says that the King of Tibet submitted without fighting when Chinghiz invaded his country in the year of the Panther (1206).  During the reign of Mangku Kaan, indeed, Uriangkadai, an eminent Mongol general [son of Subudai] who had accompanied Prince Kublai in 1253 against Yunnan, did in the following year direct his arms against the Tibetans.  But this campaign, that no doubt to which the text alludes as “the wars of Mangu Kaan,” appears to have occupied only a part of one season, and was certainly confined to the parts of Tibet on the frontiers of Yunnan and Sze-ch’wan. ["In the Yuen-shi, Tibet is mentioned under different names.  Sometimes the Chinese history of the Mongols uses the ancient name T’u-fan.  In the Annals, s.a. 1251, we read:  ’Mangu Khan entrusted Ho-li-dan with the command of the troops against T’u-fan.” Sub anno 1254 it is stated that Kublai (who at that time was still the heir-apparent), after subduing the tribes of Yun-nan, entered T’u-fan, when So-ho-to, the ruler of the country, surrendered.  Again, s.a. 1275:  ’The prince Al-lu-chi (seventh son of Kublai) led an expedition to T’u-fan.’  In chap, ccii., biography of Ba-sz’-ba, the Lama priest who invented Kublai’s official alphabet, it is stated that this Lama was a native of Sa-sz’-kia in T’u-fan. (Bretschneider, Med Res. II. p. 23.)—­H.C.] Koeppen seems to consider it certain that there was no actual conquest of Tibet, and that Kublai extended his authority over it only by diplomacy and the politic handling of the spiritual potentates who had for several generations in Tibet been the real rulers of the country.  It is certain that Chinese history attributes the organisation of civil administration in Tibet to Kublai.  Mati Dhwaja, a young and able member of the family which held the hereditary primacy of the Satya [Sakya] convent, and occupied the most influential position in Tibet, was formerly recognised by the Emperor as the head of the Lamaite Church and as the tributary Ruler of Tibet.  He is the same person that we have already (vol. i. p. 28) mentioned as the Passepa or Bashpah Lama, the inventor of Kublai’s official alphabet. (Carpini, 658, 709; D’Avezac, 564; S.  Setzen, 89; D’Ohsson, II. 317; Koeppen, II. 96; Amyot, XIV. 128.)

With the caution that Marco’s Travels in Tibet were limited to the same mountainous country on the frontier of Sze-ch’wan, we defer further geographical comment till he brings us to Yunnan.

NOTE 2.—­Marco exaggerates a little about the bamboos; but before gunpowder became familiar, no sharp explosive sounds of this kind were known to ordinary experience, and exaggeration was natural.  I have been close to a bamboo jungle on fire.  There was a great deal of noise comparable to musketry; but the bamboos were not of the large kind here spoken of.  The Hon. Robert Lindsay, describing his elephant-catching in Silhet, says:  “At night each man lights a fire at his post, and furnishes himself with a dozen joints of the large bamboo, one of which he occasionally throws into the fire, and the air it contains being rarefied by the heat, it explodes with a report as loud as a musket.” (Lives of the Lindsays, III. 191.)