Ducange, in one of his notes on Joinville, says:  “During the time that the French possessed Constantinople, they gave the name of Gas-moules to those who were born of French fathers and Greek mothers; or more probably Gaste-moules, by way of derision, as if such children by those irregular marriages ... had in some sort debased the wombs of their mothers!” I have little doubt (pace tanti viri) that the word is in a Gallicized form the same with the surviving Italian Guazzabuglio, a hotch-potch, or mish-mash.  In Davanzati’s Tacitus, the words “Colluviem illam nationum” (Annal. II. 55) are rendered “quello guazzabuglio di nazioni,” in which case we come very close to the meaning assigned to Guasmul.  The Italians are somewhat behind in matters of etymology, and I can get no light from them on the history of this word. (See Buchon, Chroniques Etrangeres, p. xv.; Ducange, Gloss.  Graecitatis, and his note on Joinville, in Bohn’s Chron. of the Crusades, 466.)

NOTE 5.—­It has often been cast in Marco’s teeth that he makes no mention of the Great Wall of China, and that is true; whilst the apologies made for the omission have always seemed to me unsatisfactory. [I find in Sir G. Staunton’s account of Macartney’s Embassy (II. p. 185) this most amusing explanation of the reason why Marco Polo did not mention the wall:  “A copy of Marco Polo’s route to China, taken from the Doge’s Library at Venice, is sufficient to decide this question.  By this route it appears that, in fact, that traveller did not pass through Tartary to Pekin, but that after having followed the usual track of the caravans, as far to the eastward from Europe as Samarcand and Cashgar, he bent his course to the south-east across the River Ganges to Bengal (!), and, keeping to the southward of the Thibet mountains, reached the Chinese province of Shensee, and through the adjoining province of Shansee to the capital, without interfering with the line of the Great Wall.”—­H.  C.] We shall see presently that the Great Wall is spoken of by Marco’s contemporaries Rashiduddin and Abulfeda.  Yet I think, if we read “between the lines,” we shall see reason to believe that the Wall was in Polo’s mind at this point of the dictation, whatever may have been his motive for withholding distincter notice of it.[7] I cannot conceive why he should say:  “Here is what we call the country of Gog and Magog,” except as intimating “Here we are beside the GREAT WALL known as the Rampart of Gog and Magog,” and being there he tries to find a reason why those names should have been applied to it.  Why they were really applied to it we have already seen.  (Supra, ch. iv. note 3.) Abulfeda says:  “The Ocean turns northward along the east of China, and then expands in the same direction till it passes China, and comes opposite to the Rampart of Yajuj and Majuj;” whilst the same geographer’s definition