a _Catholicos_ of part of the Armenian Church at Sis, which
was the royal residence. Some Armenian communities still remain both in
hills and plains; and the former, the more independent and industrious,
still speak a corrupt Armenian.

Polo's contemporary, Marino Sanuto, compares the kingdom of the Pope's
faithful Armenians to one between the teeth of four fierce beasts, the
_Lion_ Tartar, the _Panther_ Soldan, the Turkish _Wolf_, the Corsair
_Serpent_.

(_Dulaurier_, in _J. As._ ser. V. tom. xvii.; _St. Martin, Arm._; _Mar.
San._ p. 32; _Froissart_, Bk. II. ch. xxii. seqq.; _Langlois, V. en
Cilicie_, 1861, p. 19.)

NOTE 2.--"_Maintes villes et maint chasteaux_" This is a constantly
recurring phrase, and I have generally translated it as here, believing
_chasteaux (castelli)_ to be used in the frequent old Italian sense of a
_walled_ village or small walled town, or like the Eastern _Kala'_ applied
in Khorasan "to everything--town, village, or private residence--
surrounded by a wall of earth." (_Ferrier_, p. 292; see also _A. Conolly_,
I. p. 211.) Martini, in his _Atlas Sinensis_, uses "_Urbes_, _oppida_,
castella," to indicate the three classes of Chinese administrative cities.

NOTE 3.--"_Enferme durement_." So Marino Sanuto objects to Lesser Armenia
as a place of debarkation for a crusade "_quia terra est infirma_"
Langlois, speaking of the Cilician plain: "In this region once so fair,
now covered with swamps and brambles, fever decimates a population which
is yearly diminishing, has nothing to oppose to the scourge but incurable
apathy, and will end by disappearing altogether," etc. (_Voyage_, p. 65.)
Cilician Armenia retains its reputation for sport, and is much frequented
by our naval officers for that object. Ayas is noted for the extraordinary
abundance of turtles.

NOTE 4.--The phrase twice used in this passage for the _Interior_ is _Fra
terre_, an Italianism (_Fra terra_, or, as it stands in the Geog. Latin,
"_infra terram Orientis_"), which, however, Murray and Pauthier have read
as an allusion to the _Euphrates_, an error based apparently on a marginal
gloss in the published edition of the Soc. de Geographie. It is true that
the province of Comagene under the Greek Empire got the name of
_Euphratesia_, or in Arabic _Furatiyah_, but that was not in question
here. The great trade of Ayas was with Tabriz, via Sivas, Erzingan, and
Erzrum, as we see in Pegolotti. Elsewhere, too, in Polo we find the phrase