200 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XIX, 
is a sandy sea without water, etc.' Three days from that sea 
ree are certain mountains, whence flows a river of stones, 
etc. Near the mountains there is, among uninhabitable moun- 
tains, a desert; underground flows a stream to which there is 
no approach, etc. The stream flows into -another great river, 
which the people of our country enter and whence they ex- 
tract very great quantities of precious stones, etc. eyond 
the river are ten Jewish tribes, which, although they choose 
their own Kings, are the slaves and tributaries of our excel- 
lency.® 
n another province of ours, near the torrid zone, there 
e 
they make around their body a kind of skin, which the ladies 
of our palace weave with care, and so we have stuffs and 
garments for all our excellency’ s needs. These clothes are 
washed only in a strong fire.® 


be the ows of Paradise dei ot in which ws Mt. Goo mpus would 
be Adam’s Peak; but neither in M*‘ Crindle’s An nt ane nor in Yule’s 
Cathay sett ears Polo,dol find A Fable Peak Saeee And on one 
not expect the pepper forest to be placed in Ceylon 
Pliny says that the pepper-plant grows everywhere in India, though 
some writers assert that it grows only on the slopes of Caucasus, which 
lie exposed to the sun. Cf. gh Comme ree Sp -_ , p. 121. To the 
ancients the Caucasus was the malaya. do t find; however, any 
ancient authors ide gprs the Cattasts a ah “Olym pus 
tos of Lemnos (born circa 172 A.D.) in his biography o 
Philostra 
Apollonius of Tyana aay ose siitis similar: that on the heights of Mt. 
aukasos grew various rig of aromatic plants, and the cinnamon- tree 
and in the hollows the pepper-plant and frankincense-bearing trees. 
(Ibid., p. 193.) But M*‘Crindle doubts whether Apollonius a and _ his 
journalist Damis, an oe , really visited India or merely copied from 
pre-existing materials ( 
! Friar Odorie at 13 330) places ‘the Sea of Sa nd’ at a day's 
journey aie Test (Yezd) in Persia. Cf. Yule’s Cathay, I ‘see p. is 
bein 
e 
ts army of the Emperor Cublai. 1t s, therefore, that it was not 
in this century alone that the lost tribes were traced to Tatary.’ te 
by L ra fost op..cit., I, 252. 
pumber of early European writers in India thought they eesti x i 
the rae Jewish tribes in Afghanistan. Fr. Anthony Monse S.J., 
i 
