NOTE 2.—­No doubt Marsden is right in identifying this with SINING-CHAU, now Sining-fu, the Chinese city nearest to Tibet and the Kokonor frontier.  Grueber and Dorville, who passed it on their way to Lhasa, in 1661, call it urbs ingens.  Sining was visited also by Huc and Gabet, who are unsatisfactory, as usually on geographical matters.  They also call it “an immense town,” but thinly peopled, its commerce having been in part transferred to Tang-keu-ul, a small town closer to the frontier.

[Sining belonged to the country called Hwang chung; in 1198, under the Sung Dynasty, it was subjugated by the Chinese, and was named Si-ning chau; at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty (from 1368), it was named Si-ning wei, and since 1726 Si-ning fu. (Cf.  Gueluy, Chine, p. 62.) From Liangchau, M. Bonin went to Sining through the Lao kou kau pass and the Ta-Tung ho.  Obrutchev and Grum Grijmailo took the usual route from Kanchau to Sining.  After the murder of Dutreuil de Rhins at Tung bu mdo, his companion, Grenard, arrived at Sining, and left it on the 29th July, 1894.  Dr. Sven Hedin gives in his book his own drawing of a gate of Sining-fu, where he arrived on the 25th November, 1896.—­H.  C.]

Sining is called by the Tibetans Ziling or Jiling, by the Mongols Seling Khoto.  A shawl wool texture, apparently made in this quarter, is imported into Kashmir and Ladak, under the name of S’ling.  I have supposed Sining to be also the Zilm of which Mr. Shaw heard at Yarkand, and am answerable for a note to that effect on p. 38 of his High Tartary.  But Mr. Shaw, on his return to Europe, gave some rather strong reasons against this. (See Proc.  R. G. S. XVI. 245; Kircher, pp. 64, 66; Della Penna, 27; Davies’s Report, App. p. ccxxix.; Vigne, II. 110, 129.) [At present Sining is called by the Tibetans Seling K’ar or Kuar, and by the Mongols, Seling K’utun, K’ar and K’utun meaning “fortified city.” (Rockhill, Land of the Lamas, 49, note.)—­H.  C.]

[Mr. Rockhill (Diary of a Journey, 65) writes:  “There must be some Scotch blood in the Hsi-ningites, for I find they are very fond of oatmeal and of cracked wheat.  The first is called yen-mei ch’en, and is eaten boiled with the water in which mutton has been cooked, or with neat’s-foot oil (yang-t’i yu).  The cracked wheat (mei-tzue fan) is eaten prepared in the same way, and is a very good dish.”—­H.  C.]

NOTE 3.—­The Dong, or Wild Yak, has till late years only been known by vague rumour.  It has always been famed in native reports for its great fierceness.  The Haft Iklim says that “it kills with its horns, by its kicks, by treading under foot, and by tearing with its teeth,” whilst the Emperor Humayun himself told Sidi ’Ali, the Turkish admiral, that when it had knocked a man down it skinned him from head to heels by licking him with its tongue!  Dr. Campbell states, in the Journal of the As.  Soc. of Bengal, that it was said to be four times the size of the domestic Yak.  The horns are alleged to be sometimes three feet long, and of immense girth; they are handed round full of strong drink at the festivals of Tibetan grandees, as the Urus horns were in Germany, according to Caesar.