and to manage this they had to cut down great trees to bar their passage.  Even then they would not have been able to take them without the help of the king’s own men who had been taken, and who knew better how to deal with the beasts than the Tartars did.  The elephant is an animal that hath more wit than any other; but in this way at last they were caught, more than 200 of them.  And it was from this time forth that the Great Kaan began to keep numbers of elephants.

So thus it was that the king aforesaid was defeated by the sagacity and superior skill of the Tartars as you have heard.

NOTE 1.—­Nescradin for Nesradin, as we had Bascra for Basra.

This NASRUDDIN was apparently an officer of whom Rashiduddin speaks, and whom he calls governor (or perhaps commander) in Karajang.  He describes him as having succeeded in that command to his father the Sayad Ajil of Bokhara, one of the best of Kublai’s chief Ministers.  Nasr-uddin retained his position in Yun-nan till his death, which Rashid, writing about 1300, says occurred five or six years before.  His son Bayan, who also bore the grandfather’s title of Sayad Ajil, was Minister of Finance under Kublai’s successor; and another son, Hala, is also mentioned as one of the governors of the province of Fu-chau. (See Cathay, pp. 265, 268, and D’Ohsson, II. 507-508.)

Nasr-uddin (Nasulating) is also frequently mentioned as employed on this frontier by the Chinese authorities whom Pauthier cites.

[Na-su-la-ding [Nasr-uddin] was the eldest of the five sons of the Mohammedan Sai-dien-ch’i shan-sze-ding, Sayad Ajil, a native of Bokhara, who died in Yun-nan, where he had been governor when Kublai, in the reign of Mangu, entered the country.  Nasr-uddin “has a separate biography in ch. cxxv of the Yuen-shi.  He was governor of the province of Yun-nan, and distinguished himself in the war against the southern tribes of Kiao-chi (Cochin-China) and Mien (Burma).  He died in 1292, the father of twelve sons, the names of five of which are given in the biography, viz. Bo-yen-ch’a-rh [Bayan], who held a high office, Omar, Djafar, Hussein, and Saadi.” (Bretschneider, Med.  Res. I. 270-271).  Mr. E.H.  Parker writes in the China Review, February-March, 1901, pp. 196-197, that the Mongol history states that amongst the reforms of Nasr-uddin’s father in Yun-nan, was the introduction of coffins for the dead, instead of burning them.—­H.C.]

[NOTE 2.—­In his battle near Sardis, Cyrus “collected together all the camels that had come in the train of his army to carry the provisions and the baggage, and taking off their loads, he mounted riders upon them accoutred as horsemen.  These he commanded to advance in front of his other troops against the Lydian horse....  The reason why Cyrus opposed his camels to the enemy’s horse was, because the horse has a natural dread of the camel, and cannot abide either the sight or the smell of that animal....  The two armies then joined battle, and immediately the Lydian warhorses, seeing and smelling the camels, turned round and galloped off.” (Herodotus, Bk.  I. i. p. 220, Rawlinson’s ed.)—­H.C.]