The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Marco Polo and da Pisa Rusticiano
22. The princess, whose enjoyment of her royalty was brief, wept as she
2439 words | Chapter 125
took leave of the kindly and noble Venetians. They went on to Tabriz,
and after a long halt there proceeded homewards, reaching Venice,
according to all the texts some time in 1295.[22]
We have related Ramusio’s interesting tradition, like a bit out of the
Arabian Nights, of the reception that the Travellers met with from
their relations, and of the means that they took to establish their
position with those relations, and with Venetian society.[23] Of the
relations, Marco the Elder had probably been long dead;[24] Maffeo
the brother of our Marco was alive, and we hear also of a cousin
(_consanguineus_) Felice Polo, and his wife Fiordelisa, without being
able to fix their precise position in the family. We know also that
Nicolo, who died before the end of the century, left behind him two
illegitimate sons, Stefano and Zannino. It is not unlikely that these
were born from some connection entered into during the long residence
of the Polos in Cathay, though naturally their presence in the
travelling company is not commemorated in Marco’s Prologue.[25]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] _Zurla_, I. 42, quoting a MS. entitled _Petrus Ciera S. R. E. Card,
de Origine Venetorum et de Civitate Venetiarum_. Cicogna says he
could not find this MS. as it had been carried to England; and then
breaks into a diatribe against foreigners who purchase and carry
away such treasures, “not to make a serious study of them, but
for mere vain-glory ... or in order to write books contradicting
the very MSS. that they have bought, and with that dishonesty and
untruth which are so notorious!” (IV. 227.)
[2] _Campidoglio Veneto_ of Cappellari (MS. in St. Mark’s Lib.),
quoting “the Venetian Annals of Giulio Faroldi.”
[3] The _Genealogies_ of Marco Barbaro specify 1033 as the year of the
migration to Venice; on what authority does not appear (MS. copy in
_Museo Civico_ at Venice).
[4] _Cappellari_, u.s., and _Barbaro_. In the same century we find
(1125, 1195) indications of Polos at Torcello, and of others (1160)
at Equileo, and (1179, 1206) Lido Maggiore; in 1154 a Marco Polo of
Rialto. Contemporary with these is a family of Polos (1139, 1183,
1193, 1201) at Chioggia (_Documents and Lists of Documents from
various Archives at_ Venice).
[5] See Appendix C, Nos. 4, 5, and 16. It was supposed that an
autograph of Marco as member of the Great Council had been
discovered, but this proves to be a mistake, as will be explained
further on (see p. _74_, note). In those days the demarcation
between Patrician and non-Patrician at Venice, where all classes
shared in commerce, all were (generally speaking) of one race, and
where there were neither castles, domains, nor trains of horsemen,
formed no wide gulf. Still it is interesting to establish the
verity of the old tradition of Marco’s technical nobility.
[6] Marco’s seniority rests only on the assertion of Ramusio, who also
calls Maffeo older than Nicolo. But in Marco the Elder’s Will these
two are always (3 times) specified as “_Nicolaus et Matheus_.”
[7] This seems implied in the Elder Marco’s Will (1280): “_Item
de bonis quæ me habere contingunt_ de fraternâ Compagniâ _a
suprascriptis Nicolao et Matheo Paulo_,” etc.
[8] In his Will he terms himself “Ego Marcus Polo quondam de
Constantinopoli.”
[9] There is no real ground for doubt as to this. All the extant MSS.
agree in making Marco fifteen years old when his father returned to
Venice in 1269.
[10] Baldelli and Lazari say that the Bern MS. specifies 30th April;
but this is a mistake.
[11] Pipino’s version runs: “Invenit Dominus Nicolaus Paulus uxorem
suam esse defunctam, quae in recessu suo fuit praegnans.
Invenitque filium, Marcum nomine, qui jam annos xv. habebat
aetatis, qui post discessum ipsius de Venetiis natus fuerat de
uxore sua praefatâ.” To this Ramusio adds the further particular
that the mother died in giving birth to Mark.
The interpolation is older even than Pipino’s version, for we find
in the rude Latin published by the Société de Géographie “quam cum
Venetiis primo recessit praegnantem dimiserat.” But the statement
is certainly an _interpolation_, for it does not exist in any of
the older texts; nor have we any good reason for believing that
it was an _authorised_ interpolation. I suspect it to have been
introduced to harmonise with an erroneous date for the commencement
of the travels of the two brothers.
Lazari prints: “Messer Nicolò trovò che la sua donna era morta, e
n’era rimasto un fanciullo di _dodici_ anni per nome Marco, _che
il padre non avea veduto mai, perchè non era ancor nato quando
egli partì_.” These words have no equivalent in the French Texts,
but are taken from one of the Italian MSS. in the Magliabecchian
Library, and are I suspect also interpolated. The _dodici_ is pure
error (see p. 21 _infra_).
[12] The last view is in substance, I find, suggested by Cicogna (ii.
389).
The matter is of some interest, because in the Will of the
younger Maffeo, which is extant, he makes a bequest to his uncle
(_Avunculus_) Jordan Trevisan. This seems an indication that
his mother’s name may have been Trevisan. The same Maffeo had a
daughter _Fiordelisa_. And Marco the Elder, in his Will (1280),
appoints as his executors, during the absence of his brothers,
the same Jordan Trevisan and his own sister-in-law _Fiordelisa_
(“Jordanum Trivisanum de confinio S. Antonini: et Flordelisam
cognatam meam”). Hence I conjecture that this _cognata Fiordelisa_
(Trevisan?) was the wife of the absent Nicolo, and the mother of
Maffeo. In that case of course Maffeo and Marco were the sons
of different mothers. With reference to the above suggestion of
Nicolo’s second marriage in 1269 there is a curious variation in
a fragmentary Venetian Polo in the Barberini Library at Rome.
It runs, in the passage corresponding to the latter part of ch.
ix. of Prologue: “i qual do fratelli steteno do anni in Veniezia
aspettando la elletion de nuovo Papa, _nel qual tempo Mess. Nicolo
si tolse moier et si la lasò graveda._” I believe, however, that it
is only a careless misrendering of Pipino’s statement about Marco’s
birth.
[13] [Major Sykes, in his remarkable book on _Persia_, ch. xxiii. pp.
262–263, does not share Sir Henry Yule’s opinion regarding this
itinerary, and he writes:
“To return to our travellers, who started on their second great
journey in 1271, Sir Henry Yule, in his introduction,[A] makes
them travel _viâ_ Sivas to Mosul and Baghdád, and thence by sea
to Hormuz, and this is the itinerary 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 Baghdád, is it not unlikely that he should term the River
Volga the Tigris,[B] and yet leave the river of Baghdád nameless?
It may be urged that Marco believed the legend of the reappearance
of the Volga in Kurdistán, 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 Baghdád, 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, Kashán, and
Yezd. Thence they proceeded to Kermán and Hormuz, where, probably
fearing the sea voyage, owing to the manifest unseaworthiness of
the ships, which he describes as ‘wretched affairs,’ the Khorasán
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 Gházan
Khán, the son of her fiancé 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 Baghdád.”
I may be allowed to answer that when Marco Polo _started_ for the
East, Baghdád was not rather off the main caravan route. The fall
of Baghdád 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 Arghún Khan (1284–1291) that Tauris
became the great market for foreign, especially Genoese, merchants,
as Marco Polo remarks on his return journey; with Gházán 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 Baghdád, 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)
Kúblái would not have been at Kai-ping fu (otherwise Shang-tu).
[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 Kúblái’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 Kan-chau, 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 légation_.”
[19] Persian history seems to fix the arrival of the lady Kokáchin
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 Gházán, the son of Arghún, in March,
twenty-six months from their departure.
I have been unable to trace Hammer’s authority (not Wassáf 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
Gházán’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
Gházán 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,
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