NOTE 1.—­The mode of making Chinese rice-wine is described in Amyot’s Memoires, V. 468 seqq.  A kind of yeast is employed, with which is often mixed a flour prepared from fragrant herbs, almonds, pine-seeds, dried fruits, etc.  Rubruquis says this liquor was not distinguishable, except by smell, from the best wine of Auxerre; a wine so famous in the Middle Ages, that the Historian Friar, Salimbene, went from Lyons to Auxerre on purpose to drink it.[1] Ysbrand Ides compares the rice-wine to Rhenish; John Bell to Canary; a modern traveller quoted by Davis, “in colour, and a little in taste, to Madeira.” [Friar Odoric (Cathay, i. p. 117) calls this wine bigni; Dr. Schlegel (T’oung Pao, ii. p. 264) says Odoric’s wine was probably made with the date Mi-yin, pronounced Bi-im in old days.  But Marco’s wine is made of rice, and is called shao hsing chiu.  Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 166, note) writes:  “There is another stronger liquor distilled from millet, and called shao chiu:  in Anglo-Chinese, samshu; Mongols call it araka, arrak, and arreki.  Ma Twan-lin (Bk. 327) says that the Moho (the early Nu-chen Tartars) drank rice wine (mi chiu), but I fancy that they, like the Mongols, got it from the Chinese.”

Dr. Emil Bretschneider (Botanicon Sinicum, ii. pp. 154-158) gives a most interesting account of the use and fabrication of intoxicating beverages by the Chinese.  “The invention of wine or spirits in China,” he says, “is generally ascribed to a certain I TI, who lived in the time of the Emperor Yue.  According to others, the inventor of wine was TU K’ANG.”  One may refer also to Dr. Macgowan’s paper On the “Mutton Wine” of the Mongols and Analogous Preparations of the Chinese. (Jour.  N. China Br.  R. As.  Soc., 1871-1872, pp. 237-240.)—­H.  C.]

[1] Kington’s Fred. II. II. 457.  So, in a French play of the 13th
    century, a publican in his patois invites custom, with hot bread,
    hot herrings, and wine of Auxerre in plenty:—­

      “Chaiens, fait bon disner chaiens;
      Chi a caut pain et caus herens,
      Et vin d’Aucheurre a plain tonnel.”—­
          (Theat.  Franc. au Moyen Age, 168.)

CHAPTER XXX.

CONCERNING THE BLACK STONES THAT ARE DUG IN CATHAY, AND ARE BURNT FOR FUEL.

It is a fact that all over the country of Cathay there is a kind of black stones existing in beds in the mountains, which they dig out and burn like firewood.  If you supply the fire with them at night, and see that they are well kindled, you will find them still alight in the morning; and they make such capital fuel that no other is used throughout the country.  It is true that they have plenty of wood also, but they do not burn it, because those stones burn better and cost less.[NOTE 1]