chapter xxi

. of Book II. It will be seen that it contains no new facts, but is only a tedious recapitulation of circumstances already stated, though scattered over several chapters. There are a few minor additions. I have not thought it worth while to collect them systematically here, but two or three examples are given in a note.[3]

There are also one or two corrections of erroneous statements in the G. T. which seem not to be accidental and to indicate some attempt at revision. Thus a notable error in the account of Aden, which seems to conceive of the Red Sea as a _river_, disappears in Pauthier’s MSS. A and B.[4] And we find in these MSS. one or two interesting names preserved which are not found in the older Text.[5]

But on the other hand this class of MSS. contains many erroneous readings of names, either adopting the worse of two forms occurring in the G. T. or originating blunders of its own.[6]

M. Pauthier lays great stress on the character of these MSS. as the sole authentic form of the work, from their claim to have been specially revised by Marco Polo. It is evident, however, from what has been said, that this revision can have been only a very careless and superficial one, and must have been done in great measure by deputy, being almost entirely confined to curtailment and to the improvement of the expression, and that it is by no means such as to allow an editor to dispense with a careful study of the Older Text.

[Sidenote: The Bern MS. and two others form a sub-class of this Type.]

57. There is another curious circumstance about the MSS. of this type, viz., that they clearly divide into two distinct recensions, of which both have so many peculiarities and errors in common that they must necessarily have been both derived from _one_ modification of the original text, whilst at the same time there are such differences between the two as cannot be set down to the accidents of transcription. Pauthier’s MSS. A and B (Nos. 16 and 15 of the List in App. F) form one of these subdivisions: his C (No. 17 of List), Bern (No. 56), and Oxford (No. 6), the other. Between A and B the differences are only such as seem constantly to have arisen from the whims of transcribers or their dialectic peculiarities. But between A and B on the one side, and C on the other, the differences are much greater. The readings of proper names in C are often superior, sometimes worse; but in the latter half of the work especially it contains a number of substantial passages[7] which are to be found in the G. T., but are altogether absent from the MSS. A and B; whilst in one case at least (the history of the Siege of Saianfu, vol. ii. p. 159) it diverges considerably from the G. T. _as well_ as from A and B.[8]

I gather from the facts that the MS. C represents an older form of the work than A and B. I should judge that the latter had been derived from that older form, but intentionally modified from it. And as it is the MS. C, with its copy at Bern, that alone presents the certificate of derivation from the Book given to the Sieur de Cepoy, there can be no doubt that it is the true representative of that recension.

[Sidenote: Third; Friar Pipino’s Latin.]

58. III. The next Type of Text is that found in Friar Pipino’s Latin version. It is the type of which MSS. are by far the most numerous. In it condensation and curtailment are carried a good deal further than in Type II. The work is also divided into three Books. But this division does not seem to have originated with Pipino, as we find it in the ruder and perhaps older Latin version of which we have already spoken under Type I. And we have demonstrated that this ruder Latin is a translation from an Italian copy. It is probable therefore that an Italian version similarly divided was the common source of what we call the Geographic Latin and of Pipino’s more condensed version.[9]

Pipino’s version appears to have been executed in the later years of Polo’s life.[10] But I can see no ground for the idea entertained by Baldelli-Boni and Professor Bianconi that it was executed with Polo’s cognizance and retouched by him.

[Sidenote: The Latin of Grynæus a translation at fifth hand.]

59. The absence of effective publication in the Middle Ages led to a curious complication of translation and retranslation. Thus the Latin version published by Grynæus in the _Novus Orbis_ (Basle, 1532) is different from Pipino’s, and yet clearly traceable to it as a base. In fact it is a retranslation into Latin from some version (Marsden thinks the printed Portuguese one) of Pipino. It introduces many minor modifications, omitting specific statements of numbers and values, generalizing the names and descriptions of specific animals, exhibiting frequent sciolism and self-sufficiency in modifying statements which the Editor disbelieved.[11] It is therefore utterly worthless as a Text, and it is curious that Andreas Müller, who in the 17th century devoted himself to the careful editing of Polo, should have made so unfortunate a choice as to reproduce this fifth-hand Translation. I may add that the French editions published in the middle of the 16th century are _translations_ from Grynæus. Hence they complete this curious and vicious circle of translation: French—Italian—Pipino’s Latin—Portuguese?—Grynæus’s Latin—French![12]

[Sidenote: Fourth; Ramusio’s Italian.]

60. IV. We now come to a Type of Text which deviates largely from any of those hitherto spoken of, and the history and true character of which are involved in a cloud of difficulty. We mean that Italian version prepared for the press by G. B. Ramusio, with most interesting, though, as we have seen, not always accurate preliminary dissertations, and published at Venice two years after his death, in the second volume of the _Navigationi e Viaggi_.[13]

The peculiarities of this version are very remarkable. Ramusio seems to imply that he used as one basis at least the Latin of Pipino; and many circumstances, such as the division into Books, the absence of the terminal historical chapters and of those about the Magi, and the form of many proper names, confirm this. But also many additional circumstances and anecdotes are introduced, many of the names assume a new shape, and the whole style is more copious and literary in character than in any other form of the work.

Whilst some of the changes or interpolations seem to carry us further from the truth, others contain facts of Asiatic nature or history, as well as of Polo’s own experiences, which it is extremely difficult to ascribe to any hand but the Traveller’s own. This was the view taken by Baldelli, Klaproth, and Neumann;[14] but Hugh Murray, Lazari, and Bartoli regard the changes as interpolations by another hand; and Lazari is rash enough to ascribe the whole to a _rifacimento_ of Ramusio’s own age, asserting it to contain interpolations not merely from Polo’s own contemporary Hayton, but also from travellers of later centuries, such as Conti, Barbosa, and Pigafetta. The grounds for these last assertions have not been cited, nor can I trace them. But I admit _to a certain extent_ indications of modern tampering with the text, especially in cases where proper names seem to have been identified and more modern forms substituted. In days, however, where an Editor’s duties were ill understood, this was natural.

[Sidenote: Injudicious tamperings in Ramusio.]

61. Thus we find substituted for the _Bastra_ (or _Bascra_) of the older texts the more modern and incorrect _Balsora_, dear to memories of the Arabian Nights; among the provinces of Persia we have _Spaan_ (Ispahan) where older texts read _Istanit_; for _Cormos_ we have _Ormus_; for _Herminia_ and _Laias_, _Armenia_ and _Giazza_; _Coulam_ for the older _Coilum_; _Socotera_ for _Scotra_. With these changes may be classed the chapter-headings, which are undisguisedly modern, and probably Ramusio’s own. In some other cases this editorial spirit has been over-meddlesome and has gone astray. Thus _Malabar_ is substituted wrongly for _Maabar_ in one place, and by a grosser error for _Dalivar_ in another. The age of young Marco, at the time of his father’s first return to Venice, has been arbitrarily altered from 15 to 19, in order to correspond with a date which is itself erroneous. Thus also Polo is made to describe Ormus as on an Island, contrary to the old texts and to the fact; for the city of Hormuz was not transferred to the island, afterwards so famous, till some years after Polo’s return from the East. It is probably also the editor who in the notice of the oil-springs of Caucasus (i. p. 46) has substituted _camel-loads_ for _ship-loads_, in ignorance that the site of those alluded to was probably Baku on the Caspian.

Other erroneous statements, such as the introduction of window-glass as one of the embellishments of the palace at Cambaluc, are probably due only to accidental misunderstanding.

[Sidenote: Genuine statements peculiar to Ramusio.]

62. Of circumstances certainly genuine, which are peculiar to this edition of Polo’s work, and which it is difficult to assign to any one but himself, we may note the specification of the woods east of Yezd as composed of _date trees_ (vol. i pp. 88–89); the unmistakable allusion to the subterranean irrigation channels of Persia (p. 123); the accurate explanation of the term _Mulehet_ applied to the sect of Assassins (pp. 139–142); the mention of the Lake (Sirikul?) on the plateau of Pamer, of the wolves that prey on the wild sheep, and of the piles of wild rams’ horns used as landmarks in the snow (pp. 171–177). To the description of the Tibetan Yak, which is in all the texts, Ramusio’s version alone adds a fact probably not recorded again till the present century, viz., that it is the practice to cross the Yak with the common cow (p. 274). Ramusio alone notices the prevalence of _goître_ at Yarkand, confirmed by recent travellers (i. p. 187); the vermilion seal of the Great Kaan imprinted on the paper-currency, which may be seen in our plate of a Chinese note (p. 426); the variation in Chinese dialects (ii. p. 236); the division of the hulls of junks into water-tight compartments (ii. p. 249); the introduction into China from Egypt of the art of refining sugar (ii. p. 226). Ramusio’s account of the position of the city of Sindafu (Ch’êng-tu fu) encompassed and intersected by many branches of a great river (ii. p. 40), is much more just than that in the old text, which speaks of but one river through the middle of the city. The intelligent notices of the Kaan’s charities as originated by his adoption of “idolatry” or Buddhism; of the astrological superstitions of the Chinese, and of the manners and character of the latter nation, are found in Ramusio alone. To whom but Marco himself, or one of his party, can we refer the brief but vivid picture of the delicious atmosphere and scenery of the Badakhshan plateaux (i. p. 158), and of the benefit that Messer Marco’s health derived from a visit to them? In this version alone again we have an account of the oppressions exercised by Kúblái’s Mahomedan Minister Ahmad, telling how the Cathayans rose against him and murdered him, with the addition that Messer Marco was on the spot when all this happened. Now not only is the whole story in substantial accordance with the Chinese Annals, even to the name of the chief conspirator,[15] but those annals also tell of the courageous frankness of “Polo, assessor of the Privy Council,” in opening the Kaan’s eyes to the truth.

Many more such examples might be adduced, but these will suffice. It is true that many of the passages peculiar to the Ramusian version, and indeed the whole version, show a freer utterance and more of a literary faculty than we should attribute to Polo, judging from the earlier texts. It is possible, however, that this may be almost, if not entirely, due to the fact that the version is the result of a double translation, and probably of an editorial fusion of several documents; processes in which angularities of expression would be dissolved.[16]

[Sidenote: Hypothesis of the sources of the Ramusian Version.]

63. Though difficulties will certainly remain,[17] the most probable explanation of the origin of this text seems to me to be some such hypothesis as the following:—I suppose that Polo in his latter years added with his own hand supplementary notes and reminiscences, marginally or otherwise, to a copy of his book; that these, perhaps in his lifetime, more probably after his death, were digested and translated into Latin;[18] and that Ramusio, or some friend of his, in retranslating and fusing them with Pipino’s version for the _Navigationi_, made those minor modifications in names and other matters which we have already noticed. The mere facts of digestion from memoranda and double translation would account for a good deal of unintentional corruption.

That more than one version was employed in the composition of Ramusio’s edition we have curious proof in at least one passage of the latter. We have pointed out at p. 410 of this volume a curious example of misunderstanding of the old French Text, a passage in which the term _Roi des Pelaines_, or “King of Furs,” is applied to the Sable, and which in the Crusca has been converted into an imaginary Tartar phrase _Leroide pelame_, or as Pipino makes it _Rondes_ (another indication that Pipino’s Version and the Crusca passed through a common medium). But Ramusio exhibits _both_ the true reading and the perversion: “_E li Tartari la chiamano_ Regina delle pelli” (there is the true reading), “_E gli animali si chiamano_ Rondes” (and there the perverted one).

We may further remark that Ramusio’s version betrays indications that one of its bases either was in the Venetian dialect, or had passed through that dialect; for a good many of the names appear in Venetian forms, _e.g._, substituting the _z_ for the sound of _ch_, _j_, or soft _g_, as in _Goza_, _Zorzania_, _Zagatay_, _Gonza_ (for Giogiu), _Quenzanfu_, _Coiganzu_, _Tapinzu_, _Zipangu_, _Ziamba_.

[Sidenote: Summary in regard to Text of Polo.]

64. To sum up. It is, I think, beyond reasonable dispute that we have, in what we call the Geographic Text, as nearly as may be an exact transcript of the Traveller’s words as originally taken down in the prison of Genoa. We have again in the MSS. of the second type an edition pruned and refined, probably under instructions from Marco Polo, but not with any critical exactness. And lastly, I believe, that we have, imbedded in the Ramusian edition, the supplementary recollections of the Traveller, noted down at a later period of his life, but perplexed by repeated translation, compilation, and editorial mishandling.

And the most important remaining problem in regard to the text of Polo’s work is the discovery of the supplemental manuscript from which Ramusio derived those passages which are found only in his edition. It is possible that it may still exist, but no trace of it in anything like completeness has yet been found; though when my task was all but done I discovered a small part of the Ramusian peculiarities in a MS. at Venice.[19]

65. Whilst upon this subject of manuscripts of our Author, I will give some particulars regarding a very curious one, containing a version in the _Irish_ language.

[Sidenote: Notice of a curious Irish Version of Polo.]

This remarkable document is found in the _Book of Lismore_, belonging to the Duke of Devonshire. That magnificent book, finely written on vellum of the largest size, was discovered in 1814, enclosed in a wooden box, along with a superb crozier, on opening a closed doorway in the castle of Lismore. It contained Lives of the Saints, the (Romance) History of Charlemagne, the History of the Lombards, histories and tales of Irish wars, etc., etc., and among the other matter this version of Marco Polo. A full account of the Book and its mutilations will be found in _O’Curry’s Lectures on the MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History_, p. 196 _seqq._, Dublin, 1861. The _Book of Lismore_ was written about 1460 for Finghin MacCarthy and his wife Catharine Fitzgerald, daughter of Gerald, Eighth Earl of Desmond.

The date of the Translation of Polo is not known, but it may be supposed to have been executed about the above date, probably in the Monastery of Lismore (county of Waterford).

From the extracts that have been translated for me, it is obvious that the version was made, with an astounding freedom certainly, from Friar Francesco Pipino’s Latin.

Both beginning and end are missing. But what remains opens thus; compare it with Friar Pipino’s real prologue as we give it in the Appendix![20]

[Irish text] &c.

——“Kings and chieftains of that city. There was then in the city a princely Friar in the habit of St. Francis, named Franciscus, who was versed in many languages. He was brought to the place where those nobles were, and they requested of him to translate the book from the Tartar (!) into the Latin language. ‘It is an abomination to me,’ said he, ‘to devote my mind or labour to works of Idolatry and Irreligion.’ They entreated him again. ‘It shall be done,’ said he; ‘for though it be an irreligious narrative that is related therein, yet the things are miracles of the True God; and every one who hears this much against the Holy Faith shall pray fervently for their conversion. And he who will not pray shall waste the vigour of his body to convert them.’ I am not in dread of this Book of Marcus, for there is no lie in it. My eyes beheld him bringing the relics of the holy Church with him, and he left [his testimony], whilst tasting of death, that it was true. And Marcus was a devout man. What is there in it, then, but that Franciscus translated this Book of Marcus from the Tartar into Latin; and the years of the Lord at that time were fifteen years, two score, two hundred, and one thousand” (1255).

It then describes _Armein Bec_ (Little Armenia), _Armein Mor_ (Great Armenia), _Musul_, _Taurisius_, _Persida_, _Camandi_, and so forth. The last chapter is that on _Abaschia_:—

“ABASCHIA also is an extensive country, under the government of Seven Kings, four of whom worship the true God, and each of them wears a golden cross on the forehead; and they are valiant in battle, having been brought up fighting against the Gentiles of the other three kings, who are Unbelievers and Idolaters. And the kingdom of ADEN; a Soudan rules over them.

“The king of Abaschia once took a notion to make a pilgrimage to the Sepulchre of Jesus. ‘Not at all,’ said his nobles and warriors to him, ‘for we should be afraid lest the infidels through whose territories you would have to pass, should kill you. There is a Holy Bishop with you,’ said they; ‘send him to the Sepulchre of Jesus, and much gold with him’”——

The rest is wanting.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] In the following citations, the Geographic Text (G. T.) is quoted by page from the printed edition (1824); the Latin published in the same volume (G. L.) also by page; the Crusca, as before, from Bartoli’s edition of 1863. References in parentheses are to the present translation:—

A. _Passages showing the G. L. to be a translation from the Italian, and derived from the same Italian text as the_ Crusca.

Page (1). G.T. 17 (I. 43). Il hi se laborent _le souran tapis_ dou monde.

Crusca, 17 .. E quivi si fanno _i sovrani tappeti_ del mondo.

G.L. 311 .. Et ibi fiunt _soriani et tapeti_ pulcriores de mundo.

(2). G.T. 23 (I. 69). Et adonc le calif mande par tuit les cristiez ... _que en sa tere estoient_.

Crusca, 27 .. _Ora mandò_ lo aliffo per tutti gli Cristiani _ch’erano di là_.

G.L. 316 .. _Or misit_ califus pro Christianis _qui erant ultra fluvium_ (the last words being clearly a misunderstanding of the Italian _di là_).

(3). G.T. 198 (II. 313). Ont _sosimain_ (sesamum) de coi il font le olio.

Crusca, 253 .. Hanno _sosimai_ onde fanno l’olio.

G.L. 448 .. Habent _turpes manus_ (taking _sosimani_ for _sozze mani_ “Dirty hands”!).

(4). Crusca, 52 (I. 158). _Cacciare e uccellare_ v’è lo migliore del mondo.

G.L. 332 .. Et est ibi optimum _caciare et ucellare_.

(5). G.T. 124 (II. 36). Adonc treuve ... une Provence _qe est encore_ de le confin dou Mangi.

Crusca, 162–3 .. L’uomo truova una Provincia _ch’è chiamata ancora_ delle confine de’ Mangi.

G.L. 396 .. Invenit unam Provinciam _quae vocatur Anchota_ de confinibus Mangi.

(6). G.T. 146 (II. 119). Les dames portent as jambes et es braces, braciaus d’or et d’arjent de grandisme vailance.

Crusca, 189 .. Le donne _portano alle braccia e alle gambe bracciali d’oro_ e d’ariento di gran valuta.

G.L. 411 .. Dominæ eorum _portant ad brachia et ad gambas brazalia de auro_ et de argento magni valoris.

B. _Passages showing additionally the errors, or other peculiarities of a translation from a French original, common to the Italian and the Latin._

(7). G.T. 32 (I. 97). Est celle plaingne mout _chaue_ (chaude).

Crusca, 35 .. Questo piano è molto _cavo_.

G.L. 322 .. Ista planities est multum _cava_.

(8). G.T. 36 (I. 110). Avent por ce que l’eive hi est _amer_.

Crusca, 40 .. E questo è _per lo mare_ che vi viene.

G.L. 324 .. Istud est _propter mare_ quod est ibi.

(9). G.T. 18 (I. 50). Un roi qi est apelés par tout tens Davit Melic, que veut à dir _en fransois_ Davit Roi.

Crusca, 20 .. Uno re il quale si chiama _sempre_ David Melic, ciò è a dire _in francesco_ David Re.

G.L. 312 .. Rex qui _semper_ vocatur David Mellic, quod sonat _in gallico_ David Rex.

These passages, and many more that might be quoted, seem to me to demonstrate (1) that the Latin and the Crusca have had a common original, and (2) that this original was an Italian version from the French.

[2] Thus the _Pucci_ MS. at Florence, in the passage regarding the Golden King (vol. ii. p. 17) which begins in G. T. “_Lequel fist faire_ jadis _un rois qe fu apellés le Roi Dor_,” renders “_Lo quale fa fare_ Jaddis _uno re_,” a mistake which is not in the Crusca nor in the Latin, and seems to imply derivation from the French directly, or by some other channel (_Baldelli Boni_).

[3] In the Prologue (vol. i. p. 34) this class of MSS. alone names the King of England.

In the account of the Battle with Nayan (i. p. 337) this class alone speaks of the two-stringed instruments which the Tartars played whilst awaiting the signal for battle. But the circumstance appears elsewhere in the G. T. (p. 250).

In the chapter on _Malabar_ (vol. ii. p. 390), it is said that the ships which go with cargoes towards Alexandria are not one-tenth of those that go to the further East. This is not in the older French.

In the chapter on _Coilun_ (ii. p. 375), we have a notice of the Columbine ginger so celebrated in the Middle Ages, which is also absent from the older text.

[4] See vol. ii. p. 439. It is, however, remarkable that a like mistake is made about the Persian Gulf (see i. 63, 64). Perhaps Polo _thought_ in Persian, in which the word _darya_ means either _sea_ or a _large river_. The same habit and the ambiguity of the Persian _sher_ led him probably to his confusion of lions and tigers (see i. 397).

[5] Such are Pasciai-_Dir_ and _Ariora_ Kesciemur (i. p. 98.)

[6] Thus the MSS. of this type have elected the erroneous readings _Bolgara, Cogatra, Chiato, Cabanant_, etc., instead of the correcter _Bolgana, Cocacin, Quiacatu, Cobinan_, where the G. T. presents both (_supra_, p. _86_). They read _Esanar_ for the correct _Etzina_; _Chascun_ for _Casvin_; _Achalet_ for _Acbalec_; _Sardansu_ for _Sindafu_, _Kayteu, Kayton, Sarcon_ for _Zaiton_ or _Caiton_; _Soucat_ for _Locac_; _Falec_ for _Ferlec_, and so on, the worse instead of the better. They make the _Mer Occeane_ into _Mer Occident_; the wild asses (_asnes_) of the Kerman Desert into wild geese (_oes_); the _escoillez_ of Bengal (ii. p. 115) into _escoliers_; the _giraffes_ of Africa into _girofles_, or cloves, etc., etc.

[7] There are about five-and-thirty such passages altogether.

[8] The Bern MS. I have satisfied myself is an actual _copy_ of the Paris MS. C.

The Oxford MS. closely resembles both, but I have not made the comparison minutely enough to say if it is an exact copy of either.

[9] The following comparison will also show that these two Latin versions have probably had a common source, such as is here suggested.

At the end of the Prologue the Geographic Text reads simply:—

“Or puis que je voz ai contez tot le fat dou prolegue ensi con voz avés oï, adonc (commencerai) le Livre.”

Whilst the Geographic Latin has:—

“_Postquam recitavimus et diximus facta et condictiones morum, itinerum_ et ea quae nobis contigerunt per vias, _incipiemus dicere ea quae vidimus. Et primo dicemus de Minore Hermenia_.”

And Pipino:—

“_Narratione facta nostri itineris, nunc ad ea narranda quae vidimus accedamus. Primo autem Armeniam Minorem describemus breviter_.”

[10] Friar Francesco Pipino of Bologna, a Dominican, is known also as the author of a lengthy chronicle from the time of the Frank Kings down to 1314; of a Latin Translation of the French History of the Conquest of the Holy Land, by Bernard the Treasurer; and of a short Itinerary of a Pilgrimage to Palestine in 1320. Extracts from the Chronicle, and the version of Bernard, are printed in Muratori’s Collection. As Pipino states himself to have executed the translation of Polo by order of his Superiors, it is probable that the task was set him at a general chapter of the order which was held at Bologna in 1315. (See _Muratori_, IX. 583; and _Quétif, Script. Ord. Praed._ I. 539). We do not know why Ramusio assigned the translation specifically to 1320, but he may have had grounds.

[11] See _Bianconi_, 1st Mem. 29 _seqq._

[12] C. Dickens somewhere narrates the history of the equivalents for a sovereign as changed and rechanged at every frontier on a continental tour. The final equivalent received at Dover on his return was some 12 or 13 shillings; a fair parallel to the comparative value of the first and last copies in the circle of translation.

[13] The Ramusios were a family of note in literature for several generations. Paolo, the father of Gian Battista, came originally from Rimini to Venice in 1458, and had a great repute as a jurist, besides being a littérateur of some eminence, as was also his younger brother Girolamo. G. B. Ramusio was born at Treviso in 1485, and early entered the public service. In 1533 he became one of the Secretaries of the Council of X. He was especially devoted to geographical studies, and had a school for such studies in his house. He retired eventually from public duties, and lived at Villa Ramusia, near Padua. He died in the latter city, 10th July, 1557, but was buried at Venice in the Church of S. Maria dell’Orto. There was a portrait of him by Paul Veronese in the Hall of the Great Council, but it perished in the fire of 1577; and that which is now seen in the Sala dello Scudo is, like the companion portrait of Marco Polo, imaginary. Paolo Ramusio, his son, was the author of the well-known History of the Capture of Constantinople. (_Cicogna_, II. 310 _seqq._)

[14] The old French texts were unknown in Marsden’s time. Hence this question did not present itself to him.

[15] _Wangcheu_ in the Chinese Annals; _Vanchu_ in Ramusio. I assume that Polo’s _Vanchu_ was pronounced as in English; for in Venetian the _ch_ very often has that sound. But I confess that I can adduce no other instance in Ramusio where I suppose it to have this sound, except in the initial sound of _Chinchitalas_ and twice in _Choiach_ (see II. 364).

Professor Bianconi, who has treated the questions connected with the Texts of Polo with honest enthusiasm and laborious detail, will admit nothing genuine in the Ramusian interpolations beyond the preservation of some _oral traditions_ of Polo’s supplementary recollections. But such a theory is out of the question in face of a chapter like that on Ahmad.

[16] Old Purchas appears to have greatly relished Ramusio’s comparative lucidity: “I found (says he) this Booke translated by Master Hakluyt out of the Latine (_i.e._ among Hakluyt’s MS. collections). But where the blind leade the blind both fall: as here the corrupt _Latine_ could not but yeeld a corruption of truth in _English_. Ramusio, Secretarie to the _Decemviri_ in _Venice_, found a better Copie and published the same, whence you have the worke in manner new: so renewed, that I have found the Proverbe true, that it is better to pull downe an old house and to build it anew, then to repaire it; as I also should have done, had I knowne that which in the event I found. The _Latine_ is Latten, compared to _Ramusio’s_ Gold. And hee which hath the _Latine_ hath but _Marco Polo’s_ carkasse or not so much, but a few bones, yea, sometimes stones rather then bones; things divers, averse, adverse, perverted in manner, disjoynted in manner, beyond beliefe. I have seene some Authors maymed, but never any so mangled and so mingled, so present and so absent, as this vulgar _Latine_ of _Marco Polo_; not so like himselfe, as the Three _Polo’s_ were at their returne to _Venice_, where none knew them.... Much are wee beholden to _Ramusio_, for restoring this _Pole_ and Load-starre of _Asia_, out of that mirie poole or puddle in which he lay drouned.” (III. p. 65.)

[17] Of these difficulties the following are some of the more prominent:—

1. The mention of the death of Kúblái (see note 7, p. 38 of this volume), whilst throughout the book Polo speaks of Kúblái as if still reigning.

2. Mr. Hugh Murray objects that whilst in the old texts Polo appears to look on Kúblái with reverence as a faultless Prince, in the Ramusian we find passages of an opposite tendency, as in the chapter about Ahmad.

3. The same editor points to the manner in which one of the Ramusian additions represents the traveller to have visited the Palace of the Chinese Kings at Kinsay, which he conceives to be inconsistent with Marco’s position as an official of the Mongol Government. (See vol. ii. p. 208.)

If we could conceive the Ramusian additions to have been originally notes written by old Maffeo Polo on his nephew’s book, this hypothesis would remove almost all difficulty.

One passage in Ramusio seems to bear a reference to the date at which these interpolated notes were amalgamated with the original. In the chapter on Samarkand (i. p. 191) the conversion of the Prince Chagatai is said in the old texts to have occurred “not a great while ago” (_il ne a encore grament de tens_). But in Ramusio the supposed event is fixed at “one hundred and twenty-five years since.” This number could not have been uttered with reference to 1298, the year of the dictation at Genoa, nor to any year of Polo’s own life. Hence it is probable that the original note contained a date or definite term which was altered by the compiler to suit the date of his own compilation, some time in the 14th century.

[18] In the first edition of Ramusio the preface contained the following passage, which is omitted from the succeeding editions; but as even the first edition was issued after Ramusio’s own death, I do not see that any stress can be laid on this:

“A copy of the Book of Marco Polo, as it was originally written in Latin, marvellously old, and perhaps directly copied from the original as it came from M. Marco’s own hand, has been often consulted by me and compared with that which we now publish, having been lent me by a nobleman of this city, belonging to the Ca’ Ghisi.”

[19] For a moment I thought I had been lucky enough to light on a part of the missing original of Ramusio in the Barberini Library at Rome. A fragment of a Venetian version in that library (No. 56 in our list of MSS.) bore on the fly-leaf the title “_Alcuni primi capi del Libro di S. Marco Polo, copiati dall esemplare manoscritto di PAOLO RANNUSIO._” But it proved to be of no importance. One brief passage of those which have been thought peculiar to Ramusio, viz., the reference to the Martyrdom of St. Blaize at Sebaste (see p. 43 of this volume), is found also in the Geographic Latin.

It was pointed out by Lazari, that another passage (vol. i. p. 60) of those otherwise peculiar to Ramusio, is found in a somewhat abridged Latin version in a MS. which belonged to the late eminent antiquary Emanuel Cicogna. (See List in Appendix F, No. 35.) This fact induced me when at Venice in 1870 to examine the MS. throughout, and, though I could give little time to it, the result was very curious.

I find that this MS. contains, not one only, but at least _seven_ of the passages otherwise peculiar to Ramusio, and must have been one of the elements that went to the formation of his text. Yet of his more important interpolations, such as the chapter on Ahmad’s oppressions and the additional matter on the City of Kinsay, there is no indication. The seven passages alluded to are as follows; the words corresponding to Ramusian peculiarities are in italics, the references are to my own volumes.

1. In the chapter on Georgia:

“Mare quod dicitur Gheluchelan _vel ABACU_”....

“Est ejus stricta via et dubia. Ab una parte est mare _quod dixi de ABACU_ et ab aliâ nemora invia,” etc. (See I. p. 59, note 8.)

2. “Et ibi optimi austures _dicti AVIGI_” (I. 50).

3. After the chapter on Mosul is another short chapter, already alluded to:

“_Prope hanc civitatem (est) alia provincia dicta MUS e MEREDIEN in quâ nascitur magna quantitas bombacis, et hic fiunt bocharini et alia multa, et sunt mercatores homines et artiste_.” (See i. p. 60.)

4. In the chapter on _Tarcan_ (for Carcan, _i.e._ Yarkand):

“_Et maior pars horum habent unum ex pedibus grossum et habent gosum in gulâ_; et est hic fertilis contracta.” (See i. p. 187.)

5. In the Desert of Lop:

“_Homines trasseuntes appendunt bestiis suis capanullas_ [_i.e._ campanellas] _ut ipsas senciant et ne deviare possint_” (i. p. 197.)

6. “Ciagannor, _quod sonat in Latino STAGNUM ALBUM_.” (i. p. 296.)

7. “Et in medio hujus viridarii est palacium sive logia, _tota super columpnas. Et in summitate cujuslibet columnæ est draco magnus circundans totam columpnam, et hic substinet eorum cohoperturam cum ore et pedibus_; et est cohopertura tota de cannis hoc modo,” etc. (See i. p. 299.)

[20] My valued friend Sir Arthur Phayre made known to me the passage in _O’Curry’s Lectures_. I then procured the extracts and further

## particulars from Mr. J. Long, Irish Transcriber and Translator

in Dublin, who took them from the Transcript of the _Book of Lismore_, in the possession of the Royal Irish Academy. [Cf. _Anecdota Oxoniensia. Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore, edited with a translation ... by_ Whitley Stokes, Oxford, 1890.—_Marco Polo_ forms fo. 79 a, 1–fo. 89 b, 2, of the MS., and is described pp. xxii.–xxiv. of Mr. Whitley Stokes’ Book, who has since published the Text in the _Zeit. f. Celtische Philol._ (See _Bibliography_, vol. ii. p. 573.)— H. C.]

XI. SOME ESTIMATE OF THE CHARACTER OF POLO AND HIS BOOK.

[Sidenote: Grounds of Polo’s pre-eminence among mediæval travellers.]

66. That Marco Polo has been so universally recognised as the King of Mediæval Travellers is due rather to the width of his experience, the vast compass of his journeys, and the romantic nature of his personal history, than to transcendent superiority of character or capacity.

The generation immediately preceding his own has bequeathed to us, in the Report of the Franciscan Friar William de Rubruquis,[1] on the Mission with which St. Lewis charged him to the Tartar Courts, the narrative of one great journey, which, in its rich detail, its vivid pictures, its acuteness of observation and strong good sense, seems to me to form a Book of Travels of much higher claims than _any one series_ of Polo’s chapters; a book, indeed, which has never had justice done to it, for it has few superiors in the whole Library of Travel.

Enthusiastic Biographers, beginning with Ramusio, have placed Polo on the same platform with Columbus. But where has our Venetian Traveller left behind him any trace of the genius and lofty enthusiasm, the ardent and justified previsions which mark the great Admiral as one of the lights of the human race?[2] It is a juster praise that the spur which his Book eventually gave to geographical studies, and the beacons which it hung out at the Eastern extremities of the Earth helped to guide the aims, though scarcely to kindle the fire, of the greater son of the rival Republic. His work was at least a link in the Providential chain which at last dragged the New World to light.[3]

[Sidenote: His true claims to glory.]

67. Surely Marco’s real, indisputable, and, in their kind, unique claims to glory may suffice! _He was the first Traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude of_ ASIA, _naming and describing kingdom after kingdom which he had seen with his own eyes; the Deserts of_ PERSIA, _the flowering plateaux and wild gorges of_ BADAKHSHAN, _the jade-bearing rivers of_ KHOTAN, _the_ MONGOLIAN _Steppes, cradle of the power that had so lately threatened to swallow up Christendom, the new and brilliant Court that had been established at_ CAMBALUC: _The first Traveller to reveal_ CHINA _in all its wealth and vastness, its mighty rivers, its huge cities, its rich manufactures, its swarming population, the inconceivably vast fleets that quickened its seas and its inland waters; to tell us of the nations on its borders with all their eccentricities of manners and worship; of_ TIBET _with its sordid devotees; of_ BURMA _with its golden pagodas and their tinkling crowns; of_ LAOS, _of_ SIAM, _of_ COCHIN CHINA, _of_ JAPAN, _the Eastern Thule, with its rosy pearls and golden-roofed palaces; the first to speak of that Museum of Beauty and Wonder, still so imperfectly ransacked, the_ INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO, _source of those aromatics then so highly prized and whose origin was so dark; of_ JAVA _the Pearl of Islands; of_ SUMATRA _with its many kings, its strange costly products, and its cannibal races; of the naked savages of_ NICOBAR _and_ ANDAMAN; _of_ CEYLON _the Isle of Gems with its Sacred Mountain and its Tomb of Adam; of_ INDIA THE GREAT, _not as a dream-land of Alexandrian fables, but as a country seen and partially explored, with its virtuous Brahmans, its obscene ascetics, its diamonds and the strange tales of their acquisition, its sea-beds of pearl, and its powerful sun; the first in mediæval times to give any distinct account of the secluded Christian Empire of_ ABYSSINIA, _and the semi-Christian Island of_ SOCOTRA; _to speak, though indeed dimly, of_ ZANGIBAR _with its negroes and its ivory, and of the vast and distant_ MADAGASCAR, _bordering on the Dark Ocean of the South, with its Ruc and other monstrosities; and, in a remotely opposite region, of_ SIBERIA _and the_ ARCTIC OCEAN, _of dog-sledges, white bears, and reindeer-riding Tunguses_.

That all this rich catalogue of discoveries should belong to the revelations of one Man and one Book is surely ample ground enough to account for and to justify the Author’s high place in the roll of Fame, and there can be no need to exaggerate his greatness, or to invest him with imaginary attributes.[4]

[Sidenote: His personal attributes seen but dimly.]

68. What manner of man was Ser Marco? It is a question hard to answer. Some critics cry out against personal detail in books of Travel; but as regards him who would not welcome a little more egotism! In his Book impersonality is carried to excess; and we are often driven to discern by indirect and doubtful indications alone, whether he is speaking of a place from personal knowledge or only from hearsay. In truth, though there are delightful exceptions, and nearly every part of the book suggests interesting questions, a desperate meagreness and baldness does extend over considerable tracts of the story. In fact his book reminds us sometimes of his own description of Khorasan:—“_On chevauche par beaus plains et belles costieres, là où il a moult beaus herbages et bonne pasture et fruis assez.... Et aucune fois y treuve l’en un desert de soixante milles ou de mains, esquels desers ne treuve l’en point d’eaue; mais la convient porter o lui!_”

Still, some shadowy image of the man may be seen in the Book; a practical man, brave, shrewd, prudent, keen in affairs, and never losing his interest in mercantile details, very fond of the chase, sparing of speech; with a deep wondering respect for Saints, even though they be Pagan Saints, and their asceticism, but a contempt for Patarins and such like, whose consciences would not run in customary grooves, and on his own part a keen appreciation of the World’s pomps and vanities. See, on the one hand, his undisguised admiration of the hard life and long fastings of Sakya Muni; and on the other how enthusiastic he gets in speaking of the great Kaan’s command of the good things of the world, but above all of his matchless opportunities of sport![5]

Of humour there are hardly any signs in his Book. His almost solitary joke (I know but one more, and it pertains to the οὐκ ἀνήκοντα) occurs in speaking of the Kaan’s paper-money when he observes that Kúblái might be said to have the true Philosopher’s Stone, for he made his money at pleasure out of the bark of Trees.[6] Even the oddest eccentricities of outlandish tribes scarcely seem to disturb his gravity; as when he relates in his brief way of the people called Gold-Teeth on the frontier of Burma, that ludicrous custom which Mr. Tylor has so well illustrated under the name of the _Couvade_. There is more savour of laughter in the few lines of a Greek Epic, which relate precisely the same custom of a people on the Euxine:—

————“In the Tibarenian Land When some good woman bears her lord a babe, ’Tis _he_ is swathed and groaning put to bed; Whilst _she_, arising, tends his baths, and serves Nice possets for her husband in the straw.”[7]

[Illustration: Probable View OF MARCO POLO’S OWN GEOGRAPHY

Lit. Frauenfelder, Palermo]

[Sidenote: Absence of scientific notions.]

69. Of scientific notions, such as we find in the unveracious Maundevile, we have no trace in truthful Marco. The former, “lying with a circumstance,” tells us boldly that he was in 33° of South Latitude; the latter is full of wonder that some of the Indian Islands where he had been lay so far to the south that you lost sight of the Pole-star. When it rises again on his horizon he estimates the Latitude by the Pole-star’s being so many _cubits_ high. So the gallant Baber speaks of the sun having mounted _spear-high_ when the onset of battle began at Paniput. Such expressions convey no notion at all to such as have had their ideas sophisticated by angular perceptions of altitude, but similar expressions are common among Orientals,[8] and indeed I have heard them from educated Englishmen. In another place Marco states regarding certain islands in the Northern Ocean that they lie so very far to the north that in going thither one actually leaves the Pole-star a trifle behind towards the south; a statement to which we know only one parallel, to wit, in the voyage of that adventurous Dutch skipper who told Master Moxon, King Charles II.’s Hydrographer, that he had sailed two degrees beyond the Pole!

[Sidenote: Map constructed on Polo’s data.]

70. The Book, however, is full of bearings and distances, and I have thought it worth while to construct a map from its indications, in order to get some approximation to Polo’s own idea of the face of that world which he had traversed so extensively. There are three allusions to maps in the course of his work (II. 245, 312, 424).

In his own bearings, at least on land journeys, he usually carries us along a great general traverse line, without much caring about small changes of direction. Thus on the great outward journey from the frontier of Persia to that of China the line runs almost continuously “_entre Levant et Grec_” or E.N.E. In his journey from Cambaluc or Peking to Mien or Burma, it is always _Ponent_ or W.; and in that from Peking to Zayton in Fo-kien, the port of embarkation for India, it is _Sceloc_ or S.E. The line of bearings in which he deviates most widely from truth is that of the cities on the Arabian Coast from Aden to Hormuz, which he makes to run steadily _vers Maistre_ or N.W., a conception which it has not been very easy to realise on the map.[9]

[Sidenote: Singular omissions of Polo in regard to China; Historical inaccuracies.]

71. In the early part of the Book we are told that Marco acquired several of the languages current in the Mongol Empire, and no less than four written characters. We have discussed what these are likely to have been (i. pp. 28–29), and have given a decided opinion that Chinese was not one of them. Besides intrinsic improbability, and positive indications of Marco’s ignorance of Chinese, in no respect is his book so defective as in regard to Chinese manners and peculiarities. The Great Wall is never mentioned, though we have shown reason for believing that it was in his mind when one passage of his book was dictated.[10] The use of Tea, though he travelled through the Tea districts of Fo-kien, is never mentioned;[11] the compressed feet of the women and the employment of the fishing cormorant (both mentioned by Friar Odoric, the contemporary of his later years), artificial egg-hatching, printing of books (though the notice of this art seems positively challenged in his account of paper-money), besides a score of remarkable arts and customs which one would have expected to recur to his memory, are never alluded to. Neither does he speak of the great characteristic of the Chinese writing. It is difficult to account for these omissions, especially considering the comparative fulness with which he treats the manners of the Tartars and of the Southern Hindoos; but the impression remains that his associations in China were chiefly with foreigners. Wherever the place he speaks of had a Tartar or Persian name he uses that rather than the Chinese one. Thus _Cathay_, _Cambaluc_, _Pulisanghin_, _Tangut_, _Chagannor_, _Saianfu_, _Kenjanfu_, _Tenduc_, _Acbalec_, _Carajan_, _Zardandan_, _Zayton_, _Kemenfu_, _Brius_, _Caramoran_, _Chorcha_, _Juju_, are all Mongol, Turki, or Persian forms, though all have Chinese equivalents.[12]

In reference to the then recent history of Asia, Marco is often inaccurate, _e.g._ in his account of the death of Chinghiz, in the list of his successors, and in his statement of the relationship between notable members of that House.[13] But the most perplexing knot in the whole book lies in the interesting account which he gives of the Siege of Sayanfu or Siang-yang, during the subjugation of Southern China by Kúblái. I have entered on this matter in the notes (vol. ii. p. 167), and will only say here that M. Pauthier’s solution of the difficulty is no solution, being absolutely inconsistent with the story as told by Marco himself, and that I see none; though I have so much faith in Marco’s veracity that I am loath to believe that the facts admit of no reconciliation.

Our faint attempt to appreciate some of Marco’s qualities, as gathered from his work, will seem far below the very high estimates that have been pronounced, not only by some who have delighted rather to enlarge upon his frame than to make themselves acquainted with his work,[14] but also by persons whose studies and opinions have been worthy of all respect. Our estimate, however, does not abate a jot of our intense interest in his Book and affection for his memory. And we have a strong feeling that, owing partly to his reticence, and partly to the great disadvantages under which the Book was committed to writing, we have in it a singularly imperfect image of the Man.

[Sidenote: Was Polo’s Book materially affected by the Scribe Rusticiano?]

72. A question naturally suggests itself, how far Polo’s narrative, at least in its expression, was modified by passing under the pen of a professed littérateur of somewhat humble claims, such as Rusticiano was. The case is not a singular one, and in our own day the ill-judged use of such assistance has been fatal to the reputation of an adventurous Traveller.

We have, however, already expressed our own view that in the Geographic Text we have the nearest possible approach to a photographic impression of Marco’s oral narrative. If there be an exception to this we should seek it in the descriptions of battles, in which we find the narrator to fall constantly into a certain vein of bombastic commonplaces, which look like the stock phrases of a professed romancer, and which indeed have a strong resemblance to the actual phraseology of certain metrical romances.[15] Whether this feature be due to Rusticiano I cannot say, but I have not been able to trace anything of the same character in a cursory inspection of some of his romance-compilations. Still one finds it impossible to conceive of our sober and reticent Messer Marco pacing the floor of his Genoese dungeon, and seven times over rolling out this magniloquent bombast, with sufficient deliberation to be overtaken by the pen of the faithful amanuensis!

[Sidenote: Marco’s reading embraced the Alexandrian Romances. Examples.]

73. On the other hand, though Marco, who had left home at fifteen years of age, naturally shows very few signs of reading, there are indications that he had read romances, especially those dealing with the fabulous adventures of Alexander.

To these he refers explicitly or tacitly in his notices of the Irongate and of Gog and Magog, in his allusions to the marriage of Alexander with Darius’s daughter, and to the battle between those two heroes, and in his repeated mention of the _Arbre Sol_ or _Arbre Sec_ on the Khorasan frontier.

The key to these allusions is to be found in that Legendary History of Alexander, entirely distinct from the true history of the Macedonian Conqueror, which in great measure took the place of the latter in the imagination of East and West for more than a thousand years. This fabulous history is believed to be of Græco-Egyptian origin, and in its earliest extant compiled form, in the Greek of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, can be traced back to at least about A.D. 200. From the Greek its marvels spread eastward at an early date; some part at least of their matter was known to Moses of Chorene, in the 5th century;[16] they were translated into Armenian, Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac; and were reproduced in the verses of Firdusi and various other Persian Poets; spreading eventually even to the Indian Archipelago, and finding utterance in Malay and Siamese. At an early date they had been rendered into Latin by Julius Valerius; but this work had probably been lost sight of, and it was in the 10th century that they were re-imported from Byzantium to Italy by the Archpriest Leo, who had gone as Envoy to the Eastern Capital from John Duke of Campania.[17] Romantic histories on this foundation, in verse and prose, became diffused in all the languages of Western Europe, from Spain to Scandinavia, rivalling in popularity the romantic cycles of the Round Table or of Charlemagne. Nor did this popularity cease till the 16th century was well advanced.

The heads of most of the Mediæval Travellers were crammed with these fables as genuine history.[18] And by the help of that community of legend on this subject which they found wherever Mahomedan literature had spread, Alexander Magnus was to be traced everywhere in Asia. Friar Odoric found Tana, near Bombay, to be the veritable City of King Porus; John Marignolli’s vainglory led him to imitate King Alexander in setting up a marble column “in the corner of the world over against Paradise,” _i.e._ somewhere on the coast of Travancore; whilst Sir John Maundevile, with a cheaper ambition, borrowed wonders from the Travels of Alexander to adorn his own. Nay, even in after days, when the Portuguese stumbled with amazement on those vast ruins in Camboja, which have so lately become familiar to us through the works of Mouhot, Thomson, and Garnier, they ascribed them to Alexander.[19]

Prominent in all these stories is the tale of Alexander’s shutting up a score of impure nations, at the head of which were Gog and Magog, within a barrier of impassable mountains, there to await the latter days; a legend with which the disturbed mind of Europe not unnaturally connected that cataclysm of unheard-of Pagans that seemed about to deluge Christendom in the first half of the 13th century. In these stories also the beautiful Roxana, who becomes the bride of Alexander, is _Darius’s_ daughter, bequeathed to his arms by the dying monarch. Conspicuous among them again is the Legend of the Oracular Trees of the Sun and Moon, which with audible voice foretell the place and manner of Alexander’s death. With this Alexandrian legend some of the later forms of the story had mixed up one of Christian origin about the Dry Tree, _L’Arbre Sec_. And they had also adopted the Oriental story of the Land of Darkness and the mode of escape from it, which Polo relates at p. 484 of vol. ii.

[Sidenote: Injustice long done to Polo. Singular modern instance.]

74. We have seen in the most probable interpretation of the nickname _Milioni_ that Polo’s popular reputation in his lifetime was of a questionable kind; and a contemporary chronicler, already quoted, has told us how on his death-bed the Traveller was begged by anxious friends to retract his extraordinary stories.[20] A little later one who copied the Book “_per passare tempo e malinconia_” says frankly that he puts no faith in it.[21] Sir Thomas Brown is content “to carry a wary eye” in reading “Paulus Venetus”; but others of our countrymen in the last century express strong doubts whether he ever was in Tartary or China.[22] Marden’s edition might well have extinguished the last sparks of scepticism.[23] Hammer meant praise in calling Polo “_der Vater orientalischer Hodogetik_,” in spite of the uncouthness of the eulogy. But another grave German writer, ten years after Marsden’s publication, put forth in a serious book that the whole story was a clumsy imposture![24]

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] M. d’Avezac has refuted the common supposition that this admirable traveller was a native of Brabant.

The form _Rubruquis_ of the name of the traveller William de Rubruk has been habitually used in this book, perhaps without sufficient consideration, but it is the most familiar in England, from its use by Hakluyt and Purchas. The former, who first published the narrative, professedly printed from an imperfect MS. belonging to the Lord Lumley, which does not seem to be now known. But all the MSS. collated by Messrs. Francisque-Michel and Wright, in preparing their edition of the Traveller, call him simply Willelmus de Rubruc or Rubruk.

Some old authors, apparently without the slightest ground, having called him _Risbroucke_ and the like, it came to be assumed that he was a native of Ruysbroeck, a place in South Brabant.

But there is a place still called _Rubrouck_ in French Flanders. This is a commune containing about 1500 inhabitants, belonging to the Canton of Cassel and _arrondissement_ of Hazebrouck, in the Department du Nord. And we may take for granted, till facts are alleged against it, that _this_ was the place from which the envoy of St. Lewis drew his origin. Many documents of the Middle Ages, referring expressly to this place Rubrouck, exist in the Library of St. Omer, and a detailed notice of them has been published by M. Edm. Coussemaker, of Lille. Several of these documents refer to persons bearing the same name as the Traveller, _e.g._, in 1190, Thierry de Rubrouc; in 1202 and 1221, Gauthier du Rubrouc; in 1250, Jean du Rubrouc; and in 1258, Woutermann de Rubrouc. It is reasonable to suppose that Friar William was of the same stock. See _Bulletin de la Soc. de Géographie_, 2nd vol. for 1868, pp. 569–570, in which there are some remarks on the subject by M. d’Avezac; and I am indebted to the kind courtesy of that eminent geographer himself for the indication of this reference and the main facts, as I had lost a note of my own on the subject.

It seems a somewhat complex question whether a native even of _French_ Flanders at that time should be necessarily claimable as a Frenchman;[A] but no doubt on this point is alluded to by M. d’Avezac, so he probably had good ground for that assumption. [See also _Yule’s_ article in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, and _Rockhill’s Rubruck_, Int., p. xxxv.—H. C.]

That cross-grained Orientalist, I. J. Schmidt, on several occasions speaks contemptuously of this veracious and delightful traveller, whose evidence goes in the teeth of some of his crotchets. But I am glad to find that Professor Peschel takes a view similar to that expressed in the text: “The narrative of Ruysbroek [Rubruquis], almost immaculate in its freedom from fabulous insertions, may be indicated on account of its truth to nature as the greatest geographical masterpiece of the Middle Ages.” (_Gesch. der Erdkunde_, 1865, p. 151.)

[A] The County of Flanders was at this time in large part a fief of the French Crown. (See _Natalis de Wailly_, notes to Joinville, p. 576.) But that would not much affect the question either one way or the other.

[2] High as Marco’s name deserves to be set, his place is not beside the writer of such burning words as these addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella: “From the most tender age I went to sea, and to this day I have continued to do so. Whosoever devotes himself to this craft must desire to know the secrets of Nature here below. For 40 years now have I thus been engaged, and wherever man has sailed hitherto on the face of the sea, thither have I sailed also. I have been in constant relation with men of learning, whether ecclesiastic or secular, Latins and Greeks, Jews and Moors, and men of many a sect besides. To accomplish this my longing (to know the Secrets of the World) I found the Lord favourable to my purposes; it is He who hath given me the needful disposition and understanding. He bestowed upon me abundantly the knowledge of seamanship: and of Astronomy He gave me enough to work withal, and so with Geometry and Arithmetic.... In the days of my youth I studied works of all kinds, history, chronicles, philosophy, and other arts, and to apprehend these the Lord opened my understanding. Under His manifest guidance I navigated hence to the Indies; for it was the Lord who gave me the will to accomplish that task, and it was in the ardour of that will that I came before your Highnesses. All those who heard of my project scouted and derided it; all the acquirements I have mentioned stood me in no stead; and if in your Highnesses, and in you alone, Faith and Constancy endured, to Whom are due the Lights that have enlightened you as well as me, but to the Holy Spirit?” (Quoted in _Humboldt’s Examen Critique_, I. 17, 18.)

[3] Libri, however, speaks too strongly when he says: “The finest of all the results due to the influence of Marco Polo is that of having stirred Columbus to the discovery of the New World. Columbus, jealous of Polo’s laurels, spent his life in preparing means to get to that Zipangu of which the Venetian traveller had told such great things; his desire was to reach China by sailing westward, and in his way he fell in with America.” (_H. des Sciences Mathém._ etc. II. 150.)

The fact seems to be that Columbus knew of Polo’s revelations only at second hand, from the letters of the Florentine Paolo Toscanelli and the like; and I cannot find that he _ever_ refers to Polo by name. [How deep was the interest taken by Colombus in Marco Polo’s travels is shown by the numerous marginal notes of the Admiral in the printed copy of the latin version of Pipino kept at the Bib. Colombina at Seville. See _Appendix H_. p. 558.—H. C.] Though to the day of his death he was full of imaginations about Zipangu and the land of the Great Kaan as being in immediate proximity to his discoveries, these were but accidents of his great theory. It was the intense conviction he had acquired of the absolute smallness of the Earth, of the vast extension of Asia eastward, and of the consequent narrowness of the Western Ocean, on which his life’s project was based. This conviction he seems to have derived chiefly from the works of Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly. But the latter borrowed his collected arguments from Roger Bacon, who has stated them, erroneous as they are, very forcibly in his _Opus Majus_ (p. 137), as Humboldt has noticed in his _Examen_ (vol. i. p. 64). The Spanish historian Mariana makes a strange jumble of the alleged guides of Columbus, saying that some ascribed his convictions to “the information given by _one Marco Polo, a Florentine Physician!_” (“como otros dizen, por aviso que le dio _un cierto Marco Polo, Medico Florentin_;” _Hist. de España_, lib. xxvi. cap 3). Toscanelli is called by Columbus _Maestro Paulo_, which seems to have led to this mistake; see Sign. _G. Uzielli_, in _Boll. della Soc. Geog. Ital._ IX. p. 119. [Also by the same: _Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli iniziatore della scoperta d’America_, Florence, 1892; _Toscanelli_, No. 1; _Toscanelli_, Vol. V. of the _Raccolta Colombiana_, 1894.—H. C.]

[4] “C’est diminuer l’expression d’un éloge que de l’exagérer.” (_Humboldt, Examen_, III. 13.)

[5] See vol. ii. p. 318, and vol. i. p. 404.

[6] Vol. i. p. 423.

[7] Vol. ii. p. 85, and _Apollonius Rhodius, Argonaut_. II. 1012.

[8] Chinese Observers record the length of Comets’ tails by _cubits_!

[9] The map, perhaps, gives too favourable an idea of Marco’s geographical conceptions. For in such a construction much has to be supplied for which there are no data, and that is apt to take mould from modern knowledge. Just as in the book illustrations of ninety years ago we find that Princesses of Abyssinia, damsels of Otaheite, and Beauties of Mary Stuart’s Court have all somehow a savour of the high waists, low foreheads, and tight garments of 1810.

We are told that Prince Pedro of Portugal in 1426 received from the Signory of Venice a map which was supposed to be either an original or a copy of one by Marco Polo’s own hand. (_Major’s P. Henry_, p. 62.) There is no evidence to justify any absolute expression of disbelief; and if any map-maker with the spirit of the author of the Carta Catalana then dwelt in Venice, Polo certainly could not have gone to his grave uncatechised. But I should suspect the map to have been a copy of the old one that existed in the Sala dello Scudo of the Ducal Palace.

The maps now to be seen painted on the walls of that Hall, and on which Polo’s route is marked, are not of any great interest. But in the middle of the 15th century there was an old _Descriptio Orbis sive Mappamundus_ in the Hall, and when the apartment was renewed in 1459 a decree of the Senate ordered that such a map should be repainted on the new walls. This also perished by a fire in 1483. On the motion of Ramusio, in the next century, four new maps were painted. These had become dingy and ragged, when, in 1762, the Doge Marco Foscarini caused them to be renewed by the painter Francesco Grisellini. He professed to have adhered closely to the old maps, but he certainly did not, as Morelli testifies. Eastern Asia looks as if based on a work of Ramusio’s age, but Western Asia is of undoubtedly modern character. (See _Operetti di Iacopo Morelli_, Ven. 1820, I. 299.)

[10] “Humboldt confirms the opinion I have more than once expressed that too much must not be inferred from the silence of authors. He adduces three important and perfectly undeniable matters of fact, as to which no evidence is to be found where it would be most anticipated: In the archives of Barcelona no trace of the triumphal entry of Columbus into that city; _in Marco Polo no allusion to the Chinese Wall_; in the archives of Portugal nothing about the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci in the service of that crown.” (_Varnhagen_ v. _Ense_, quoted by Hayward, _Essays_, 2nd Ser. I. 36.) See regarding the Chinese Wall the remarks referred to above, at p. 292 of this volume.

[11] [It is a strange fact that Polo never mentions the use of _Tea_ in China, although he travelled through the Tea districts in Fu Kien, and tea was then as generally drunk by the Chinese as it is now. It is mentioned more than four centuries earlier by the Mohammedan merchant Soleyman, who visited China about the middle of the 9th century. He states (_Reinaud, Relation des Voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans l’Inde et à la Chine_, 1845, I. 40): “The people of China are accustomed to use as a beverage an infusion of a plant, which they call _sakh_, and the leaves of which are aromatic and of a bitter taste. It is considered very wholesome. This plant (the leaves) is sold in all the cities of the empire.” (_Bretschneider, Hist. Bot. Disc._ I. p. 5.)—H. C.]

[12] It is probable that Persian, which had long been the language of Turanian courts, was also the common tongue of foreigners at that of the Mongols. _Pulisanghin_ and _Zardandan_, in the preceding list, are pure Persian. So are several of the Oriental phrases noted at p. _84_. See also notes on _Ondanique_ and _Vernique_ at pp. 93 and 384 of this volume, on _Tacuin_ at p. 448, and a note at p. _93_ _supra_. The narratives of Odoric, and others of the early travellers to Cathay, afford corroborative examples. Lord Stanley of Alderley, in one of his contributions to the Hakluyt Series, has given evidence from experience that Chinese Mahomedans still preserve the knowledge of numerous Persian words.

[13] Compare these errors with like errors of Herodotus, _e.g._, regarding the conspiracy of the False Smerdis. (See Rawlinson’s Introduction, p. 55.) There is a curious parallel between the two also in the supposed occasional use of Oriental state records, as in Herodotus’s accounts of the revenues of the satrapies, and of the army of Xerxes, and in Marco Polo’s account of Kinsay, and of the Kaan’s revenues. (Vol. ii pp. 185, 216.)

[14] An example is seen in the voluminous _Annali Musulmani_ of _G. B. Rampoldi_, Milan, 1825. This writer speaks of the Travels of Marco Polo with his _brother_ and uncle; declares that he visited _Tipango_ (_sic_), Java, Ceylon, and the _Maldives_, collected all the geographical notions of his age, traversed the two peninsulas of the Indies, examined the islands of _Socotra, Madagascar, Sofala_, and traversed with _philosophic eye_ the regions of Zanguebar, Abyssinia, Nubia, and Egypt! and so forth (ix. 174). And whilst Malte-Brun bestows on Marco the sounding and ridiculous title of “_the Humboldt of the 13th century_,” he shows little real acquaintance with his Book. (See his _Précis_, ed. of 1836, I. 551 _seqq._)

[15] See for example vol. i. p. 338, and note 4 at p. 341; also vol. ii. p. 103. The descriptions in the style referred to recur in all seven times; but most of them (which are in Book IV.) have been omitted in this translation.

[16] [On the subject of Moses of Chorene and his works, I must refer to the clever researches of the late Auguste Carrière, Professor of Armenian at the École des Langues Orientales.—H. C.]

[17] _Zacher, Forschungen zur Critik, &c., der Alexandersage_, Halle, 1867, p. 108.

[18] Even so sagacious a man as Roger Bacon quotes the fabulous letter of Alexander to Aristotle as authentic. (_Opus Majus_, p. 137.)

[19] _J. As._ sér. VI. tom. xviii. p. 352.

[20] See passage from Jacopo d’Acqui, _supra_, p. _54_.

[21] It is the transcriber of one of the Florence MSS. who appends this terminal note, worthy of Mrs. Nickleby:—“Here ends the Book of Messer M. P. of Venice, written with mine own hand by me Amalio Bonaguisi when Podestà of Cierreto Guidi, to get rid of time and _ennui_. The contents seem to me incredible things, not lies so much as miracles; and it may be all very true what he says, but I don’t believe it; though to be sure throughout the world very different things are found in different countries. But these things, it has seemed to me in copying, are entertaining enough, but not things to believe or put any faith in; that at least is my opinion. And I finished copying this at Cierreto aforesaid, 12th November, A.D. 1392.”

[22] _Vulgar Errors_, Bk. I. ch. viii.; _Astley’s Voyages_, IV. 583.

[23] A few years before Marsden’s publication, the Historical branch of the R. S. of Science at Göttingen appears to have put forth as the subject of a prize Essay the Geography of the Travels of Carpini, Rubruquis, and especially of Marco Polo. (See _L. of M. Polo_, by _Zurla_, in _Collezione di Vite e Ritratti d’Illustri Italiani_. Pad. 1816.)

[24] See _Städtewesen des Mittelalters_, by _K. D. Hüllmann_, Bonn, 1829, vol. iv.

After speaking of the Missions of Pope Innocent IV. and St. Lewis, this author sketches the Travels of the Polos, and then proceeds:—“Such are the clumsily compiled contents of this ecclesiastical fiction (_Kirchengeschichtlichen Dichtung_) disguised as a Book of Travels, a thing devised generally in the spirit of the age, but specially in the interests of the Clergy and of Trade.... This compiler’s aim was analogous to that of the inventor of the Song of Roland, to kindle enthusiasm for the conversion of the Mongols, and so to facilitate commerce through their dominions.... Assuredly the Poli never got further than Great Bucharia, which was then reached by many Italian Travellers. What they have related of the regions of the Mongol Empire lying further east consists merely of recollections of the bazaar and travel-talk of traders from those countries; whilst the notices of India, Persia, Arabia, and Ethiopia, are borrowed from Arabic Works. The compiler no doubt carries his audacity in fiction a long way, when he makes his hero Marcus assert that he had been seventeen years in Kúblái’s service,” etc. etc. (pp. 360–362).

In the French edition of _Malcolm’s History of Persia_ (II. 141), Marco is styled “_prêtre Venetien_”! I do not know whether this is due to Sir John or to the translator.

[Polo is also called “a Venetian Priest,” in a note, vol. i., p. 409, of the original edition of London, 1815, 2 vols., 4to.—H. C.]

XII. CONTEMPORARY RECOGNITION OF POLO AND HIS BOOK.

[Sidenote: How far was there diffusion of his Book in his own day?]

75. But we must return for a little to Polo’s own times. Ramusio states, as we have seen, that immediately after the first commission of Polo’s narrative to writing (in Latin as he imagined), many copies of it were made, it was translated into the vulgar tongue, and in a few months all Italy was full of it.

The few facts that we can collect do not justify this view of the rapid and diffused renown of the Traveller and his Book. The number of MSS. of the latter dating from the 14th century is no doubt considerable, but a large proportion of these are of Pipino’s condensed Latin Translation, which was not put forth, if we can trust Ramusio, till 1320, and certainly not much earlier. The whole number of MSS. in various languages that we have been able to register, amounts to about eighty. I find it difficult to obtain statistical data as to the comparative number of copies of different works existing in manuscript. With Dante’s great Poem, of which there are reckoned close upon 500 MSS.,[1] comparison would be inappropriate. But of the Travels of Friar Odoric, a poor work indeed beside Marco Polo’s, I reckoned thirty-nine MSS., and could now add at least three more to the list. [I described seventy-three in my edition of _Odoric_.—H. C.] Also I find that of the nearly contemporary work of Brunetto Latini, the _Tresor_, a sort of condensed Encyclopædia of knowledge, but a work which one would scarcely have expected to approach the popularity of Polo’s Book, the Editor enumerates some fifty MSS. And from the great frequency with which one encounters in Catalogues both MSS. and early printed editions of Sir John Maundevile, I should suppose that the lying wonders of our English Knight had a far greater popularity and more extensive diffusion than the veracious and more sober marvels of Polo.[2] To Southern Italy Polo’s popularity certainly does not seem at any time to have extended. I cannot learn that any MS. of his Book exists in any Library of the late Kingdom of Naples or in Sicily.[3]

Dante, who lived for twenty-three years after Marco’s work was written, and who touches so many things in the seen and unseen Worlds, never alludes to Polo, nor I think to anything that can be connected with his Book. I believe that no mention of _Cathay_ occurs in the _Divina Commedia_. That distant region is indeed mentioned more than once in the poems of a humbler contemporary, Francesco da Barberino, but there is nothing in his allusions besides this name to suggest any knowledge of Polo’s work.[4]

Neither can I discover any trace of Polo or his work in that of his contemporary and countryman, Marino Sanudo the Elder, though this worthy is well acquainted with the somewhat later work of Hayton, and many of the subjects which he touches in his own book would seem to challenge a reference to Marco’s labours.

[Sidenote: Contemporary references to Polo.]

76. Of contemporary or nearly contemporary references to our Traveller by name, the following are all that I can produce, and none of them are new.

First there is the notice regarding his presentation of his book to Thibault de Cepoy, of which we need say no more (_supra_, p. _68_).

Next there is the Preface to Friar Pipino’s Translation, which we give at length in the Appendix (E) to these notices. The phraseology of this appears to imply that Marco was still alive, and this agrees with the date assigned to the work by Ramusio. Pipino was also the author of a Chronicle, of which a part was printed by Muratori, and this contains chapters on the Tartar wars, the destruction of the Old Man of the Mountain, etc., derived from Polo. A passage not printed by Muratori has been extracted by Prof. Bianconi from a MS. of this Chronicle in the Modena Library, and runs as follows:—

“The matters which follow, concerning the magnificence of the Tartar Emperors, whom in their language they call _Cham_ as we have said, are related by Marcus Paulus the Venetian in a certain Book of his which has been translated by me into Latin out of the Lombardic Vernacular. Having gained the notice of the Emperor himself and become attached to his service, he passed nearly 27 years in the Tartar countries.”[5]

Again we have that mention of Marco by Friar Jacopo d’Acqui, which we have quoted in connection with his capture by the Genoese, at p. _54_.[6] And the Florentine historian GIOVANNI VILLANI,[7] when alluding to the Tartars, says:—

“Let him who would make full acquaintance with their history examine the book of Friar Hayton, Lord of Colcos in Armenia, which he made at the instance of Pope Clement V., and also the Book called _Milione_ which was made by Messer Marco Polo of Venice, who tells much about their power and dominion, having spent a long time among them. And so let us quit the Tartars and return to our subject, the History of Florence.”[8]

[Sidenote: Further contemporary references.]

77. Lastly, we learn from a curious passage in a medical work by PIETRO OF ABANO, a celebrated physician and philosopher, and a man of Polo’s own generation, that he was personally acquainted with the Traveller. In a discussion on the old notion of the non-habitability of the Equatorial regions, which Pietro controverts, he says:[9]

[Illustration: Star at the Antarctic as sketched by Marco Polo[10].]

“In the country of the ZINGHI there is seen a star as big as a sack. I know a man who has seen it, and he told me it had a faint light like a piece of a cloud, and is always in the south.[11] I have been told of this and other matters by MARCO the Venetian, the most extensive traveller and the most diligent inquirer whom I have ever known. He saw this same star under the Antarctic; he described it as having a great tail, and drew a figure of it _thus_. He also told me that he saw the Antarctic Pole at an altitude above the earth apparently equal to the length of a soldier’s lance, whilst the Arctic Pole was as much below the horizon. ’Tis from that place, he says, that they export to us camphor, lign-aloes, and brazil. He says the heat there is intense, and the habitations few. And these things he witnessed in a certain island at which he arrived by Sea. He tells me also that there are (wild?) men there, and also certain very great rams that have very coarse and stiff wool just like the bristles of our pigs.”[12]

In addition to these five I know no other contemporary references to Polo, nor indeed any other within the 14th century, though such there must surely be, excepting in a Chronicle written after the middle of that century by JOHN of YPRES, Abbot of St. Bertin, otherwise known as Friar John the Long, and himself a person of very high merit in the history of Travel, as a precursor of the Ramusios, Hakluyts and Purchases, for he collected together and translated (when needful) into French all of the most valuable works of Eastern Travel and Geography produced in the age immediately preceding his own.[13] In his Chronicle the Abbot speaks at some length of the adventures of the Polo Family, concluding with a passage to which we have already had occasion to refer:

“And so Messers Nicolaus and Maffeus, with certain Tartars, were sent a second time to these parts; but Marcus Pauli was retained by the Emperor and employed in his military service, abiding with him for a space of 27 years. And the Cham, on account of his ability despatched him upon affairs of his to various parts of Tartary and India and the Islands, on which journeys he beheld many of the marvels of those regions. And concerning these he afterwards composed a book in the French vernacular, which said Book of Marvels, with others of the same kind, we do possess.” (_Thesaur. Nov. Anecdot._ III. 747.)

[Sidenote: Curious borrowings from Polo in the Romance of Bauduin de Sebourc.]

78. There is, however, a notable work which is ascribed to a rather early date in the 14th century, and which, though it contains no reference to Polo by name, shows a thorough acquaintance with his book, and borrows themes largely from it. This is the poetical Romance of Bauduin de Sebourc, an exceedingly clever and vivacious production, partaking largely of that bantering, half-mocking spirit which is, I believe, characteristic of many of the later mediæval French Romances.[14] Bauduin is a knight who, after a very wild and loose youth, goes through an extraordinary series of adventures, displaying great faith and courage, and eventually becomes King of Jerusalem. I will cite some of the traits evidently derived from our Traveller, which I have met with in a short examination of this curious work.

Bauduin, embarked on a dromond in the Indian Sea, is wrecked in the territory of Baudas, and near a city called Falise, which stands on the River of Baudas. The people of this city were an unbelieving race.

“Il ne créoient Dieu, Mahon, né Tervogant, Ydole, cruchéfis, déable, né tirant.” P. 300.

Their only belief was this, that when a man died a great fire should be made beside his tomb, in which should be burned all his clothes, arms, and necessary furniture, whilst his horse and servant should be put to death, and then the dead man would have the benefit of all these useful properties in the other world.[15] Moreover, if it was the king that died—

“Sé li rois de la terre i aloit trespassant, * * * * * Si fasoit-on tuer, .viij. jour en un tenant, Tout chiaus c’on encontroit par la chité passant, Pour tenir compaingnie leur ségnor soffisant. Telle estoit le créanche ou païs dont je cant!”[16] P. 301.

Baudin arrives when the king has been dead three days, and through dread of this custom all the people of the city are shut up in their houses. He enters an inn, and helps himself to a vast repast, having been fasting for three days. He is then seized and carried before the king, Polibans by name. We might have quoted this prince at p. _87_ as an instance of the diffusion of the French tongue:

“Polibans sot Fransois, car on le doctrina: j. renoiés de Franche .vij. ans i demora, Qui li aprist Fransois, si que bel en parla.” P. 309.

Bauduin exclaims against their barbarous belief, and declares the Christian doctrine to the king, who acknowledges good points in it, but concludes:

“Vassaus, dist Polibans, à le chière hardie, Jà ne crerrai vou Dieux, à nul jour de ma vie; Né vostre Loy ne vaut une pomme pourie!” P. 311.

Bauduin proposes to prove his Faith by fighting the prince, himself unarmed, the latter with all his arms. The prince agrees, but is rather dismayed at Bauduin’s confidence, and desires his followers, in case of his own death, to burn with him horses, armour, etc., asking at the same time which of them would consent to burn along with him, in order to be his companions in the other world:

“Là en i ot .ijᵉ. dont cascuns s’escria: Nous morons volentiers, quant vo corps mort sara!”[17] P. 313.

Bauduin’s prayer for help is miraculously granted; Polibans is beaten, and converted by a vision. He tells Bauduin that in his neighbourhood, beyond Baudas—

“ou .v. liewes, ou .vi. Ché un felles prinches, orgoellieus et despis; De la Rouge-Montaingne est Prinches et Marchis. Or vous dirai comment il a ses gens nouris: Je vous di que chius Roys a fait un Paradis Tant noble et gratieus, et plain de tels déliis, * * * * * Car en che Paradis est un riex establis, Qui se partist en trois, en che noble pourpris: En l’un coert li clarés, d’espises bien garnis; Et en l’autre li miés, qui les a resouffis; Et li vins di pieument i queurt par droit avis— * * * * * Il n’i vente, né gèle. Che liés est de samis, De riches dras de soie, bien ouvrés à devis. Et aveukes tout che que je chi vous devis, I a .ijᵉ. puchelles qui moult ont cler les vis, Carolans et tresquans, menans gales et ris. Et si est li dieuesse, dame et suppellatis, Qui doctrine les autres et en fais et en dis, Celle est la fille au Roy c’on dist des _Haus-Assis_.”[18] Pp. 319–320.

This Lady Ivorine, the Old Man’s daughter, is described among other points as having—

“Les iex vairs com faucons, nobles et agentis.”[19] P. 320.

The King of the Mountain collects all the young male children of the country, and has them brought up for nine or ten years:

“Dedens un lieu oscur: là les met-on toudis Aveukes males bestes; kiens, et cas, et soris, Culoères, et lisaerdes, escorpions petis. Là endroit ne peut nuls avoir joie, né ris.” Pp. 320–321.

And after this dreary life they are shown the Paradise, and told that such shall be their portion if they do their Lord’s behest.

“S’il disoit à son homme: ‘Va-t-ent droit à Paris; Si me fier d’un coutel le Roy de Saint Denis, Jamais n’aresteroit, né par nuit né par dis, S’aroit tué le Roy, voïant tous ches marchis; Et déuist estre à fources traïnés et mal mis.’” P. 321.

Bauduin determines to see this Paradise and the lovely Ivorine. The road led by Baudas:

“Or avoit à che tamps, sé l’istoire ne ment, En le chit de Baudas Kristiens jusqu’à cent; Qui manonent illoec par tréu d’argent, Que cascuns cristiens au Roy-Calife rent. Li pères du Calife, qui régna longement, Ama les Crestiens, et Dieu primièrement: * * * * * Et lor fist establir. j. monstier noble et gent, Où Crestien faisoient faire lor sacrement. Une mout noble pière lor donna proprement, Où on avoit posé Mahon moult longement.”[20] P. 322.

The story is, in fact, that which Marco relates of Samarkand.[21] The Caliph dies. His son hates the Christians. His people complain of the toleration of the Christians and their minister; but he says his father had pledged him not to interfere, and he dared not forswear himself. If, without doing so, he could do them an ill turn, he would gladly. The people then suggest their claim to the stone:

“Or leur donna vos pères, dont che fu mesprisons. Ceste pierre, biaus Sire, Crestiens demandons: Il ne le porront rendre, pour vrai le vous disons, Si li monstiers n’est mis et par pièches et par mons; Et s’il estoit desfais, jamais ne le larons Refaire chi-endroit. Ensément averons Faites et acomplies nostres ententions.” P. 324.

The Caliph accordingly sends for Maistre Thumas, the Priest of the Christians, and tells him the stone must be given up:

“Il a .c. ans ut plus c’on i mist à solas Mahon, le nostre Dieu: dont che n’est mie estas Que li vous monstiers soit fais de nostre harnas!” P. 324.

Master Thomas, in great trouble, collects his flock, mounts the pulpit, and announces the calamity. Bauduin and his convert Polibans then arrive. Bauduin recommends confession, fasting, and prayer. They follow his advice, and on the third day the miracle occurs:

“L’escripture le dist, qui nous achertéfie Que le pierre Mahon, qui ou mur fut fiquie, Sali hors du piler, coi que nul vous en die, Droit enmi le monstier, c’onques ne fut brisie. Et demoura li traus, dont le pière ert widie, Sans pière est sans quailliel, à cascune partie; Chou deseure soustient, par divine maistrie, Tout en air proprement, n’el tenés a falie. Encore le voit-on en ichelle partie: Qui croire ne m’en voelt, si voist; car je l’en prie!” P. 327.

The Caliph comes to see, and declares it to be the Devil’s doing. Seeing Polibans, who is his cousin, he hails him, but Polibans draws back, avowing his Christian faith. The Caliph in a rage has him off to prison. Bauduin becomes very ill, and has to sell his horse and arms. His disease is so offensive that he is thrust out of his hostel, and in his wretchedness sitting on a stone he still avows his faith, and confesses that even then he has not received his deserts. He goes to beg in the Christian quarter, and no one gives to him; but still his faith and love to God hold out:

“Ensément Bauduins chelle rue cherqua, Tant qu’à .j. chavetier Bauduins s’arresta, Qui chavates cousoit; son pain en garigna: Jones fu et plaisans, apertement ouvra. Bauduins le regarde, c’onques mot ne parla.” P. 334.

The cobler is charitable, gives him bread, shoes, and a grey coat that was a foot too short. He then asks Bauduin if he will not learn his trade; but that is too much for the knightly stomach:

“Et Bauduins respont, li preus et li membrus: J’ameroie trop miex que je fuisse pendus!” P. 335.

The Caliph now in his Council expresses his vexation about the miracle, and says he does not know how to disprove the faith of the Christians. A very sage old Saracen who knew Hebrew, and Latin, and some thirty languages, makes a suggestion, which is, in fact, that about the moving of the Mountain, as related by Marco Polo.[22] Master Thomas is sent for again, and told that they must transport the high mountain of _Thir_ to the valley of _Joaquin_, which lies to the westward. He goes away in new despair and causes his clerk to _sonner le clocke_ for his people. Whilst they are weeping and wailing in the church, a voice is heard desiring them to seek a certain holy man who is at the good cobler’s, and to do him honour. God at his prayer will do a miracle. They go in procession to Bauduin, who thinks they are mocking him. They treat him as a saint, and strive to touch his old coat. At last he consents to pray along with the whole congregation.

The Caliph is in his palace with his princes, taking his ease at a window. Suddenly he starts up exclaiming:

“‘Seignour, par Mahoumet que j’aoure et tieng chier, Le Mont de Thir enportent le déable d’enfeir!’ Li Califes s’écrie: ‘Seignour, franc palasin, Voïés le Mont de Thir qui ch’est mis au chemin! Vés-le-là tout en air, par mon Dieu Apolin; Jà bientost le verrons ens ou val Joaquin!’” P. 345.

The Caliph is converted, releases Polibans, and is baptised, taking the name of Bauduin, to whom he expresses his fear of the Viex de la Montagne with his _Hauts-Assis_, telling anew the story of the Assassin’s Paradise, and so enlarges on the beauty of Ivorine that Bauduin is smitten, and his love heals his malady. Toleration is not learned however:

“Bauduins, li Califes, fist baptisier sa gent, Et qui ne voilt Dieu crore, li teste on li pourfent!” P. 350.

The Caliph gives up his kingdom to Bauduin, proposing to follow him to the Wars of Syria. And Bauduin presents the Kingdom to the Cobler.

Bauduin, the Caliph, and Prince Polibans then proceed to visit the Mountain of the Old Man. The Caliph professes to him that they want help against Godfrey of Bouillon. The Viex says he does not give a _bouton_ for Godfrey; he will send one of his _Hauts-Assis_ straight to his tent, and give him a great knife of steel between _fie et poumon!_

After dinner they go out and witness the feat of devotion which we have quoted elsewhere.[23] They then see the Paradise and the lovely Ivorine, with whose beauty Bauduin is struck dumb. The lady had never smiled before; now she declares that he for whom she had long waited was come. Bauduin exclaims:

“‘Madame, fu-jou chou qui sui le vous soubgis?’ Quant la puchelle l’ot, lors li geta .j. ris; Et li dist: ‘Bauduins, vous estes mes amis!’” Pp. 362–363.

The Old One is vexed, but speaks pleasantly to his daughter, who replies with frightfully bad language, and declares herself to be a Christian. The father calls out to the Caliph to kill her. The Caliph pulls out a big knife and gives him a blow that nearly cuts him in two. The amiable Ivorine says she will go with Bauduin:

“‘Sé mes pères est mors, n’en donne .j. paresis!’” P. 364.

We need not follow the story further, as I did not trace beyond this point any distinct derivation from our Traveller, with the exception of that allusion to the incombustible covering of the napkin of St. Veronica, which I have quoted at p. 216 of this volume. But including this, here are at least seven different themes borrowed from Marco Polo’s book, on which to be sure his poetical contemporary plays the most extraordinary variations.

[Sidenote: Chaucer and Marco Polo.]

[78 _bis._—In the third volume of _The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer_, Oxford, 1894, the Rev. Walter W. Skeat gives (pp. 372 _seqq._) an _Account of the Sources of the Canterbury Tales_. Regarding _The Squieres Tales_, he says that one of his sources was the Travels of Marco; Mr. Keighley in his _Tales and Popular Fictions_, published in 1834, at p. 76, distinctly derives Chaucer’s Tale from the travels of Marco Polo. (_Skeat, l. c._, p. 463, note.) I cannot quote all the arguments given by the Rev. W. W. Skeat to support his theory, pp. 463–477.

Regarding the opinion of Professor Skeat of Chaucer’s indebtedness to Marco Polo, cf. _Marco Polo and the Squire’s Tale_, by Professor John Matthews Manly, vol. xi. of the _Publications of the Modern Language Association of America_, 1896, pp. 349–362. Mr. Manly says (p. 360): “It seems clear, upon reviewing the whole problem, that if Chaucer used Marco Polo’s narrative, he either carelessly or intentionally confused all the features of the setting that could possibly be confused, and retained not a single really characteristic trait of any person, place or event. It is only by twisting everything that any part of Chaucer’s story can be brought into relation with any part of Polo’s. To do this might be allowable, if any rational explanation could be given for Chaucer’s supposed treatment of his ‘author,’ or if there were any scarcity of sources from which Chaucer might have obtained as much information about Tartary as he seems really to have possessed; but such an explanation would be difficult to devise, and there is no such scarcity. Any one of half a dozen accessible accounts could be distorted into almost if not quite as great resemblance to the _Squire’s Tale_ as Marco Polo’s can.”

Mr. A. W. Pollard, in his edition of _The Squire’s Tale_ (Lond., 1899) writes: “A very able paper, by Prof. J. M. Manly, demonstrates the needlessness of Prof. Skeat’s theory, which has introduced fresh complications into an already complicated story. My own belief is that, though we may illustrate the Squire’s Tale from these old accounts of Tartary, and especially from Marco Polo, because he has been so well edited by Colonel Yule, there is very little probability that Chaucer consulted any of them. It is much more likely that he found these details where he found more important parts of his story, _i.e._ in some lost romance. But if we must suppose that he provided his own local colour, we have no right to pin him down to using Marco Polo to the exclusion of other accessible authorities.” Mr. Pollard adds in a note (p. xiii.): “There are some features in these narratives, _e.g._ the account of the gorgeous dresses worn at the Kaan’s feast, which Chaucer with his love of colour could hardly have helped reproducing if he had known them.”—H. C.]

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] See _Ferrazzi, Manuele Dantesca_, Bassano, 1865, p. 729.

[2] In Quaritch’s catalogue for Nov. 1870 there is only one old edition of Polo; there are _nine_ of Maundevile. In 1839 there were nineteen MSS. of the latter author _catalogued_ in the British Museum Library. There are _now_ only six of Marco Polo. At least twenty-five editions of Maundevile and only five of Polo were printed in the 15th century.

[3] I have made personal enquiry at the National Libraries of Naples and Palermo, at the Communal Library in the latter city, and at the Benedictine Libraries of Monte Cassino, Monreale, S. Martino, and Catania.

In the 15th century, when Polo’s book had become more generally diffused we find three copies of it in the Catalogue of the Library of Charles VI. of France, made at the Louvre in 1423, by order of the Duke of Bedford.

The estimates of value are curious. They are in _sols parisis_, which we shall not estimate very wrongly at a shilling each:—

“No. 295. _Item_. Marcus Paulus; _en ung cahier escript de lettre formée, en françois, à deux coulombes. Commt. ou ii{e.} fo._ ‘deux frères prescheurs,’ _et ou derrenier_ ‘que sa arrières.’ _X. s. p._

* * *

“No. 334. _Item_. Marcus Paulus. _Couvert de drap d’or, bien escript & enluminé, de lettre de forme en françois, à deux coulombes. Commt. ou ii{e.} fol._; ‘il fut Roys,’ _& ou derrenier_ ‘propremen,’ _à deux fermouers de laton. XV. s. p._

* * *

“No. 336. _Item_. Marcus Paulus; _non enluminé, escript en françois, de lettre de forme. Commt. ou ii{e.} fo._ ‘vocata moult grant,’ _& ou derrenier_ ‘ilec dist il.’ _Couvert de cuir blanc, à deux fermouers de laton. XII. s. p._”

(_Inventaire de la Bibliothèque du Roi Charles VI._, etc. Paris, Société des Bibliophiles, 1867.)

[4] See _Del Reggimento e de’ Costumi delle donne di Messer Francesco da Barberino_, Roma, 1815, pp. 166 and 271. The latter passage runs thus, on _Slavery_:—

“E fu indutta prima da Noé, E fu cagion lo vin, perchè si egge: Ch’egli è un paese, dove Son molti servi in parte di Cathay: Che per questa cagione Hanno a nimico il vino, E non ne beon, nè voglion vedere.”

The author was born the year before Dante (1264), and though he lived to 1348 it is probable that the poems in question were written in his earlier years. _Cathay_ was no doubt known by dim repute long before the final return of the Polos, both through the original journey of Nicolo and Maffeo, and by information gathered by the Missionary Friars. Indeed, in 1278 Pope Nicolas III., in consequence of information said to have come from Abaka Khan of Persia, that Kúblái was a baptised Christian, sent a party of Franciscans with a long letter to the Kaan _Quobley_, as he is termed. They never seem to have reached their destination. And in 1289 Nicolas IV. entrusted a similar mission to Friar John of Monte Corvino, which eventually led to very tangible results. Neither of the Papal letters, however, mentions _Cathay_. (See _Mosheim_, App. pp. 76 and 94.)

[5] See _Muratori_, IX. 583, _seqq._; _Bianconi_, Mem. I. p. 37.

[6] This Friar makes a strange hotch-potch of what he had read, _e.g._: “The Tartars, when they came out of the mountains, made them a king, viz., the son of Prester John, who is thus vulgarly termed _Vetulus de la Montagna!_” (_Mon. Hist. Patr._ Script. III. 1557.)

[7] G. Villani died in the great plague of 1348. But his book was begun soon after Marco’s was written, for he states that it was the sight of the memorials of greatness which he witnessed at Rome, during the Jubilee of 1300, that put it into his head to write the history of the rising glories of Florence, and that he began the work after his return home. (Bk. VIII. ch. 36.)

[8] Book V. ch. 29.

[9] _Petri Aponensis Medici ac Philosophi Celeberrimi, Conciliator_, Venice, 1521, fol. 97. Peter was born in 1250 at Abano, near Padua, and was Professor of Medicine at the University in the latter city. He twice fell into the claws of the Unholy Office, and only escaped them by death in 1316.

[10] [It is curious that this figure is almost exactly that which among oriental carpets is called a “cloud.” I have heard the term so applied by Vincent Robinson. It often appears in old Persian carpets, and also in Chinese designs. Mr. Purdon Clarke tells me it is called _nebula_ in heraldry; it is also called in Chinese by a term signifying cloud; in Persian, by a term which he called _silen-i-khitai_, but of this I can make nothing.—_MS. Note by Yule_.]

[11] The great Magellanic cloud? In the account of Vincent Yanez Pinzon’s Voyage to the S.W. in 1499 as given in Ramusio (III. 15) after Pietro Martire d’Anghieria, it is said:—“Taking the astrolabe in hand, and ascertaining the Antarctic Pole, they did not see any star like our Pole Star; but they related that they saw another manner of stars very different from ours, and which they could not clearly discern because of a certain dimness which diffused itself about those stars, and obstructed the view of them.” Also the Kachh mariners told Lieutenant Leech that midway to Zanzibar there was a town (?) called Marethee, where the North Pole Star sinks below the horizon, and they steer by _a fixed cloud in the heavens_. (Bombay Govt. Selections, No. XV. N.S. p. 215.)

The great Magellan cloud is mentioned by an old Arab writer as a white blotch at the foot of Canopus, visible in the Tehama along the Red Sea, but not in Nejd or ’Irák. Humboldt, in quoting this, calculates that in A.D. 1000 the Great Magellan would have been visible at Aden some degrees above the horizon. (_Examen_, V. 235.)

[12] This passage contains points that are omitted in Polo’s book, besides the drawing implied to be from Marco’s own hand! The island is of course Sumatra. The animal is perhaps the peculiar Sumatran wild-goat, figured by Marsden, the hair of which on the back is “coarse and strong, almost like bristles.” (_Sumatra_, p. 115.)

[13] A splendid example of Abbot John’s Collection is the _Livre des Merveilles_ of the Great French Library (No. 18 in our _App. F._). This contains Polo, Odoric, William of Boldensel, the Book of the Estate of the Great Kaan by the Archbishop of Soltania, Maundevile, Hayton, and Ricold of Montecroce, of which all but Polo and Maundevile are French versions by this excellent Long John. A list of the Polo miniatures is given in _App. F_. of this Edition, p. 527.

It is a question for which there is sufficient ground, whether the Persian Historians Rashiduddin and Wassáf, one or other or both, did not derive certain information that appears in their histories, from Marco Polo personally, he having spent many months in Persia, and at the Court of Tabriz, when either or both may have been there. Such passages as that about the Cotton-trees of Guzerat (vol. ii. p. 393, and note), those about the horse trade with Maabar (id. p. 340, and note), about the brother-kings of that country (id. p. 331), about the naked savages of Necuveram (id. p. 306), about the wild people of Sumatra calling themselves subjects of the Great Kaan (id. pp. 285, 292, 293, 299), have so strong a resemblance to parallel passages in one or both of the above historians, as given in the first and third volumes of Elliot, that the probability, at least, of the Persian writers having derived their information from Polo might be fairly maintained.

[14] _Li Romans de Bauduin de Sebourc IIIᵉ Roy de Jhérusalem_; Poēme du XIVᵉ Siècle; Valenciennes, 1841. 2 vols. 8vo. I was indebted to two references of M. Pauthier’s for knowledge of the existence of this work. He cites the legends of the Mountain, and of the Stone of the Saracens from an abstract, but does not seem to have consulted the work itself, nor to have been aware of the extent of its borrowings from Marco Polo. M. Génin, from whose account Pauthier quotes, ascribes the poem to an early date after the death of Philip the Fair (1314). See _Pauthier_, pp. 57, 58, and 140.

[15] See Polo, vol. i. p. 204, and vol. ii. p. 191.

[16] See Polo, vol. i. p. 246.

[17] See Polo, vol. ii. p. 339.

[18] See Polo, vol. i. p. 140. _Hashishi_ has got altered into _Haus Assis_.

[19] See vol. i. p. 358, note.

[20] See vol. i. p. 189, note 2.

[21] Vol. i. pp. 183–186.

[22] Vol. i. pp. 68 _seqq._ The virtuous cobler is not left out, but is made to play second fiddle to the hero Bauduin.

[23] Vol. i. p. 144.

XIII. NATURE OF POLO’S INFLUENCE ON GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.

[Sidenote: Tardy operation, and causes thereof.]

79. Marco Polo contributed such a vast amount of new facts to the knowledge of the Earth’s surface, that one might have expected his book to have had a sudden effect upon the Science of Geography: but no such result occurred speedily, nor was its beneficial effect of any long duration.

No doubt several causes contributed to the slowness of its action upon the notions of Cosmographers, of which the unreal character attributed to the Book, as a collection of romantic marvels rather than of geographical and historical facts, may have been one, as Santarem urges. But the essential causes were no doubt the imperfect nature of publication before the invention of the press; the traditional character which clogged geography as well as all other branches of knowledge in the Middle Ages; and the entire absence of scientific principle in what passed for geography, so that there was no organ competent to the assimilation of a large mass of new knowledge.

Of the action of the first cause no examples can be more striking than we find in the false conception of the Caspian as a gulf of the Ocean, entertained by Strabo, and the opposite error in regard to the Indian Sea held by Ptolemy, who regards it as an enclosed basin, when we contrast these with the correct ideas on both subjects possessed by Herodotus. The later Geographers no doubt knew his statements, but did not appreciate them, probably from not possessing the evidence on which they were based.

[Sidenote: General characteristics of Mediæval Cosmography.]

80. As regards the second cause alleged, we may say that down nearly to the middle of the 15th century cosmographers, as a rule, made scarcely any attempt to reform their maps by any elaborate search for new matter, or by lights that might be collected from recent travellers. Their world was in its outline that handed down by the traditions of their craft, as sanctioned by some Father of the Church, such as Orosius or Isidore, as sprinkled with a combination of classical and mediæval legend; Solinus being the great authority for the former. Almost universally the earth’s surface is represented as filling the greater part of a circular disk, rounded by the ocean; a fashion that already existed in the time of Aristotle and was ridiculed by him.[1] No dogma of false geography was more persistent or more pernicious than this. Jerusalem occupies the central point, because it was found written in the Prophet Ezekiel: “_Haec dicit Dominus Deus: Ista est Jerusalem_, in medio gentium _posui eam, et in circuitu ejus terras_;”[2] a declaration supposed to be corroborated by the Psalmist’s expression, regarded as prophetic of the death of Our Lord: “_Deus autem, Rex noster, ante secula operatus est salutem_ in medio Terrae” (Ps. lxxiii. 12).[3] The Terrestrial Paradise was represented as occupying the extreme East, because it was found in Genesis that the Lord planted a garden eastward in Eden.[4] _Gog and Magog_ were set in the far north or north-east, because it was said again in Ezekiel: “_Ecce Ego super te Gog Principem capitis Mosoch et Thubal ... et ascendere te faciam de lateribus Aquilonis_,” whilst probably the topography of those mysterious nationalities was completed by a girdle of mountains out of the Alexandrian Fables. The loose and scanty nomenclature was mainly borrowed from Pliny or Mela through such Fathers as we have named; whilst vacant spaces were occupied by Amazons, Arimaspians, and the realm of Prester John. A favourite representation of the inhabited earth was this [circled T]; a great O enclosing a T, which thus divides the circle in three parts; the greater or half-circle being Asia, the two quarter circles Europe and Africa.[5] These Maps were known to St. Augustine.[6]

[Sidenote: Roger Bacon as a geographer.]

81. Even Ptolemy seems to have been almost unknown; and indeed had his Geography been studied it might, with all its errors, have tended to some greater endeavours after accuracy. Roger Bacon, whilst lamenting the exceeding deficiency of geographical knowledge in the Latin world, and purposing to essay an exacter distribution of countries, says he will not attempt to do so by latitude and longitude, for that is a system of which the Latins have learned nothing. He himself, whilst still somewhat burdened by the authoritative dicta of “saints and sages” of past times, ventures at least to criticise some of the latter, such as Pliny and Ptolemy, and declares his intention to have recourse to the information of those who have travelled most extensively over the Earth’s surface. And judging from the good use he makes, in his description of the northern parts of the world, of the Travels of Rubruquis, whom he had known and questioned, besides diligently studying his narrative,[7] we might have expected much in Geography from this great man, had similar materials been available to him for other parts of the earth. He did attempt a map with mathematical determination of places, but it has not been preserved.[8]

It may be said with general truth that the world-maps current up to the end of the 13th century had more analogy to the mythical cosmography of the Hindus than to any thing properly geographical. Both, no doubt, were originally based in the main on real features. In the Hindu cosmography these genuine features are symmetrised as in a kaleidoscope; in the European cartography they are squeezed together in a manner that one can only compare to a pig in brawn. Here and there some feature strangely compressed and distorted is just recognisable. A splendid example of this kind of map is that famous one at Hereford, executed about A.D. 1275, of which a facsimile has lately been published, accompanied by a highly meritorious illustrative Essay.[9]

82. Among the Arabs many able men, from the early days of Islám, took an interest in Geography, and devoted labour to geographical compilations, in which they often made use of their own observations, of the itineraries of travellers, and of other fresh knowledge. But somehow or other their maps were always far behind their books. Though they appear to have had an early translation of Ptolemy, and elaborate Tables of Latitudes and Longitudes form a prominent feature in many of their geographical treatises, there appears to be no Arabic map in existence, laid down with meridians and parallels; whilst _all_ of their best known maps are on the old system of the circular disk. This apparent incapacity for map-making appears to have acted as a heavy drag and bar upon progress in Geography among the Arabs, notwithstanding its early promise among them, and in spite of the application to its furtherance of the great intellects of some (such as Abu Rihán al-Biruni), and of the indefatigable spirit of travel and omnivorous curiosity of others (such as Mas’udi).

[Sidenote: Marino Sanudo the Elder.]

83. Some distinct trace of acquaintance with the Arabian Geography is to be found in the World-Map of Marino Sanudo the Elder, constructed between 1300 and 1320; and this may be regarded as an exceptionally favourable specimen of the cosmography in vogue, for the author was a diligent investigator and compiler, who evidently took a considerable interest in geographical questions, and had a strong enjoyment and appreciation of a map.[10] Nor is the map in question without some result of these characteristics. His representation of Europe, Northern Africa, Syria, Asia Minor, Arabia and its two gulfs, is a fair approximation to general facts; his collected knowledge has enabled him to locate, with more or less of general truth, Georgia, the Iron Gates, Cathay, the Plain of Moghan, Euphrates and Tigris, Persia, Bagdad, Kais, Aden (though on the wrong side of the Red Sea), Abyssinia (_Habesh_), Zangibar (_Zinz_), Jidda (Zede), etc. But after all the traditional forms are too strong for him. Jerusalem is still the centre of the disk of the habitable earth, so that the distance is as great from Syria to Gades in the extreme West, as from Syria to the India Interior of Prester John which terminates the extreme East. And Africa beyond the Arabian Gulf is carried, according to the Arabian modification of Ptolemy’s misconception, far to the eastward until it almost meets the prominent shores of India.

[Sidenote: The Catalan Map of 1375, the most complete mediæval embodiment of Polo’s Geography.]

84. The first genuine mediæval attempt at a geographical construction that I know of, absolutely free from the traditional _idola_, is the Map of the known World from the Portulano Mediceo (in the Laurentian Library), of which an extract is engraved in the atlas of Baldelli-Boni’s Polo. I need not describe it, however, because I cannot satisfy myself that it makes much use of Polo’s contributions, and its facts have been embodied in a more ambitious work of the next generation, the celebrated Catalan Map of 1375 in the great Library of Paris. This also, but on a larger scale and in a more comprehensive manner, is an honest endeavour to represent the known world on the basis of collected facts, casting aside all theories pseudo-scientific or pseudo-theological; and a very remarkable work it is. In this map it seems to me Marco Polo’s influence, I will not say on geography, but on map-making, is seen to the greatest advantage. His Book is the basis of the Map as regards Central and Further Asia, and partially as regards India. His names are often sadly perverted, and it is not always easy to understand the view that the compiler took of his itineraries. Still we have Cathay admirably placed in the true position of China, as a great Empire filling the south-east of Asia. The Eastern Peninsula of India is indeed absent altogether, but the Peninsula of Hither India is for the first time in the History of Geography represented with a fair approximation to its correct form and position,[11] and Sumatra also (_Jaua_) is not badly placed. Carajan, Vocian, Mien, and Bangala, are located with a happy conception of their relation to Cathay and to India. Many details in India foreign to Polo’s book,[12] and some in Cathay (as well as in Turkestan and Siberia, which have been entirely derived from other sources) have been embodied in the Map. But the study of his Book has, I conceive, been essentially the basis of those great portions which I have specified, and the additional matter has not been in mass sufficient to perplex the compiler. Hence we really see in this Map something like the idea of Asia that the Traveller himself would have presented, had he bequeathed a Map to us.

[Illustration: Part of the Catalan Map (1375).]

[Some years ago, I made a special study of the Far East in the Catalan Map (_L’Extrême-Orient dans l’Atlas catalan de Charles V._, Paris, 1895), and I have come to the conclusion that the cartographer’s knowledge of Eastern Asia is drawn almost entirely from Marco Polo. We give a reproduction of part of the Catalan Map.—H. C.]

[Sidenote: Confusions in Cartography of the 16th century, from the endeavour to combine new and old information.]

85. In the following age we find more frequent indications that Polo’s book was diffused and read. And now that the spirit of discovery began to stir, it was apparently regarded in a juster light as a Book of Facts, and not as a mere _Romman du Grant Kaan_.[13] But in fact this age produced new supplies of crude information in greater abundance than the knowledge of geographers was prepared to digest or co-ordinate, and the consequence is that the magnificent Work of Fra Mauro (1459), though the result of immense labour in the collection of facts and the endeavour to combine them, really gives a considerably less accurate idea of Asia than that which the Catalan Map had afforded.[14]

And when at a still later date the great burst of discovery eastward and westward took effect, the results of all attempts to combine the new knowledge with the old was most unhappy. The first and crudest forms of such combinations attempted to realise the ideas of Columbus regarding the identity of his discoveries with the regions of the Great Kaan’s dominion;[15] but even after AMERICA had vindicated its independent position on the surface of the globe, and the new knowledge of the Portuguese had introduced CHINA where the Catalan Map of the 14th century had presented CATHAY, the latter country, with the whole of Polo’s nomenclature, was shoved away to the north, forming a separate system.[16] Henceforward the influence of Polo’s work on maps was simply injurious; and when to his nomenclature was added a sprinkling of Ptolemy’s, as was usual throughout the 16th century, the result was a most extraordinary hotch-potch, conveying no approximation to any consistent representation of facts.

Thus, in a map of 1522,[17] running the eye along the north of Europe and Asia from West to East, we find the following succession of names: Groenlandia, or Greenland, as a great peninsula overlapping that of Norvegia and Suecia; Livonia, Plescovia and Moscovia, Tartaria bounded on the South by _Scithia extra Imaum_, and on the East, by the Rivers _Ochardes_ and _Bautisis_ (out of Ptolemy), which are made to flow into the Arctic Sea. South of these are _Aureacithis_ and _Asmirea_ (Ptolemy’s _Auxacitis_ and _Asmiræa_), and _Serica Regio_. Then following the northern coast _Balor Regio_,[18] _Judei Clausi_, _i.e._ the Ten Tribes who are constantly associated or confounded with the Shut-up Nations of Gog and Magog. These impinge upon the River _Polisacus_, flowing into the Northern Ocean in Lat. 75°, but which is in fact no other than Polo’s _Pulisanghin_![19] Immediately south of this is _Tholomon Provincia_ (Polo’s again), and on the coast _Tangut_, _Cathaya_, the Rivers _Caramoran_ and _Oman_ (a misreading of Polo’s _Quian_), _Quinsay_ and _Mangi_.

[Sidenote: Gradual disappearance of Polo’s nomenclature.]

86. The Maps of Mercator (1587) and Magini (1597) are similar in character, but more elaborate, introducing China as a separate system. Such indeed also is Blaeu’s Map (1663) excepting that Ptolemy’s contributions are reduced to one or two.

In Sanson’s Map (1659) the data of Polo and the mediæval Travellers are more cautiously handled, but a new element of confusion is introduced in the form of numerous features derived from Edrisi.

It is scarcely worth while to follow the matter further. With the increase of knowledge of Northern Asia from the Russian side, and that of China from the Maps of Martini, followed by the surveys of the Jesuits, and with the real science brought to bear on Asiatic Geography by such men as De l’Isle and D’Anville, mere traditional nomenclature gradually disappeared. And the task which the study of Polo has provided for the geographers of later days has been chiefly that of determining the true localities that his book describes under obsolete or corrupted names.

[My late illustrious friend, Baron _A. E. Nordenskiöld_, who has devoted much time and labour to the study of Marco Polo (see his _Periplus_, Stockholm, 1897), and published a facsimile edition of one of the French MSS. kept in the Stockholm Royal Library (see vol. ii. _Bibliography_, p. 570), has given to _The Geographical Journal_ for April, 1899, pp. 396–406, a paper on _The Influence of the “Travels of Marco Polo” on Jacobo Gastaldi’s Maps of Asia_. He writes (p. 398) that as far as he knows, none “of the many learned men who have devoted their attention to the discoveries of Marco Polo, have been able to refer to any maps in which all or almost all those places mentioned by Marco Polo are given. All friends of the history of geography will therefore be glad to hear that such an atlas from the middle of the sixteenth century really does exist, viz. Gastaldi’s ‘Prima, seconda e terza parte dell’Asia.’” All the names of places in Ramusio’s Marco Polo are introduced in the maps of Asia of Jacobo Gastaldi (1561). Cf. _Periplus_, liv., lv., and lvi.

I may refer to what both Yule and myself say _supra_ of the Catalan Map.—H. C.]

[Sidenote: Alleged introduction of Block-printed Books into Europe by Marco Polo.]

87. Before concluding, it may be desirable to say a few words on the subject of important knowledge other than geographical, which various persons have supposed that Marco Polo must have introduced from Eastern Asia to Europe.

Respecting the mariner’s compass and gunpowder I shall say nothing, as no one now, I believe, imagines Marco to have had anything to do with their introduction. But from a highly respectable source in recent years we have seen the introduction of Block-printing into Europe connected with the name of our Traveller. The circumstances are stated as follows:[20]

“In the beginning of the 15th century a man named Pamphilo Castaldi, of Feltre ... was employed by the Seignory or Government of the Republic, to engross deeds and public edicts of various kinds ... the initial letters at the commencement of the writing being usually ornamented with red ink, or illuminated in gold and colours.

“According to Sansovino, certain stamps or types had been invented some time previously by Pietro di Natali, Bishop of Aquilœa.[21] These were made at Murano of glass, and were used to stamp or print the outline of the large initial letters of public documents, which were afterwards filled up by hand.... Pamphilo Castaldi improved on these glass types, by having others made of wood or metal, and having seen several Chinese books which the famous traveller Marco Polo had brought from China, and of which the entire text was printed with wooden blocks, he caused moveable wooden types to be made, each type containing a single letter; and with these he printed several broadsides and single leaves, at Venice, in the year 1426. Some of these single sheets are said to be preserved among the archives at Feltre....

“The tradition continues that John Faust, of Mayence ... became acquainted with Castaldi, and passed some time with him, at his _Scriptorium_, ... at Feltre;”

and in short developed from the knowledge so acquired the great invention of printing. Mr. Curzon goes on to say that Panfilo Castaldi was born in 1398, and died in 1490, and that he gives the story as he found it in an article written by Dr. Jacopo Facen, of Feltre, in a (Venetian?) newspaper called _Il Gondoliere_, No. 103, of 27th December, 1843.

In a later paper Mr. Curzon thus recurs to the subject:[22]

“Though none of the early block-books have dates affixed to them, many of them are with reason supposed to be more ancient than any books printed with moveable types. Their resemblance to Chinese block-books is so exact, that they would almost seem to be copied from the books commonly used in China. _The impressions are taken off on one side of the paper only, and in binding, both the Chinese, and ancient German, or Dutch block-books, the blank sides of the pages are placed opposite each other_, and sometimes pasted together.... The impressions are not taken off with printer’s ink, but _with a brown paint or colour, of a much thinner description, more in the nature of Indian ink, as we call it, which is used in printing Chinese books_. Altogether the German and Oriental block-books are so precisely alike, in almost every respect, that ... we must suppose that the process of printing then must have been copied from ancient Chinese specimens, brought from that country by some early travellers, whose names have not been handed down to our times.”

The writer then refers to the tradition about _Guttemberg_ (so it is stated on this occasion, not Faust) having learned Castaldi’s art, etc., mentioning a circumstance which he supposes to indicate that Guttemberg had relations with Venice; and appears to assent to the probability of the story of the art having been founded on specimens brought home by Marco Polo.

This story was in recent years diligently propagated in Northern Italy, and resulted in the erection at Feltre of a public statue of Panfilo Castaldi, bearing this inscription (besides others of like tenor):—

“_To Panfilo Castaldi the illustrious Inventor of Movable Printing Types, Italy renders this Tribute of Honour, too long deferred._”

In the first edition of this book I devoted a special note to the exposure of the worthlessness of the evidence for this story.[23] This note was, with the present Essay, translated and published at Venice by Comm. Berchet, but this challenge to the supporters of the patriotic romance, so far as I have heard, brought none of them into the lists in its defence.

But since Castaldi has got his statue from the printers of Lombardy, would it not be mere equity that the mariners of Spain should set up a statue at Huelva to the Pilot Alonzo Sanchez of that port, who, according to Spanish historians, after discovering the New World, died in the house of Columbus at Terceira, and left the crafty Genoese to appropriate his journals, and rob him of his fame?

Seriously; if anybody in Feltre cares for the real reputation of his native city, let him do his best to have that preposterous and discreditable fiction removed from the base of the statue. If Castaldi has deserved a statue on other and truer grounds let _him_ stand; if not, let him be burnt into honest lime! I imagine that the original story that attracted Mr. Curzon was more _jeu d’esprit_ than anything else; but that the author, finding what a stone he had set rolling, did not venture to retract.

[Sidenote: Frequent opportunities for such introduction in the age following Polo’s.]

88. Mr. Curzon’s own observations, which I have italicised about the resemblance of the two systems are, however, very striking, and seem clearly to indicate the derivation of the art from China. But I should suppose that in the tradition, if there ever was any genuine tradition of the kind at Feltre (a circumstance worthy of all doubt), the name of Marco Polo was introduced merely because it was so prominent a name in Eastern Travel. The fact has been generally overlooked and forgotten[24] that, for many years in the course of the 14th century, not only were missionaries of the Roman Church and Houses of the Franciscan Order established in the chief cities of China, but a regular trade was carried on overland between Italy and China, by way of Tana (or Azov), Astracan, Otrar and Kamul, insomuch that instructions for the Italian merchant following that route form the two first chapters in the Mercantile Handbook of Balducci Pegolotti (_circa_ 1340).[25] Many a traveller besides Marco Polo might therefore have brought home the block-books. And this is the less to be ascribed to him because he so curiously omits to speak of the art of printing, when his subject seems absolutely to challenge its description.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] “They draw nowadays the map of the world in a laughable manner, for they draw the inhabited earth as a circle; but this is impossible, both from what we see and from reason.” (_Meteorolog. Lib._ II. cap. 5.) Cf. _Herodotus_, iv. 36.

[2] In Dante’s Cosmography, Jerusalem is the centre of our οἰκουμένη, whilst the Mount of Purgatory occupies the middle of the Antipodal hemisphere:—

“Come ciò sia, se’ l vuoi poter pensare, Dentro raccolto immagina Sion Con questo monte in su la terra stare, Sì, ch’ambodue hann’un solo orrizon E diversi emisperi”.... —_Purg._ IV. 67.

[3] The belief, with this latter ground of it, is alluded to in curious verses by Jacopo Alighieri, Dante’s son:—

“_E molti gran Profeti_ _Filosofi e Poeti_ Fanno il colco dell’Emme Dov’è Gerusalemme; _Se le loro scritture_ _Hanno vere figure:_ _E per la Santa fede_ _Cristiana ancor si vede_ _Che’ l’ suo principio Cristo_ Nel suo mezzo _conquisto_ _Per cui prese morte_ _E vi pose la sorte_.” —(_Rime Antiche Toscane_, III. 9.)

Though the general meaning of the second couplet is obvious, the expression _il colco dell’Emme_, “the couch of the M,” is puzzling. The best solution that occurs to me is this: In looking at the world map of Marino Sanudo, noticed on p. _133_, as engraved by Bongars in the _Gesta Dei per Francos_, you find geometrical lines laid down, connecting the N.E., N.W., S.E., and S.W. points, and thus forming a square inscribed in the circular disk of the Earth, with its diagonals passing through the Central Zion. The eye easily discerns in these a great M inscribed in the circle, with its middle angular point at Jerusalem. Gervasius of Tilbury (with some confusion in his mind between tropic and equinoxial, like that which Pliny makes in speaking of the Indian Mons Malleus) says that “some are of opinion that the Centre is in the place where the Lord spoke to the woman of Samaria at the well, for there, at the summer solstice, the noonday sun descends perpendicularly into the water of the well, casting no shadow; a thing which the philosophers say occurs at Syene”! (_Otia Imperialia_, by Liebrecht, p. 1.)

[4] This circumstance does not, however, show in the Vulgate.

[5]

“Veggiamo in prima in general la terra Come risiede e come il mar la serra.

Un T dentro ad un O mostra il disegno Come in tre parti fu diviso il Mondo, E la superiore è il maggior regno Che quasi piglia la metà del tondo. ASIA chiamata: il gambo ritto è segno Che parte il terzo nome dal secondo AFFRICA dico da EUROPA: il mare Mediterran tra esse in mezzo appare.” —_La Sfera_, di F. Leonardo di Stagio Dati, Lib. iii. st. 11.

[6] _De Civ. Dei_, xvi. 17, quoted by _Peschel_, 92.

[7] _Opus Majus_, Venice ed. pp. 142, _seqq._

[8] _Peschel_, p. 195. This had escaped me.

[9] By the Rev. W. L. Bevan, M.A., and the Rev. H. W. Phillott, M.A. In Asia, they point out, the only name showing any recognition of modern knowledge is Samarcand.

[10] His work, _Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis_, intended to stimulate a new Crusade, has three capital maps, besides that of the World, one of which, translated, but otherwise in facsimile, is given at p. 18 of this volume. But besides these maps, he gives, in a tabular form of parallel columns, the reigning sovereigns in Europe and Asia connected with his historical retrospect, just on the plan presented in Sir Harris Nicolas’s Chronology of History.

[11] I do not see that al-Birúni deserves the credit in this respect assigned to him by Professor Peschel, so far as one can judge from the data given by Sprenger (_Peschel_, p. 128; _Post und Reise-Routen_, 81–82.)

[12] For example, _Delli_, which Polo does not name; _Diogil_ (Deogír); on the Coromandel coast _Setemelti_, which I take to be a clerical error for _Sette-Templi_, the Seven Pagodas; round the Gulf of Cambay we have _Cambetum_ (Kambayat), _Cocintaya_ (Kokan-Tana, see vol. ii. p. 396), _Goga, Baroche, Neruala_ (Anharwala), and to the north _Moltan_. Below Multan are _Hocibelch_ and _Bargelidoa_, two puzzles. The former is, I think, _Uch-baligh_, showing that part of the information was from Perso-Mongol sources.

[13] I see it stated by competent authority that _Romman_ is often applied to any prose composition in a Romance language.

In or about 1426, Prince Pedro of Portugal, the elder brother of the illustrious Prince Henry, being on a visit to Venice, was presented by the Signory with a copy of Marco Polo’s book, together with a map already alluded to. (_Major’s P. Henry_, pp. 61, 62.)

[14] This is partly due also to Fra Mauro’s reversion to the fancy of the circular disk limiting the inhabited portion of the earth.

[15] An early graphic instance of this is Ruysch’s famous map (1508). The following extract of a work printed as late as 1533 is an example of the like confusion in verbal description: “The Territories which are beyond the limits of Ptolemy’s Tables have not yet been described on certain authority. Behind the Sinae and the Seres, and beyond 180° of East Longitude, many countries were discovered by one [_quendam_] Marco Polo a Venetian and others, and the sea-coasts of those countries have now recently again been explored by Columbus the Genoese and Amerigo Vespucci in navigating the Western Ocean.... To this part (of Asia) belong the territory called that of the _Bachalaos_ [or Codfish, Newfoundland], _Florida_, _the Desert of Lop_, _Tangut_, _Cathay_, the realm of _Mexico_ (wherein is the vast city of _Temistitan_, built in the middle of a great lake, but which the older travellers styled QUINSAY), besides _Paria_, _Uraba_, and the countries of the _Canibals_.” (_Joannis Schoneri Carolostadtii Opusculum Geogr._, quoted by Humboldt, _Examen_, V. 171, 172.)

[16] In Robert Parke’s Dedication of his Translation of Mendoza’s, London, 1st of January, 1589, he identifies China and Japan with the regions of which _Paulus Venetus_ and _Sir John Mandeuill_ “wrote long agoe.”—_MS. Note by Yule_.

[17] “_Totius Europae et Asiae Tabula Geographica, Auctore Thoma D. Aucupario. Edita Argentorati_, MDXXII.” Copied in Witsen.

[18] This strange association of _Balor_ (_i.e._, Bolor, that name of so many odd vicissitudes, see pp. 178–179 _infra_) with the shut-up Israelites must be traced to a passage which Athanasius Kircher quotes from _R. Abraham Pizol_ (qu. Peritsol?): “_Regnum_, inquit, Belor _magnum et excelsum nimis, juxta omnes illos qui scripserunt Historicos_. Sunt in eo Judaei _plurimi inclusi, et illud in latere Orientali et Boreali_,” etc. (_China Illustrata_, p. 49.)

[19] Vol. ii. p. 1.

[20] _A short Account of Libraries of Italy_, by the Hon. R. Curzon (the late Lord de la Zouche); in _Bibliog. and Hist. Miscellanies; Philobiblon Society_, vol. i, 1854, pp. 6. _seqq._

[21] P. del Natali was Bishop of Equilio, a city of the Venetian Lagoons, in the latter part of the 14th century. (See _Ughelli, Italia Sacra_, X. 87.) There is no ground whatever for connecting him with these inventions. The story of the glass types appears to rest entirely and solely on one obscure passage of Sansovino, who says that under the Doge Marco Corner (1365–1367): “_certe Natale Veneto lasciò un libro della materie delle forme da giustar intorno alle lettere, ed il modo di formarle di vetro_.” There is absolutely nothing more. Some kind of stencilling seems indicated.

[22] _History of Printing in China and Europe_, in _Philobiblon_, vol. vi. p. 23.

[23] See _Appendix L_. in First Edition.

[24] Ramusio himself appears to have been entirely unconscious of it, _vide supra_, p. 3.

[25] This subject has been fully treated in _Cathay and the Way Thither_.

XIV. EXPLANATIONS REGARDING THE BASIS ADOPTED FOR THE PRESENT TRANSLATION.

89. It remains to say a few words regarding the basis adopted for our English version of the Traveller’s record.

[Sidenote: Text followed by Marsden and by Pauthier.]

Ramusio’s recension was that which Marsden selected for translation. But at the date of his most meritorious publication nothing was known of the real literary history of Polo’s Book, and no one was aware of the peculiar value and originality of the French manuscript texts, nor had Marsden seen any of them. A translation from one of those texts is a translation at first hand; a translation from Ramusio’s Italian is, as far as I can judge, the translation of a translated compilation from two or more translations, and therefore, whatever be the merits of its matter, inevitably carries us far away from the spirit and style of the original narrator. M. Pauthier, I think, did well in adopting for the text of his edition the MSS. which I have classed as of the second Type, the more as there had hitherto been no publication from those texts. But editing a text in the original language, and translating, are tasks substantially different in their demands.

[Sidenote: Eclectic formation of the English Text of this Translation.]

90. It will be clear from what has been said in the preceding pages that I should not regard as a fair or full representation of Polo’s Work, a version on which the Geographic Text did not exercise a material influence. But to adopt that Text, with all its awkwardnesses and tautologies, as the absolute subject of translation, would have been a mistake. What I have done has been, in the first instance, to translate from Pauthier’s Text. The process of abridgment in this text, however it came about, has been on the whole judiciously executed, getting rid of the intolerable prolixities of manner which belong to many parts of the Original Dictation, but _as a general rule_ preserving the matter. Having translated this,—not always from the Text adopted by Pauthier himself, but with the exercise of my own judgment on the various readings which that Editor lays before us,—I then compared the translation with the Geographic Text, and transferred from the latter not only all items of real substance that had been omitted, but also all expressions of special interest and character, and occasionally a greater fulness of phraseology where condensation in Pauthier’s text seemed to have been carried too far. And finally I introduced _between brackets_ everything peculiar to Ramusio’s version that seemed to me to have a just claim to be reckoned authentic, and that could be so introduced without harshness or mutilation. Many passages from the same source which were of interest in themselves, but failed to meet one or other of these conditions, have been given in the notes.[1]

[Sidenote: Mode of rendering proper names.]

91. As regards the reading of proper names and foreign words, in which there is so much variation in the different MSS. and editions, I have done my best to select what seemed to be the true reading from the G. T. and Pauthier’s three MSS., only in some rare instances transgressing this limit.

Where the MSS. in the repetition of a name afforded a choice of forms, I have selected that which came nearest the real name when known. Thus the G. T. affords _Baldasciain, Badascian, Badasciam, Badausiam, Balasian_. I adopt BADASCIAN, or in English spelling BADASHAN, because it is closest to the real name _Badakhshan_. Another place appears as COBINAN, _Cabanat, Cobian_. I adopt the first because it is the truest expression of the real name _Koh-benán_. In chapters 23, 24 of Book I., we have in the G. T. _Asisim, Asciscin, Asescin_, and in Pauthier’s MSS. _Hasisins, Harsisins_, etc. I adopt ASCISCIN, or in English spelling ASHISHIN, for the same reason as before. So with _Creman, Crerman, Crermain_, QUERMAN, Anglicè KERMAN; Cormos, HORMOS, and many more.[2]

In two or three cases I have adopted a reading which I cannot show _literatim_ in any authority, but because such a form appears to be the just resultant from the variety of readings which are presented; as in surveying one takes the mean of a number of observations when no one can claim an absolute preference.

Polo’s proper names, even in the French Texts, are _in the main_ formed on an Italian fashion of spelling.[3] I see no object in preserving such spelling in an English book, so after selecting the best reading of the name I express it in English spelling, printing _Badashan, Pashai, Kerman_, instead of _Badascian, Pasciai, Querman_, and so on.

And when a little trouble has been taken to ascertain the true form and force of Polo’s spelling of Oriental names and technical expressions, it will be found that they are in the main as accurate as Italian lips and orthography will admit, and not justly liable either to those disparaging epithets[4] or to those exegetical distortions which have been too often applied to them. Thus, for example, _Cocacin, Ghel_ or _Ghelan, Tonocain, Cobinan, Ondanique, Barguerlac, Argon, Sensin, Quescican, Toscaol, Bularguci, Zardandan, Anin, Caugigu, Coloman, Gauenispola, Mutfili, Avarian, Choiach_, are not, it will be seen, the ignorant blunderings which the interpretations affixed by some commentators would imply them to be, but are, on the contrary, all but perfectly accurate utterances of the names and words intended.

The _-tchéou_ (of French writers), _-choo_, _-chow_, or _-chau_[5] of English writers, which so frequently forms the terminal part in the names of Chinese cities, is almost invariably rendered by Polo as _-giu_. This has frequently in the MSS., and constantly in the printed editions, been converted into _-gui_, and thence into _-guy_. This is on the whole the most constant canon of Polo’s geographical orthography, and holds in _Caagiu_ (Ho-chau), _Singiu_ (Sining-chau), _Cui-giu_ (Kwei-chau), _Sin-giu_ (T’sining-chau), _Pi-giu_ (Pei-chau), _Coigangiu_ (Hwaingan-chau), _Si-giu_ (Si-chau), _Ti-giu_ (Tai-chau), _Tin-giu_ (Tung-chau), _Yan-giu_ (Yang-chau), _Sin-giu_ (Chin-chau), _Cai-giu_ (Kwa-chau), _Chinghi-giu_ (Chang-chau), _Su-giu_ (Su-chau), _Vu-giu_ (Wu-chau), and perhaps a few more. In one or two instances only (as _Sinda-ciu_, _Caiciu_) he has _-ciu_ instead of _-giu_.

The chapter-headings I have generally taken from Pauthier’s Text, but they are no essential part of the original work, and they have been slightly modified or enlarged where it seemed desirable.

• • • • •

“=Behold! I see the Haven nigh at Hand, To which I meane my wearie Course to bend; Vere the maine Shete, and beare up with the Land, The which afore is fayrly to be kend, And seemeth safe from Storms that may offend.= * * * * * =There eke my Feeble Barke a while may stay, Till mery Wynd and Weather call her thence away.=” —THE FAERIE QUEENE, I. xii. 1.

[Illustration]

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] This “eclectic formation of the English text,” as I have called it for brevity in the marginal rubric, has been disapproved by Mr. de Khanikoff, a critic worthy of high respect. But I must repeat that the duties of a translator, and of the Editor of an original text, at least where the various recensions bear so peculiar a relation to each other as in this case, are essentially different; and that, on reconsidering the matter after an interval of four or five years, the plan which I have adopted, whatever be the faults of execution, still commends itself to me as the only appropriate one.

Let Mr. de Khanikoff consider what course he would adopt if he were about to publish Marco Polo in Russian. I feel certain that with whatever theory he might set out, before his task should be concluded he would have arrived practically at the same system that I have adopted.

[2] In Polo’s diction C frequently represents H., _e.g._, _Cormos_ = Hormuz; _Camadi_ probably = Hamadi; _Caagiu_ probably = Hochau; _Cacianfu_ = Hochangfu, and so on. This is perhaps attributable to Rusticiano’s Tuscan ear. A true Pisan will absolutely contort his features in the intensity of his efforts to aspirate sufficiently the letter C. Filippo Villani, speaking of the famous Aguto (Sir J. Hawkwood), says his name in English was _Kauchouvole_. (_Murat. Script._ xiv. 746.)

[3] In the Venetian dialect _ch_ and _j_ are often sounded as in English, not as in Italian. Some traces of such pronunciation I think there are, as in _Coja, Carajan_, and in the Chinese name _Vanchu_ (occurring only in Ramusio, _supra_, p. _99_). But the scribe of the original work being a Tuscan, the spelling is in the main Tuscan. The sound of the _Qu_ is, however, French, as in _Quescican, Quinsai_, except perhaps in the case of _Quenianfu_, for a reason given in vol. ii. p. 29.

[4] For example, that enthusiastic student of mediæval Geography, Joachim Lelewel, speaks of Polo’s “gibberish” (_le baragouinage du Venitien_) with special reference to such names as _Zayton_ and _Kinsay_, whilst we now know that these names were in universal use by all foreigners in China, and no more deserve to be called gibberish than _Bocca-Tigris_, _Leghorn_, _Ratisbon_, or _Buda_.

[5] I am quite sensible of the diffidence with which any outsider should touch any question of Chinese language or orthography. A Chinese scholar and missionary (Mr. Moule) objects to my spelling _chau_, whilst he, I see, uses _chow_. I imagine we mean the same sound, according to the spelling which I try to use throughout the book. Dr. C. Douglas, another missionary scholar, writes _chau_.

[Illustration: MARCO POLO’S ITINERARIES, Nᵒ. I. (Prologue; Book I, Chapters 1–36; and Book IV.)

SKETCH SHOWING CHIEF MONARCHIES OF ASIA IN LATTER PART OF 13ᵗʰ CENTURY]

THE BOOK OF MARCO POLO.

PROLOGUE.

Great Princes, Emperors, and Kings, Dukes and Marquises, Counts, Knights, and Burgesses! and People of all degrees who desire to get knowledge of the various races of mankind and of the diversities of the sundry regions of the World, take this Book and cause it to be read to you. For ye shall find therein all kinds of wonderful things, and the divers histories of the Great Hermenia, and of Persia, and of the Land of the Tartars, and of India, and of many another country of which our Book doth speak, particularly and in regular succession, according to the description of Messer Marco Polo, a wise and noble citizen of Venice, as he saw them with his own eyes. Some things indeed there be therein which he beheld not; but these he heard from men of credit and veracity. And we shall set down things seen as seen, and things heard as heard only, so that no jot of falsehood may mar the truth of our Book, and that all who shall read it or hear it read may put full faith in the truth of all its contents.

For let me tell you that since our Lord God did mould with his hands our first Father Adam, even until this day, never hath there been Christian, or Pagan, or Tartar, or Indian, or any man of any nation, who in his own person hath had so much knowledge and experience of the divers parts of the World and its Wonders as hath had this Messer Marco! And for that reason he bethought himself that it would be a very great pity did he not cause to be put in writing all the great marvels that he had seen, or on sure information heard of, so that other people who had not these advantages might, by his Book, get such knowledge. And I may tell you that in acquiring this knowledge he spent in those various parts of the World good six-and-twenty years. Now, being thereafter an inmate of the Prison at Genoa, he caused Messer Rusticiano of Pisa, who was in the said Prison likewise, to reduce the whole to writing; and this befell in the year 1298 from the birth of Jesus.

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