Let me tell you a strange thing too.  When they are carrying the body of any Emperor to be buried with the others, the convoy that goes with the body doth put to the sword all whom they fall in with on the road, saying:  “Go and wait upon your Lord in the other world!” For they do in sooth believe that all such as they slay in this manner do go to serve their Lord in the other world.  They do the same too with horses; for when the Emperor dies, they kill all his best horses, in order that he may have the use of them in the other world, as they believe.  And I tell you as a certain truth, that when Mongou Kaan died, more than 20,000 persons, who chanced to meet the body on its way, were slain in the manner I have told.[NOTE 4]

NOTE 1.—­Before parting with Chinghiz let me point out what has not to my knowledge been suggested before, that the name of “Cambuscan bold” in Chaucer’s tale is only a corruption of the name of Chinghiz.  The name of the conqueror appears in Fr. Ricold as Camiuscan, from which the transition to Cambuscan presents no difficulty. Camius was, I suppose, a clerical corruption out of Canjus or Cianjus.  In the chronicle of St. Antonino, however, we have him called “Chinghiscan rectius Tamgius Cam” (XIX. c. 8).  If this is not merely the usual blunder of t for c, it presents a curious analogy to the form Tankiz Khan always used by Ibn Batuta.  I do not know the origin of the latter, unless it was suggested by tankis (Ar.) “Turning upside down.” (See Pereg.  Quat., p. 119; I.  B. III. 22, etc.)

NOTE 2.—­Polo’s history here is inadmissible.  He introduces into the list of the supreme Kaans Batu, who was only Khan of Kipchak (the Golden Horde), and Hulaku who was Khan of Persia, whilst he omits Okkodai, the immediate successor of Chinghiz.  It is also remarkable that he uses the form Alacou here instead of Alaue as elsewhere; nor does he seem to mean the same person, for he was quite well aware that Alaue was Lord of the Levant, who sent ambassadors to the Great Khan Cublay, and could not therefore be one of his predecessors.  The real succession ran:  1.  Chinghiz; 2.  Okkodai; 3.  Kuyuk; 4.  Mangku; 5.  Kublai.

There are quite as great errors in the history of Haiton, who had probably greater advantages in this respect than Marco.  And I may note that in Teixeira’s abridgment of Mirkhond, Hulaku is made to succeed Mangku Kaan on the throne of Chinghiz. (Relaciones, p. 338.)

NOTE 3.—­The ALTAI here certainly does not mean the Great South Siberian Range to which the name is now applied.  Both Altai and Altun-Khan appear sometimes to be applied by Sanang Setzen to the Khingan of the Chinese, or range running immediately north of the Great Wall near Kalgan.  (See ch. lxi. note I.) But in reference to this matter of the burial of Chinghiz, he describes the place as “the district of Yekeh Utek, between the shady side of the Altai-Khan and the sunny side of the Kentei-Khan.”  Now the Kentei-Khan (khan here meaning “mountain”) is near the sources of the Onon, immediately to the north-east of Urga; and Altai-Khan in this connection cannot mean the hills near the Great Wall, 500 miles distant.