As time passed on, the name of Scythia in Asia became merged in that of Tartary. From the time that the Mahometans became masters of Egypt and Constantinople, as no Christian was allowed to pass through their dominion to the East, intercourse with India by the two most direct roads ceased entirely. Cotton goods and other merchandise from India were therefore conveyed by the trading caravans before mentioned. The depôt to which they were generally forwarded was Samarcand, as was correctly related to Guillaume Postel by Michel, the Arabic interpreter (p. 13). There they met the great caravan travelling from the East into Russia, and, on the journey, passed through part of Scythia in Asia. In each district the caravan was joined by hosts of Tartar traders carrying with them the wool of their sheep, the hair of their goats, and the skins of both, the soft, curly skins of their lambs, and droves of hardy colts, the produce of their mares, whose milk was, and still is, to them as important an article of diet as that of cows is to ourselves. As the Tartar merchants brought with the fleeces of their sheep, goats, and lambs the fleeces also of “the fine white wool that grew on trees” and the piece-goods made from it, “the vegetable lamb” from which it was supposed to have been sheared became also in this manner identified with Tartary, in the same way as were Indian spices with “Araby,” through which they sometimes passed in transit, but where they never grew. It thus became known as “the wool of the Tartarian Lamb,” and travellers whose curiosity concerning the far-famed “zoophyte” was subsequently aroused sought for it in the dominions of the “Great Cham.” But, just as when Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius II., sought in Scotland for the “goose-bearing tree,” which he eagerly desired to see, upon being told that it grew much further north, complained that “miracles will always flee farther and farther away”; so when any painstaking traveller in Tartary endeavoured to investigate the subject of the strange “plant-animal,” he was sure to learn (unless he allowed himself to be cunningly hoaxed by the skin of a natural lamb, or the fruit of another plant) that the object of his search was non-existent in its reputed birthplace, and that he must look for it elsewhere. Thus the story of the “Scythian” or “Tartarian Lamb” grew, and was exaggerated and distorted, until all traces of its origin were so obliterated that even men of thought and learning have been unable to recognise in the misleading descriptions given of it the plant which, excepting corn, is, perhaps, the most valuable to mankind. For, as I have said, it seems to me to be clear and indubitable that the fruit which burst when ripe and disclosed within it “a little lamb” was the cotton pod, and that the soft, white, delicate fleece of “the Vegetable Lamb of Scythia” was that which we still call “Cotton Wool.” [Illustration: FIG. 7.--THE REAL “VEGETABLE LAMB”--A COTTON POD.