In His Report To The Foreign Office, Alluding To Marco Polo's
Account, He Says:
"It is still true that wild asses and other game are
found in the wooded spots on the road." The ass is the Asinus Onager,
the Gor Khar of Persia, or Kulan of the Tartars.
(Khan. Mem. p. 200;
Id. sur Marco Polo, p. 21; J. R. G. S. XXV. 20-29; Mr. Abbott's MS.
Report in Foreign office.) [The difficulty has now been explained by
General Houtum-Schindler in a valuable paper published in the Jour. Roy.
As. Soc. N.S. XIII., October, 1881, p. 490. He says: "Marco Polo
travelled from Yazd to Kerman via Bafk. His description of the road, seven
days over great plains, harbour at three places only, is perfectly exact.
The fine woods, producing dates, are at Bafk itself. (The place is
generally called Baft.) Partridges and quails still abound; wild asses I
saw several on the western road, and I was told that there were a great
many on the Bafk road. Travellers and caravans now always go by the
eastern road via Anar and Bahramabad. Before the Sefaviehs (i.e. before
A.D. 1500) the Anar road was hardly, if ever, used; travellers always took
the Bafk road. The country from Yazd to Anar, 97 miles, seems to have been
totally uninhabited before the Sefaviehs. Anar, as late as A.D. 1340, is
mentioned as the frontier place of Kerman to the north, on the confines of
the Yazd desert.
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