Mag. Opera, 1551, II.
227, 233; Fr. Michel, Recherches, etc., II. 91; Gerv. of Tilbury, p.
13; N. et E. II. 493; D. des Tissus, II. 1-12; J. N. China Branch R.
A. S., December, 1867, p. 70.) [Berger de Xivrey, Traditions
teratologiques, 457-458, 460-463. - H. C.]
[1] The late Mr. Atkinson has been twice alluded to in this note. I take
the opportunity of saying that Mr. Ney Elias, a most competent judge,
who has travelled across the region in question whilst admitting, as
every one must, Atkinson's vagueness and sometimes very careless
statements, is not at all disposed to discredit the truth of his
narrative.
CHAPTER XLIII.
OF THE PROVINCE OF SUKCHUR.
On leaving the province of which I spoke before,[NOTE 1] you ride ten days
between north-east and east, and in all that way you find no human
dwelling, or next to none, so that there is nothing for our book to speak
of.
At the end of those ten days you come to another province called SUKCHUR,
in which there are numerous towns and villages. The chief city is called
SUKCHU.[NOTE 2] The people are partly Christians and partly Idolaters, and
all are subject to the Great Kaan.
The great General Province to which all these three provinces belong is
called TANGUT.
Over all the mountains of this province rhubarb is found in great
abundance, and thither merchants come to buy it, and carry it thence all
over the world.[NOTE 3] [Travellers, however, dare not visit those
mountains with any cattle but those of the country, for a certain plant
grows there which is so poisonous that cattle which eat it lose their
hoofs. The cattle of the country know it and eschew it.[NOTE 4]] The
people live by agriculture, and have not much trade. [They are of a brown
complexion. The whole of the province is healthy.]
NOTE 1. - Referring apparently to Shachau; see Note 1 and the closing words
of last chapter.
NOTE 2. - There is no doubt that the province and city are those of
SUHCHAU, but there is a great variety in the readings, and several texts
have a marked difference between the name of the province and that of the
city, whilst others give them as the same. I have adopted those to which
the resultants of the readings of the best texts seem to point, viz.
Succiur and Succiu, though with considerable doubt whether they should
not be identical. Pauthier declares that Suctur, which is the reading of
his favourite MS., is the exact pronunciation, after the vulgar Mongol
manner, of Suh-chau-lu, the Lu or circuit of Suhchau; whilst Neumann
says that the Northern Chinese constantly add an euphonic particle or to
the end of words. I confess to little faith in such refinements, when no
evidence is produced.
[Suhchau had been devastated and its inhabitants massacred by Chinghiz
Khan in 1226. - H. C.]
Suhchau is called by Rashiduddin, and by Shah Rukh's ambassadors,
Sukchu, in exact correspondence with the reading we have adopted for the
name of the city, whilst the Russian Envoy Boikoff, in the 17th century,
calls it "Suktsey, where the rhubarb grows"; and Anthony Jenkinson, in
Hakluyt, by a slight metathesis, Sowchick. Suhchau lies just within the
extreme north-west angle of the Great Wall. It was at Suhchau that
Benedict Goes was detained, waiting for leave to go on to Peking, eighteen
weary months, and there he died just as aid reached him.
NOTE 3. - The real rhubarb [Rheum palmatum] grows wild, on very high
mountains. The central line of its distribution appears to be the high
range dividing the head waters of the Hwang-Ho, Yalung, and Min-Kiang. The
chief markets are Siningfu (see ch. lvii.), and Kwan-Kian in Szechwan. In
the latter province an inferior kind is grown in fields, but the genuine
rhubarb defies cultivation. (See Richthofen, Letters, No. VII. p. 69.)
Till recently it was almost all exported by Kiakhta and Russia, but some
now comes via Hankau and Shanghai.
["See, on the preparation of the root in China, Gemelli-Careri.
(Churchill's Collect., Bk. III. ch. v. 365.) It is said that when
Chinghiz Khan was pillaging Tangut, the only things his minister, Yeh-lue
Ch'u-ts'ai, would take as his share of the booty were a few Chinese books
and a supply of rhubarb, with which he saved the lives of a great number
of Mongols, when, a short time after, an epidemic broke out in the army."
(D'Ohsson, I. 372. - Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 193, note.)
"With respect to rhubarb ... the Suchowchi also makes the remark, that
the best rhubarb, with golden flowers in the breaking, is gathered in this
province (district of Shan-tan), and that it is equally beneficial to
men and beasts, preserving them from the pernicious effects of the heat."
(Palladius, l.c. p. 9.) - H. C.]
NOTE 4. - Erba is the title applied to the poisonous growth, which may be
either "plant" or "grass." It is not unlikely that it was a plant akin to
the Andromeda ovalifolia, the tradition of the poisonous character of
which prevails everywhere along the Himalaya from Nepal to the Indus.
It is notorious for poisoning sheep and goats at Simla and other hill
sanitaria; and Dr. Cleghorn notes the same circumstance regarding it that
Polo heard of the plant in Tangut, viz. that its effects on flocks
imported from the plains are highly injurious, whilst those of the hills
do not appear to suffer, probably because they shun the young leaves,
which alone are deleterious. Mr. Marsh attests the like fact regarding the
Kalmia angustifolia of New England, a plant of the same order
(Ericaceae). Sheep bred where it abounds almost always avoid browsing on
its leaves, whilst those brought from districts where it is unknown feed
upon it and are poisoned.
Firishta, quoting from the Zafar-Namah, says: "On the road from Kashmir
towards Tibet there is a plain on which no other vegetable grows but a
poisonous grass that destroys all the cattle that taste of it, and
therefore no horsemen venture to travel that route." And Abbe Desgodins,
writing from E. Tibet, mentions that sheep and goats are poisoned by
rhododendron leaves.
