[1] My lamented friend Lieutenant F. Garnier had kindly undertaken to send
    me a plan of Ch’eng-tu fu from the place itself, but, as is well
    known, he fell on a daring enterprise elsewhere. [We hope that the
    plan from a Chinese map we give from M.  Marcel Monnier’s
    Itineraires will replace the promised one.

    It will be seen that Ch’eng-tu is divided into three cities:  the Great
    City containing both the Imperial and Tartar cities.—­H.C.

[2] I find the same expression applied to the miskal or dinar in a MS.
    letter written by Giovanni dell’ Affaitado, Venetian Agent at Lisbon
    in 1503, communicated to me by Signor Berchet.  The King of Melinda was
    to pay to Portugal a tribute of 1500 pesi d’oro, “che un peso
    val un ducato e un quarto.”

CHAPTER XLV.

CONCERNING THE PROVINCE OF TEBET.

After those five days’ march that I spoke of, you enter a province which has been sorely ravaged; and this was done in the wars of Mongu Kaan.  There are indeed towns and villages and hamlets, but all harried and destroyed.[NOTE 1]

In this region you find quantities of canes, full three palms in girth and fifteen paces in length, with some three palms’ interval between the joints.  And let me tell you that merchants and other travellers through that country are wont at nightfall to gather these canes and make fires of them; for as they burn they make such loud reports that the lions and bears and other wild beasts are greatly frightened, and make off as fast as possible; in fact nothing will induce them to come nigh a fire of that sort.  So you see the travellers make those fires to protect themselves and their cattle from the wild beasts which have so greatly multiplied since the devastation of the country.  And ’tis this great multiplication of the wild beasts that prevents the country from being reoccupied.  In fact but for the help of these canes, which make such a noise in burning that the beasts are terrified and kept at a distance, no one would be able even to travel through the land.

I will tell you how it is that the canes make such a noise.  The people cut the green canes, of which there are vast numbers, and set fire to a heap of them at once.  After they have been awhile burning they burst asunder, and this makes such a loud report that you might hear it ten miles off.  In fact, any one unused to this noise, who should hear it unexpectedly, might easily go into a swound or die of fright.  But those who are used to it care nothing about it.  Hence those who are not used to it stuff their ears well with cotton, and wrap up their heads and faces with all the clothes they can muster; and so they get along until they have become used to the sound.  ’Tis just the same with horses.  Those which are unused to these noises are so alarmed by them that they break away from their halters and heel-ropes,