The Travels of Marco Polo Volume I Part 37

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 alia 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 qua nascitur magna quant.i.tas 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 gula_; et est hic fertilis contracta." (See i. p. 187.)

5. In the Desert of Lop:

"_Homines tra.s.seuntes appendunt bestiis suis capanullas_ [i.e.

campanellas] _ut ipsas senciant et ne deviare possint_" (i. p. 197.)

6. "Ciagannor, _quod sonat in Latino STAGNUM ALb.u.m_." (i. p. 296.)

7. "Et in medio hujus viridarii est palacium sive logia, _tota super columpnas. Et in summitate cujuslibet columnae est draco magnus circundans totam columpnam, et hic substinet eorum cohoperturam c.u.m 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 pa.s.sage 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 mediaeval travellers.]

66. That Marco Polo has been so universally recognised as the King of Mediaeval Travellers is due rather to the width of his experience, the vast compa.s.s 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 wors.h.i.+p; of_ TIBET _with its sordid devotees; of_ BURMA _with its golden paG.o.das and their tinkling crowns; of_ LAOS, _of_ SIAM, _of_ COCHIN CHINA, _of_ j.a.pAN, _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 mediaeval 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, la ou il a moult beaus herbages et bonne pasture et fruis a.s.sez.... 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]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PROBABLE VIEW OF MARCO POLO'S OWN GEOGRAPHY]

Of humour there are hardly any signs in his Book. His almost solitary joke (I know but one more, and it pertains to the [Greek: ouk anaekonta]) occurs in speaking of the Kaan's paper-money when he observes that Kublai 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 ill.u.s.trated 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]

[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 circ.u.mstance," tells us boldly that he was in 33 of South Lat.i.tude; 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 Lat.i.tude 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 alt.i.tude, 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 pa.s.sage 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sociations 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 relation s.h.i.+p 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 Kublai. 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 p.r.o.nounced, 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 pa.s.sing under the pen of a professed litterateur 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 a.s.sistance 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 Graeco-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 Ch.o.r.ene, 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.