which exactly fitted Marco’s conditions, as at Sarbizan the Sardu plateau terminates in a high pass of 9200 feet, from which there is a most abrupt descent to the plain of Jiruft, Komadin being about 35 miles, or two days’ journey from the top of the pass.  Starting from Kerman, the stages would be as follows:—­I.  Jupar (small town); 2.  Bahramjird (large village); 3.  Gudar (village); 4.  Rain (small town)....  Thence to the Sarbizan pass is a distance of 45 miles, or three desert stages, thus constituting a total of 110 miles for the seven days.  This is the camel route to the present day, and absolutely fits in with the description given....  The question to be decided by this section of the journey may then, I think, be considered to be finally and most satisfactorily settled, the route proving to lie between the two selected by Colonel Yule, as being the most suitable, although he wisely left the question open.”—­H.  C.]

In the abstract of Major Smith’s Itinerary as we have given it, we do not find Polo’s city of Camadi.  Major Smith writes to me, however, that this is probably to be sought in “the ruined city, the traces of which I observed in the plain of Jiruft near Kerimabad.  The name of the city is now apparently lost.”  It is, however, known to the natives as the City of Dakianus, as Mr. Abbott, who visited the site, informs us.  This is a name analogous only to the Arthur’s ovens or Merlin’s caves of our own country, for all over Mahomedan Asia there are old sites to which legend attaches the name of Dakianus or the Emperor Decius, the persecuting tyrant of the Seven Sleepers.  “The spot,” says Abbott, “is an elevated part of the plain on the right bank of the Hali Rud, and is thickly strewn with kiln-baked bricks, and shreds of pottery and glass....  After heavy rain the peasantry search amongst the ruins for ornaments of stone, and rings and coins of gold, silver, and copper.  The popular tradition concerning the city is that it was destroyed by a flood long before the birth of Mahomed.”

[General Houtum-Schindler, in a paper in the Jour.  R. As.  Soc., Jan. 1898, p. 43, gives an abstract of Dr. Houtsma’s (of Utrecht) memoir, Zur Geschichte der Saljuqen von Kerman, and comes to the conclusion that “from these statements we can safely identify Marco Polo’s Camadi with the suburb Qumadin, or, as I would read it, Qamadin, of the city of Jiruft.”—­ (Cf. Major Sykes’ Persia, chap. xxiii.:  “Camadi was sacked for the first time, after the death of Toghrul Shah of Kerman, when his four sons reduced the province to a condition of anarchy.”)

Major P. Molesworth Sykes, Recent Journeys in Persia (Geog.  Journal, X. 1897, p. 589), says:  “Upon arrival in Rudbar, we turned north wards and left the Farman Farma, in order to explore the site of Marco Polo’s ’Camadi.’...  We came upon a huge area littered with yellow bricks eight inches square, while not even a broken wall is left to mark the site of what was formerly a great city, under the name of the Sher-i-Jiruft.”—­H.  C.] The actual distance from Bamm to the City of Dakianus is, by Abbott’s Journal, about 66 miles.