
In Ma Huan's account of the Kingdom of Siam, transl. by Mr. Phillips
(Jour. China B.R.A.S., XXI. 1886, pp. 35-36) we read: "Their marriage
ceremonies are as follows: - They first invite the priest to conduct the
bridegroom to the bride's house, and on arrival there the priest exacts
the 'droit seigneurial,' and then she is introduced to the bridegroom."
11. - RUCK QUILLS. (Vol. ii. p. 421.)
Regarding Ruck Quills, Sir H. Yule wrote in the Academy, 22nd March,
1884, pp. 204-405: -
"I suggested that this might possibly have been some vegetable production,
such as a great frond of the Ravenala (Urania speciosa) cooked to pass
as a ruc's quill. (Marco Polo, first edition, ii. 354; second edition,
ii. 414.) Mr. Sibree, in his excellent book on Madagascar (The Great
African Island, 1880) noticed this, but said:
"'It is much more likely that they [the ruc's quills] were the immensely
long midribs of the leaves of the rofia palm. These are from twenty to
thirty feet long, and are not at all unlike an enormous quill stripped of
the feathering portion'" (p. 55).
In another passage he describes the palm, Sagus ruffia (? raphia):
"The rofia has a trunk of from thirty to fifty feet in height, and at
the head divides into seven or eight immensely long leaves.
