[Illustration: Village Of Eastern Tibet On Szechwan Frontier (From Cooper)]

As regards Tebet, however, you should understand that it is subject to the Great Kaan.

So, likewise, all the other kingdoms, regions, and provinces which are described in this book are subject to the Great Kaan, nay, even those other kingdoms, regions, and provinces of which I had occasion to speak at the beginning of the book as belonging to the son of Argon, the Lord of the Levant, are also subject to the Emperor; for the former holds his dominion of the Kaan, and is his liegeman and kinsman of the blood Imperial. So you must know that from this province forward all the provinces mentioned in our book are subject to the Great Kaan; and even if this be not specially mentioned, you must understand that it is so.

[Illustration: Roads in Eastern Tibet. (Gorge of the Lan t'sang Kiang, from Cooper.)]

Now let us have done with this matter, and I will tell you about the Province of Caindu.

NOTE 1. - Here Marco at least shows that he knew Tibet to be much more extensive than the small part of it that he had seen. But beyond this his information amounts to little.

NOTE 2. - "Or de paliolle" "Oro di pagliuola" (pagliuola, "a spangle") must have been the technical phrase for what we call gold-dust, and the French now call or en paillettes, a phrase used by a French missionary in speaking of this very region. (Ann. de la Foi, XXXVII. 427.) Yet the only example of this use of the word cited in the Voc. Ital. Universale is from this passage of the Crusca MS.; and Pipino seems not to have understood it, translating "aurum quod dicitur Deplaglola"; whilst Zurla says erroneously that pajola is an old Italian word for gold. Pegolotti uses argento in pagliuola (p. 219). A Barcelona tariff of 1271 sets so much on every mark of Pallola. And the old Portuguese navigators seem always to have used the same expression for the gold-dust of Africa, ouro de pajola. (See Major's Prince Henry, pp. 111, 112, 116; Capmany Memorias, etc., II. App. p. 73; also "Aurum de Pajola," in Usodimare of Genoa, see Graberg, Annali, II. 290, quoted by Peschel, p. 178.)

NOTE 3. - The cinnamon must have been the coarser cassia produced in the lower parts of this region (See note to next chapter.) We have already (Book I. ch. xxxi.) quoted Tavernier's testimony to the rage for coral among the Tibetans and kindred peoples. Mr. Cooper notices the eager demand for coral at Bathang: (See also Desgodins, La Mission du Thibet, 310.)

NOTE 4. - See supra, Bk. I. ch. lxi. note 11.

NOTE 5. - The big Tibetan mastiffs are now well known. Mr. Cooper, at Ta-t'sien lu, notes that the people of Tibetan race "keep very large dogs, as large as Newfoundlands." And he mentions a pack of dogs of another breed, tan and black, "fine animals of the size of setters." The missionary M. Durand also, in a letter from the region in question, says, speaking of a large leopard:

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