but there were none of the docked tails mentioned by Marco
Polo."--H.C.]

Armour of boiled leather--"_armes cuiraces de cuir bouilli_"; so
Pauthier's text; the material so often mentioned in mediaeval costume;
e.g. in the leggings of Sir Thopas:--

"His jambeux were of cuirbouly,
His swerdes sheth of ivory,
His helme of latoun bright."

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