In this country too is found the best musk in the world; and I will tell you how ’tis produced.  There exists in that region a kind of wild animal like a gazelle.  It has feet and tail like the gazelle’s, and stag’s hair of a very coarse kind, but no horns.  It has four tusks, two below and two above, about three inches long, and slender in form, one pair growing upwards, and the other downwards.  It is a very pretty creature.  The musk is found in this way.  When the creature has been taken, they find at the navel between the flesh and the skin something like an impostume full of blood, which they cut out and remove with all the skin attached to it.  And the blood inside this impostume is the musk that produces that powerful perfume.  There is an immense number of these beasts in the country we are speaking of. [The flesh is very good to eat.  Messer Marco brought the dried head and feet of one of these animals to Venice with him.[NOTE 4]]

The people are traders and artizans, and also grow abundance of corn.  The province has an extent of 26 days’ journey.  Pheasants are found there twice as big as ours, indeed nearly as big as a peacock, and having tails of 7 to 10 palms in length; and besides them other pheasants in aspect like our own, and birds of many other kinds, and of beautiful variegated plumage.[NOTE 5] The people, who are Idolaters, are fat folks with little noses and black hair, and no beard, except a few hairs on the upper lip.  The women too have very smooth and white skins, and in every respect are pretty creatures.  The men are very sensual, and marry many wives, which is not forbidden by their religion.  No matter how base a woman’s descent may be, if she have beauty she may find a husband among the greatest men in the land, the man paying the girl’s father and mother a great sum of money, according to the bargain that may be made.

NOTE 1.—­No approximation to the name of Erguiul in an appropriate position has yet been elicited from Chinese or other Oriental sources.  We cannot go widely astray as to its position, five days east of Kanchau.  Klaproth identifies it with Liangchau-fu; Pauthier with the neighbouring city of Yungchang, on the ground that the latter was, in the time of Kublai, the head of one of the Lus, or Circles, of Kansuh or Tangut, which he has shown some reason for believing to be the “kingdoms” of Marco.

It is probable, however, that the town called by Polo Erguiul lay north of both the cities named, and more in line with the position assigned below to Egrigaya. (See note 1, ch. lviii.)

I may notice that the structure of the name Ergui-ul or Ergiu-ul, has a look of analogy to that of Tang-keu-ul, named in the next note.

["Erguiul is Erichew of the Mongol text of the Yuen ch’ao pi shi, Si-liang in the Chinese history, the modern Liang chow fu.  Klaproth, on the authority of Rashid-eddin, has already identified this name with that of Si-liang.” (Palladius, p. 18.) M. Bonin left Ning-h’ia at the end of July, 1899, and he crossed the desert to Liangchau in fifteen days from east to west; he is the first traveller who took this route:  Prjevalsky went westward, passing by the residence of the Prince of Alashan, and Obrutchev followed the route south of Bonin’s.—­H.  C.]