The Travels of Marco Polo Volume II Part 21

So, quitting this province and city of Linju, you travel three days more towards the south, constantly finding numbers of rich towns and villages.

These still belong to Cathay; and the people are all Idolaters, burning their dead, and using paper-money, that I mean of their Lord the Great Kaan, whose subjects they are. This is the finest country for game, whether in beasts or birds, that is anywhere to be found, and all the necessaries of life are in profusion.

At the end of those three days you find the city of PIJU, a great, rich, and n.o.ble city, with large trade and manufactures, and a great production of silk. This city stands at the entrance to the great province of Manzi, and there reside at it a great number of merchants who despatch carts from this place loaded with great quant.i.ties of goods to the different towns of Manzi. The city brings in a great revenue to the Great Kaan.[NOTE 2]

NOTE 1.--Murray suggests that Lingiu is a place which appears in D'Anville's Map of Shan-tung as _Lintching-y_ and in Arrowsmith's Map of China (also in those of Berghaus and Keith Johnston) as _Lingchinghien_.

The position a.s.signed to it, however, on the west bank of the ca.n.a.l, nearly under the 35th degree of lat.i.tude, would agree fairly with Polo's data. [_Lin-ch'ing, Lin-tsing_, lat. 37 03', _Playfair's Dict._ No. 4276; _Biot_, p. 107.--H.C.]

In any case, I imagine Lingiu (of which, perhaps, _Lingin_ may be the correct reading) to be the _Lenzin_ of Odoric, which he reached in travelling by water from the south, before arriving at Sinjumatu.

(_Cathay_, p. 125.)

NOTE 2.--There can be no doubt that this is PEI-CHAU on the east bank of the ca.n.a.l. The abundance of game about here is noticed by Nieuhoff (in _Astley_, III. 417). [See _D. Gandar, Ca.n.a.l Imperial_, 1894.--H.C.]

CHAPTER LXIV.

CONCERNING THE CITY OF SIJU, AND THE GREAT RIVER CARAMORAN.

When you leave Piju you travel towards the south for two days, through beautiful districts abounding in everything, and in which you find quant.i.ties of all kinds of game. At the end of those two days you reach the city of SIJU, a great, rich, and n.o.ble city, flourishing with trade and manufactures. The people are Idolaters, burn their dead, use paper-money, and are subjects of the Great Kaan. They possess extensive and fertile plains producing abundance of wheat and other grain.[NOTE 1] But there is nothing else to mention, so let us proceed and tell you of the countries further on.

On leaving Siju you ride south for three days, constantly falling in with fine towns and villages and hamlets and farms, with their cultivated lands.

There is plenty of wheat and other corn, and of game also; and the people are all Idolaters and subjects of the Great Kaan.

At the end of those three days you reach the great river CARAMORAN, which flows. .h.i.ther from Prester John's country. It is a great river, and more than a mile in width, and so deep that great ships can navigate it. It abounds in fish, and very big ones too. You must know that in this river there are some 15,000 vessels, all belonging to the Great Kaan, and kept to transport his troops to the Indian Isles whenever there may be occasion; for the sea is only one day distant from the place we are speaking of. And each of these vessels, taking one with another, will require 20 mariners, and will carry 15 horses with the men belonging to them, and their provisions, arms, and equipments.[NOTE 2]

Hither and thither, on either bank of the river, stands a town; the one facing the other. The one is called COIGANJU and the other CAIJU; the former is a large place, and the latter a little one. And when you pa.s.s this river you enter the great province of MANZI. So now I must tell you how this province of Manzi was conquered by the Great Kaan.[NOTE 3]

NOTE 1.--SIJU can scarcely be other than Su-t'sien (_Sootsin_ of Keith Johnston's map) as Murray and Pauthier have said. The latter states that one of the old names of the place was _Si-chau_, which corresponds to that given by Marco. Biot does not give this name.

The town stands on the flat alluvial of the Hw.a.n.g-Ho, and is approached by high embanked roads. (_Astley_, III. 524-525.)

[Sir J.F. Davis writes: "From _Sootsien Hien_ to the point of junction with the Yellow River, a length of about fifty miles, that great stream and the ca.n.a.l run nearly parallel with each other, at an average distance of four or five miles, and sometimes much nearer." (_Sketches of China_, I. p. 265.)--H.C.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch Map, exhibiting the VARIATIONS of the TWO GREAT RIVERS OF CHINA Within the Period of History]

NOTE 2.--We have again arrived on the banks of the Hw.a.n.g-Ho, which was crossed higher up on our traveller's route to Karajang.

No accounts, since China became known to modern Europe, attribute to the Hw.a.n.g-Ho the great utility for navigation which Polo here and elsewhere ascribes to it. Indeed, we are told that its current is so rapid that its navigation is scarcely practicable, and the only traffic of the kind that we hear of is a transport of coal in Shan-si for a certain distance down stream. This rapidity also, bringing down vast quant.i.ties of soil, has so raised the bed that in recent times the tide has not entered the river, as it probably did in our traveller's time, when, as it would appear from his account, seagoing craft used to ascend to the ferry north of Hwai-ngan fu, or thereabouts. Another indication of change is his statement that the pa.s.sage just mentioned was only one day's journey from the sea, whereas it is now about 50 miles in a direct line. But the river has of late years undergone changes much more material.

In the remotest times of which the Chinese have any record, the Hw.a.n.g-Ho discharged its waters into the Gulf of Chih-li, by two branches, the most northerly of which appears to have followed the present course of the Pei-ho below Tien-tsing. In the time of the Shang Dynasty (ending B.C.

1078) a branch more southerly than either of the above flowed towards T'si-ning, and combined with the _T'si_ River, which flowed by T'si-nan fu, the same in fact that was till recently called the Ta-t'sing. In the time of Confucius we first hear of a branch being thrown off south-east towards the Hwai, flowing north of Hwai-ngan, in fact towards the embouchure which our maps still display as that of the Hw.a.n.g-Ho. But, about the 3rd and 4th centuries of our era, the river discharged exclusively by the T'si; and up to the Mongol age, or nearly so, the ma.s.s of the waters of this great river continued to flow into the Gulf of Chih-li. They then changed their course bodily towards the Hwai, and followed that general direction to the sea; this they had adopted before the time of our traveller, and they retained it till a very recent period. The ma.s.s of Shan-tung thus forms a mountainous island rising out of the vast alluvium of the Hw.a.n.g-Ho, whose discharge into the sea has alternated between the north and the south of that mountainous tract. (_See Map opposite_.)

During the reign of the last Mongol emperor, a project was adopted for restoring the Hw.a.n.g-Ho to its former channel, discharging into the Gulf of Chih-li; and discontents connected with this scheme promoted the movement for the expulsion of the dynasty (1368).

A river whose regimen was liable to such vast changes was necessarily a constant source of danger, insomuch that the Emperor Kia-K'ing in his will speaks of it as having been "from the remotest ages China's sorrow." Some idea of the enormous works maintained for the control of the river may be obtained from the following description of their character on the north bank, some distance to the west of Kai-fung fu:

"In a village, apparently bounded by an earthen wall as large as that of the Tartar city of Peking, was reached the first of the outworks erected to resist the Hw.a.n.g-Ho, and on arriving at the top that river and the gigantic earthworks rendered necessary by its outbreaks burst on the view.

On a level with the spot on which I was standing stretched a series of embankments, each one about 70 feet high, and of breadth sufficient for four railway trucks to run abreast on them. The mode of their arrangement was on this wise: one long bank ran parallel to the direction of the stream; half a mile distant from it ran a similar one; these two embankments were then connected by another series exactly similar in size, height, and breadth, and running at right angles to them right down to the edge of the water."

In 1851, the Hw.a.n.g-Ho burst its northern embankment nearly 30 miles east of Kai-fung fu; the floods of the two following years enlarged the breach; and in 1853 the river, after six centuries, resumed the ancient direction of its discharge into the Gulf of Chih-li. Soon after leaving its late channel, it at present spreads, without defined banks, over the very low lands of South-Western Shan-tung, till it reaches the Great Ca.n.a.l, and then enters the Ta-t'sing channel, pa.s.sing north of T'si-nan to the sea.

The old channel crossed by Polo in the present journey is quite deserted.

The greater part of the bed is there cultivated; it is dotted with numerous villages; and the vast trading town of Tsing-kiang pu was in 1868 extending so rapidly from the southern bank that a traveller in that year says he expected that in two years it would reach the northern bank.

The same change has destroyed the Grand Ca.n.a.l as a navigable channel for many miles south of Lin-t'sing chau. (_J.R.G.S._ XXVIII. 294-295; _Escayrac de Lauture, Mem. sur la Chine; Cathay_, p. 125; _Reports of Journeys in China_, etc. [by Consuls Alabaster, Oxenham, etc., Parl. Blue Book], 1869, pp. 4-5, 14; _Mr. Elias_ in _J.R.G.S._ XL. p. 1 seqq.)

[Since the exploration of the Hw.a.n.g-Ho in 1868 by Mr. Ney Elias and by Mr.

H.G. Hollingworth, an inspection of this river was made in 1889 and a report published in 1891 by the Dutch Engineers J.G.W. Fijnje van Salverda, Captain P.G. van Schermbeek and A. Visser, for the improvement of the Yellow River.--H.C.]

NOTE 3.--Coiganju will be noticed below. _Caiju_ does not seem to be traceable, having probably been carried away by the changes in the river.

But it would seem to have been at the mouth of the ca.n.a.l on the north side of the Hw.a.n.g-Ho, and the name is the same as that given below (ch. lxxii.) to the town (_Kwachau_) occupying the corresponding position on the Kiang.

"Khatai," says Rashiduddin, "is bounded on one side by the country of Machin, which the Chinese call MANZI.... In the Indian language Southern China is called Maha-chin, i.e. 'Great China,' and hence we derive the word _Machin_. The Mongols call the same country _Nangia.s.s_. It is separated from Khatai by the river called KARAMORAN, which comes from the mountains of Tibet and Kashmir, and which is never fordable. The capital of this kingdom is the city of _Khingsai_, which is forty days' journey from Khanbalik." (_Quat. Rashid._, xci.-xciii.)

MANZI (or Mangi) is a name used for Southern China, or more properly for the territory which const.i.tuted the dominion of the Sung Dynasty at the time when the Mongols conquered Cathay or Northern China from the Kin, not only by Marco, but by Odoric and John Marignolli, as well as by the Persian writers, who, however, more commonly call it _Machin_. I imagine that some confusion between the two words led to the appropriation of the latter name, also to _Southern_ China. The term _Man-tzu_ or _Man-tze_ signifies "Barbarians" ("Sons of Barbarians"), and was applied, it is said, by the Northern Chinese to their neighbours on the south, whose civilisation was of later date.[1] The name is now specifically applied to a wild race on the banks of the Upper Kiang. But it retains its mediaeval application in Manchuria, where _Mantszi_ is the name given to the Chinese immigrants, and in that use is said to date from the time of Kublai. (_Palladius_ in _J.R.G.S._ vol. xlii. p. 154.) And Mr. Moule has found the word, apparently used in Marco's exact sense, in a Chinese extract of the period, contained in the topography of the famous Lake of Hang-chau (infra, ch. lxxvi.-lxxvii.)

Though both Polo and Rashiduddin call the Karamoran the boundary between Cathay and Manzi, it was not so for any great distance. Ho-nan belonged essentially to Cathay.

[1] Magaillans says the Southerns, in return, called the Northerns _Pe-tai_, "Fools of the North"!

CHAPTER LXV.

HOW THE GREAT KAAN CONQUERED THE PROVINCE OF MANZI.

You must know that there was a King and Sovereign lord of the great territory of Manzi who was styled FACFUR, so great and puissant a prince, that for vastness of wealth and number of subjects and extent of dominion, there was hardly a greater in all the earth except the Great Kaan himself.

[NOTE 1] But the people of his land were anything rather than warriors; all their delight was in women, and nought but women; and so it was above all with the King himself, for he took thought of nothing else but women, unless it were of charity to the poor.

In all his dominion there were no horses; nor were the people ever inured to battle or arms, or military service of any kind. Yet the province of Manzi is very strong by nature, and all the cities are encompa.s.sed by sheets of water of great depth, and more than an arblast-shot in width; so that the country never would have been lost, had the people but been soldiers. But that is just what they were not; so lost it was.[NOTE 2]

Now it came to pa.s.s, in the year of Christ's incarnation, 1268, that the Great Kaan, the same that now reigneth, despatched thither a Baron of his whose name was BAYAN CHINCSAN, which is as much as to say "Bayan Hundred Eyes." And you must know that the King of Manzi had found in his horoscope that he never should lose his Kingdom except through a man that had an hundred eyes; so he held himself a.s.sured in his position, for he could not believe that any man in existence could have an hundred eyes. There, however, he deluded himself, in his ignorance of the name of Bayan.[NOTE 3]

This Bayan had an immense force of horse and foot entrusted to him by the Great Kaan, and with these he entered Manzi, and he had also a great number of boats to carry both horse and food when need should be. And when he, with all his host, entered the territory of Manzi and arrived at this city of COIGANJU--whither we now are got, and of which we shall speak presently--he summoned the people thereof to surrender to the Great Kaan; but this they flatly refused. On this Bayan went on to another city, with the same result, and then still went forward; acting thus because he was aware that the Great Kaan was despatching another great host to follow him up.[NOTE 4]

What shall I say then? He advanced to five cities in succession, but got possession of none of them; for he did not wish to engage in besieging them and they would not give themselves up. But when he came to the sixth city he took that by storm, and so with a second, and a third, and a fourth, until he had taken twelve cities in succession. And when he had taken all these he advanced straight against the capital city of the kingdom, which was called KINSAY, and which was the residence of the King and Queen.

And when the King beheld Bayan coming with all his host, he was in great dismay, as one unused to see such sights. So he and a great company of his people got on board a thousand ships and fled to the islands of the Ocean Sea, whilst the Queen who remained behind in the city took all measures in her power for its defence, like a valiant lady.

Now it came to pa.s.s that the Queen asked what was the name of the captain of the host, and they told her that it was Bayan Hundred-Eyes. So when she wist that he was styled Hundred-Eyes, she called to mind how their astrologers had foretold that a man of an hundred eyes should strip them of the kingdom.[NOTE 5] Wherefore she gave herself up to Bayan, and surrendered to him the whole kingdom and all the other cities and fortresses, so that no resistance was made. And in sooth this was a goodly conquest, for there was no realm on earth half so wealthy.[NOTE 6] The amount that the King used to expend was perfectly marvellous; and as an example I will tell you somewhat of his liberal acts.

In those provinces they are wont to expose their newborn babes; I speak of the poor, who have not the means of bringing them up. But the King used to have all those foundlings taken charge of, and had note made of the signs and planets under which each was born, and then put them out to nurse about the country. And when any rich man was childless he would go to the King and obtain from him as many of these children as he desired. Or, when the children grew up, the King would make up marriages among them, and provide for the couples from his own purse. In this manner he used to provide for some 20,000 boys and girls every year.[NOTE 7]