"Devers la
tramontane en a il i. autre (vent) plus debonaire, qui a non Chorus.
Cestui apelent li marinier MAISTRE por vij. estoiles qui sont en celui
meisme leu," etc. (Li Tresors, p. 122). Magister or Magistra in
mediaeval Latin, La Maistre in old French, signifies "the beam of a
plough." Possibly this accounts for the application of Maistre to the
Great Bear, or Plough. But on the other hand the pilot's art is called in
old French maistrance. Hence this constellation may have had the name as
the pilot's guide, - like our Lode-star. The name was probably given to
the N.W. point under a latitude in which the Great Bear sets in that
quarter. In this way many of the points of the old Arabian Rose des Vents
were named from the rising or setting of certain constellations. (See
Reinaud's Abulfeda, Introd. pp. cxcix.-cci.)
NOTE 3. - The tree here intended, and which gives the chief supply of toddy
and sugar in the Malay Islands, is the Areng Saccharifera (from the
Javanese name), called by the Malays Gomuti, and by the Portuguese
Saguer. It has some resemblance to the date-palm, to which Polo compares
it, but it is a much coarser and wilder-looking tree, with a general
raggedness, "incompta et adspectu tristis," as Rumphius describes it. It
is notable for the number of plants that find a footing in the joints of
its stem. On one tree in Java I have counted thirteen species of such
parasites, nearly all ferns. The tree appears in the foreground of the cut
at p. 273.
Crawford thus describes its treatment in obtaining toddy: "One of the
spathae, or shoots of fructification, is, on the first appearance of the
fruit, beaten for three successive days with a small stick, with the view
of determining the sap to the wounded part. The shoot is then cut off, a
little way from the root, and the liquor which pours out is received in
pots.... The Gomuti palm is fit to yield toddy at 9 or 10 years old, and
continues to yield it for 2 years at the average rate of 3 quarts a day."
(Hist. of Ind. Arch. I. 398.)
The words omitted in translation are unintelligible to me: "et sunt
quatre raimes trois cel en." (G.T.)
["Polo's description of the wine-pots of Samara hung on the trees 'like
date-palms,' agrees precisely with the Chinese account of the shu theu
tsiu made from 'coir trees like cocoa-nut palms' manufactured by the
Burmese. Therefore it seems more likely that Samara is Siam (still
pronounced Shumuro in Japan, and Siamlo in Hakka), than Sumatra."
(Parker, China Review, XIV. p. 359.) I think it useless to discuss
this theory. - H.C.]
NOTE 4. - No one has been able to identify this state. Its position,
however, must have been near PEDIR, and perhaps it was practically the
same.
