of d in it; so much so, that generally a word beginning with 7 is chosen by Chinamen to represent our d, e. g. Mr. Doty was called Lo-ti; and when they try to say 'Doctor,' they make it Lok-to. So in fine it is proved, that Rashid's governor of Zaitun was governor of Changchow. None of the Chinchew names have the least resemblance, while the Changchow is much more like the sound than could have well been expected."

It seems to me to be very probable that this Yao-hu-nan, or as it was perhaps written Yao-hu-t'an, is the same personage as Rashid's Boháuddin; more especially as the time he held office would agree with the time that Rashid wrote of Zaitun.

There is a Boyen mentioned in the Changchow history, as holding the office of governor, but I cannot find anything satisfactory about him at present, to warrant me in accepting him as the Boyen Fanchan of Rashid or the Boyen Cha-urh of the Chinese annals. All I can say with certainty is, that a Boyen appears in the list of the governors of Changchow; but no official high or low bearing that name, appears on the list of officials holding office in Ch'üanchow in Mongol times.

I may remark that the name Boyen was a very common one during the Yuan, and officials of that name bore office in many of the cities of Fookien.

The following officers held the post of governor or Darugachi at Ch'üanchow during Kublai's time:-So-tu,

sha,

Keih-sheng,

THu-san-mu-ting or T Hu-sa-mu-ting, Ah-
Ah-li-tah, and Shih-man.

In closing these researches, I must leave it to others to decide, whether I have been justified in endeavouring to disturb the position usually ascribed to Zaitun, which at first sight might have appeared unwarrantable; but when the whole account of Marco Polo's description of Fookien, as described in the three texts I have used to comment upon, are studied, I do not think I can be accused of fickleness of purpose; and indeed were the commentary confined to Ramusio's Italian printed text, the account of Fookien as I have shewn, is easy of elucidation, excepting always the matter of distance between certain places, which in all the texts appears utterly irreconcilable.

A

A MONGOL PRISON.

LITTLE, stoop-shouldered, one-eyed, stiff-jointed, barefooted, elderly man, after being treated for some disease of his own, said he had come as a deputation from some patients who lived near at hand, and who were anxious that I should visit them. On its being suggested,

that if the distance was not great, and the patients not severely afflicted, perhaps it would be better for them to come to me, a young man sitting by said that they could not come; that the men in question were criminals confined in prison, and could not be allowed to come out. Of course I agreed to go, and offered to go at once, but that would not do for the old man. He must first go back to the prison, put on his boots, and escort me over with proper formality.

He soon came with his boots on, and as we walked towards the place, the old man gave a detailed account of himself, his prison, and his prisoners. He was there on duty for a month only, and was subgovernor. There was a head governor above him, a turnkey under him, a couple of soldiers to supply any force or do any fighting that might be needed, and six prisoners to be looked after. The head governor did not live in the prison; so that keepers and criminals, the total of the inmates was ten.

The two soldiers had gone out visiting, the turnkey had gone to buy a candle, he himself was escorting me, and the six prisoners, with open doors, had been left to look after themselves! There they were, the whole six of them, five lamas and one black man, standing staring at us over the low wall that surrounded the "black-house," as the prison is called. The turnkey had not arrived with the candle, and the old man was in a dilemma; it was too dark to see inside the house without a light, so I suggested that we might sit outside. The old man shouted his orders; a commotion was visible among the six prisoners, and by the time we arrived at the little gate in the low mud wall, cushions were spread on the ground outside. All the usual formalities of salutation had to be gone through. Though the half of them were invalids and suffering more or less, when asked as to the state of their bodies, they all replied, as politeness required them to do, that they were in perfect health and comfort; and when, also in deference to custom, the condition and prosperity of their cattle were inquired about, they all hastened to affirm that their cattle were fat and flourishing, though the great probability was, that one half of them had not a hoof to their name, and that those who owned animals had not seen them for months. Salutations over, the prisoners crouched in front of the cushions and the patients detailed their afflictions. Meantime the turnkey, holding a candle in one hand, and with his other steadying a couple of water-buckets that hung from his shoulder, came through the low doorway, staggering under the weight of his load. The candle was lighted and we adjourned inside. The first thing noticeable in the darkness was the candlestick. Candlestick they had none; the beer-bottle-which, in a civilized country would probably have supplied such a lack-is a scarce article in Mongolia; but cups

and millet abound, so a cup was filled with millet and the candle stuck into the centre. Mongols very seldom have candles to burn, but when they do find a candle, a cup filled with millet is a common substitute for a candlestick. The next most noticeable thing in the house was the turnkey, who still hovered around the newly-lighted candle. The sub-governor wanted an eye; the turnkey was minus the nose, and a most lugubrious man he looked. His affliction interfered with his speech, and the depression in the centre of his face terminated in a dark hole, which gave him such a repulsive yet fascinating appearance, that it was almost impossible to keep the eye from following him and resting on his disfigurement. Next day this turnkey escorted me to the prison. He turned out to be a government servant there on duty for a month, and so poor that he was glad to get employment at anything. This time it was broad daylight, and we surprised the inmates playing chess. For a board they had taken down one half of a window shutter, and scratched the form of the chess-board on it. Proper chess-men they had none, but the black man, being a scribe, had written on little flat pieces of wood, camel, mandarin, child, and so on, thus indicating the different kinds of men. With this make-shift board and these make-shift men they were playing quite a keen game; both players and spectators protested against the positions being disturbed, and the chess-board was laid carefully away, that the game might be resumed where it was left off. A few minutes later, a terrible storm of wind, rain, and hail beat against the front of the house. The door was closed. One window had no shutters; the other aperture had no window, but shutters only. The one half of the shutter was under a pile of clothes, keeping them from the damp of the kh'ang; the other was laid away with the game of chess on it; but as the storm beat into the room, the clothes were thrown aside, the chessmen were swept up, the shutters fixed, and with only one small window left, the black-house was true to its name.

The storm soon passed over, light was re-admitted, and the place once more became visible. There was little but bare walls to be seen. Two kh'angs, one at each end, without flues, and almost destitute of mats; a couple of broken-down-looking fireplaces, a pot, and a couple of water buckets comprised nearly the whole of the furniture in the place. All the floor, except two or three feet at each side, was wood. Near the centre was a trap-door with a little square hole cut in the middle. When this door was raised, it disclosed an underground room about ten feet deep, eight feet wide, and fifteen or twenty feet long, with mud floor, plastered walls, and the flooring of the prison for ceiling. This room had no furniture and contained nothing of any kind. There seemed to be no air-holes or provision for ventilation,

except the seams between the boards of the ceiling, and the little hole about four or five inches square, in the trap-door. Outside the house there was conspicuous from afar a clumsy Chinese ladder. By means of this ladder, every night at dark, three of the prisoners were let down with their bedding to pass the night in this strong room. It was rather hard lines for a criminal even, to pass eight or ten hours of the twenty-four in such a damp stagnant hole, which never gets warm all the year round. It was summer time then; but the keeper remarked, "In the morning the men come up shivering with cold.” One thing the dungeon afforded,—safe keeping for the prisoners. Once let down into it and the ladder withdrawn and placed outside the house, the three men were in no danger of getting out. The trap-door was fastend down firmly ten feet above their heads, and to mine themselves out, they would have had to work through the solid earth. Experienced breakers of foreign prisons would doubtless have easily devised means of escape, but Mongols were safe enough. Three of the six were not compelled to sleep in the dungeon, but shared the comforts of the upper prison in common with the sub-governor, the turnkey, and the two soldiers. The most remarkable thing about the prison, was the amount of liberty allowed the prisoners. It seemed to be no uncommon thing for the keepers and soldiers to be away at the same time; when the prisoners were left at perfect freedom. It is true that on these occasions the keepers never went far, and kept continually casting glances towards the jail; yet it sounds strange to hear of half-a-dozen criminals left to roam at will inside and outside of the prison and the prison yard. The great distances and the naked solitudes of the country doubtless accounted for this. Suppose a prisoner ran away, where could he go? If he travelled, his track would not be difficult to find; and if he did not travel, where could he lie hid? During the night he might get away and baffle pursuit, but more care was exercised after dark. Another consideration too, that makes jails easy to guard in Mongolia is this, that an escaped prisoner would doom himself to perpetual banishment. If he returned home at any time, he would be instantly apprehended, and most Mongols would prefer to endure two or three years imprisonment, to being compelled to skulk for life. The three prisoners that were allowed to sleep in the upper prison, had almost completed their term of restraint; a few weeks or months more would make them free men; and in these circumstances, they would not render themselves liable to fresh punishment by attempting to escape. The keepers knew this, and were not at all afraid to give them plenty of liberty.

The prison was pleasantly situated on high ground, overlooking a valley lively with flocks, herds, tents, and a couple of large Chinese

trading establishments. Close at hand, but round the shoulder of a hill, and just out of sight, but within hearing, was a large temple. The monotony of prison life was much relieved by the sight of all the life and activity in the neighbourhood. People were riding to and fro, carts coming and going, flocks pasturing, horse droves conspicuous on the hill tops, lamas in state coming to the temple and going off to the country on religious business, and government officials conspicuous with their buttons. These things the prisoners could see from their prison; frequently they stood looking at them over the low mud wall; but more frequently still they were to be seen crouching on the ash heap in front of the gate. All prisons in Mongolia have not such a good prospect. Some of them are built in quiet situations, and have a wall about ten feet high round them, which shuts out nearly everything but the sky. Even then the fate of the inmates is not so hard as it might be, because in most cases they are allowed to go outside the enclosure.

But to return to this prison. The last time I visited them, they were having a feast. They had clubbed together and bought the head and some other parts of an ox slaughtered at the temple hard by, to supply rations to ten lamas engaged on the great summer services. The tongue they had slit up and hung up to dry. The rest they were boiling. The pot was much too small for even the moiety they had in hand, but they piled it high above the rim and kept industriously turning the raw parts down into the water. The fuel too was bad. They had a little argol, but that seemed damp and was utterly insufficient; so they had gone out to the hills and pulled up by the roots a great quantity of southernwood, and that they used as fuel. The day before, it was blooming in all its August freshness and fragrance; now it was cast into the furnace, blazing a little and smoking a great deal. The Mongols rather like their meat half raw, and on this occasion they seemed to be having their taste gratified to the full. When one potful was pronounced to be done, the same half shutter that had before acted as a chess-board, was now called into requisition as a trencher, and covered with huge pieces of steaming meat and bone. With perfect liberty, fraternity, and equality, prisoners and keepers gathered round and did their best. Knives were scarce' and the table small, so they had to take it in turns; and one poor fellow was poorly that day, and had to sit apart and look at his companions feasting. His was a hard lot; they had such a feast but seldom; and to think that of all the days of the year he should have been sick on that day!

On the termination of the last visit, the inmates offered hearty thanks for all the attention that had been paid them, and lamented that they had not been able to offer the universal token of Mongol