NOTE 2.—­“Or de paliolle” “Oro di pagliuola” (pagliuola, “a spangle”) must have been the technical phrase for what we call gold-dust, and the French now call or en paillettes, a phrase used by a French missionary in speaking of this very region. (Ann. de la Foi, XXXVII. 427.) Yet the only example of this use of the word cited in the Voc.  Ital.  Universale is from this passage of the Crusca MS.; and Pipino seems not to have understood it, translating “aurum quod dicitur Deplaglola”; whilst Zurla says erroneously that pajola is an old Italian word for gold.  Pegolotti uses argento in pagliuola (p. 219).  A Barcelona tariff of 1271 sets so much on every mark of Pallola.  And the old Portuguese navigators seem always to have used the same expression for the gold-dust of Africa, ouro de pajola. (See Major’s Prince Henry, pp. 111, 112, 116; Capmany Memorias, etc., II.  App. p. 73; also “Aurum de Pajola,” in Usodimare of Genoa, see Graberg, Annali, II. 290, quoted by Peschel, p. 178.)

NOTE 3.—­The cinnamon must have been the coarser cassia produced in the lower parts of this region (See note to next chapter.) We have already (Book I. ch. xxxi.) quoted Tavernier’s testimony to the rage for coral among the Tibetans and kindred peoples.  Mr. Cooper notices the eager demand for coral at Bathang:  (See also Desgodins, La Mission du Thibet, 310.)

NOTE 4.—­See supra, Bk.  I. ch. lxi. note 11.

NOTE 5.—­The big Tibetan mastiffs are now well known.  Mr. Cooper, at Ta-t’sien lu, notes that the people of Tibetan race “keep very large dogs, as large as Newfoundlands.”  And he mentions a pack of dogs of another breed, tan and black, “fine animals of the size of setters.”  The missionary M. Durand also, in a letter from the region in question, says, speaking of a large leopard:  “Our brave watch-dogs had several times beaten him off gallantly, and one of them had even in single combat with him received a blow of the paw which had laid his skull open.” (Ann. de la Prop de la Foi, XXXVII. 314.) On the title-page of vol. i. we have introduced one of these big Tibetan dogs as brought home by the Polos to Venice.

The “wild oxen called Beyamini” are probably some such species as the Gaur. Beyamini I suspect to be no Oriental word, but to stand for Buemini, i.e.  Bohemian, a name which may have been given by the Venetians to either the bison or urus.  Polo’s contemporary, Brunetto Latini, seems to speak of one of these as still existing in his day in Germany:  “Autre buef naissent en Alemaigne qui ont grans cors, et sont bons por sommier et por vin porter.” (Paris ed., p. 228; see also Lubbock, Pre-historic Times, 296-7.)