Marco Polo Cannot Have Taken The Direct Road To Kubenan, As It Took
Him Seven Days To Reach It.
As he speaks of waterless deserts, he probably
took a circuitous route to the east of the mountains, via Kuhpayeh and
the desert lying to the north of Khabis." (Houtum-Schindler, l.c. pp.
496-497.) (Cf.
Major Sykes, ch. xxiii.) - H. C.]
NOTE 2. - This description of the Desert of Kerman, says Mr. Khanikoff, "is
very correct. As the only place in the Desert of Lut where water is found
is the dirty, salt, bitter, and green water of the rivulet called
Shor-Rud (the Salt River), we can have no doubt of the direction of Marco
Polo's route from Kerman so far." Nevertheless I do not agree with
Khanikoff that the route lay N.E. in the direction of Ambar and Kain, for a
reason which will appear under the next chapter. I imagine the route to
have been nearly due north from Kerman, in the direction of Tabbas or of
Tun. And even such a route would, according to Khanikoff's own map, pass
the Shor-Rud, though at a higher point.
I extract a few lines from that gentleman's narrative: "In proportion as
we got deeper into the desert, the soil became more and more arid; at
daybreak I could still discover a few withered plants of Caligonum and
Salsola, and not far from the same spot I saw a lark and another bird of
a whitish colour, the last living things that we beheld in this dismal
solitude.... The desert had now completely assumed the character of a land
accursed, as the natives call it. Not the smallest blade of grass, no
indication of animal life vivified the prospect; no sound but such as came
from our own caravan broke the dreary silence of the void." (Mem. p.
176.)
[Major P. Molesworth Sykes (Geog. Jour. X. p. 578) writes: "At Tun, I
was on the northern edge of the great Dash-i-Lut (Naked Desert), which lay
between us and Kerman, and which had not been traversed, in this
particular portion, since the illustrious Marco Polo crossed it, in the
opposite direction, when travelling from Kerman to 'Tonocain' via
Cobinan." Major Sykes (Persia, ch. iii.) seems to prove that geographers
have, without sufficient grounds, divided the great desert of Persia into
two regions, that to the north being termed Dasht-i-Kavir, and that
further south the Dasht-i-Lut - and that Lut is the one name for the whole
desert, Dash-i-Lut being almost a redundancy, and that Kavir (the arabic
Kafr) is applied to every saline swamp. "This great desert stretches
from a few miles out of Tehran practically to the British frontier, a
distance of about 700 miles." - H. C.]
NOTE 3. - I can have no doubt of the genuineness of this passage from
Ramusio. Indeed some such passage is necessary; otherwise why distinguish
between three days of desert and four days more of desert?
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