But the reading of the G. Text which is “cuir de bufal,” is probably the right one.  Some of the Miau-tzu of Kweichau are described as wearing armour of buffalo-leather overlaid with iron plates. (Ritter, IV. 768-776.) Arblasts or crossbows are still characteristic weapons of many of the wilder tribes of this region; e.g. of some of the Singphos, of the Mishmis of Upper Assam, of the Lu-tzu of the valley of the Lukiang, of tribes of the hills of Laos, of the Stiens of Cambodia, and of several of the Miau-tzu tribes of the interior of China.  We give a cut copied from a Chinese work on the Miau-tzu of Kweichau in Dr. Lockhart’s possession, which shows three little men of the Sang-Miau tribe of Kweichau combining to mend a crossbow, and a chief with armes cuiraces and jambeux also. [The cut (p. 83) is well explained by this passage of Baber’s Travels among the Lolos (p. 71):  “They make their own swords, three and a half to five spans long, with square heads, and have bows which it takes three men to draw, but no muskets.”—­H.C.]

NOTE 5.—­I have nowhere met with a precise parallel to this remarkable superstition, but the following piece of Folk-Lore has a considerable analogy to it.  This extraordinary custom is ascribed by Ibn Fozlan to the Bulgarians of the Volga:  “If they find a man endowed with special intelligence then they say:  ‘This man should serve our Lord God;’ and so they take him, run a noose round his neck and hang him on a tree, where they leave him till the corpse falls to pieces.”  This is precisely what Sir Charles Wood did with the Indian Corps of Engineers;—­doubtless on the same principle.

Archbishop Trench, in a fine figure, alludes to a belief prevalent among the Polynesian Islanders, “that the strength and valour of the warriors whom they have slain in battle passes into themselves, as their rightful inheritance.” (Fraehn, Wolga-Bulgaren, p. 50; Studies in the Gospels, p. 22; see also Lubbock, 457.)

[Illustration:  The Sangmiau Tribe of Kweichau, with the Crossbow. (From a Chinese Drawing.)

“Ont armes corases de cuir de bufal, et ont lances et scuz et ont balestres.”]

There is some analogy also to the story Polo tells, in the curious Sindhi tradition, related by Burton, of Baha-ul-hakk, the famous saint of Multan.  When he visited his disciples at Tatta they plotted his death, in order to secure the blessings of his perpetual presence.  The people of Multan are said to have murdered two celebrated saints with the same view, and the Hazaras to “make a point of killing and burying in their own country any stranger indiscreet enough to commit a miracle or show any particular sign of sanctity.”  The like practice is ascribed to the rude Moslem of Gilghit; and such allegations must have been current in Europe, for they are the motive of Southey’s St. Romuald: 

      “‘But,’ quoth the Traveller, ’wherefore did he leave
  A flock that knew his saintly worth so well?’