[Illustration:  Mediaeval Architecture in Guzerat. (From Fergusson.)]

They dress in this country great numbers of skins of various kinds, goat-skins, ox-skins, buffalo and wild ox-skins, as well as those of unicorns and other animals.  In fact so many are dressed every year as to load a number of ships for Arabia and other quarters.  They also work here beautiful mats in red and blue leather, exquisitely inlaid with figures of birds and beasts, and skilfully embroidered with gold and silver wire.  These are marvellously beautiful things; they are used by the Saracens to sleep upon, and capital they are for that purpose.  They also work cushions embroidered with gold, so fine that they are worth six marks of silver a piece, whilst some of those sleeping-mats are worth ten marks.[NOTE 4]

NOTE 1.—­Again we note the topographical confusion.  Guzerat is mentioned as if it were a province adjoining Malabar, and before arriving at Tana, Cambay, and Somnath; though in fact it includes those three cities, and Cambay was then its great mart.  Wassaf, Polo’s contemporary, perhaps acquaintance, speaks of Gujarat which is commonly called Kambayat. (Elliot, III. 31.)

NOTE 2.—­["The origin of the name [Tamarina] is curious.  It is Ar. tamar-u’l-Hind, ‘date of India,’ or perhaps rather, in Persian form, tamar-i-Hindi.  It is possible that the original name may have been thamar, (’fruit’) of India, rather than tamar, (’date’).” (Hobson-Jobson.)]

NOTE 3.—­The notice of pepper here is hard to explain.  But Hiuen Tsang also speaks of Indian pepper and incense (see next chapter) as grown at ’Ochali which seems to be some place on the northern border of Guzerat (II. 161).

Marsden, in regard to the cotton, supposes here some confused introduction of the silk-cotton tree (Bombax or Salmalia, the Semal of Hindustan), but the description would be entirely inapplicable to that great forest tree.  It is remarkable that nearly the same statement with regard to Guzerat occurs in Rashiduddin’s sketch of India, as translated in Sir H. Elliot’s History of India (ed. by Professor Dowson, I. 67):  “Grapes are produced twice during the year, and the strength of the soil is such that cotton-plants grow like willows and plane-trees, and yield produce ten years running.”  An author of later date, from whom extracts are given in the same work, viz., Mahommed Masum in his History of Sind, describing the wonders of Siwi, says:  “In Korzamin and Chhatur, which are districts of Siwi, cotton-plants grow as large as trees, insomuch that men pick the cotton mounted” (p. 237).