[Kamul is the Turkish name of the province called by the Mongols Khamil, by the Chinese Hami; the latter name is found for the first time in the Yuen Shi, but it is first mentioned in Chinese history in the 1st century of our Era under the name of I-wu-lu or I-wu (Bretschneider, Med.  Res. II. p. 20); after the death of Chinghiz, it belonged to his son Chagatai.  From the Great Wall, at the Pass of Kia Yue, to Hami there is a distance of 1470 li. (C.  Imbault-Huart.  Le Pays de Hami ou Khamil ... d’apres les auteurs chinois, Bul. de Geog. hist. et desc., Paris, 1892, pp. 121-195.) The Chinese general Chang Yao was in 1877 at Hami, which had submitted in 1867 to the Athalik Ghazi, and made it the basis of his operations against the small towns of Chightam and Pidjam, and Yakub Khan himself stationed at Turfan.  The Imperial Chinese Agent in this region bears the title of K’u lun Pan She Ta Ch’en and resides at K’urun (Urga); of lesser rank are the agents (Pan She Ta Ch’en) of Kashgar, Kharashar, Kuche, Aksu, Khotan, and Hami. (See a description of Hami by Colonel M. S. Bell, Proc.  R. G. S. XII. 1890, p. 213.)—­H.  C.]

NOTE 2.—­Expressed almost in the same words is the character attributed by a Chinese writer to the people of Kuche in the same region. (Chin.  Repos. IX. 126.) In fact, the character seems to be generally applicable to the people of East Turkestan, but sorely kept down by the rigid Islam that is now enforced. (See Shaw, passim, and especially the Mahrambashi’s lamentations over the jolly days that were no more, pp. 319, 376.)

NOTE 3.—­Pauthier’s text has “sont si honni de leur moliers comme vous avez ouy.”  Here the Crusca has “sono bozzi delle loro moglie,” and the Lat.  Geog. “sunt bezzi de suis uxoribus.”  The Crusca Vocab. has inserted bozzo with the meaning we have given, on the strength of this passage.  It occurs also in Dante (Paradiso, XIX. 137), in the general sense of disgraced.

The shameful custom here spoken of is ascribed by Polo also to a province of Eastern Tibet, and by popular report in modern times to the Hazaras of the Hindu-Kush, a people of Mongolian blood, as well as to certain nomad tribes of Persia, to say nothing of the like accusation against our own ancestors which has been drawn from Laonicus Chalcondylas.  The old Arab traveller Ibn Muhalhal (10th century) also relates the same of the Hazlakh (probably Kharlikh) Turks:  “Ducis alicujus uxor vel filia vel soror, quum mercatorum agmen in terram venit, eos adit, eorumque lustrat faciem.  Quorum siquis earum afficit admiratione hunc domum suam ducit, eumque apud se hospitio excipit, eique benigne facit.  Atque marito suo et filio fratrique rerum necessariarum curam demandat; neque dum hospes apud eam habitat, nisi necessarium est, maritus eam adit.”  A like custom prevails among the Chukchis and Koryaks in the vicinity of Kamtchatka. (Elphinstone’s Caubul; Wood, p. 201; Burnes, who discredits, II. 153, III. 195; Laon.  Chalcond. 1650, pp. 48-49; Kurd de Schloezer, p. 13; Erman, II. 530.)