is illustrated by a passage in
Sanang Setzen, which speaks of a tent covered with panther-skins, sent to
Chinghiz by the Khan of the Solongos (p. 77).

[Illustration: The Tents of the Emperor Kienlung.]

[Grenard (pp. 160-162) gives us his experience of Tents in Central Asia
(Khotan). "These Tents which we had purchased at Tashkent were the
'tentes-abris' which are used in campaign by Russian military workshops,
only we made them larger by a third. They were made of grey Kirghiz felt,
which cannot be procured at Khotan. The felt manufactured in this town not
having enough consistency or solidity, we took Aksu felt, which is better
than this of Khotan, though inferior to the felt of Russian Turkestan.
These felt tents are extremely heavy, and, once damp, are dried with
difficulty. These drawbacks are not compensated by any important
advantage; it would be an illusion to believe that they preserve from the
cold any better than other tents. In fact, I prefer the Manchu tent in use
in the Chinese army, which is, perhaps, of all military tents the most
practical and comfortable. It is made of a single piece of double cloth of
cotton, very strong, waterproof for a long time, white inside, blue
outside, and weighs with its three tipped sticks and its wooden poles, 25
kilog. Set up, it forms a ridge roof 7 feet high and shelters fully ten
men. It suits servants perfectly well. For the master who wants to work,
to write, to draw, occasionally to receive officials, the ideal tent would
be one of the same material, but of larger proportions, and comprising two
parallel vertical partitions and surmounted by a ridge roof. The round
form of Kirghiz and Mongol tents is also very comfortable, but it requires
a complicated and inconvenient wooden frame-work, owing to which it takes
some considerable time to raise up the tent."--H. C.]

NOTE 8.--The expressions about the sable run in the G. T., "_et l'apellent
les Tartarz les_ roi des pelaines," etc. This has been curiously
misunderstood both in versions based on Pipino, and in the Geog. Latin and
Crusca Italian. The Geog. Latin gives us "_vocant eas Tartari_ Lenoidae
Pellonae"; the Crusca, "_chiamanle li Tartari_ Leroide Pelame"; Ramusio in
a very odd way combines both the genuine and the blundered interpretation:
"_E li Tartari la chiamano_ Regina delle Pelli; _e gli animali si
chiamano_ Rondes." Fraehn ingeniously suggested that this _Rondes_ (which
proves to be merely a misunderstan