Professor Deveria (Notes d’Epig. 49) says that the word [Greek:  Archon] was used by the Mongol Government as a designation for the members of the Christian clergy at large; the word is used between 1252 and 1315 to speak of Christian priests by the historians of the Yuen Dynasty; it is not used before nor is it to be found in the Si-ngan-fu inscription (l.c. 82).  Mr. E. H. Parker (China Review, xxiv. p. 157) supplies a few omissions in Deveria’s paper; we note among others:  “Ninth moon of 1329.  Buddhist services ordered to be held by the Uighur priests, and by the Christians [Ye li ke un].”

Captain Wellby writes (Unknown Tibet, p. 32):  “We impressed into our service six other muleteers, four of them being Argoons, who are really half-castes, arising from the merchants of Turkestan making short marriages with the Ladakhi women.”—­H.  C.]

Our author gives the odd word Guasmul as the French equivalent of Argon.  M. Pauthier has first, of Polo’s editors, given the true explanation from Ducange.  The word appears to have been in use in the Levant among the Franks as a name for the half-breeds sprung from their own unions with Greek women.  It occurs three times in the history of George Pachymeres.  Thus he says (Mich.  Pal. III. 9), that the Emperor Michael “depended upon the Gasmuls, or mixt breeds ([Greek:  symmiktoi]), which is the sense of this word of the Italian tongue, for these were born of Greeks and Italians, and sent them to man his ships; for the race in question inherited at once the military wariness and quick wit of the Greeks, and the dash and pertinacity of the Latins.”  Again (IV. 26) he speaks of these “Gasmuls, whom a Greek would call [Greek:  digeneis], men sprung from Greek mothers and Italian fathers.”  Nicephorus Gregoras also relates how Michael Palaeologus, to oppose the projects of Baldwin for the recovery of his fortunes, manned 60 galleys, chiefly with the tribe of Gasmuls ([Greek:  genos tou Gasmoulikou]), to whom he assigns the same characteristics as Pachymeres. (IV. v. 5, also VI. iii. 3, and XIV. x. 2.) One MS. of Nicetas Choniates also, in his annals of Manuel Comnenus (see Paris ed. p. 425), speaks of “the light troops whom we call Basmuls.”  Thus it would seem that, as in the analogous case of the Turcopuli, sprung from Turk fathers and Greek mothers, their name had come to be applied technically to a class of troops.  According to Buchon, the laws of the Venetians in Candia mention, as different races in that island, the Vasmulo, Latino, Blaco, and Griego.