OF TAICAN, AND THE MOUNTAINS OF SALT.  ALSO OF THE PROVINCE OF CASEM.

After those twelve days’ journey you come to a fortified place called TAICAN, where there is a great corn market.[NOTE 1] It is a fine place, and the mountains that you see towards the south are all composed of salt.  People from all the countries round, to some thirty days’ journey, come to fetch this salt, which is the best in the world, and is so hard that it can only be broken with iron picks.  ’Tis in such abundance that it would supply the whole world to the end of time. [Other mountains there grow almonds and pistachioes, which are exceedingly cheap.][NOTE 2]

When you leave this town and ride three days further between north-east and east, you meet with many fine tracts full of vines and other fruits, and with a goodly number of habitations, and everything to be had very cheap.  The people are worshippers of Mahommet, and are an evil and a murderous generation, whose great delight is in the wine shop; for they have good wine (albeit it be boiled), and are great topers; in truth, they are constantly getting drunk.  They wear nothing on the head but a cord some ten palms long twisted round it.  They are excellent huntsmen, and take a great deal of game; in fact they wear nothing but the skins of the beasts they have taken in the chase, for they make of them both coats and shoes.  Indeed, all of them are acquainted with the art of dressing skins for these purposes.[NOTE 3]

When you have ridden those three days, you find a town called CASEM,[NOTE 4] which is subject to a count.  His other towns and villages are on the hills, but through this town there flows a river of some size.  There are a great many porcupines hereabouts, and very large ones too.  When hunted with dogs, several of them will get together and huddle close, shooting their quills at the dogs, which get many a serious wound thereby.[NOTE 5]

This town of Casem is at the head of a very great province, which is also called Casem.  The people have a peculiar language.  The peasants who keep cattle abide in the mountains, and have their dwellings in caves, which form fine and spacious houses for them, and are made with ease, as the hills are composed of earth.[NOTE 6]

After leaving the town of Casem, you ride for three days without finding a single habitation, or anything to eat or drink, so that you have to carry with you everything that you require.  At the end of those three days you reach a province called Badashan, about which we shall now tell you.[NOTE 7]

NOTE 1.—­The Taican of Polo is the still existing TALIKAN in the province of Kataghan or Kunduz, but it bears the former name (Thaikan) in the old Arab geographies.  Both names are used by Baber, who says it lay in the Ulugh Bagh, or Great Garden, a name perhaps acquired by the Plains of Talikan in happier days, but illustrating what Polo says of the next three days’ march.  The