The marriage customs of Tartars are as follows.  Any man may take a hundred wives an he so please, and if he be able to keep them.  But the first wife is ever held most in honour, and as the most legitimate [and the same applies to the sons whom she may bear].  The husband gives a marriage payment to his wife’s mother, and the wife brings nothing to her husband.  They have more children than other people, because they have so many wives.  They may marry their cousins, and if a father dies, his son may take any of the wives, his own mother always excepted; that is to say the eldest son may do this, but no other.  A man may also take the wife of his own brother after the latter’s death.  Their weddings are celebrated with great ado.[NOTE 5]

NOTE 1.—­The word here in the G. T. is “fennes,” which seems usually to mean ropes, and in fact Pauthier’s text reads:  “Il ont mesons de verges et les cueuvrent de cordes.”  Ramusio’s text has feltroni, and both Muller and the Latin of the S. G. have filtro.  This is certainly the right reading.  But whether fennes was ever used as a form of feltres (as pennes means peltry) I cannot discover.  Perhaps some words have dropped out.  A good description of a Kirghiz hut (35 feet in diameter), and exactly corresponding to Polo’s account, will be found in Atkinson’s Siberia, and another in Vambery’s Travels.  How comfortable and civilised the aspect of such a hut may be, can be seen also in Burnes’s account of a Turkoman dwelling of this kind.  This description of hut or tent is common to nearly all the nomade tribes of Central Asia.  The trellis-work forming the skeleton of the tent-walls is (at least among the Turkomans) loosely pivoted, so as to draw out and compress like “lazy-tongs.”

[Illustration:  Dressing up a tent.]

Rubruquis, Pallas, Timkowski, and others, notice the custom of turning the door to the south; the reason is obvious. (Atkinson, 285; Vamb. 316; Burnes, III. 51; Conolly, I. 96) But throughout the Altai, Mr. Ney Elias informs me, K’alkas, Kirghiz, and Kalmaks all pitch their tents facing east.  The prevailing winter wind is there westerly.

[Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 56, note) says that he has often seen Mongol tents facing east and south-east.  He adds:  “It is interesting to find it noted in the Chou Shu (Bk. 50, 3) that the Khan of the Turks, who lived always on the Tu-kin mountains, had his tent invariably facing south, so as to show reverence to the sun’s rising place.”—­H.  C.]

NOTE 2.—­Aeschylus already knows the

               “wandering Scyths who dwell
  In latticed huts high-poised on easy wheels.”
      (Prom.  Vinct. 709-710.)

And long before him Hesiod says Phineus was carried by the Harpies—­

  “To the Land of the Milk-fed nations, whose houses are waggons.”
      (Strabo, vii. 3-9.)