The Travels Of Marco Polo - Volume 2 Of 2 By Marco Polo And Rustichello Of Pisa











































 -  Kachyens and Shans ride on ordinary Chinese saddles. The
stirrups are of the usual average length, but the saddles are - Page 169
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"Kachyens And Shans Ride On Ordinary Chinese Saddles.

The stirrups are of the usual average length, but the saddles are so constructed as to rise at least a foot above the pony's back." He adds with reference to another point in the text:

"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.

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