I conceive, then, that Cape Comorin (Comari) was the first Indian land
made by the fleet on the homeward voyage, and that Hili, Tana, Cambay,
Somnath, were touched at successively as it proceeded towards Persia.
I conceive that in a former voyage to India on the Great Kaan's business
Marco had visited Maabar and Kaulam, and gained partly from actual visits
and partly from information the substance of the notices he gives us of
Telingana and St Thomas's on the one side and of Malabar and Guzerat on
the other, and that in combining into one series the results of the
information acquired on two different voyages he failed rightly to
co-ordinate the material, and thus those dislocations which we have noticed
occurred, as they very easily might, in days when maps had practically no
existence; to say nothing of the accidents of dictation.
The expression in this passage for "the cities that lie in the interior,"
is in the G.T. "celz qe sunt en fra terres"; see I. 43. Pauthier's text
has "celles qui sont en ferme terre," which is nonsense here.
[1] Abulfeda's orientation is the same as Polo's.
CHAPTER XXXI.
DISCOURSETH OF THE TWO ISLANDS CALLED MALE AND FEMALE, AND WHY THEY ARE SO
CALLED.
When you leave this kingdom of Kesmacoran, which is on the mainland, you
go by sea some 500 miles towards the south; and then you find the two
Islands, MALE and FEMALE, lying about 30 miles distant from one another.
The people are all baptized Christians, but maintain the ordinances of the
Old Testament; thus when their wives are with child they never go near
them till their confinement, or for forty days thereafter.
