Here, you should be told, is the end of the empire of the Tartar Lord of the Levant.  And this city is also the limit of Persia in the direction between east and north-east.[NOTE 1]

Now, let us quit this city, and I will tell you of another country called DOGANA.[NOTE 2]

When you have quitted the city of which I have been speaking, you ride some 12 days between north-east and east, without finding any human habitation, for the people have all taken refuge in fastnesses among the mountains, on account of the Banditti and armies that harassed them.  There is plenty of water on the road, and abundance of game; there are lions too.  You can get no provisions on the road, and must carry with you all that you require for these 12 days.[NOTE 3]

NOTE 1.—­BALKH, “the mother of cities,” suffered mercilessly from Chinghiz.  Though the city had yielded without resistance, the whole population was marched by companies into the plain, on the usual Mongol pretext of counting them, and then brutally massacred.  The city and its gardens were fired, and all buildings capable of defence were levelled.  The province long continued to be harried by the Chaghataian inroads.  Ibn Batuta, sixty years after Marco’s visit, describes the city as still in ruins, and as uninhabited:  “The remains of its mosques and colleges,” he says, “are still to be seen, and the painted walls traced with azure.”  It is no doubt the Vaeq (Valq) of Clavijo, “very large, and surrounded by a broad earthen wall, thirty paces across, but breached in many parts.”  He describes a large portion of the area within as sown with cotton.  The account of its modern state in Burnes and Ferrier is much the same as Ibn Batuta’s, except that they found some population; two separate towns within the walls according to the latter.  Burnes estimates the circuit of the ruins at 20 miles.  The bulk of the population has been moved since 1858 to Takhtapul, 8 miles east of Balkh, where the Afghan Government is placed.

(Erdmann, 404-405; I.  B. III. 59; Clavijo, p. 117; Burnes, II. 204-206; Ferrier, 206-207.)

According to the legendary history of Alexander, the beautiful Roxana was the daughter of Darius, and her father in a dying interview with Alexander requested the latter to make her his wife:—­

  “Une fille ai mult bele; se prendre le voles. 
  Vus en seres de l’mont tout li mius maries,” etc.
      (Lambert Le Court, p. 256.)

NOTE 2.—­The country called Dogana in the G. Text is a puzzle.  In the former edition I suggested Juzgana, a name which till our author’s time was applied to a part of the adjoining territory, though not to that traversed in quitting Balkh for the east.  Sir H. Rawlinson is inclined to refer the name to Dehgan, or “villager,” a term applied in Bactria, and in Kabul, to Tajik peasantry[1].  I may also refer to certain passages