NOTE 1.—­No province mentioned by Marco has given rise to wider and wilder conjectures than this, Cangigu as it has been generally printed.

M. Pauthier, who sees in it Laos, or rather one of the states of Laos called in the Chinese histories Papesifu, seems to have formed the most probable opinion hitherto propounded by any editor of Polo.  I have no doubt that Laos or some part of that region is meant to be described, and that Pauthier is right regarding the general direction of the course here taken as being through the regions east of Burma, in a north-easterly direction up into Kwei-chau.  But we shall be able to review the geography of this tract better, as a whole, at a point more advanced.  I shall then speak of the name CAUGIGU, and why I prefer this reading of it.

I do not believe, for reasons which will also appear further on, that Polo is now following a route which he had traced in person, unless it be in the latter part of it.

M. Pauthier, from certain indications in a Chinese work, fixes on Chiangmai or Kiang-mai, the Zimme of the Burmese (in about latitude 18 deg. 48’ and long. 99 deg. 30’) as the capital of the Papesifu and of the Caugigu of our text.  It can scarcely however be the latter, unless we throw over entirely all the intervals stated in Polo’s itinerary; and M. Garnier informs me that he has evidence that the capital of the Papesifu at this time was Muang-Yong, a little to the south-east of Kiang-Tung, where he has seen its ruins.[1] That the people called by the Chinese Papesifu were of the great race of Laotians, Shans, or Thai, is very certain, from the vocabulary of their language published by Klaproth.

[Illustration:  Script Pa-pe.]

Pauthier’s Chinese authority gives a puerile interpretation of Papesifu as signifying “the kingdom of the 800 wives,” and says it was called so because the Prince maintained that establishment.  This may be an indication that there were popular stories about the numerous wives of the King of Laos, such as Polo had heard; but the interpretation is doubtless rubbish, like most of the so-called etymologies of proper names applied by the Chinese to foreign regions.  At best these seem to be merely a kind of Memoria Technica, and often probably bear no more relation to the name in its real meaning than Swift’s All-eggs-under-the-grate bears to Alexander Magnus.  How such “etymologies” arise is obvious from the nature of the Chinese system of writing.  If we also had to express proper names by combining monosyllabic words already existing in English, we should in fact be obliged to write the name of the Macedonian hero much as Swift travestied it.  As an example we may give the Chinese name of Java, Kwawa, which signifies “gourd-sound,” and was given to that Island, we are told, because the voice of its inhabitants is very like that of a dry gourd rolled upon the ground!  It is usually