"At the Straits leading into the Great Sea, on the West Side, there is a
hill called the Faro. - But since beginning on this matter I have changed
my mind, because so many people know all about it, so we will not put it
in our description but go on to something else." (See vol. ii. p. 487
seqq.)
And so on.
As a specimen of tautology and hammering reiteration the following can
scarcely be surpassed. The Traveller is speaking of the Chughi, i.e. the
Indian Jogis: -
"And there are among them certain devotees, called Chughi; these are
longer-lived than the other people, for they live from 150 to 200 years;
and yet they are so hale of body that they can go and come wheresoever
they please, and do all the service needed for their monastery or their
idols, and do it just as well as if they were younger; and that comes of
the great abstinence that they practise, in eating little food and only
what is wholesome; for they use to eat rice and milk more than anything
else. And again I tell you that these Chughi who live such a long time
as I have told you, do also eat what I am going to tell you, and you
will think it a great matter. For I tell you that they take quicksilver
and sulphur, and mix them together, and make a drink of them, and then
they drink this, and they say that it adds to their life; and in fact
they do live much longer for it; and I tell you that they do this twice
every month. And let me tell you that these people use this drink from
their infancy in order to live longer, and without fail those who live
so long as I have told you use this drink of sulphur and quicksilver."
(See G. T. p. 213.)
Such talk as this does not survive the solvent of translation; and we may
be certain that we have here the nearest approach to the Traveller's
reminiscences as they were taken down from his lips in the prison of
Genoa.
[Sidenote: Conclusive proof that the Old French Text is the source of all
the others.]
53. Another circumstance, heretofore I believe unnoticed, is in itself
enough to demonstrate the Geographic Text to be the source of all other
versions of the Work. It is this.
In reviewing the various classes or types of texts of Polo's Book, which
we shall hereafter attempt to discriminate, there are certain proper names
which we find in the different texts to take very different forms, each
class adhering in the main to one particular form.
Thus the names of the Mongol ladies introduced at pp.
