NOTE 1.—­Friar Ricold mentions this Tartar maxim:  “One Khan will put another to death, to get possession of the throne, but he takes great care that the blood be not spilt.  For they say that it is highly improper that the blood of the Great Khan should be spilt upon the ground; so they cause the victim to be smothered somehow or other.”  The like feeling prevails at the Court of Burma, where a peculiar mode of execution without bloodshed is reserved for Princes of the Blood.  And Kaempfer, relating the conspiracy of Faulcon at the Court of Siam, says that two of the king’s brothers, accused of participation, were beaten to death with clubs of sandal-wood, “for the respect entertained for the blood-royal forbids its being shed.”  See also note 6, ch. vi.  Bk.  I., on the death of the Khalif Mosta’sim Billah. (Pereg.  Quat. p. 115; Mission to Ava, p. 229; Kaempfer; I. 19.)

NOTE 2.—­CHORCHA is the Manchu country, Niuche of the Chinese. (Supra, note 2, ch. xlvi.  Bk.  I.) ["Chorcha is Churchin.—­Nayan, as vassal of the Mongol khans, had the commission to keep in obedience the people of Manchuria (subdued in 1233), and to care for the security of the country (Yuen shi); there is no doubt that he shared these obligations with his relative Hatan, who stood nearer to the native tribes of Manchuria.” (Palladius, 32.)—­H.  C.]

KAULI is properly Corea, probably here a district on the frontier thereof, as it is improbable that Nayan had any rule over Corea. ["The Corean kingdom proper could not be a part of the prince’s appanage.  Marco Polo might mean the northern part of Corea, which submitted to the Mongols in A.D. 1269, with sixty towns, and which was subordinated entirely to the central administration in Liao-yang.  As to the southern part of Corea, it was left to the king of Corea, who, however, was a vassal of the Mongols.” (Palladius, 32.) The king of Corea (Ko rye, Kao-li) was in 1288 Chyoung ryel wang (1274-1298); the capital was Syong-to, now Kai syeng (K’ai-ch’eng).—­H.  C.]

BARSKUL, “Leopard-Lake,” is named in Sanang Setsen (p. 217), but seems there to indicate some place in the west of Mongolia, perhaps the Barkul of our maps.  This Barskul must have been on the Manchu frontier. [There are in the Yuen-shi the names of the department of P’u-yue-lu, and of the place Pu-lo-ho, which, according to the system of Chinese transcription, approach to Barscol; but it is difficult to prove this identification, since our knowledge of these places is very scanty; it only remains to identify Barscol with Abalahu, which is already known; a conjecture all the more probable as the two names of P’u-yue-lu and Pu-lo-ho have also some resemblance to Abalahu. (Palladius, 32.) Mr. E. H. Parker says (China Review, xviii. p. 261) that Barscol may be Pa-la ssu or Bars Koto [in Tsetsen].  “This seems the more probable in that Cauly and Chorcha are clearly proved to be Corea and Niuche or Manchuria, so that Bars Koto would naturally fall within Nayan’s appanage.”—­H.  C.]