(Matt. p. 245; Spec.
Natur. Lib. XVII. c. 106, 108.)
["According to Chinese notions, Han Yue, the St. Patrick of China, having
persuaded the alligators in China that he was all-powerful, induced the
stupid saurians to migrate to Ngo Hu or 'Alligators' Lake' in the
Kwang-tung province." (North-China Herald, 5th July, 1895, p. 5.)
Alligators have been found in 1878 at Wu-hu and at Chen-kiang (Ngan-hwei
and Kiang-Su). (See A. A. Fauvel, Alligators in China, in Jour. N.
China B.R.A.S. XIII. 1879, 1-36.) - H.C.]
NOTE 4. - I think the great horses must be an error, though running
through all the texts, and that grant quantite de chevaus was probably
intended. Valuable ponies are produced in those regions, but I have
never heard of large horses, and Martini's testimony is to like effect (p.
141). Nor can I hear of any race in those regions in modern times that
uses what we should call long stirrups. It is true that the Tartars rode
very short - "brevissimas habent strepas," as Carpini says (643); and the
Kirghiz Kazaks now do the same. Both Burmese and Shans ride what we should
call short; and Major Sladen observes of the people on the western border
of Yun-nan:
