P. 20); after the death of Chinghiz, it
belonged to his son Chagatai.
From the Great Wall, at the Pass of Kia Yue,
to Hami there is a distance of 1470 li. (C. Imbault-Huart. Le Pays de
Hami ou Khamil ... d'apres les auteurs chinois, Bul. de Geog. hist. et
desc., Paris, 1892, pp. 121-195.) The Chinese general Chang Yao was in
1877 at Hami, which had submitted in 1867 to the Athalik Ghazi, and made
it the basis of his operations against the small towns of Chightam and
Pidjam, and Yakub Khan himself stationed at Turfan. The Imperial Chinese
Agent in this region bears the title of K'u lun Pan She Ta Ch'en and
resides at K'urun (Urga); of lesser rank are the agents (Pan She Ta
Ch'en) of Kashgar, Kharashar, Kuche, Aksu, Khotan, and Hami. (See a
description of Hami by Colonel M. S. Bell, Proc. R. G. S. XII. 1890, p.
213.) - H. C.]
NOTE 2. - Expressed almost in the same words is the character attributed by
a Chinese writer to the people of Kuche in the same region. (Chin.
Repos. IX. 126.) In fact, the character seems to be generally applicable
to the people of East Turkestan, but sorely kept down by the rigid Islam
that is now enforced. (See Shaw, passim, and especially the
Mahrambashi's lamentations over the jolly days that were no more, pp. 319,
376.)
NOTE 3. - Pauthier's text has "sont si honni de leur moliers comme vous
avez ouy." Here the Crusca has "sono bozzi delle loro moglie," and
the Lat. Geog. "sunt bezzi de suis uxoribus." The Crusca Vocab. has
inserted bozzo with the meaning we have given, on the strength of this
passage. It occurs also in Dante (Paradiso, XIX. 137), in the general
sense of disgraced.
The shameful custom here spoken of is ascribed by Polo also to a province
of Eastern Tibet, and by popular report in modern times to the Hazaras of
the Hindu-Kush, a people of Mongolian blood, as well as to certain nomad
tribes of Persia, to say nothing of the like accusation against our own
ancestors which has been drawn from Laonicus Chalcondylas. The old Arab
traveller Ibn Muhalhal (10th century) also relates the same of the Hazlakh
(probably Kharlikh) Turks: "Ducis alicujus uxor vel filia vel soror,
quum mercatorum agmen in terram venit, eos adit, eorumque lustrat faciem.
Quorum siquis earum afficit admiratione hunc domum suam ducit, eumque apud
se hospitio excipit, eique benigne facit. Atque marito suo et filio
fratrique rerum necessariarum curam demandat; neque dum hospes apud eam
habitat, nisi necessarium est, maritus eam adit." A like custom prevails
among the Chukchis and Koryaks in the vicinity of Kamtchatka.
(Elphinstone's Caubul; Wood, p. 201; Burnes, who discredits, II. 153,
III. 195; Laon. Chalcond. 1650, pp. 48-49; Kurd de Schloezer, p. 13;
Erman, II. 530.)
["It is remarkable that the Chinese author, Hung Hao, who lived a
century before M. Polo, makes mention in his memoirs nearly in the same
words of this custom of the Uighurs, with whom he became acquainted during
his captivity in the kingdom of the Kin.
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