"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 quantitas 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 trasseuntes appendunt bestiis suis capanullas [i.e.
campanellas] ut ipsas senciant et ne deviare possint" (i. p. 197.)
6. "Ciagannor, quod sonat in Latino STAGNUM ALBUM." (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 cum
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 passage 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 compass 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
worship; of TIBET with its sordid devotees; of BURMA with its golden
pagodas and their tinkling crowns; of LAOS, of SIAM, of COCHIN CHINA,
of JAPAN, 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.
