NOTE 3. - Ibn Batuta thus describes the traffic that took place with the
natives of the Land of Darkness: "When the Travellers have accomplished a
journey of 40 days across this Desert tract they encamp near the borders
of the Land of Darkness. Each of them then deposits there the goods that
he has brought with him, and all return to their quarters. On the morrow
they come back to look at their goods, and find laid beside them skins of
the Sable, the Vair, and the Ermine. If the owner of the goods is
satisfied with what is laid beside his parcel he takes it, if not he
leaves it there. The inhabitants of the Land of Darkness may then (on
another visit) increase the amount of their deposit, or, as often happens,
they may take it away altogether and leave the goods of the foreign
merchants untouched. In this way is the trade conducted. The people who go
thither never know whether those with whom they buy and sell are men or
goblins, for they never see any one!" (II. 401.)
["Ibn Batuta's account of the market of the 'Land of Darkness' ... agrees
almost word for word with Dr. Mirth's account of the 'Spirit Market, taken
from the Chinese.'" (Parker, China Review, XIV. p. 359.) - H.C.]
Abulfeda gives exactly the same account of the trade; and so does
Herberstein. Other Oriental writers ascribe the same custom to the Wisu,
a people three months' journey from Bolghar. These Wisu have been
identified by Fraehn with the Wesses, a people spoken of by Russian
historians as dwelling on the shores of the Bielo Osero, which Lake indeed
is alleged by a Russian author to have been anciently called Wuesu,
misunderstood into Weissensee, and thence rendered into Russian Bielo
Osero ("White Lake"). (Golden Horde, App. p. 429; Buesching, IV.
359-360; Herberstein in Ram. II. 168 v.; Fraehn, Bolghar, pp. 14, 47;
Do., Ibn Fozlan, 205 seqq., 221.) Dumb trade of the same kind is a
circumstance related of very many different races and periods, e.g., of a
people beyond the Pillars of Hercules by Herodotus, of the Sabaean dealers
in frankincense by Theophrastus, of the Seres by Pliny, of the Sasians far
south of Ethiopia by Cosmas, of the people of the Clove Islands by Kazwini,
of a region beyond Segelmessa by Mas'udi, of a people far beyond Timbuctoo
by Cadamosto, the Veddas of Ceylon by Marignolli and more modern writers,
of the Poliars of Malabar by various authors, by Paulus Jovius of the
Laplanders, etc. etc.
Pliny's attribution, surely erroneous, of this custom to the Chinese [see
supra, H.C.], suggests that there may have been a misunderstanding by
which this method of trade was confused with that other curious system of
dumb higgling, by the pressure of the knuckles under a shawl, a masonic
system in use from Peking to Bombay, and possibly to Constantinople.
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