I. 259, 263, 268;
Vinc. Bellov. Spec. Hist. XXIX. 73, XXXI. 32-34; Pereg. Quat. 118;
Not. et Ext. II. 536.)
NOTE 6. - The towns and villages were probably those immediately north of
the Great Wall, between 112 deg. and 115 deg. East longitude, of which many
remains exist, ascribed to the time of the Yuen or Mongol Dynasty. This
tract, between the Great Wall and the volcanic plateau of Mongolia, is
extensively colonised by Chinese, and has resumed the flourishing aspect
that Polo describes. It is known now as the Ku-wei, or extramural
region.
[After Kalgan, Captain Younghusband, on the 12th April, 1886, "passed
through the [outer] Great Wall ... entering what Marco Polo calls the land
of Gog and Magog. For the next two days I passed through a hilly country
inhabited by Chinese, though it really belongs to Mongolia; but on the
14th I emerged on to the real steppes, which are the characteristic
features of Mongolia Proper." (Proc. R. G. S. X., 1888, p. 490.) - H. C.]
Of the cloths called nakh and nasij we have spoken before (supra ch.
vi. note 4). These stuffs, or some such as these, were, I believe, what
the mediaeval writers called Tartary cloth, not because they were made
in Tartary, but because they were brought from China and its borders
through the Tartar dominions; as we find that for like reason they were
sometimes called stuffs of Russia.
