The people are Idolaters and an evil generation, holding it no sin to rob and maltreat:  in fact, they are the greatest brigands on earth.  They live by the chase, as well as on their cattle and the fruits of the earth.

I should tell you also that in this country there are many of the animals that produce musk, which are called in the Tartar language Gudderi.  Those rascals have great numbers of large and fine dogs, which are of great service in catching the musk-beasts, and so they procure great abundance of musk.  They have none of the Great Kaan’s paper money, but use salt instead of money.  They are very poorly clad, for their clothes are only of the skins of beasts, and of canvas, and of buckram.[NOTE 5] They have a language of their own, and they are called Tebet.  And this country of TEBET forms a very great province, of which I will give you a brief account.

NOTE 1.—­The mountains that bound the splendid plain of Ch’eng-tu fu on the west rise rapidly to a height of 12,000 feet and upwards.  Just at the skirt of this mountain region, where the great road to Lhasa enters it, lies the large and bustling city of Yachaufu, forming the key of the hill country, and the great entrepot of trade between Sze-ch’wan on the one side, and Tibet and Western Yunnan on the other.  The present political boundary between China Proper and Tibet is to the west of Bathang and the Kin-sha Kiang, but till the beginning of last century it lay much further east, near Ta-t’sien-lu, or, as the Tibetans appear to call it, Tartsedo or Tachindo, which a Chinese Itinerary given by Ritter makes to be 920 li, or 11 marches from Ch’eng-tu fu.  In Marco’s time we must suppose that Tibet was considered to extend several marches further east still, or to the vicinity of Yachau.[1] Mr. Cooper’s Journal describes the country entered on the 5th march from Ch’eng-tu as very mountainous, many of the neighbouring peaks being capped with snow.  And he describes the people as speaking a language mixed with Tibetan for some distance before reaching Ta-t’sien-lu.  Baron Richthofen also who, as we shall see, has thrown an entirely new light upon this part of Marco’s itinerary, was exactly five days in travelling through a rich and populous country, from Ch’eng-tu to Yachau. [Captain Gill left Ch’eng-tu on the 10th July, 1877, and reached Ya-chau on the 14th, a distance of 75 miles.—­H.  C] (Ritter, IV. 190 seqq.; Cooper, pp. 164-173; Richthofen in Verhandl.  Ges. f.  Erdk. zu Berlin, 1874, p. 35.)

Tibet was always reckoned as a part of the Empire of the Mongol Kaans in the period of their greatness, but it is not very clear how it came under subjection to them.  No conquest of Tibet by their armies appears to be related by either the Mahomedan or the Chinese historians.  Yet it is alluded to by Plano Carpini, who ascribes the achievement to an unnamed son of Chinghiz, and narrated by Sanang Setzen, who