NOTE 2.—­The words Camut and Borgal appear both to be used here for what we call Russia-Leather.  The latter word in one form or another, Bolghar, Borghali, or Bulkal, is the term applied to that material to this day nearly all over Asia.  Ibn Batuta says that in travelling during winter from Constantinople to the Wolga he had to put on three pairs of boots, one of wool (which we should call stockings), a second of wadded linen, and a third of Borghali, “i.e. of horse-leather lined with wolf-skin.”  Horse-leather seems to be still the favourite material for boots among all the Tartar nations.  The name was undoubtedly taken from Bolghar on the Wolga, the people of which are traditionally said to have invented the art of preparing skins in that manner.  This manufacture is still one of the staple trades of Kazan, the city which in position and importance is the nearest representative of Bolghar now.

Camut is explained by Klaproth to be “leather made from the back-skin of a camel.”  It appears in Johnson’s Persian Dictionary as Kamu, but I do not know from what language it originally comes.  The word is in the Latin column of the Petrarchian Vocabulary with the Persian rendering Sagri.  This shows us what is meant, for Saghri is just our word Shagreen, and is applied to a fine leather granulated in that way, which is much used for boots and the like by the people of Central Asia. [In Turkish saghri or saghri is the name both for the buttocks of a horse and the leather called shagreen prepared with them. (See Devic, Dict.  Etym.)—­H.  C.] In the commercial lists of our Indian north-west frontier we find as synonymous Saghri or Kimukht, “Horse or Ass-hide.”  No doubt this latter word is a form of Kamu or Camut.  It appears (as Keimukht, “a sort of leather”) in a detail of imports to Aden given by Ibn al Wardi, a geographer of the 13th century.

Instead of Camut, Ramusio has Camoscia, i.e.  Chamois, and the same seems to be in all the editions based on Fra Pipino’s version.  It may be a misrendering of camutum or camutium; or is there any real connexion between the Oriental Kamu Kimukht, and the Italian camoscia? (I.  B. II. 445; Klapr.  Mem. vol.  III.; Davies’s Trade Report, App. p. ccxx.; Vambery’s Travels, 423; Not. et Ext. II. 43.)

Fraehn (writing in 1832) observes that he knew no use of the word Bolghar, in the sense of Russian leather, older than the 17th century.  But we see that both Marco and Ibn Batuta use it. (F. on the Wolga Bulghars, pp. 8-9.)

Pauthier in a note (p. 285) gives a list of the garments issued to certain officials on these ceremonial occasions under the Mongols, and sure enough this list includes “pairs of boots in red leather.”  Odoric particularly mentions the broad golden girdles worn at the Kaan’s court.