[Grenard (pp. 160-162) gives us his experience of Tents in Central Asia (Khotan).  “These Tents which we had purchased at Tashkent were the ‘tentes-abris’ which are used in campaign by Russian military workshops, only we made them larger by a third.  They were made of grey Kirghiz felt, which cannot be procured at Khotan.  The felt manufactured in this town not having enough consistency or solidity, we took Aksu felt, which is better than this of Khotan, though inferior to the felt of Russian Turkestan.  These felt tents are extremely heavy, and, once damp, are dried with difficulty.  These drawbacks are not compensated by any important advantage; it would be an illusion to believe that they preserve from the cold any better than other tents.  In fact, I prefer the Manchu tent in use in the Chinese army, which is, perhaps, of all military tents the most practical and comfortable.  It is made of a single piece of double cloth of cotton, very strong, waterproof for a long time, white inside, blue outside, and weighs with its three tipped sticks and its wooden poles, 25 kilog.  Set up, it forms a ridge roof 7 feet high and shelters fully ten men.  It suits servants perfectly well.  For the master who wants to work, to write, to draw, occasionally to receive officials, the ideal tent would be one of the same material, but of larger proportions, and comprising two parallel vertical partitions and surmounted by a ridge roof.  The round form of Kirghiz and Mongol tents is also very comfortable, but it requires a complicated and inconvenient wooden frame-work, owing to which it takes some considerable time to raise up the tent.”—­H.  C.]

NOTE 8.—­The expressions about the sable run in the G. T., “et l’apellent les Tartarz les roi des pelaines,” etc.  This has been curiously misunderstood both in versions based on Pipino, and in the Geog.  Latin and Crusca Italian.  The Geog.  Latin gives us “vocant eas Tartari Lenoidae Pellonae”; the Crusca, “chiamanle li Tartari Leroide Pelame”; Ramusio in a very odd way combines both the genuine and the blundered interpretation:  “E li Tartari la chiamano Regina delle Pelli; e gli animali si chiamano Rondes.”  Fraehn ingeniously suggested that this Rondes (which proves to be merely a misunderstanding of the French words Roi des) was a mistake for Kunduz, usually meaning a “beaver,” but also a “sable.”  (See Ibn Foszlan, p. 57.) Condux, no doubt with this meaning, appears coupled with vair, in a Venetian Treaty with Egypt (1344), quoted by Heyd. (II. 208.)

Ibn Batuta puts the ermine above the sable.  An ermine pelisse, he says, was worth in India 1000 dinars of that country, whilst a sable one was worth only 400 dinars.  As Ibn Batuta’s Indian dinars are Rupees, the estimate of price is greatly lower than Polo’s.  Some years ago I find the price of a Sack, as it is technically called by the Russian traders, or robe of fine sables, stated