was possessed of some literary culture, committed the narrative to writing; and this was probably done originally in the French language, for the Italian version bears marks of being a translation, and it has been ascertained that Rusticien was subsequently the author of a book on the "Round Table," which is written in French.

It would be impossible, within the limits of an article like the present, to give even an abstract of the multifarious information about Fastern countries which Polo has collected and arranged in his narrative. We must content ourselves with such an outline as will indicate the general character of the work. But we cannot forbear quoting the prologue, which Rusticien seems to have considered a masterpiece of composition, for he has adopted it mutatis mutandis in his subsequent work, above referred to. It runs thus:

"Emperors, kings, dukes, marquises, counts, knights, and all persons wishing to know the generations of men in the world, also the kingdoms, provinces, and all the regions of the East, read this book. In it you will find very great and wonderful things of the nations, chiefly of Armenia, Persia, Tartary, India, and various other provinces. In the present book Messer Marco Polo, a prudent and learned citizen of Venice, relates in order the various things which he himself saw, or heard from men of honour and truth. And those who read this book may be assured that all things in it are true.

For

I would have you to know that, from the creation of Adam to the present day, no Pagan, or Saracen, or Christian, or any other person of whatever race or generation, explored so many parts of the world, or saw such great wonders, as this Messer Marco Polo."

Marco then describes the jour

neys of his father and his uncle, which we have already referred to, and thereafter ushers us at once into the presence of the great Khan Kublai, King of the Tartars, and Lord of lords, "the most powerful monarch in people, in lands, and in treasure, that is, or ever was, from the creation of Adam to the present day." It seems a strange thing to a reader of Marco Polo that the dynasty of the Grand Khans of Tartary, unquestionably the most powerful monarchs of their time, and probably, with the exception of the Cæsars and Alexander the Great, the most powerful monarchs of any time, should now occupy so insignificant a place in the world's history; that Temügin, who subdued Asia, the Gengis: Khan of Tartar history, should be almost forgotten; that the name should sound strange in modern ears of Okkodai, who, with an army of more than half a million of men, overran Russia and Poland, devastated Silesia and Hungary, and was to all appearance only prevented by his death, in 1241, from utterly blotting out the civilization of Western Europe; and that Kublai, with the description of whose power and magnificence the traveller fills page after page, should only be better known to the English reader, because his name chances to have been rescued from oblivion by a few verses of Coleridge! At the date of Polo's visit he was in the zenith of his glory. He had completed the conquest of China, and fixed his principal residence at Kambalu (the modern Pekin), a vast city, forming a regular square, six miles on each side, surrounded with walls ten paces thick and twenty high. Here he had built a great palace, also in the form of a square, a mile long on every side. "The walls of the chambers and stairs," says Marco," are all covered with gold and silver, and adorned

with pictures of dragons, horses, and other races of animals." The banqueting-hall can accommodate 6,000 guests. The roof is painted externally in all the colours of the rainbow. The palace is surrounded with game preserves, and has a magnificent lake full of all varieties of fish. Here, too, is the Green Mountain, an artificial mound, "full an hundred paces high, and a mile in circuit, all covered with evergreen trees which never shed their leaves;" evidently the original of Coleridge's

"Forests ancient as the hills, Encircling sunny spots of greenery,"

though he places the scene at the Khan's hunting palace at Xanadu instead of here.

Some idea of the magnificence of Kublai's court may be obtained from the statistics furnished by Marco Polo, even if we make the amplest allowance for exaggeration. His guard of honour consists of 12,000 horsemen. In addition to the officers of his own court, he has separate establishments for each of his four wives, some of them containing 10,000 persons; and he maintains a large number of concubines besides. At his great festivals, which are frequent, he entertains all his barons and knights, and 40,000 persons are seated at his board. On these occasions the doors are guarded by two giants, whose office it is to keep the visitors from touching the threshold as they enter, this being considered unlucky. Since, however, some of the company may be overcome with liquor when leaving," unlimited supplies being handed round in golden goblets, each containing enough for eight men, this rule about the threshold is then relaxed. On his birthday, the greatest festival of all except the new year, he wears robes of

66

beaten gold, and his barons are similarly clad, many of them wearing garments worth 10,000 bezants, all of which are presents made periodically by the Khan. At New Year all are clad in white, and then the Khan receives presents from his dependants, consisting, besides gold, silver, and jewels, of more than 5,000 camels, 100,000 white horses, and 5,000 elephants covered with cloths of silk and gold. To the twelve barons of his quiesitan, "the faithful men of the supreme lord," he gives every year vestments adorned with gold and jewels, thirteen to each, being one for every lunar month. He delights in the chase, and has 20,000 huntsmen in charge of his hounds and of the trained leopards, tigers, and lynxes with which he pursues his game. The number of his falconers is 10,000, and every part of his hunting establishment is on the same scale.

His empire contains numerous large cities, seats of trade, or retreats of pleasure. Kinsai (the modern Hang - tcheou - fou), the "most noble and wonderful" of all, is the city of heaven, the Venice of the East, built wholly on and surrounded by water. "In the world there is not the like, nor a place in which there are found so many pleasures, that a man would imagine himself in paradise." It has 12,000 stone bridges, and is 100 miles in circumference.

Twelve trades are carried on in it, each trade having 12,000 houses or stations. The merchants are enormously rich; and neither they nor their ladies do anything with their own hands, but "live as cleanly and as delicately as if they were kings." In the neighbourhood are public parks and pleasuregrounds, baths, and other attractions without number. The imperial revenue derived from this one city is £7,350,000.

It is curious that Marco Polo makes no mention of tea in his description of China. Tea was certainly used there in the earliest ages. Whether the fragrant leaf known to the ancients as malabathrum was identical with the tea plant is not certainly known; but the Arabs, who visited China in the ninth century, mention it distinctly under the name of tcha, and state that an infusion of the leaf in hot water was reckoned a cure for every disease. One of the earliest of the more modern notices of tea is contained in a letter from the Directors of the East India Company to their agent at Madras, in 1684, in which they say:

"In regard thea is grown to be a commodity here, and we have occasion to make presents therein to our great friends at court; we would have you send us yearly five or six canisters of the very best and freshest thea. That which will colour the water in which it is infused most of a greenish complexion is generally best accepted."

Sugar and salt were largely manufactured in Palestine by the Chinese; and the silk-manufacture was carried on at many of the cities. The people of Nankin, for example, "live by merchandise and arts, have silk in abundance, and make clothes of it, interwoven with gold, in all fashions." The vine was cultivated only at Tay-yuenfou, and wine was not very largely used, the drink in general use being distilled from rice. "It is clear, and beautiful," says Marco, "and it makes a man drunk sooner than any other wine, for it is extremely hot."

Coal, though it was known to the early Britons as an inflammable substance, was not regularly used as fuel in England, or worked as an article of commerce, till the end of the twelfth century. In Polo's

time it was entirely unknown in Venice. But he found it the common fuel of China:

"It may be observed," he says, "that throughout the whole province of Cathay there are a kind of black stones cut from the mountains in veins, which burn like logs. They maintain the fire better than wood. If you put them on in the evening, they will preserve it the whole night, and will be found burning in the morning. Throughout the whole of Cathay this fuel is used. They have also wood indeed; but the stones are much less expensive."

The manufacture of porcelain was very early established in China, and the ware is still commonly known as china-ware. The town of King-te-ching has supplied porcelain to the Emperors since A.D. 442.

"In that town," says our traveller, "they make the most beautiful cups in the world; they are of porcelain, and are manufactured in no other part of the earth besides that city; for a Venetian grosso you may purchase three cups of this most elegant ware."

So wonderfully fine was some of the china-ware first brought to Europe, that it was generally sup posed to be made of egg-shells.

Before the reign of Kublai the Khans had established a paper currency, and his treasury served many of the purposes of a modern bank:

"With regard to the money of Kambalu, the great Khan may be called a perfect alchymist, for he makes it himself. He orders people to collect the bark of a certain tree, whose leaves are eaten by the worms that spin silk. The thin rind between the bark and the interior is taken, and from it cards are formed like those of paper, all black."

A certain value is fixed on each

eard, up to ten bezants, and all are stamped with his seal.

"He makes all his payments in these, and none dares to refuse them under pain of death. All the nations under his sway receive and pay this money for their merchandise, gold, silver, precious stones, and whatever they transport, buy, or sell. He frequently commands those who have gold, silver, cloths of silk and gold, or other precious commodities, to bring them to him. Then he calls twelve men, skilful in these matters, and commands them to look at the articles, and fix their price. Whatever they name is paid in these cards, which the merchant cordially receives, because he can again make purchases with them throughout the whole empire. In this manner the great Sire possesses all the gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones in his dominions. When any of the cards are torn or spoiled, the owner carries them to the place whence they were issued, and receives fresh ones with a deduction of three per cent. If a man wishes gold or silver to make plate, girdles, or other ornaments, he goes to the office carrying a sufficient number of cards, and gives them in payment for the quantities he requires. This is the reason why the Khan has more treasure than any other lord in the world; nay, all the princes in the world together have not an equal amount."

Our notice of those portions of Polo's travels which deal with countries other than China must be very brief.

In Armenia he found petroleum, of which there was "a fountain whence rises oil in such abundance, that a hundred ships might be at once loaded with it. It is not good for eating, but very fit for fuel, for anointing the camels in maladies of the skin, and for other purposes; for which reason people come from

a great distance for it, and nothing else is burned in all the country." Of the Indian islands Java is said to be immensely rich, "yielding pepper, nutmegs, galanga, cubebs, cloves, and all the richest of spices."

Sumatra, which he calls Lesser Java, has among its denizens "unicorns (the rhinoceros), double the size of a buffalo. They have a large black horn in the middle of the forehead, and beneath the tongue sharp prickles, which can inflict severe wounds. Their heads resemble the wild boar, yet they carry them bent to the earth. They are very ugly, and fond of wallowing among mud.”

Pigmies are mentioned by Homer, so that the fable about them is of high antiquity. Mandeville describes them in his Travels, and it would seem that specimens of the race had occasionally been imported into Europe. But Marco Polo tells us that "those who bring the little men from India practise a great deception, for the figures to which they give that name are manufactured in this island in the following manner :-There is a species of small monkey with a face resembling the human, which they catch, skin, and shave off all the hair, except on the beard and chin; having then moulded them into a human semblance, they dry and preserve them with camphor and other articles. But it is a gross deception, for neither in India, nor in any other country however savage, are there men so small as these pretended ones."

Of Malabar we are gravely told : "Now in all this province there is not a tailor, for the people go naked at every season."

The more extensive knowledge which we now have about China enables us to form a tolerably accurate estimate of the truthfulness of Polo; and, in so far as he con.

fines himself to relating facts which came under his own observation, his narrative is perfectly trustworthy. In his own day he was regarded to a large extent as a romancer; but the charges made against him were for the most part founded on those portions of his book where he relied for his information on others. The large figures he uses in describing the riches of the Khan and his armies procured for him, in his own day, the nickname of Marco Millione, and this name was adopted on the Venetian stage to designate a character guilty of fabulous exaggeration. But, even if we admit that these figures are in excess of the reality, it must be remembered that nothing is more easy than for a man to deceive himself in dealing with sums so large that the mind can scarcely form an accurate conception of them, and that some of the statements of Polo which seemed most astounding to the Venetians have since been amply confirmed.

Very little is known of the history of Marco Polo after 1299, when the treaty of peace with Genoa restored him to liberty. On his return to Venice he found

his father married a second time, and he seems soon to have followed the paternal example by taking a wife himself. That he was alive in 1323 is known from the fact of his will being dated in that year.

Such of our readers as wish to study the travels of Polo in detail will find in the recent edition by Colonel Yule, not only a carefully revised text of the author- no easy task to accomplish-but a most interesting and elaborate commentary on all the subjects alluded to, and a series of highly finished engravings illustrative of Chinese scenes and antiquities. Colonel

Yule is, in fact, a model editor, and we are glad to see that his beautiful volumes have already reached a second edition. Our present object being rather to give a general idea of the contents and the style of "Polo's Travels" than to treat them critically or historically, we have not made much use of the learning which the Colonel brings to bear on the subject; but it is not too much to say that his researches have done for Marco Polo a service not inferior to that which the researches of Rawlinson recently did for Herodotus.