Failing explanation of this, I should suppose that the cloves of which the text speaks were cassia-buds, an article once more prominent in commerce (as indeed were all similar aromatics) than now, but still tolerably well known.  I was at once supplied with them at a drogheria, in the city where I write (Palermo), on asking for Fiori di Canella, the name under which they are mentioned repeatedly by Pegolotti and Uzzano, in the 14th and 15th centuries.  Friar Jordanus, in speaking of the cinnamon (or cassia) of Malabar, says, “it is the bark of a large tree which has fruit and flowers like cloves” (p. 28).  The cassia-buds have indeed a general resemblance to cloves, but they are shorter, lighter in colour, and not angular.  The cinnamon, mentioned in the next lines as abundantly produced in the same region, was no doubt one of the inferior sorts, called cassia-bark.

Williams says:  “Cassia grows in all the southern provinces of China, especially Kwang-si and Yun-nan, also in Annam, Japan, and the Isles of the Archipelago.  The wood, bark, buds, seeds, twigs, pods, leaves, oil, are all objects of commerce.....  The buds (kwei-tz’) are the fleshy ovaries of the seeds; they are pressed at one end, so that they bear some resemblance to cloves in shape.”  Upwards of 500 piculs (about 30 tons), valued at 30 dollars each, are annually exported to Europe and India. (Chin.  Commercial Guide, 113-114).

The only doubt as regards this explanation will probably be whether the cassia would be found at such a height as we may suppose to be that of the country in question above the sea-level.  I know that cassia bark is gathered in the Kasia Hills of Eastern Bengal up to a height of about 4000 feet above the sea, and at least the valleys of “Caindu” are probably not too elevated for this product.  Indeed, that of the Kin-sha or Brius, near where I suppose Polo to cross it, is only 2600 feet.  Positive evidence I cannot adduce.  No cassia or cinnamon was met with by M. Garnier’s party where they intersected this region.

But in this 2nd edition I am able to state on the authority of Baron Richthofen that cassia is produced in the whole length of the valley of Kien-ch’ang (which is, as we shall see in the notes on next chapter, Caindu), though in no other part of Sze-ch’wan nor in Northern Yun-nan.

[Captain Gill (River of Golden Sand, II. p. 263) writes:  “There were chestnut trees..; and the Kwei-Hua, a tree ’with leaves like the laurel, and with a small white flower, like the clove,’ having a delicious, though rather a luscious smell.  This was the Cassia, and I can find no words more suitable to describe it than those of Polo which I have just used.”—­H.  C]