[General A. Houtum-Schindler (Jour.  R. As.  Soc. N.S.  XIII.  October, 1881, p. 497) says:  “The name Tutia for collyrium is now not used in Kerman.  Tutia, when the name stands alone, is sulphate of copper, which in other parts of Persia is known as Kat-i-Kebud; Tutia-i-sabz (green Tutia) is sulphate of iron, also called Zaj-i-siyah.  A piece of Tutia-i-zard (yellow Tutia) shown to me was alum, generally called Zaj-i-safid; and a piece of Tutia-i-safid (white Tutia) seemed to be an argillaceous zinc ore.  Either of these may have been the earth mentioned by Marco Polo as being put into the furnace.  The lampblack used as collyrium is always called Surmah.  This at Kerman itself is the soot produced by the flame of wicks, steeped in castor oil or goat’s fat, upon earthenware saucers.  In the high mountainous districts of the province, Kubenan, Pariz, and others, Surmah is the soot of the Gavan plant (Garcia’s goan).  This plant, a species of Astragalus, is on those mountains very fat and succulent; from it also exudes the Tragacanth gum.  The soot is used dry as an eye-powder, or, mixed with tallow, as an eye-salve.  It is occasionally collected on iron gratings.

“Tutia is the Arabicised word dudha, Persian for smokes.

“The Shems-ul-loghat calls Tutia a medicine for eyes, and a stone used for the fabrication of Surmah.  The Tohfeh says Tutia is of three kinds—­yellow and blue mineral Tutia, Tutia-i-qalam (collyrium) made from roots, and Tutia resulting from the process of smelting copper ore.  ’The best Tutia-i-qalam comes from Kerman.’  It adds, ’Some authors say Surmah is sulphuret of antimony, others say it is a composition of iron’; I should say any black composition used for the eyes is Surmah, be it lampblack, antimony, iron, or a mixture of all.

“Teixeira’s Tutia was an impure oxide of zinc, perhaps the above-mentioned Tutia-i-safid, baked into cakes; it was probably the East India Company’s Lapis Tutia, also called Tutty.  The Company’s Tutenague and Tutenage, occasionally confounded with Tutty, was the so-called ‘Chinese Copper,’ an alloy of copper, zinc, and iron, brought from China.”

Major Sykes (ch. xxiii.) writes:  “I translated Marco’s description of tutia (which is also the modern Persian name), to a khan of Kubenan, and he assured me that the process was the same to-day; spodium he knew nothing about, but the sulphate of zinc is found in the hills to the east of Kubenan.”

Heyd (Com. II. p. 675) says in a note:  “Il resulte de l’ensemble de ce passage que les matieres designees par Marco Polo sous le nom de ‘espodie’ (spodium) etaient des scories metalliques; en general, le mot spodium designe les residus de la combustion des matieres vegetales ou des os (de l’ivoire).”—­H.  C.]

CHAPTER XXII.

OF A CERTAIN DESERT THAT CONTINUES FOR EIGHT DAYS’ JOURNEY.