d throughout those seven days'
journey plenty of towns and villages, the inhabitants of which are
Mahommetans, but with a mixture also of Idolaters and Nestorian
Christians. They get their living by trade and manufactures; weaving those
fine cloths of gold which are called _Nasich_ and _Naques_, besides silk
stuffs of many other kinds. For just as we have cloths of wool in our
country, manufactured in a great variety of kinds, so in those regions
they have stuffs of silk and gold in like variety.[NOTE 6]

All this region is subject to the Great Kaan. There is a city you come to
called SINDACHU, where they carry on a great many crafts such as provide
for the equipment of the Emperor's troops. In a mountain of the province
there is a very good silver mine, from which much silver is got: the place
is called YDIFU. The country is well stocked with game, both beast and
bird.[NOTE 7]

Now we will quit that province and go three days' journey forward.

NOTE 1.--Marco's own errors led commentators much astray about Tanduc or
Tenduc, till Klaproth put the matter in its true light.

Our traveller says that Tenduc had been the seat of Aung Khan's
sovereignty; he has already said that it had been the scene of his final
defeat, and he tells us that it was still the residence of his descendants
in their reduced state. To the last piece of information he can speak as a
witness, and he is corroborated by other evidence; but the second
statement we have seen to be almost certainly erroneous; about the first
we cannot speak positively.

Klaproth pointed out the true position of Tenduc in the vicinity of the
great northern bend of the Hwang-Ho, quoting Chinese authorities to show
that _Thiante_ or _Thiante-Kiun_ was the name of a district or group of
towns to the north of that bend, a name which he supposes to be the
original of Polo's _Tenduc_. The general position entirely agrees with
Marco's indications; it lies on his way eastward from Tangut towards
Chagannor, and Shangtu (see ch. lx., lxi.), whilst in a later passage (Bk.
II. ch. lxiv.), he speaks of the Caramoran or Hwang-Ho in its lower
course, as "coming from the lands of Prester John."

M. Pauthier finds severe fault with Klaproth's identification of the
_name_ Tenduc with the Thiante of the Chinese, belonging to a city which
had been destroyed 300 years before, whilst he himself will have that name
to be a corruption of _Tathung_. The latter is still the name of a city