The Travels of Marco Polo Volume I Part 22

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Piazzetta at Venice. (From the Bodleian MS. of Polo.)]

[Sidenote: Second Journey of the Polo Brothers, accompanied by Marco.]

19. The Papal interregnum was the longest known, at least since the dark ages. Those two years pa.s.sed, and yet the Cardinals at Viterbo had come to no agreement. The brothers were unwilling to let the Great Kaan think them faithless, and perhaps they hankered after the virgin field of speculation that they had discovered; so they started again for the East, taking young Mark with them. At Acre they took counsel with an eminent churchman, TEDALDO (or Tebaldo) VISCONTI, Archdeacon of Liege, whom the Book represents to have been Legate in Syria, and who in any case was a personage of much gravity and influence. From him they got letters to authenticate the causes of the miscarriage of their mission, and started for the further East. But they were still at the port of Ayas on the Gulf of Scanderoon, which was then becoming one of the chief points of arrival and departure for the inland trade of Asia, when they were overtaken by the news that a Pope was at last elected, and that the choice had fallen upon their friend Archdeacon Tedaldo. They immediately returned to Acre, and at last were able to execute the Kaan's commission, and to obtain a reply. But instead of the hundred able teachers of science and religion whom Kublai is said to have asked for, the new Pope, Gregory X., could supply but two Dominicans; and these lost heart and drew back when they had barely taken the first step of the journey.

Judging from certain indications we conceive it probable that the three Venetians, whose second start from Acre took place about November 1271, proceeded by Ayas and Sivas, and then by Mardin, Mosul, and Baghdad, to Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, with the view of going on by sea, but that some obstacle arose which compelled them to abandon this project and turn north again from Hormuz.[13] They then traversed successively Kerman and Khorasan, Balkh and Badakhshan, whence they ascended the Panja or upper Oxus to the Plateau of Pamir, a route not known to have been since followed by any European traveller except Benedict Goes, till the spirited expedition of Lieutenant John Wood of the Indian Navy in 1838.[14] Crossing the Pamir highlands the travellers descended upon Kashgar, whence they proceeded by Yarkand and Khotan, and the vicinity of Lake Lob, and eventually across the Great Gobi Desert to Tangut, the name then applied by Mongols and Persians to territory at the extreme North-west of China, both within and without the Wall. Skirting the northern frontier of China they at last reached the presence of the Kaan, who was at his usual summer retreat at Kai-ping fu, near the base of the Khingan Mountains, and nearly 100 miles north of the Great Wall at Kalgan.

If there be no mistake in the time (three years and a half) ascribed to this journey in all the existing texts, the travellers did not reach the Court till about May of 1275.[15]

[Sidenote: Marco's employment by Kublai Kaan; and his journeys.]

20. Kublai received the Venetians with great cordiality, and took kindly to young Mark, who must have been by this time one-and-twenty. The _Joenne Bacheler_, as the story calls him, applied himself to the acquisition of the languages and written characters in chief use among the multifarious nationalities included in the Kaan's Court and administration; and Kublai after a time, seeing his discretion and ability, began to employ him in the public service. M. Pauthier has found a record in the Chinese Annals of the Mongol Dynasty, which states that in the year 1277, a certain POLO was nominated a second-cla.s.s commissioner or agent attached to the Privy Council, a pa.s.sage which we are happy to believe to refer to our young traveller.[16]

His first mission apparently was that which carried him through the provinces of Shan-si, Shen-si, and Sze-ch'wan, and the wild country on the East of Tibet, to the remote province of Yun-nan, called by the Mongols Karajang, and which had been partially conquered by an army under Kublai himself in 1253, before his accession to the throne.[17] Mark, during his stay at court, had observed the Kaan's delight in hearing of strange countries, their marvels, manners, and oddities, and had heard his Majesty's frank expressions of disgust at the stupidity of his commissioners when they could speak of nothing but the official business on which they had been sent. Profiting by these observations, he took care to store his memory or his note-books with all curious facts that were likely to interest Kublai, and related them with vivacity on his return to Court. This first journey, which led him through a region which is still very nearly a _terra incognita_, and in which there existed and still exists, among the deep valleys of the Great Rivers flowing down from Eastern Tibet, and in the rugged mountain ranges bordering Yun-nan and Kwei-chau, a vast Ethnological Garden, as it were, of tribes of various race and in every stage of uncivilisation, afforded him an acquaintance with many strange products and eccentric traits of manners, wherewith to delight the Emperor.

Mark rose rapidly in favour, and often served Kublai again on distant missions, as well as in domestic administration, but we gather few details as to his employments. At one time we know that he held for three years the government of the great city of Yang-chau, though we need not try to magnify this office, as some commentators have done, into the viceroyalty of one of the great provinces of the Empire; on another occasion we find him with his uncle Maffeo, pa.s.sing a year at Kan-chau in Tangut; again, it would appear, visiting Kara Korum, the old capital of the Kaans in Mongolia; on another occasion in Champa or Southern Cochin China; and again, or perhaps as a part of the last expedition, on a mission to the Indian Seas, when he appears to have visited several of the southern states of India. We are not informed whether his father and uncle shared in such employments;[18] and the story of their services rendered to the Kaan in promoting the capture of the city of Siang-yang, by the construction of powerful engines of attack, is too much perplexed by difficulties of chronology to be cited with confidence. Anyhow they were gathering wealth, and after years of exile they began to dread what might follow old Kublai's death, and longed to carry their gear and their own grey heads safe home to the Lagoons. The aged Emperor growled refusal to all their hints, and but for a happy chance we should have lost our mediaeval Herodotus.

[Sidenote: Circ.u.mstances of the Departure of the Polos from the Kaan's Court.]

21. Arghun Khan of Persia, Kublai's great-nephew, had in 1286 lost his favourite wife the Khatun Bulughan; and, mourning her sorely, took steps to fulfil her dying injunction that her place should be filled only by a lady of her own kin, the Mongol Tribe of Bayaut. Amba.s.sadors were despatched to the Court of Kaan-baligh to seek such a bride. The message was courteously received, and the choice fell on the lady Kokachin, a maiden of 17, "_moult bele dame et avenant_." The overland road from Peking to Tabriz was not only of portentous length for such a tender charge, but was imperilled by war, so the envoys desired to return by sea.

Tartars in general were strangers to all navigation; and the envoys, much taken with the Venetians, and eager to profit by their experience, especially as Marco had just then returned from his Indian mission, begged the Kaan as a favour to send the three _Firinghis_ in their company. He consented with reluctance, but, having done so, fitted the party out n.o.bly for the voyage, charging the Polos with friendly messages for the potentates of Europe, including the King of England. They appear to have sailed from the port of Zayton (as the Westerns called T'swan-chau or Chin-cheu in Fo-kien) in the beginning of 1292. It was an ill-starred voyage, involving long detentions on the coast of Sumatra, and in the South of India, to which, however, we are indebted for some of the best chapters in the book; and two years or upwards pa.s.sed before they arrived at their destination in Persia.[19] The three hardy Venetians survived all perils, and so did the lady, who had come to look on them with filial regard; but two of the three envoys, and a vast proportion of the suite, had perished by the way.[20] Arghun Khan too had been dead even before they quitted China;[21] his brother Kaikhatu reigned in his stead; and his son Ghazan succeeded to the lady's hand. We are told by one who knew both the princes well that Arghun was one of the handsomest men of his time, whilst Ghazan was, among all his host, one of the most insignificant in appearance. But in other respects the lady's change was for the better.

Ghazan had some of the highest qualities of a soldier, a legislator and a king, adorned by many and varied accomplishments; though his reign was too short for the full development of his fame.

[Sidenote: They pa.s.s by Persia to Venice. Their relations there.]

22. The princess, whose enjoyment of her royalty was brief, wept as she took leave of the kindly and n.o.ble Venetians. They went on to Tabriz, and after a long halt there proceeded homewards, reaching Venice, according to all the texts some time in 1295.[22]

We have related Ramusio's interesting tradition, like a bit out of the Arabian Nights, of the reception that the Travellers met with from their relations, and of the means that they took to establish their position with those relations, and with Venetian society.[23] Of the relations, Marco the Elder had probably been long dead;[24] Maffeo the brother of our Marco was alive, and we hear also of a cousin (_consanguineus_) Felice Polo, and his wife Fiordelisa, without being able to fix their precise position in the family. We know also that Nicolo, who died before the end of the century, left behind him two illegitimate sons, Stefano and Zannino. It is not unlikely that these were born from some connection entered into during the long residence of the Polos in Cathay, though naturally their presence in the travelling company is not commemorated in Marco's Prologue.[25]

[1] _Zurla_, I. 42, quoting a MS. ent.i.tled _Petrus Ciera S. R. E. Card, de Origine Venetorum et de Civitate Venetiarum_. Cicogna says he could not find this MS. as it had been carried to England; and then breaks into a diatribe against foreigners who purchase and carry away such treasures, "not to make a serious study of them, but for mere vain-glory ... or in order to write books contradicting the very MSS.

that they have bought, and with that dishonesty and untruth which are so notorious!" (IV. 227.)

[2] _Campidoglio Veneto_ of Cappellari (MS. in St. Mark's Lib.), quoting "the Venetian Annals of Giulio Faroldi."

[3] The _Genealogies_ of Marco Barbaro specify 1033 as the year of the migration to Venice; on what authority does not appear (MS. copy in _Museo Civico_ at Venice).

[4] _Cappellari_, u.s., and _Barbaro_. In the same century we find (1125, 1195) indications of Polos at Torcello, and of others (1160) at Equileo, and (1179, 1206) Lido Maggiore; in 1154 a Marco Polo of Rialto. Contemporary with these is a family of Polos (1139, 1183, 1193, 1201) at Chioggia (_Doc.u.ments and Lists of Doc.u.ments from various Archives at_ Venice).

[5] See Appendix C, Nos. 4, 5, and 16. It was supposed that an autograph of Marco as member of the Great Council had been discovered, but this proves to be a mistake, as will be explained further on (see p. 74, note). In those days the demarcation between Patrician and non-Patrician at Venice, where all cla.s.ses shared in commerce, all were (generally speaking) of one race, and where there were neither castles, domains, nor trains of hors.e.m.e.n, formed no wide gulf. Still it is interesting to establish the verity of the old tradition of Marco's technical n.o.bility.

[6] Marco's seniority rests only on the a.s.sertion of Ramusio, who also calls Maffeo older than Nicolo. But in Marco the Elder's Will these two are always (3 times) specified as "_Nicolaus et Matheus_."

[7] This seems implied in the Elder Marco's Will (1280): "_Item de bonis quae me habere contingunt_ de fraterna Compagnia _a suprascriptis Nicolao et Matheo Paulo_," etc.

[8] In his Will he terms himself "Ego Marcus Polo quondam de Constantinopoli."

[9] There is no real ground for doubt as to this. All the extant MSS.

agree in making Marco fifteen years old when his father returned to Venice in 1269.

[10] Baldelli and Lazari say that the Bern MS. specifies 30th April; but this is a mistake.

[11] Pipino's version runs: "Invenit Dominus Nicolaus Paulus uxorem suam esse de functam, quae in recessu suo fuit praegnans. Invenitque filium, Marc.u.m nomine, qui jam annos xv. habebat aetatis, qui post discessum ipsius de Venetiis natus fuerat de uxore sua praefata." To this Ramusio adds the further particular that the mother died in giving birth to Mark.

The interpolation is older even than Pipino's version, for we find in the rude Latin published by the Societe de Geographie "quam c.u.m Venetiis primo recessit praegnantem dimiserat." But the statement is certainly an _interpolation_, for it does not exist in any of the older texts; nor have we any good reason for believing that it was an _authorised_ interpolation. I suspect it to have been introduced to harmonise with an erroneous date for the commencement of the travels of the two brothers.

Lazari prints: "Messer Nicol trov che la sua donna era morta, e n'era rimasto un fanciullo di _dodici_ anni per nome Marco, _che il padre non avea veduto mai, perche non era ancor nato quando egli part_." These words have no equivalent in the French Texts, but are taken from one of the Italian MSS. in the Magliabecchian Library, and are I suspect also interpolated. The _dodici_ is pure error (see p. 21 infra).

[12] The last view is in substance, I find, suggested by Cicogna (ii.

389).

The matter is of some interest, because in the Will of the younger Maffeo, which is extant, he makes a bequest to his uncle (_Avunculus_) Jordan Trevisan. This seems an indication that his mother's name may have been Trevisan. The same Maffeo had a daughter _Fiordelisa_. And Marco the Elder, in his Will (1280), appoints as his executors, during the absence of his brothers, the same Jordan Trevisan and his own sister-in-law _Fiordelisa_ ("Jordanum Trivisanum de confinio S.

Antonini: et Flordelisam cognatam meam"). Hence I conjecture that this _cognata Fiordelisa_ (Trevisan?) was the wife of the absent Nicolo, and the mother of Maffeo. In that case of course Maffeo and Marco were the sons of different mothers. With reference to the above suggestion of Nicolo's second marriage in 1269 there is a curious variation in a fragmentary Venetian Polo in the Barberini Library at Rome. It runs, in the pa.s.sage corresponding to the latter part of ch. ix. of Prologue: "i qual do fratelli steteno do anni in Veniezia aspettando la elletion de nuovo Papa, _nel qual tempo Mess. Nicolo si tolse moier et si la las graveda._" I believe, however, that it is only a careless misrendering of Pipino's statement about Marco's birth.

[13] [Major Sykes, in his remarkable book on _Persia_, ch. xxiii. pp.

262-263, does not share Sir Henry Yule's opinion regarding this itinerary, and he writes:

"To return to our travellers, who started on their second great journey in 1271, Sir Henry Yule, in his introduction,[A] makes them travel via Sivas to Mosul and Baghdad, and thence by sea to Hormuz, and this is the itinerary shown on his sketch map. This view I am unwilling to accept for more than one reason. In the first place, if, with Colonel Yule, we suppose that Ser Marco visited Baghdad, is it not unlikely that he should term the River Volga the Tigris,[B] and yet leave the river of Baghdad nameless? It may be urged that Marco believed the legend of the reappearance of the Volga in Kurdistan, but yet, if the text be read with care and the character of the traveller be taken into account, this error is scarcely explicable in any other way, than that he was never there.

"Again, he gives no description of the striking buildings of Baudas, as he terms it, but this is nothing to the inaccuracy of his supposed onward journey. To quote the text, 'A very great river flows through the city,... and merchants descend some eighteen days from Baudas, and then come to a certain city called Kisi,[C] where they enter the Sea of India.' Surely Marco, had he travelled down the Persian Gulf, would never have given this description of the route, which is so untrue as to point to the conclusion that it was vague information given by some merchant whom he met in the course of his wanderings.

"Finally, apart from the fact that Baghdad, since its fall, was rather off the main caravan route, Marco so evidently travels east from Yezd and thence south to Hormuz, that unless his journey be described backwards, which is highly improbable, it is only possible to arrive at one conclusion, namely, that the Venetians entered Persia near Tabriz, and travelled to Sultania, Kashan, and Yezd. Thence they proceeded to Kerman and Hormuz, where, probably fearing the sea voyage, owing to the manifest unseaworthiness of the s.h.i.+ps, which he describes as 'wretched affairs,' the Khorasan route was finally adopted. Hormuz, in this case, was not visited again until the return from China, when it seems probable that the same route was retraced to Tabriz, where their charge, the Lady Kokachin, 'moult bele dame et avenant,' was married to Ghazan Khan, the son of her fiance Arghun. It remains to add that Sir Henry Yule may have finally accepted this view in part, as in the plate showing _Probable View of Marco Polo's own Geography_,[D] the itinerary is not shown as running to Baghdad."

I may be allowed to answer that when Marco Polo _started_ for the East, Baghdad was not rather off the main caravan route. The fall of Baghdad was not immediately followed by its decay, and we have proof of its prosperity at the beginning of the 14th century. Tauris had not yet the importance it had reached when the Polos visited it on their _return_ journey. We have the will of the Venetian Pietro Viglioni, dated from Tauris, 10th December, 1264 (_Archiv. Veneto_, xxvi. 161- 165), which shows that he was but a pioneer. It was only under Arghun Khan (1284-1291) that Tauris became the great market for foreign, especially Genoese, merchants, as Marco Polo remarks on his return journey; with Ghazan and the new city built by that prince, Tauris reached a very high degree of prosperity, and was then really the chief emporium on the route from Europe to Persia and the far East.

Sir Henry Yule had not changed his views, and if in the plate showing _Probable View of Marco Polo's own Geography_, the itinerary is not shown as running to Baghdad, it is mere neglect on the part of the draughtsman.--H. C.]

[A] Page 19.

[B] _Vide Yule_, vol. i. p. 5. It is noticeable that John of Pian de Carpine, who travelled 1245 to 1247, names it correctly.

[C] The modern name is Keis, an island lying off Linga.

[D] Vol. i. p. 110 (Introduction).

[14] It is stated by Neumann that this most estimable traveller once intended to have devoted a special work to the elucidation of Marco's chapters on the Oxus Provinces, and it is much to be regretted that this intention was never fulfilled. Pamir has been explored more extensively and deliberately, whilst this book was going through the press, by Colonel Gordon, and other officers, detached from Sir Douglas Forsyth's Mission. [We have made use of the information given by these officers and by more recent travellers.--H. C.]

[15] Half a year earlier, if we suppose the three years and a half to count from Venice rather than Acre. But at that season (November) Kublai would not have been at Kai-ping fu (otherwise Shang-tu).

[16] _Pauthier_, p. ix., and p. 361.

[17] That this was Marco's first mission is positively stated in the Ramusian edition; and though this may be only an editor's gloss it seems well-founded. The French texts say only that the Great Kaan, "l'envoia en un message en une terre ou bien avoit vj. mois de chemin." The traveller's actual Itinerary affords to Vochan (Yung-ch'ang), on the frontier of Burma, 147 days' journey, which with halts might well be reckoned six months in round estimate. And we are enabled by various circ.u.mstances to fix the date of the Yun-nan journey between 1277 and 1280. The former limit is determined by Polo's account of the battle with the Burmese, near Vochan, which took place according to the Chinese Annals in 1277. The latter is fixed by his mention of Kublai's son, Mangalai, as governing at Kenjanfu (Si-ngan fu), a prince who died in 1280. (See vol. ii. pp. 24, 31, also 64, 80.)

[18] Excepting in the doubtful case of Kan-chau, where one reading says that the three Polos were there on business of their own not necessary to mention, and another, that only Maffeo and Marco were there, "_en legation_."

[19] Persian history seems to fix the arrival of the lady Kokachin in the North of Persia to the winter of 1293-1294. The voyage to Sumatra occupied three months (vol. i. p. 34); they were five months detained there (ii. 292); and the remainder of the voyage extended to eighteen more (i. 35),--twenty-six months in all.

The data are too slight for unexceptional precision, but the following adjustment will fairly meet the facts. Say that they sailed from Fo-kien in January 1292. In April they would be in Sumatra, and find the S.W. Monsoon too near to admit of their crossing the Bay of Bengal. They remain in port till September (five months), and then proceed, touching (perhaps) at Ceylon, at Kayal, and at several ports of Western India. In one of these, e.g. Kayal or Tana, they pa.s.s the S.W. Monsoon of 1293, and then proceed to the Gulf. They reach Hormuz in the winter, and the camp of the Persian Prince Ghazan, the son of Arghun, in March, twenty-six months from their departure.

I have been unable to trace Hammer's authority (not Wa.s.saf I find), which perhaps gives the precise date of the Lady's arrival in Persia (see infra, p. 38). From his narrative, however (_Gesch. der Ilchane_, ii. 20), March 1294 is perhaps too late a date. But the five months'

stoppage in Sumatra _must_ have been in the S.W. Monsoon; and if the arrival in Persia is put earlier, Polo's numbers can scarcely be held to. Or, the eighteen months mentioned at vol. i. p. 35, must _include_ the five months' stoppage. We may then suppose that they reached Hormuz about November 1293, and Ghazan's camp a month or two later.