proper is very likely correct....  I. J. Schmidt (Ssanang Setzen, 380) derives the name Mongol from mong, meaning ‘brave, daring, bold,’ while Rashiduddin says it means ’simple, weak’ (d’Ohsson, i. 22).  The Chinese characters used to transcribe the name mean ‘dull, stupid,’ and ‘old, ancient,’ but they are used purely phonetically....  The Mongols of the present day are commonly called by the Chinese Ta-tzu, but this name is resented by the Mongols as opprobrious, though it is but an abbreviated form of the name Ta-ta-tzu, in which, according to Rubruck, they once gloried.”—­H.  C.]

Vincent of Beauvais has got from some of his authorities a conception of the distinction of the Tartars into two races, to which, however, he assigns no names:  “Sunt autem duo genera Tartarorum, diversa quidem habentia idiomata, sed unicam legem ac ritum, sicut Franci et Theutonici.”  But the result of his effort to find a realisation of Gog and Magog is that he makes Guyuk Kaan into Gog, and Mangu Kaan into Magog.  Even the intelligent Friar Ricold says of the Tartars:  “They say themselves that they are descended from Gog and Magog:  and on this account they are called Mogoli, as if from a corruption of Magogoli.” (Abulfeda in Buesching, IV. 140, 274-275; I.  B. IV. 274; Golden Horde, 34, 68; Erdmann, 241-242, 257-258; Timk. I. 259, 263, 268; Vinc.  Bellov.  Spec.  Hist. XXIX. 73, XXXI. 32-34; Pereg.  Quat. 118; Not. et Ext. II. 536.)

NOTE 6.—­The towns and villages were probably those immediately north of the Great Wall, between 112 deg. and 115 deg.  East longitude, of which many remains exist, ascribed to the time of the Yuen or Mongol Dynasty.  This tract, between the Great Wall and the volcanic plateau of Mongolia, is extensively colonised by Chinese, and has resumed the flourishing aspect that Polo describes.  It is known now as the Ku-wei, or extramural region.

[After Kalgan, Captain Younghusband, on the 12th April, 1886, “passed through the [outer] Great Wall ... entering what Marco Polo calls the land of Gog and Magog.  For the next two days I passed through a hilly country inhabited by Chinese, though it really belongs to Mongolia; but on the 14th I emerged on to the real steppes, which are the characteristic features of Mongolia Proper.” (Proc.  R. G. S. X., 1888, p. 490.)—­H.  C.]

Of the cloths called nakh and nasij we have spoken before (supra ch. vi. note 4).  These stuffs, or some such as these, were, I believe, what the mediaeval writers called Tartary cloth, not because they were made in Tartary, but because they were brought from China and its borders through the Tartar dominions; as we find that for like reason they were sometimes called stuffs of Russia.  Dante alludes to the supposed skill of Turks and Tartars in weaving gorgeous stuffs, and Boccaccio, commenting thereon, says that Tartarian cloths are so skilfully woven that no painter with his brush could equal them.  Maundevile often speaks of cloths of Tartary (e.g. pp. 175, 247).  So also Chaucer: