NOTE 2. - This paragraph from Ramusio replaces the following in Pauthier's
text: "In the summer they got abundance of game, both beasts and birds,
but in winter, there is none to be had because of the great cold."
Marco is here dealing, I apprehend, with hearsay geography, and, as is
common in like cases, there is great compression of circumstances and
characteristics, analogous to the like compression of little-known regions
in mediaeval maps.
The name Bargu appears to be the same with that often mentioned in
Mongol history as BARGUCHIN TUGRUM or BARGUTI, and which Rashiduddin calls
the northern limit of the inhabited earth. This commenced about Lake
Baikal, where the name still survives in that of a river (Barguzin)
falling into the Lake on the east side, and of a town on its banks
(Barguzinsk). Indeed, according to Rashid himself, BARGU was the name of
one of the tribes occupying the plain; and a quotation from Father
Hyacinth would seem to show that the country is still called Barakhu.
[The Archimandrite Palladius (Elucidations, 16-17) writes: - "In the
Mongol text of Chingis Khan's biography, this country is called Barhu and
Barhuchin; it is to be supposed, according to Colonel Yule's
identification of this name with the modern Barguzin, that this country
was near Lake Baikal. The fact that Merkits were in Bargu is confirmed by
the following statement in Chingis Khan's biography:
