"I noticed a few Shan ponies
with docked tails. But the more general practice is to loop up the tail
in a knot, the object being to protect the rider, or rather his clothes,
from the dirt with which they would otherwise be spattered from the
flipping of the animal's tail." (MS. Notes.)
[After Yung-ch'ang, Captain Gill writes (II. p. 356): "The manes were
hogged and the tails cropped of a great many of the ponies these men were
riding; but there were none of the docked tails mentioned by Marco
Polo." - H.C.]
Armour of boiled leather - "armes cuiraces de cuir bouilli"; so
Pauthier's text; the material so often mentioned in mediaeval costume;
e.g. in the leggings of Sir Thopas: -
"His jambeux were of cuirbouly,
His swerdes sheth of ivory,
His helme of latoun bright."
But the reading of the G. Text which is "cuir de bufal," is probably the
right one. Some of the Miau-tzu of Kweichau are described as wearing
armour of buffalo-leather overlaid with iron plates. (Ritter, IV.
768-776.) Arblasts or crossbows are still characteristic weapons of many of
the wilder tribes of this region; e.g. of some of the Singphos, of the
Mishmis of Upper Assam, of the Lu-tzu of the valley of the Lukiang, of
tribes of the hills of Laos, of the Stiens of Cambodia, and of several of
the Miau-tzu tribes of the interior of China.
