Speaking of the Sifan village of Po Lo and the account given by Marco Polo of the customs of these people, M.R.  Logan JACK (Back Blocks, 1904, pp. 145-6) writes:  “I freely admit that the good looks and modest bearing of the girls were the chief merits of the performance in my eyes.  Had the danseuses been scrubbed and well dressed, they would have been a presentable body of debutantes in any European ballroom.  One of our party, frivolously disposed, asked a girl (through an interpreter) if she would marry him and go to his country.  The reply, ’I do not know you, sir,’ was all that propriety could have demanded in the best society, and worthy of a pupil ‘finished’ at Miss Pinkerton’s celebrated establishment....  Judging from our experience, no idea of hospitalities of the kind [Marco’s experience] was in the people’s minds.”

XLV., p. 45.  Speaking of the people of Tibet, Polo says:  “They are very poorly clad, for their clothes are only of the skins of beasts, and of canvas, and of buckram.”

Add to the note, I., p. 48, n. 5:—­

“Au XIV’e siecle, le bougran [buckram] etait une espece de tissu de lin:  le meilleur se fabriquait en Armenie et dans le royaume de Melibar, s’il faut s’en rapporter a Marco Polo, qui nous apprend que les habitants du Thibet, qu’il signale comme pauvrement vetus, l’etaient de canevas et de bougran, et que cette derniere etoffe se fabriquait aussi dans la province d’Abasce.  Il en venait egalement de l’ile de Chypre.  Sorti des manufactures d’Espagne ou importe dans le royaume, a partir de 1442, date d’une ordonnance royale publiee par le P. Saez, le bougran le plus fin payait soixante-dix maravedis de droits, sans distinction de couleur” (FRANCISQUE-MICHEL, Recherches sur le commerce, la fabrication et l’usage des etoffes de soie, d’or et d’argent....  II., 1854, pp. 33-4).  Passage mentioned by Dr. Laufer.

XLV., pp. 46 n., 49 seq.

Referring to Dr. E. Bretschneider, Prof.  E.H.  Parker gives the following notes in the Asiatic Quart.  Review, Jan., 1904, p. 131:  “In 1251 Ho-erh-t’ai was appointed to the command of the Mongol and Chinese forces advancing on Tibet (T’u-fan). [In my copy of the Yuean Shi there is no entry under the year 1254 such as that mentioned by Bretschneider; it may, however, have been taken by Palladius from some other chapter.] In 1268 Mang-ku-tai was ordered to invade the Si-fan (outer Tibet) and Kien-tu [Marco’s Caindu] with 6000 men.  Bretschneider, however, omits Kien-tu, and also omits to state that in 1264 eighteen Si-fan clans were placed under the superintendence of the an-fu-sz (governor) of An-si Chou, and that in 1265 a reward was given to the troops of the decachiliarch Hwang-li-t’a-rh for their services against the T’u fan, with another reward to the troops under Prince Ye-suh-pu-hwa for their successes against the Si-fan.  Also that in 1267 the Si-fan chieftains were encouraged to submit to Mongol power, in consequence