NOTE 2.—Marsden and Murray have identified Changlu with T’SANG-CHAU in Pe Chih-li, about 30 miles east by south of Ho-kien fu. This seems substantially right, but Pauthier shows that there was an old town actually called CH’ANGLU, separated from T’sang-chau only by the great canal. [Ch’ang-lu was the name of T’sang-chau under the T’ang and the Kin. (See _Playfair, Dict._, p. 34.)—H. C.] The manner of obtaining salt, described in the text, is substantially the same as one described by Duhalde, and by one of the missionaries, as being employed near the mouth of the Yang-tzŭ kiang. There is a town of the third order some miles south-east of T’sang-chau, called _Yen-shan_ or “salt-hill,” and, according to Pauthier, T’sang-chau is the mart for salt produced there. (_Duhalde_ in _Astley_, IV. 310; _Lettres Edif._ XI. 267 _seqq._; _Biot._ p. 283.) Polo here introduces a remark about the practice of burning the dead, which, with the notice of the idolatry of the people, and their use of paper-money, constitutes a formula which he repeats all through the Chinese provinces with wearisome iteration. It is, in fact, his definition of the Chinese people, for whom he seems to lack a comprehensive name. A great change seems to have come over Chinese custom, since the Middle Ages, in regard to the disposal of the dead. Cremation is now entirely disused, except in two cases; one, that of the obsequies of a Buddhist priest, and the other that in which the coffin instead of being buried has been exposed in the fields, and in the lapse of time has become decayed. But it is impossible to reject the evidence that it was a common practice in Polo’s age. He repeats the assertion that it was _the_ custom at every stage of his journey through Eastern China; though perhaps his taking absolutely no notice of the practice of burial is an instance of that imperfect knowledge of strictly Chinese peculiarities which has been elsewhere ascribed to him. It is the case, however, that the author of the Book of the Estate of the Great Kaan (_circa_ 1330) also speaks of cremation as the usual Chinese practice, and that Ibn Batuta says positively: “The Chinese are infidels and idolaters, and they burn their dead after the manner of the Hindus.” This is all the more curious, because the Arab _Relations_ of the 9th century say distinctly that the Chinese bury their dead, though they often kept the body long (as they do still) before burial; and there is no mistaking the description which Conti (15th century) gives of the Chinese mode of sepulture. Mendoza, in the 16th century, alludes to no disposal of the dead except by burial, but Semedo in the early part of the 17th says that bodies were occasionally burnt, especially in Sze-ch’wan.