HKB
XVII., p. 90. “There are also plenty of veins of steel and Ondanique.”
“The ondanique which Marco Polo mentions in his 42nd chapter is almost certainly the pin t’ieh or ‘pin iron’ of the Chinese, who frequently mention it as coming from Arabia, Persia, Cophene, Hami, Ouigour-land and other High Asia States.” (E. H. PARKER, Journ. North China Br. Roy. Asiatic Soc., XXXVIII., 1907, p. 225.)
XVIII., pp. 97, 100. “The province that we now enter is called REOBARLES.... The beasts also are peculiar.... Then there are sheep here as big as asses; and their tails are so large and fat, that one tail shall weight some 30 lbs. They are fine fat beasts, and afford capital mutton.”
Prof. E. H. PARKER writes in the Journ. of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Soc., XXXVII., 1906, p. 196: “Touching the fat-tailed sheep of Persia, the Shan-haï-king says the Yuëh-chï or Indo-Scythy had a ‘big-tailed sheep,’ the correct name for which is hien-yang. The Sung History mentions sheep at Hami with tails so heavy that they could not walk. In the year 1010 some were sent as tribute to China by the King of Kuché.”
“Among the native products [at Mu lan p’i, Murābit, Southern Coast of Spain] are foreign sheep, which are several feet high and have tails as big as a fan. In the spring-time they slit open their bellies and take out some tens of catties of fat, after which they sew them up again, and the sheep live on; if the fat were not removed, (the animal) would swell up and die.” (CHAU JU-KWA, pp. 142–3.)
“The Chinese of the T’ang period had heard also of the trucks put under these sheep’s tails. ‘The Ta-shï have a foreign breed of sheep (hu-yang) whose tails, covered with fine wool, weigh from ten to twenty catties; the people have to put carts under them to hold them up. Fan-kuo-chï as quoted in Tung-si-yang-k’au.” (HIRTH and ROCKHILL, p. 143.)
Leo Africanus, Historie of Africa, III., 945 (Hakluyt Soc. ed.), says he saw in Egypt a ram with a tail weighing eighty pounds!:
OF THE AFRICAN RAMME.
“There is no difference betweene these rammes of Africa and others, saue onely in their tailes, which are of a great thicknes, being by so much the grosser, but how much they are more fatte, so that some of their tailes waigh tenne, and other twentie pounds a peece, and they become fatte of their owne naturall inclination: but in Egypt there are diuers that feede them fatte with bran and barly, vntill their tailes growe so bigge that they cannot remooue themselves from place to place: insomuch that those which take charge of them are faine to binde little carts vnder their tailes, to the end they may haue strength to walke. I my selfe saw at a citie in Egypt called Asiot, and standing vpon Nilus, about an hundred and fiftie miles from Cairo, one of the saide rams tailes that weighed fowerscore pounds, and others affirmed that they had seene one of those tailes of an hundred and fiftie pounds weight. All the fatte therefore of this beast consisteth in his taile; neither is there any of them to be founde but onely in Tunis and in Egypt.” (LEO AFRICANUS, edited by Dr. Robert BROWN, III., 1896, Hakluyt Society, p. 945.)
XVIII., pp. 97, 100 n.
Dr. B. Laufer draws my attention to what is probably the oldest mention of this sheep from Arabia, in Herodotus, Book III., Chap. 113: