is one of the last, if not the last traveller
who visited the region, tells me that he found in the large temple of
Erdeni Tso an iron (the cast bore a Latin cross; had the wafer been
Nestorian, the cross should have been Greek) and a silver box, which are
very likely the objects mentioned by Rubruquis. It is a new proof of the
identity of the sites of Erdeni Tso and Karakorum.--H. C.]

[Illustration: Entrance to the Erdeni Tso Great Temple.]

NOTE 2.--[Mr. Rockhill (_Rubruck_, 113, note) says: "The earliest date to
which I have been able to trace back the name Tartar is A.D. 732. We find
mention made in a Turkish inscription found on the river Orkhon and
bearing that date, of the _Tokuz Tatar_, or 'Nine (tribes of) Tatars,' and
of the _Otuz Tatar_, or 'Thirty (tribes of) Tatars.' It is probable that
these tribes were then living between the Oguz or Uigur Turks on the west,
and the Kitan on the east. (_Thomsen, Inscriptions de l'Orkhon_, 98, 126,
140.) Mr. Thos. Watters tells me that the Tartars are first mentioned by
the Chinese in the period extending from A.D. 860 to 874; the earliest
mention I have discovered, however, is under date of A.D. 880. (_Wu tai
shih_, Bk. 4.) We also read in the same work (Bk. 74, 2) that 'The Ta-ta
were a branch of the Mo-ho (the name the Nu-chen Tartars bore during the
Sui and T'ang periods: _Ma Tuan-lin_, Bk. 327, 5). They first lived to the
north of the Kitan. Later on they were conquered by this people, when they
scattered, a part becoming tributaries of the Kitan, another to the
P'o-hai (a branch of the Mo-ho), while some bands took up their abode in
the Yin Shan in Southern Mongolia, north of the provinces of Chih-li and
Shan-si, and took the name of _Ta-ta_.' In 981 the Chinese ambassador to
the Prince of Kao-chang (Karakhodjo, some 20 miles south-east of Turfan)
traversed the Ta-ta country. They then seem to have occupied the northern
bend of the Yellow River. He gives the names of some nine tribes of Ta-ta
living on either side of the river. He notes that their neighbours to the
east were Kitan, and that for a long time they had been fighting them after
the occupation of Kan-chou by the Uigurs. (_Ma Tuan-lin_, Bk. 336, 12-14.)
We may gather from this that these Tartars were already settled along the
Yellow River and the Yin Shan (the valley in which is now the important
frontier mart of Kwei-hua Ch'eng) at the beginning of the ninth century,
for the Uigurs, driven southward by the