I. cap. 3; Bartoli, H. della Comp. di Gesu, Asia, I. p. 37; P.
Vincenzo, p. 443.)
The story was, I imagine, a mere ramification of the ancient and
wide-spread fable of the Amazons, and is substantially the same that
Palladius tells of the Brahmans; how the men lived on one side of the
Ganges and the women on the other. The husbands visited their wives for 40
days only in June, July, and August, "those being their cold months, as the
sun was then to the north." And when a wife had once borne a child the
husband returned no more. (Mueller's Ps. Callisth. 105.) The Mahabharata
celebrates the Amazon country of Rana Paramita, where the regulations were
much as in Polo's islands, only male children were put to death, and men if
they overstayed a month. (Wheelers India, I. 400.)
Hiuen Tsang's version of the legend agrees with Marco's in placing the
Woman's Island to the south of Persia. It was called the Kingdom of
Western Women. There were none but women to be seen. It was under Folin
(the Byzantine Empire), and the ruler thereof sent husbands every year; if
boys were born, the law prohibited their being brought up. (Vie et
Voyages, p. 268.) Alexander, in Ferdusi's poem, visits the City of Women
on an island in the sea, where no man was allowed.
The Chinese accounts, dating from the 5th century, of a remote Eastern
Land called Fusang, which Neumann fancied to have been Mexico, mention
that to the east of that region again there was a Woman's Island, with the
usual particulars. (Lassen, IV. 751.) [Cf. G. Schlegel, Niu Kouo,
T'oung Pao, III. pp. 495-510. - H.C.] Oddly enough, Columbus heard the
same story of an island called Matityna or Matinino (apparently
Martinique) which he sighted on his second voyage. The Indians on board
"asserted that it had no inhabitants but women, who at a certain time of
the year were visited by the Cannibals (Caribs); if the children born were
boys they were brought up and sent to their fathers, if girls they were
retained by the mothers. They reported also that these women had certain
subterranean caverns in which they took refuge if any one went thither
except at the established season," etc. (P. Martyr in Ramusio, III. 3
v. and see 85.) Similar Amazons are placed by Adam of Bremen on the Baltic
Shores, a story there supposed to have originated in a confusion between
Gwenland, i.e. Finland, and a land of Cwens or Women.
Mendoza heard of the like in the vicinity of Japan (perhaps the real
Fusang story), though he opines judiciously that "this is very doubtful
to be beleeved, although I have bin certified by religious men that have
talked with persons that within these two yeares have beene at the saide
ilands, and have seene the saide women." (H. of China, II. 301.) Lane
quotes a like tale about a horde of Cossacks whose wives were said to live
apart on certain islands in the Dnieper. (Arab. Nights, 1859, III. 479.)
The same story is related by a missionary in the Lettres Edifiantes of
certain unknown islands supposed to lie south of the Marian group.
Pauthier, from whom I derive this last instance, draws the conclusion: "On
voit que le recit de Marc Pol est loin d'etre imaginaire." Mine from the
premises would be different!
Sometimes the fable took another form; in which the women are entirely
isolated, as in that which Mela quotes from Hanno (III. 9). So with the
Isle of Women which Kazwini and Bakui place to the South of China. They
became enceinte by the Wind, or by eating a particular fruit [or by
plunging into the sea; cf. Schlegel, l.c. - H.C.], or, as in a Chinese
tradition related by Magaillans, by looking at their own faces in a well!
The like fable is localised by the Malays in the island of Engano off
Sumatra, and was related to Pigafetta of an island under Great Java called
Ocoloro, perhaps the same.
(Magail. 76; Gildem. 196; N. et Ex. II. 398; Pigafetta, 173;
Marsden's Sumatra, 1st ed. p. 264.)
CHAPTER XXXII.
CONCERNING THE ISLAND OF SCOTRA.
When you leave those two Islands and go about 500 miles further towards
the south, then you come to an Island called SCOTRA. The people are all
baptized Christians; and they have an Archbishop. They have a great deal
of ambergris; and plenty also of cotton stuffs and other merchandize;
especially great quantities of salt fish of a large and excellent kind.
They also eat flesh and milk and rice, for that is their only kind of
corn; and they all go naked like the other Indians.
[The ambergris comes from the stomach of the whale, and as it is a great
object of trade, the people contrive to take the whales with barbed iron
darts, which, once they are fixed in the body, cannot come out again. A
long cord is attached to this end, to that a small buoy which floats on
the surface, so that when the whale dies they know where to find it. They
then draw the body ashore and extract the ambergris from the stomach and
the oil from the head.[NOTE 1]]
There is a great deal of trade there, for many ships come from all
quarters with goods to sell to the natives. The merchants also purchase
gold there, by which they make a great profit; and all the vessels bound
for Aden touch at this Island.
Their Archbishop has nothing to do with the Pope of Rome, but is subject
to the great Archbishop who lives at Baudas. He rules over the Bishop of
that Island, and over many other Bishops in those regions of the world,
just as our Pope does in these.[NOTE 2]
A multitude of corsairs frequent the Island; they come there and encamp
and put up their plunder to sale; and this they do to good profit, for the
Christians of the Island purchase it, knowing well that it is Saracen or
Pagan gear.[NOTE 3]
