The Travels of Marco Polo Volume I Part 88

[6] A translation of _Heins'_ was kindly lent me by the author of this article, the lamented Mr. J. W. S. Wyllie.

[7] I owe the suggestion of this to a remark in _Oppert's Presbyter Johannes_, p. 77.

CHAPTER LX.

CONCERNING THE KAAN'S PALACE OF CHAGANNOR.

At the end of those three days you find a city called CHAGAN NOR [which is as much as to say White Pool], at which there is a great Palace of the Grand Kaan's;[NOTE 1] and he likes much to reside there on account of the Lakes and Rivers in the neighbourhood, which are the haunt of swans[NOTE 2] and of a great variety of other birds. The adjoining plains too abound with cranes, partridges, pheasants, and other game birds, so that the Emperor takes all the more delight in staying there, in order to go a-hawking with his gerfalcons and other falcons, a sport of which he is very fond.[NOTE 3]

There are five different kinds of cranes found in those tracts, as I shall tell you. First, there is one which is very big, and all over as black as a crow; the second kind again is all white, and is the biggest of all; its wings are really beautiful, for they are adorned with round eyes like those of a peac.o.c.k, but of a resplendent golden colour, whilst the head is red and black on a white ground. The third kind is the same as ours. The fourth is a small kind, having at the ears beautiful long pendent feathers of red and black. The fifth kind is grey all over and of great size, with a handsome head, red and black.[NOTE 4]

Near this city there is a valley in which the Emperor has had several little houses erected in which he keeps in mew a huge number of _cators_ which are what we call the Great Partridge. You would be astonished to see what a quant.i.ty there are, with men to take charge of them. So whenever the Kaan visits the place he is furnished with as many as he wants.

[NOTE 5]

NOTE 1.--[According to the _Siu t'ung kien_, quoted by Palladius, the palace in Chagannor was built in 1280.--H. C.]

NOTE 2.--"_Ou demeurent_ sesnes." _Sesnes, Cesnes, Cecini, Cesanae_, is a mediaeval form of _cygnes, cigni_, which seems to have escaped the dictionary-makers. It occurs in the old Italian version of _Brunetto Latini's Tresor_, Bk. V. ch. xxv., as _cecino_; and for other examples, see _Cathay_, p. 125.

NOTE 3.--The city called by Polo CHAGAN-NOR (meaning in Mongol, as he says, "White Lake") is the _Chaghan Balghasun_ mentioned by Timkowski as an old city of the Mongol era, the ruined rampart of which he pa.s.sed about 30 miles north of the Great Wall at Kalgan, and some 55 miles from Siuen-hwa, adjoining the Imperial pastures. It stands near a lake still called Chaghan-Nor, and is called by the Chinese Pe-ching-tzu, or White City, a translation of Chaghan Balghasun. Dr. Bush.e.l.l says of one of the lakes (Ichi-Nor), a few miles east of Chaghan-Nor: "We ... found the water black with waterfowl, which rose in dense flocks, and filled the air with discordant noises. _Swans_, geese, and ducks predominated, and _three different species of cranes_ were distinguished."

The town appears as _Tchahan Toloho_ in D'Anville. It is also, I imagine, the _Arulun Tsaghan Balghasun_ which S. Setzen says Kublai built about the same time with Shangtu and another city "on the shady side of the Altai,"

by which here he seems to mean the Khingan range adjoining the Great Wall.

(_Timk._ II. 374, 378-379; _J. R. G. S._ vol. xliii.; _S. Setz._ 115.) I see Ritter has made the same identification of Chaghan-Nor (II. 141).

NOTE 4.--The following are the best results I can arrive at in the identification of these five cranes.

1. Radde mentions as a rare crane in South Siberia _Grus monachus_, called by the Buraits _Kara Togoru_, or "Black Crane." Atkinson also speaks of "a beautiful black variety of crane," probably the same. The _Grus monachus_ is not, however, jet black, but brownish rather. (_Radde, Reisen_, Bd. II.

p. 318; _Atkinson. Or. and W. Sib._ 548.)

2. _Grus leucogera.n.u.s_ (?) whose chief habitat is Siberia, but which sometimes comes as far south as the Punjab. It is the largest of the genus, snowy white, with red face and beak; the ten largest quills are black, but this barely shows as a narrow black line when the wings are closed. The resplendent golden eyes on the wings remain unaccounted for; no naturalist whom I have consulted has any knowledge of a crane or crane-like bird with such decorations. When 'tis discovered, let it be the _Grus Poli_!

3. _Grus cinerea_.

4. The colour of the pendants varies in the texts. Pauthier's and the G.

Text have _red and black_; the Lat. S. G. _black_ only, the Crusca _black and white_, Ramusio _feathers red and blue_ (not pendants). The _red and black_ may have slipt in from the preceding description. I incline to believe it to be the Demoiselle, _Anthropoides Virgo_, which is frequently seen as far north as Lake Baikal. It has a tuft of pure _white_ from the eye, and a beautiful black pendent ruff or collar; the general plumage purplish-grey.

5. Certainly the Indian _Saras_ (vulgo Cyrus), or _Grus antigone_, which answers in colours and grows to 52 inches high.

NOTE 5.--_Cator_ occurs only in the G. Text and the Crusca, in the latter with the interpolated explanation "_cioe contornici_" (i.e. quails), whilst the S. G. Latin has _coturnices_ only. I suspect this impression has a.s.sisted to corrupt the text, and that it was originally written or dictated _ciacor_ or _cacor_, viz. _chakor_, a term applied in the East to more than one kind of "Great Partridge." Its most common application in India is to the Himalayan red-legged partridge, much resembling on a somewhat larger scale the bird so called in Europe. It is the "Francolin"

of Moorcroft's Travels, and the _Caccabis Chukor_ of Gray. According to Cunningham the name is applied in Ladak to the bird sometimes called the Snow-pheasant, Jerdan's Snow-c.o.c.k, _Tetraogallus himalayensis_ of Gray.

And it must be the latter which Moorcroft speaks of as "the gigantic Chukor, much larger than the common partridge, found in large coveys on the edge of the snow;... one plucked and drawn weighed 5 lbs."; described by Vigne as "a partridge as large as a hen-turkey"; the original perhaps of that partridge "larger than a vulture" which formed one of the presents from an Indian King to Augustus Caesar. [With reference to the large Tibetan partridge found in the Nan-shan Mountains in the meridian of Sha-chau by Prjevalsky, M. E. D. Morgan in a note (_P. R. Geog. S._ ix.

1887, p. 219), writes: "_Megaloperdrix thibeta.n.u.s_. Its general name in Asia is _ullar_, a word of Kirghiz or Turkish origin; the Mongols call it _hailik_, and the Tibetans _kung-mo_. There are two other varieties of this bird found in the Himalaya and Altai Mountains, but the habits of life and call-note of all three are the same."] From the extensive diffusion of the term, which seems to be common to India, Tibet, and Persia (for the latter, see _Abbott_ in _J. R. G. S._ XXV. 41), it is likely enough to be of Mongol origin, not improbably _Tsokhor_, "dappled or pied." (_Kovalevsky_, No.

2196, and _Strahlenberg's_ Vocabulary; see also _Ladak_, 205; _Moorcr._ I.

313, 432; _Jerdan's Birds of India_, III. 549, 572; _Dunlop, Hunting in Himalaya_, 178; _J. A. S. B._ VI. 774.)

The chakor is mentioned by Baber (p. 282); and also by the Hindi poet Chand (_Ras Mala_, I. 230, and _Ind. Antiquary_, I. 273). If the latter pa.s.sage is genuine, it is adverse to my Mongol etymology, as Chand lived before the Mongol era.

The keeping of partridges for the table is alluded to by Chaucer in his portrait of the Franklin, _Prologue, Cant. Tales_:

"It snewed in his hous of mete and drinke, Of alle deyntees that men coud of thinke, After the sondry sesons of the yere, So changed he his mete and his soupere.

_Full many a fat partrich hadde he in mewe_, And many a breme and many a luce in stewe."

CHAPTER LXI.

OF THE CITY OF CHANDU, AND THE KAAN'S PALACE THERE.

And when you have ridden three days from the city last mentioned, between north-east and north, you come to a city called CHANDU,[NOTE 1] which was built by the Kaan now reigning. There is at this place a very fine marble Palace, the rooms of which are all gilt and painted with figures of men and beasts and birds, and with a variety of trees and flowers, all executed with such exquisite art that you regard them with delight and astonishment.[NOTE 2]

Round this Palace a wall is built, inclosing a compa.s.s of 16 miles, and inside the Park there are fountains and rivers and brooks, and beautiful meadows, with all kinds of wild animals (excluding such as are of ferocious nature), which the Emperor has procured and placed there to supply food for his gerfalcons and hawks, which he keeps there in mew. Of these there are more than 200 gerfalcons alone, without reckoning the other hawks. The Kaan himself goes every week to see his birds sitting in mew, and sometimes he rides through the park with a leopard behind him on his horse's croup; and then if he sees any animal that takes his fancy, he slips his leopard at it,[NOTE 3] and the game when taken is made over to feed the hawks in mew. This he does for diversion.

Moreover [at a spot in the Park where there is a charming wood] he has another Palace built of cane, of which I must give you a description. It is gilt all over, and most elaborately finished inside. [It is stayed on gilt and lackered columns, on each of which is a dragon all gilt, the tail of which is attached to the column whilst the head supports the architrave, and the claws likewise are stretched out right and left to support the architrave.] The roof, like the rest, is formed of canes, covered with a varnish so strong and excellent that no amount of rain will rot them. These canes are a good 3 palms in girth, and from 10 to 15 paces in length. [They are cut across at each knot, and then the pieces are split so as to form from each two hollow tiles, and with these the house is roofed; only every such tile of cane has to be nailed down to prevent the wind from lifting it.] In short, the whole Palace is built of these canes, which (I may mention) serve also for a great variety of other useful purposes. The construction of the Palace is so devised that it can be taken down and put up again with great celerity; and it can all be taken to pieces and removed whithersoever the Emperor may command. When erected, it is braced [against mishaps from the wind] by more than 200 cords of silk.[NOTE 4]

The Lord abides at this Park of his, dwelling sometimes in the Marble Palace and sometimes in the Cane Palace for three months of the year, to wit, June, July, and August; preferring this residence because it is by no means hot; in fact it is a very cool place. When the 28th day of [the Moon of] August arrives he takes his departure, and the Cane Palace is taken to pieces.[NOTE 5] But I must tell you what happens when he goes away from this Palace every year on the 28th of the August [Moon].

You must know that the Kaan keeps an immense stud of white horses and mares; in fact more than 10,000 of them, and all pure white without a speck. The milk of these mares is drunk by himself and his family, and by none else, except by those of one great tribe that have also the privilege of drinking it. This privilege was granted them by Chinghis Kaan, on account of a certain victory that they helped him to win long ago. The name of the tribe is HORIAD.[NOTE 6]

Now when these mares are pa.s.sing across the country, and any one falls in with them, be he the greatest lord in the land, he must not presume to pa.s.s until the mares have gone by; he must either tarry where he is, or go a half-day's journey round if need so be, so as not to come nigh them; for they are to be treated with the greatest respect. Well, when the Lord sets out from the Park on the 28th of August, as I told you, the milk of all those mares is taken and sprinkled on the ground. And this is done on the injunction of the Idolaters and Idol-priests, who say that it is an excellent thing to sprinkle that milk on the ground every 28th of August, so that the Earth and the Air and the False G.o.ds shall have their share of it, and the Spirits likewise that inhabit the Air and the Earth. And thus those beings will protect and bless the Kaan and his children and his wives and his folk and his gear, and his cattle and his horses, his corn and all that is his. After this is done, the Emperor is off and away.[NOTE 7]

But I must now tell you a strange thing that hitherto I have forgotten to mention. During the three months of every year that the Lord resides at that place, if it should happen to be bad weather, there are certain crafty enchanters and astrologers in his train, who are such adepts in necromancy and the diabolic arts, that they are able to prevent any cloud or storm from pa.s.sing over the spot on which the Emperor's Palace stands.

The sorcerers who do this are called TEBET and KESIMUR, which are the names of two nations of Idolaters. Whatever they do in this way is by the help of the Devil, but they make those people believe that it is compa.s.sed by dint of their own sanct.i.ty and the help of G.o.d.[NOTE 8] [They always go in a state of dirt and uncleanness, devoid of respect for themselves, or for those who see them, unwashed, unkempt, and sordidly attired.]

These people also have a custom which I must tell you. If a man is condemned to death and executed by the lawful authority, they take his body and cook and eat it. But if any one die a natural death then they will not eat the body.[NOTE 9]

There is another marvel performed by those BACSI, of whom I have been speaking as knowing so many enchantments.[NOTE 10] For when the Great Kaan is at his capital and in his great Palace, seated at his table, which stands on a platform some eight cubits above the ground, his cups are set before him [on a great buffet] in the middle of the hall pavement, at a distance of some ten paces from his table, and filled with wine, or other good spiced liquor such as they use. Now when the Lord desires to drink, these enchanters by the power of their enchantments cause the cups to move from their place without being touched by anybody, and to present themselves to the Emperor! This every one present may witness, and there are ofttimes more than 10,000 persons thus present. 'Tis a truth and no lie! and so will tell you the sages of our own country who understand necromancy, for they also can perform it.[NOTE 11]

And when the Idol Festivals come round, these _Bacsi_ go to the Prince and say: "Sire, the Feast of such a G.o.d is come" (naming him). "My Lord, you know," the enchanter will say, "that this G.o.d, when he gets no offerings, always sends bad weather and spoils our seasons. So we pray you to give us such and such a number of black-faced sheep," naming whatever number they please. "And we beg also, good my lord, that we may have such a quant.i.ty of incense, and such a quant.i.ty of lignaloes, and"--so much of this, so much of that, and so much of t'other, according to their fancy--"that we may perform a solemn service and a great sacrifice to our Idols, and that so they may be induced to protect us and all that is ours."

The _Bacsi_ say these things to the Barons entrusted with the Stewards.h.i.+p, who stand round the Great Kaan, and these repeat them to the Kaan, and he then orders the Barons to give everything that the Bacsi have asked for.

And when they have got the articles they go and make a great feast in honour of their G.o.d, and hold great ceremonies of wors.h.i.+p with grand illuminations and quant.i.ties of incense of a variety of odours, which they make up from different aromatic spices. And then they cook the meat, and set it before the idols, and sprinkle the broth hither and thither, saying that in this way the idols get their bellyful. Thus it is that they keep their festivals. You must know that each of the idols has a name of his own, and a feast-day, just as our Saints have their anniversaries.[NOTE 12]

They have also immense Minsters and Abbeys, some of them as big as a small town, with more than two thousand monks (i.e. after their fas.h.i.+on) in a single abbey.[NOTE 13] These monks dress more decently than the rest of the people, and have the head and beard shaven. There are some among these _Bacsi_ who are allowed by their rule to take wives, and who have plenty of children.[NOTE 14]

Then there is another kind of devotees called SENSIN, who are men of extraordinary abstinence after their fas.h.i.+on, and lead a life of such hards.h.i.+p as I will describe. All their life long they eat nothing but bran,[NOTE 15] which they take mixt with hot water. That is their food: bran, and nothing but bran; and water for their drink. 'Tis a lifelong fast! so that I may well say their life is one of extraordinary asceticism. They have great idols, and plenty of them; but they sometimes also wors.h.i.+p fire. The other Idolaters who are not of this sect call these people heretics--_Patarins_ as we should say[NOTE 16]--because they do not wors.h.i.+p their idols in their own fas.h.i.+on. Those of whom I am speaking would not take a wife on any consideration.[NOTE 17] They wear dresses of hempen stuff, black and blue,[NOTE 18] and sleep upon mats; in fact their asceticism is something astonis.h.i.+ng. Their idols are all feminine, that is to say, they have women's names.[NOTE 19]

Now let us have done with this subject, and let me tell you of the great state and wonderful magnificence of the Great Lord of Lords; I mean that great Prince who is the Sovereign of the Tartars, CUBLAY by name, that most n.o.ble and puissant Lord.

NOTE 1.--[There were two roads to go from Peking to Shangtu: the eastern road through Tu-s.h.i.+-k'ow, and the western (used for the return journey) road by Ye-hu ling. Polo took this last road, which ran from Peking to Siuen-te chau through the same places as now; but from the latter town it led, not to Kalgan as it does now, but more to the west, to a place called now Shan-fang pu where the pa.s.s across the Ye-hu ling range begins. "On both these roads _nabo_, or temporary palaces, were built, as resting-places for the Khans; eighteen on the eastern road, and twenty-four on the western." (_Palladius_, p. 25.) The same author makes (p. 26) the following remarks: "M. Polo's statement that he travelled three days from Siuen-te chau to Chagannor, and three days also from the latter place to Shang-tu, agrees with the information contained in the 'Researches on the Routes to Shangtu.' The Chinese authors have not given the precise position of Lake Chagannor; there are several lakes in the desert on the road to Shangtu, and their names have changed with time. The palace in Chagannor was built in 1280" (according to the _Siu t'ung kien_).--H. C.]

NOTE 2.--_Chandu_, called more correctly in Ramusio _Xandu_, i.e. SHANDU, and by Fr. Odorico _Sandu_, viz. SHANG-TU or "Upper Court," the Chinese t.i.tle of Kublai's summer residence at Kaipingfu, _Mongolice_ Keibung (see ch. xiii. of Prologue) [is called also _Loan king_, i.e. "the capital on the Loan River," according to Palladius, p. 26.--H. C.]. The ruins still exist, in about lat. 40 22', and a little west of the longitude of Peking. The site is 118 miles in direct line from Chaghan-nor, making Polo's three marches into rides of unusual length.[1] The ruins bear the Mongol name of _Chao Naiman Sume Khotan_, meaning "city of the 108 temples," and are about 26 miles to the north-west of Dolon-nor, a bustling, dirty town of modern origin, famous for the manufactory of idols, bells, and other ecclesiastical paraphernalia of Buddhism. The site was visited (though not described) by Pere Gerbillon in 1691, and since then by no European traveller till 1872, when Dr. Bush.e.l.l of the British Legation at Peking, and the Hon. T. G. Grosvenor, made a journey thither from the capital, by way of the Nan-kau Pa.s.s (supra p. 26), Kalgan, and the vicinity of Chaghan-nor, the route that would seem to have been habitually followed, in their annual migration, by Kublai and his successors.