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shown on his sketch map. This view I am unwilling to accept for more than one reason. In the first place, if, with Colonel Yule, we suppose that Ser Marco visited Baghdad, is it not unlikely that he should term the River Volga the Tigris,[B] and yet leave the river of Baghdad nameless? It may be urged 68 that Marco believed the legend of the reappearance of the Volga in Kurdistan, but yet, if the text be read with care and the character of the traveller be taken into account, this error is scarcely explicable in any other way, than that he was never there. "Again, he gives no description of the striking buildings of Baudas, as he terms it, but this is nothing to the inaccuracy of his supposed onward journey. To quote the text, 'A very great river flows through the city,... and merchants descend some eighteen days from Baudas, and then come to a certain city called Kisi,[C] where they enter the Sea of India.' Surely Marco, had he travelled down the Persian Gulf, would never have given this description of the route, which is so untrue as to point to the conclusion that it was vague information given by some merchant whom he met in the course of his wanderings. "Finally, apart from the fact that Baghdad, since its fall, was rather off the main caravan route, Marco so evidently travels east from Yezd and thence south to Hormuz, that unless his journey be described backwards, which is highly improbable, it is only possible to arrive at one conclusion, namely, that the Venetians entered Persia near Tabriz, and travelled to Sultania, Kashan, and Yezd. Thence they proceeded to Kerman and Hormuz, where, probably fearing the sea voyage, owing to the manifest unseaworthiness of the ships, which he describes as 'wretched affairs,' the Khorasan route was finally adopted. Hormuz, in this case, was not visited again until the return from China, when it seems probable that the same route was retraced to Tabriz, where their charge, the Lady Kokachin, 'moult bele dame et avenant,' was married to Ghazan Khan, the son of her fiance Arghun. It remains to add that Sir Henry Yule may have finally accepted this view in part, as in the plate showing Probable View of Marco Polo's own Geography,[D] the itinerary is not shown as running to Baghdad." I may be allowed to answer that when Marco Polo started for the East, Baghdad was not rather off the main caravan route. The fall of Baghdad was not immediately followed by its decay, and we have proof of its prosperity at the beginning of the 14th century. Tauris had not yet the importance it had reached when the Polos visited it on their return journey. We have the will of the Venetian Pietro Viglioni, dated from Tauris, 10th December, 1264 (Archiv. Veneto, xxvi. 161-165), which shows that he was but a pioneer. It was only under Arghun Khan (1284-1291) that Tauris became the great market for foreign, especially Genoese, merchants, as Marco Polo remarks on his return journey; with Ghazan and the new city built by that prince, Tauris reached a very high degree of prosperity, and was then really the chief emporium on the route from Europe to Persia and the far East. Sir Henry Yule had not changed his views, and if in the plate showing Probable View of Marco Polo's own Geography, the itinerary is not shown as running to Baghdad, it is mere neglect on the part of the draughtsman.--H. C.] [A] Page 19. [B] Vide Yule, vol. i. p. 5. It is noticeable that John of Pian de Carpine, who travelled 1245 to 1247, names it correctly. [C] The modern name is Keis, an island lying off Linga. [D] Vol. i. p. 110 (Introduction). [14] It is stated by Neumann that this most estimable traveller once intended to have devoted a special work to the elucidation of Marco's chapters on the Oxus Provinces, and it is much to be regretted that this intention was never fulfilled. Pamir has been explored more extensively and deliberately, whilst this book was going through the press, by Colonel Gordon, and other officers, detached from Sir Douglas Forsyth's Mission. [We have made use of the information given by these officers and by more recent travellers.--H. C.] [15] Half a year earlier, if we suppose the three years and a half to count from Venice rather than Acre. But at that season (November) Kublai would not have been at Kaiping fu (otherwise Shangtu). [16] Pauthier, p. ix., and p. 361. [17] That this was Marco's first mission is positively stated in the Ramusian edition; and though this may be only an editor's gloss it seems well-founded. The French texts say only that the Great Kaan, "l'envoia en un message en une terre ou bien avoit vj. mois de chemin." The traveller's actual Itinerary affords to Vochan (Yung-ch'ang), on the frontier of Burma, 147 days' journey, which with halts might well be reckoned six months in round estimate. And we are enabled by various circumstances to fix the date of the Yun-nan journey between 1277 and 1280. The former limit is determined by Polo's account of the battle with the Burmese, near Vochan, which took place according to the Chinese Annals in 1277. The latter is fixed by his mention of Kublai's son, Mangalai, as governing at Kenjanfu (Si-ngan fu), a prince who died in 1280. (See vol. ii. pp. 24, 31, also 64, 80.) [18] Excepting in the doubtful case of Kanchau, where one reading says that the three Polos were there on business of their own not necessary to mention, and another, that only Maffeo and Marco were there, "en legation." 69 [19] Persian history seems to fix the arrival of the lady Kokachin in the North of Persia to the winter of 1293-1294. The voyage to Sumatra occupied three months (vol. i. p. 34); they were five months detained there (ii. 292); and the remainder of the voyage extended to eighteen more (i. 35),--twenty-six months in all. The data are too slight for unexceptional precision, but the following adjustment will fairly meet the facts. Say that they sailed from Fo-kien in January 1292. In April they would be in Sumatra, and find the S.W. Monsoon too near to admit of their crossing the Bay of Bengal. They remain in port till September (five months), and then proceed, touching (perhaps) at Ceylon, at Kayal, and at several ports of Western India. In one of these, e.g. Kayal or Tana, they pass the S.W. Monsoon of 1293, and then proceed to the Gulf. They reach Hormuz in the winter, and the camp of the Persian Prince Ghazan, the son of Arghun, in March, twenty-six months from their departure. I have been unable to trace Hammer's authority (not Wassaf I find), which perhaps gives the precise date of the Lady's arrival in Persia (see infra, p. 38). From his narrative, however (Gesch. der Ilchane, ii. 20), March 1294 is perhaps too late a date. But the five months' stoppage in Sumatra must have been in the S.W. Monsoon; and if the arrival in Persia is put earlier, Polo's numbers can scarcely be held to. Or, the eighteen months mentioned at vol. i. p. 35, must include the five months' stoppage. We may then suppose that they reached Hormuz about November 1293, and Ghazan's camp a month or two later. [20] The French text which forms the basis of my translation says that, excluding mariners, there were 600 souls, out of whom only 8 survived. The older MS. which I quote as G. T., makes the number 18, a fact that I had overlooked till the sheets were printed off. [21] Died 12th March, 1291. [22] All dates are found so corrupt that even in this one I do not feel absolute confidence. Marco in dictating the book is aware that Ghazan had attained the throne of Persia (see vol. i. p. 36, and ii. pp. 50 and 477), an event which did not occur till October, 1295. The date assigned to it, however, by Marco (ii. 477) is 1294, or the year before that assigned to the return home. The travellers may have stopped some time at Constantinople on their way, or even may have visited the northern shores of the Black Sea; otherwise, indeed, how did Marco acquire his knowledge of that Sea (ii. 486-488) and of events in Kipchak (ii. 496 seqq.)? If 1296 was the date of return, moreover, the six-and-twenty years assigned in the preamble as the period of Marco's absence (p. 2) would be nearer accuracy. For he left Venice in the spring or summer of 1271. [23] Marco Barbaro, in his account of the Polo family, tells what seems to be the same tradition in a different and more mythical version:-- "From ear to ear the story has past till it reached mine, that when the three Kinsmen arrived at their home they were dressed in the most shabby and sordid manner, insomuch that the wife of one of them gave away to a beggar that came to the door one of those garments of his, all torn, patched, and dirty as it was. The next day he asked his wife for that mantle of his, in order to put away the jewels that were sewn up in it; but she told him she had given it away to a poor man, whom she did not know. Now, the stratagem he employed to recover it was this. He went to the Bridge of Rialto, and stood there turning a wheel, to no apparent purpose, but as if he were a madman, and to all those who crowded round to see what prank was this, and asked him why he did it, he answered: 'He'll come if God pleases.' So after two or three days he recognised his old coat on the back of one of those who came to stare at his mad proceedings, and got it back again. Then, indeed, he was judged to be quite the reverse of a madman! And from those jewels he built in the contrada of S. Giovanni Grisostomo a very fine palace for those days; and the family got among the vulgar the name of the Ca' Million, because the report was that they had jewels to the value of a million of ducats; and the palace has kept that name to the present day--viz., 1566." (Genealogies, MS. copy in Museo Civico; quoted also by Baldelli Boni, Vita, p. xxxi.) [24] The Will of the Elder Marco, to which we have several times referred, is dated at Rialto 5th August, 1280. The testator describes himself as formerly of Constantinople,
