This In The G. T.
And In Ramusio Is Clearly Six Days.
The point of departure is indeed
uncertain, but even if we were to place that at Sharakhs on the extreme
verge of cultivated Khorasan, which would be quite inconsistent with other
data, it would have taken the travellers something like double the time to
reach Shibrgan.
Where I have followed the G. T. in its reading "quant
l'en a chevauches six jornee tel che je vos ai contes, adunc treuve l'en
une cite," etc., Pauthier's text has "Et quant l'en a chevauchie les vi
cites, si treuve l'en une cite qui a nom Sapurgan," and to this that
editor adheres. But I suspect that cites is a mere lapsus for journees
as in the reading in one of his three MSS. What could be meant by
"chevauchier les vi cites"?
Whether the true route be, as I suppose, by Nishapur and Meshid, or, as
Khanikoff supposes, by Herat and Badghis, it is strange that no one of
those famous cities is mentioned. And we feel constrained to assume that
something has been misunderstood in the dictation, or has dropt out of it.
As a probable conjecture I should apply the six days to the extent of
pleasing country described in the first lines of the chapter, and identify
it with the tract between Sabzawur and the cessation of fertile country
beyond Meshid. The distance would agree well, and a comparison with Fraser
or Ferrier will show that even now the description, allowing for the
compression of an old recollection, would be well founded; e.g. on the
first march beyond Nishapur: "Fine villages, with plentiful gardens full
of trees, that bear fruit of the highest flavour, may be seen all along
the foot of the hills, and in the little recesses formed by the ravines
whence issues the water that irrigates them. It was a rich and pleasing
scene, and out of question by far the most populous and cultivated tract
that I had seen in Persia.... Next morning we quitted Derrood ... by a
very indifferent but interesting road, the glen being finely wooded with
walnut, mulberry, poplar, and willow-trees, and fruit-tree gardens rising
one above the other upon the mountain-side, watered by little rills....
These gardens extended for several miles up the glen; beyond them the bank
of the stream continued to be fringed with white sycamore, willow, ash,
mulberry, poplar, and woods that love a moist situation," and so on,
describing a style of scenery not common in Persia, and expressing
diffusely (as it seems to me) the same picture as Polo's two lines. In the
valley of Nishapur, again (we quote Arthur Conolly): "'This is Persia!'
was the vain exclamation of those who were alive to the beauty of the
scene; 'this is Persia!' Bah! Bah! What grass, what grain, what water!
Bah! Bah!
['If there be a Paradise on the face of the Earth,
This is it! This is it!
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