De Harlez, P. 97.) - H.C.]

CHAPTER LVII.

CONCERNING THE PROVINCE OF ANIN.

Anin is a Province towards the east, the people of which are subject to the Great Kaan, and are Idolaters. They live by cattle and tillage, and have a peculiar language. The women wear on the legs and arms bracelets of gold and silver of great value, and the men wear such as are even yet more costly. They have plenty of horses which they sell in great numbers to the Indians, making a great profit thereby. And they have also vast herds of buffaloes and oxen, having excellent pastures for these. They have likewise all the necessaries of life in abundance.[NOTE 1]

Now you must know that between Anin and Caugigu, which we have left behind us, there is a distance of [25] days' journey;[NOTE 2] and from Caugigu to Bangala, the third province in our rear, is 30 days' journey. We shall now leave Anin and proceed to another province which is some 8 days' journey further, always going eastward.

NOTE 1. - Ramusio, the printed text of the Soc. de Geographie, and most editions have Amu; Pauthier reads Aniu and considers the name to represent Tungking or Annam, called also Nan-yue. The latter word he supposes to be converted into Anyue, Aniu. And accordingly he carries the traveller to the capital of Tungking.

Leaving the name for the present, according to the scheme of the route as I shall try to explain it below, I should seek for Amu or Aniu or Anin in the extreme south-east of Yun-nan. A part of this region was for the first time traversed by the officers of the French expedition up the Mekong, who in 1867 visited Sheu-ping, Lin-ngan and the upper valley of the River of Tungking on their way to Yun-nan-fu. To my question whether the description in the text, of Aniu or Anin and its fine pastures, applied to the tract just indicated, Lieut. Garnier replied on the whole favourably (see further on), proceeding: "The population about Sheu-ping is excessively mixt. On market days at that town one sees a gathering of wild people in great number and variety, and whose costumes are highly picturesque, as well as often very rich. There are the Pa-is, who are also found again higher up, the Ho-nhi, the Khato, the Lope, the Shentseu. These tribes appear to be allied in part to the Laotians, in part to the Kakhyens.... The wilder races about Sheuping are remarkably handsome, and you see there types of women exhibiting an extraordinary regularity of feature, and at the same time a complexion surprisingly white. The Chinese look quite an inferior race beside them.... I may add that all these tribes, especially the Ho-nhi and the Pa-i, wear large amounts of silver ornament; great collars of silver round the neck, as well as on the legs and arms."

Though the whiteness of the people of Anin is not noticed by Polo, the distinctive manner in which he speaks in the next chapter of the dark complexion of the tribes described therein seems to indicate the probable omission of the opposite trait here.

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