Sea, beyond which there is no more land at all; so I shall proceed to tell
you of the other provinces on the way to the Great Kaan. Let us, then,
return to that province of which I spoke before, called Campichu.

NOTE 1.--The readings differ as to the length of the journey. In
Pauthier's text we seem to have first a journey of forty days from near
Karakorum to the Plain of Bargu, and then a journey of forty days more
across the plain to the Northern Ocean. The G. T. seems to present only
_one_ journey of forty days (Ramusio, of sixty days), but leaves the
interval from Karakorum undefined. I have followed the former, though with
some doubt.

NOTE 2.--This paragraph from Ramusio replaces the following in Pauthier's
text: "In the summer they got abundance of game, both beasts and birds,
but in winter, there is none to be had because of the great cold."

Marco is here dealing, I apprehend, with hearsay geography, and, as is
common in like cases, there is great compression of circumstances and
characteristics, analogous to the like compression of little-known regions
in mediaeval maps.

The name _Bargu_ appears to be the same with that often mentioned in
Mongol history as BARGUCHIN TUGRUM or BARGUTI, and which Rashiduddin calls
the northern limit of the inhabited earth. This commenced about Lake
Baikal, where the name still survives in that of a river (_Barguzin_)
falling into the Lake on the east side, and of a town on its banks
(_Barguzinsk_). Indeed, according to Rashid himself, BARGU was the name of
one of the tribes occupying the plain; and a quotation from Father
Hyacinth would seem to show that the country is still called _Barakhu_.

[The Archimandrite Palladius (_Elucidations_, 16-17) writes:--"In the
Mongol text of Chingis Khan's biography, this country is called Barhu and
Barhuchin; it is to be supposed, according to Colonel Yule's
identification of this name with the modern Barguzin, that this country
was near Lake Baikal. The fact that Merkits were in Bargu is confirmed by
the following statement in Chingis Khan's biography: 'When Chingis Khan
defeated his enemies, the Merkits, they fled to Barhuchin tokum.' _Tokum_
signifies 'a hollow, a low place,' according to the Chinese translation of
the above-mentioned biography, made in 1381; thus Barhuchin tokum
undoubtedly corresponds to M. Polo's Plain of Bargu. As to M. Polo's
statement that the inhabitants of Bargu were Merkits, it cannot be
accepted uncondi