The Travels of Marco Polo Volume II Part 9

Now I have told you in brief all that is to be said about Tebet, and so we will leave it, and tell you about another province that is called Caindu.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Village of Eastern Tibet on Szechwan Frontier (From Cooper)]

As regards Tebet, however, you should understand that it is subject to the Great Kaan. So, likewise, all the other kingdoms, regions, and provinces which are described in this book are subject to the Great Kaan, nay, even those other kingdoms, regions, and provinces of which I had occasion to speak at the beginning of the book as belonging to the son of Argon, the Lord of the Levant, are also subject to the Emperor; for the former holds his dominion of the Kaan, and is his liegeman and kinsman of the blood Imperial. So you must know that from this province forward all the provinces mentioned in our book are subject to the Great Kaan; and even if this be not specially mentioned, you must understand that it is so.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Roads in Eastern Tibet. (Gorge of the Lan t'sang Kiang, from Cooper.)]

Now let us have done with this matter, and I will tell you about the Province of Caindu.

NOTE 1.--Here Marco at least shows that he knew Tibet to be much more extensive than the small part of it that he had seen. But beyond this his information amounts to little.

NOTE 2.--"_Or de paliolle_" "_Oro di pagliuola_" (_pagliuola_, "a spangle") must have been the technical phrase for what we call gold-dust, and the French now call _or en paillettes_, a phrase used by a French missionary in speaking of this very region. (_Ann. de la Foi_, x.x.xVII.

427.) Yet the only example of this use of the word cited in the _Voc.

Ital. Universale_ is from this pa.s.sage of the Crusca MS.; and Pipino seems not to have understood it, translating "_aurum quod dicitur_ Deplaglola"; whilst Zurla says erroneously that _pajola_ is an old Italian word for _gold_. Pegolotti uses _argento in pagliuola_ (p. 219). A Barcelona tariff of 1271 sets so much on every mark of _Pallola_. And the old Portuguese navigators seem always to have used the same expression for the gold-dust of Africa, _ouro de pajola_. (See Major's Prince Henry, pp. 111, 112, 116; _Capmany Memorias_, etc., II. App. p. 73; also "_Aurum_ de Pajola," in Usodimare of Genoa, see _Graberg, Annali_, II. 290, quoted by Peschel, p.

178.)

NOTE 3.--The cinnamon must have been the coa.r.s.er ca.s.sia produced in the lower parts of this region (See note to next chapter.) We have already (Book I. ch. x.x.xi.) quoted Tavernier's testimony to the rage for coral among the Tibetans and kindred peoples. Mr. Cooper notices the eager demand for coral at Bathang: (See also _DesG.o.dins, La Mission du Thibet_, 310.)

NOTE 4.--See supra, Bk. I. ch. lxi. note 11.

NOTE 5.--The big Tibetan mastiffs are now well known. Mr. Cooper, at Ta-t'sien lu, notes that the people of Tibetan race "keep very large dogs, as large as Newfoundlands." And he mentions a pack of dogs of another breed, tan and black, "fine animals of the size of setters." The missionary M. Durand also, in a letter from the region in question, says, speaking of a large leopard: "Our brave watch-dogs had several times beaten him off gallantly, and one of them had even in single combat with him received a blow of the paw which had laid his skull open." (_Ann. de la Prop de la Foi_, x.x.xVII. 314.) On the t.i.tle-page of vol. i. we have introduced one of these big Tibetan dogs as brought home by the Polos to Venice.

The "wild oxen called _Beyamini_" are probably some such species as the Gaur. _Beyamini_ I suspect to be no Oriental word, but to stand for _Buemini_, i.e. Bohemian, a name which may have been given by the Venetians to either the bison or urus. Polo's contemporary, Brunetto Latini, seems to speak of one of these as still existing in his day in Germany: "Autre buef naissent en Alemaigne qui ont grans cors, et sont bons por sommier et por vin porter." (Paris ed., p. 228; see also _Lubbock, Pre-historic Times_, 296-7.)

[Mr. Baber (_Travels_, pp. 39, 40) writes: "A special interest attaches to the wild oxen, since they are unknown in any other part of China Proper.

From a Lolo chief and his followers, most enthusiastic hunters, I afterwards learnt that the cattle are met with in herds of from seven to twenty head in the recesses of the Wilderness, which may be defined as the region between the T'ung River and Yachou, but that in general they are rarely seen.... I was lucky enough to obtain a pair of horns and part of the hide of one of these redoubtable animals, which seem to show that they are a kind of bison." Sir H. Yule remarks in a footnote (Ibid. p. 40): "It is not possible to say from what is stated here what the species is, but probably it is a _gavoeus_, of which Jerdan describes three species.

(See _Mammals of India_, pp. 301-307.) Mr. Hodgson describes the Gaur (_Gavoeus gaurus_ of Jerdan) of the forests below Nepaul as fierce and revengeful."--H.C.]

CHAPTER XLVII.

CONCERNING THE PROVINCE OF CAINDU.

CAINDU is a province lying towards the west,[NOTE 1] and there is only one king in it. The people are Idolaters, subject to the Great Kaan, and they have plenty of towns and villages. [The chief city is also called Caindu, and stands at the upper end of the province.] There is a lake here,[1] in which are found pearls [which are white but not round]. But the Great Kaan will not allow them to be fished, for if people were to take as many as they could find there, the supply would be so vast that pearls would lose their value, and come to be worth nothing. Only when it is his pleasure they take from the lake so many as he may desire; but any one attempting to take them on his own account would be incontinently put to death.

There is also a mountain in this country wherein they find a kind of stone called turquoise, in great abundance; and it is a very beautiful stone.

These also the Emperor does not allow to be extracted without his special order.[NOTE 2]

I must tell you of a custom that they have in this country regarding their women. No man considers himself wronged if a foreigner, or any other man, dishonour his wife, or daughter, or sister, or any woman of his family, but on the contrary he deems such intercourse a piece of good fortune. And they say that it brings the favour of their G.o.ds and idols, and great increase of temporal prosperity. For this reason they bestow their wives on foreigners and other people as I will tell you.

When they fall in with any stranger in want of a lodging they are all eager to take him in. And as soon as he has taken up his quarters the master of the house goes forth, telling him to consider everything at his disposal, and after saying so he proceeds to his vineyards or his fields, and comes back no more till the stranger has departed. The latter abides in the caitiffs house, be it three days or be it four, enjoying himself with the fellow's wife or daughter or sister, or whatsoever woman of the family it best likes him; and as long as he abides there he leaves his hat or some other token hanging at the door, to let the master of the house know that he is still there. As long as the wretched fellow sees that token, he must not go in. And such is the custom over all that province.

[NOTE 3]

The money matters of the people are conducted in this way. They have gold in rods which they weigh, and they reckon its value by its weight in _saggi_, but they have no coined money. Their small change again is made in this way. They have salt which they boil and set in a mould [flat below and round above],[NOTE 4] and every piece from the mould weighs about half a pound. Now, 80 moulds of this salt are worth one _saggio_ of fine gold, which is a weight so called. So this salt serves them for small change.[NOTE 5]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Valley of the Kin-Sha Kiang, near the lower end of Caindu, i.e. Kienchang. (From Garnier.)

"Et quant l'en est ales ceste dix jornee adonc treuve-l'en un grant fluv qe est apele Brius, auquel se fenist la provence de Cheindu."]

The musk animals are very abundant in that country, and thus of musk also they have great store. They have likewise plenty of fish which they catch in the lake in which the pearls are produced. Wild animals, such as lions, bears, wolves, stags, bucks and roes, exist in great numbers; and there are also vast quant.i.ties of fowl of every kind. Wine of the vine they have none, but they make a wine of wheat and rice and sundry good spices, and very good drink it is.[NOTE 6] There grows also in this country a quant.i.ty of clove. The tree that bears it is a small one, with leaves like laurel but longer and narrower, and with a small white flower like the clove.[NOTE 7] They have also ginger and cinnamon in great plenty, besides other spices which never reach our countries, so we need say nothing about them.

Now we may leave this province, as we have told you all about it. But let me tell you first of this same country of Caindu that you ride through it ten days, constantly meeting with towns and villages, with people of the same description that I have mentioned. After riding those ten days you come to a river called Brius, which terminates the province of Caindu. In this river is found much gold-dust, and there is also much cinnamon on its banks. It flows to the Ocean Sea.

There is no more to be said about this river, so I will now tell you about another province called Carajan, as you shall hear in what follows.

NOTE 1.--Ramusio's version here enlarges: "Don't suppose from my saying _towards the west_ that these countries really lie in what we call the _west_, but only that we have been travelling from regions in the east-north-east _towards_ the west, and hence we speak of the countries we come to as lying towards the west."

NOTE 2.--Chinese authorities quoted by Ritter mention _mother-o'-pearl_ as a product of Lithang, and speak of turquoises as found in Djaya to the west of Bathang. (_Ritter_, IV. 235-236.) Neither of these places is, however, within the tract which we believe to be Caindu. Amyot states that pearls are found in a certain river of Yun-nan. (See _Trans.R.A.Soc._ II. 91.)

NOTE 3.--This alleged practice, like that mentioned in the last chapter but one, is ascribed to a variety of people in different parts of the world. Both, indeed, have a curious double parallel in the story of two remote districts of the Himalaya which was told to Bernier by an old Kashmiri. (See Amst. ed. II. 304-305.) Polo has told nearly the same story already of the people of Kamul. (Bk. I. ch. xli.) It is related by Strabo of the Ma.s.sagetae; by Eusebius of the Geli and the Bactrians; by Elphinstone of the Hazaras; by Mendoza of the Ladrone Islanders; by other authors of the Nairs of Malabar, and of some of the aborigines of the Canary Islands. (_Caubul_, I. 209; _Mendoza_, II. 254; _Muller's Strabo_, p. 439; _Euseb. Praep. Evan._ vi. 10; _Major's Pr. Henry_, p. 213.)

NOTE 4.--Ramusio has here: "as big as a twopenny loaf," and adds, "on the money so made the Prince's mark is printed; and no one is allowed to make it except the royal officers.... And merchants take this currency and go to those tribes that dwell among the mountains of those parts in the wildest and most unfrequented quarters; and there they get a _saggio_ of gold for 60, or 50, or 40 pieces of this salt money, in proportion as the natives are more barbarous and more remote from towns and civilised folk. For in such positions they cannot dispose at pleasure of their gold and other things, such as musk and the like, for want of purchasers; and so they give them cheap.... And the merchants travel also about the mountains and districts of Tebet, disposing of this salt money in like manner to their own great gain. For those people, besides buying necessaries from the merchants, want this salt to use in their food; whilst in the towns only broken fragments are used in food, the whole cakes being kept to use as money." This exchange of salt cakes for gold forms a curious parallel to the like exchange in the heart of Africa, narrated by Cosmas in the 6th century, and by Aloisio Cadamosto in the 15th. (See _Cathay_, pp. clxx-clxxi.) Ritter also calls attention to an a.n.a.logous account in Alvarez's description of Ethiopia. "The salt,"

Alvarez says, "is current as money, not only in the kingdom of Prester John, but also in those of the Moors and the pagans, and the people here say that it pa.s.ses right on to Manicongo upon the Western Sea. This salt is dug from the mountain, it is said, in squared blocks.... At the place where they are dug, 100 or 120 such pieces pa.s.s for a drachm of gold ... equal to 3/4 of a ducat of gold. When they arrive at a certain fair ... one day from the salt mine, these go 5 or 6 pieces fewer to the drachm. And so, from fair to fair, fewer and fewer, so that when they arrive at the capital there will be only 6 or 7 pieces to the drachm."

(_Ramusio_, I. 207.) Lieutenant Bower, in his account of Major Sladen's mission, says that at Momein the salt, which was a government monopoly, was "made up in rolls of one and two viss" (a Rangoon viss is 3 lbs. 5 oz.

5-1/2 drs.), "and stamped" (p. 120).

[At Hsia-Kuan, near Ta-li, Captain Gill remarked to a friend (II. p. 312) "that the salt, instead of being in the usual great flat cakes about two or two and a half feet in diameter, was made in cylinders eight inches in diameter and nine inches high. 'Yes,' he said, 'they make them here in a sort of loaves,' unconsciously using almost the words of old Polo, who said the salt in Yun-Nan was in pieces 'as big as a twopenny loaf.'" (See also p. 334.)--H.C.]

M. DesG.o.dins, a missionary in this part of Tibet, gives some curious details of the way in which the civilised traders still prey upon the simple hill-folks of that quarter; exactly as the Hindu Banyas prey upon the simple forest-tribes of India. He states one case in which the account for a pig had with interest run up to 2127 bushels of corn! (_Ann. de la Prop de la Foi_, x.x.xVI. 320.)

Gold is said still to be very plentiful in the mountains called Gulan Sigong, to the N.W. of Yun-nan, adjoining the great eastern branch of the Irawadi, and the Chinese traders go there to barter for it. (See _J.A.S.B._ VI. 272.)

NOTE 5.--Salt is still an object highly coveted by the wild Lolos already alluded to, and to steal it is a chief aim of their constant raids on Chinese villages. (_Richthofen_ in _Verhandlungen_, etc., u.s. p. 36.) On the continued existence of the use of salt currency in regions of the same frontier, I have been favoured with the following note by M. Francis Garnier, the distinguished leader of the expedition of the great Kamboja River in its latter part: "Salt currency has a very wide diffusion from Muang Yong [in the Burman-Shan country, about lat. 21 43'] to Sheu-pin [in Yun-nan, about lat. 23 43']. In the Shan markets, especially within the limits named, all purchases are made with salt. At Sse-mao and Pou-erl [_Esmok_ and _Puer_ of some of our maps], silver, weighed and cut in small pieces, is in our day tending to drive out the custom, but in former days it must have been universal in the tract of which I am speaking. The salt itself, prime necessity as it is, has there to be extracted by condensation from saline springs of great depth, a very difficult affair. The operation consumes enormous quant.i.ties of fuel, and to this is partly due the denudation of the country". Marco's somewhat rude description of the process, '_Il prennent la sel e la font cuire, et puis la gitent en forme_,' points to the manufacture spoken of in this note. The cut which we give from M. Garnier's work ill.u.s.trates the process, but the cakes are vastly greater than Marco's. Instead of a half pound they weigh a _preul_, i.e. 133-1/3 lbs. In Sze-ch'wan the brine wells are bored to a depth of 700 to 1000 feet, and the brine is drawn up in bamboo tubes by a gin. In Yun-nan the wells are much less deep, and a succession of hand pumps is used to raise the brine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Salt pans in Yun-nan (From Garnier.)

"Il prennent la sel e la font cuire, et puis la gitent en forme."]

[Mr. Hosie has a chapter (_Three Years in W. China_, VII.) to which he has given the t.i.tle of _Through Caindu to Carajan_, regarding salt he writes (p. 121). "The brine wells from which the salt is derived be at Pai yen ching, 14 miles to the south west of the city [of Yen yuan] ... [they]

are only two in number, and comparatively shallow, being only 50 feet in depth. Bamboo tubes, ropes and buffaloes are here dispensed with, and small wooden tubs, with bamboos fixed to their sides as handles for raising, are considered sufficient. At one of the wells a staging was erected half way down, and from it the tubs of brine were pa.s.sed up to the workmen above. Pa.s.sing from the wells to the evaporating sheds, we found a series of mud furnaces with round holes at the top, into which cone shaped pans, manufactured from iron obtained in the neighbourhood, and varying in height from one to two and a half feet, were loosely fitted. When a pan has been sufficiently heated, a ladleful of the brine is poured into it, and, bubbling up to the surface, it sinks, leaving a saline deposit on the inside of the pan. This process is repeated until a layer, some four inches thick, and corresponding to the shape of the pan, is formed, when the salt is removed as a hollow cone ready for market. Care must be taken to keep the bottom of the pan moist; otherwise, the salt cone would crack, and be rendered unfit for the rough carriage which it experiences on the backs of pack animals. A soft coal, which is found just under the surface of the yellow-soiled hills seven miles to the west of Pai-yen-ching, is the fuel used in the furnaces. The total daily output of salt at these wells does not exceed two tons a day, and the cost at the wells, including the Government tax, amounts to about three half-pence a pound. The area of supply, owing to the country being spa.r.s.ely populated, is greater than the output would lead one to expect."--H.C.]

NOTE 6.--The spiced wine of Kien-ch'ang (see note to next chapter) has even now a high repute. (_Richthofen_.)

NOTE 7.--M. Pauthier will have it that Marco was here the discoverer of a.s.sam tea. a.s.sam is, indeed, far out of our range, but his notice of this plant, with the laurel-like leaf and white flower, was brought strongly to my recollection in reading Mr. Cooper's repeated notices, almost in this region, of the _large-leaved tea-tree, with its white flowers_; and, again, of "the hills covered with _tea-oil_ trees, all white with flowers." Still, one does not clearly see why Polo should give tea-trees the name of cloves.

Failing explanation of this, I should suppose that the cloves of which the text speaks were _ca.s.sia-buds_, an article once more prominent in commerce (as indeed were all similar aromatics) than now, but still tolerably well known. I was at once supplied with them at a _drogheria_, in the city where I write (Palermo), on asking for _Fiori di Canella_, the name under which they are mentioned repeatedly by Pegolotti and Uzzano, in the 14th and 15th centuries. Friar Jorda.n.u.s, in speaking of the cinnamon (or ca.s.sia) of Malabar, says, "it is the bark of a large tree which has fruit and _flowers like cloves_" (p. 28). The ca.s.sia-buds have indeed a general resemblance to cloves, but they are shorter, lighter in colour, and not angular. The cinnamon, mentioned in the next lines as abundantly produced in the same region, was no doubt one of the inferior sorts, called ca.s.sia-bark.

Williams says: "Ca.s.sia grows in all the southern provinces of China, especially Kw.a.n.g-si and Yun-nan, also in Annam, j.a.pan, and the Isles of the Archipelago. The wood, bark, buds, seeds, twigs, pods, leaves, oil, are all objects of commerce..... The buds (_kwei-tz'_) are the fleshy ovaries of the seeds; they are pressed at one end, so that they bear some resemblance to cloves in shape." Upwards of 500 _piculs_ (about 30 tons), valued at 30 dollars each, are annually exported to Europe and India. (_Chin. Commercial Guide_, 113-114).

The only doubt as regards this explanation will probably be whether the ca.s.sia would be found at such a height as we may suppose to be that of the country in question above the sea-level. I know that ca.s.sia bark is gathered in the Kasia Hills of Eastern Bengal up to a height of about 4000 feet above the sea, and at least the valleys of "Caindu" are probably not too elevated for this product. Indeed, that of the Kin-sha or _Brius_, near where I suppose Polo to cross it, is only 2600 feet. Positive evidence I cannot adduce. No ca.s.sia or cinnamon was met with by M. Garnier's party where they intersected this region.

But in this 2nd edition I am able to state on the authority of Baron Richthofen that ca.s.sia is produced in the whole length of the valley of Kien-ch'ang (which is, as we shall see in the notes on next chapter, Caindu), though in no other part of Sze-ch'wan nor in Northern Yun-nan.

[Captain Gill (_River of Golden Sand_, II. p. 263) writes: "There were chestnut trees..; and the Kwei-Hua, a tree 'with leaves like the laurel, and with a small white flower, like the clove,' having a delicious, though rather a luscious smell. This was the Ca.s.sia, and I can find no words more suitable to describe it than those of Polo which I have just used."--H. C]