The Travels of Marco Polo Volume II Part 59

The expression in this pa.s.sage for "the cities that lie in the interior,"

is in the G.T. "_celz qe sunt_ en fra terres"; see I. 43. Pauthier's text has "_celles qui sont_ en ferme terre," which is nonsense here.

[1] Abulfeda's orientation is the same as Polo's.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

DISCOURSETH OF THE TWO ISLANDS CALLED MALE AND FEMALE, AND WHY THEY ARE SO CALLED.

When you leave this kingdom of Kesmacoran, which is on the mainland, you go by sea some 500 miles towards the south; and then you find the two Islands, MALE and FEMALE, lying about 30 miles distant from one another.

The people are all baptized Christians, but maintain the ordinances of the Old Testament; thus when their wives are with child they never go near them till their confinement, or for forty days thereafter.

In the Island however which is called Male, dwell the men alone, without their wives or any other women. Every year when the month of March arrives the men all set out for the other Island, and tarry there for three months, to wit, March, April, May, dwelling with their wives for that s.p.a.ce. At the end of those three months they return to their own Island, and pursue their husbandry and trade for the other nine months.

They find on this Island very fine ambergris. They live on flesh and milk and rice. They are capital fishermen, and catch a great quant.i.ty of fine large sea-fish, and these they dry, so that all the year they have plenty of food, and also enough to sell to the traders who go thither. They have no chief except a bishop, who is subject to the archbishop of another Island, of which we shall presently speak, called SCOTRA. They have also a peculiar language.

As for the children which their wives bear to them, if they be girls they abide with their mothers; but if they be boys the mothers bring them up till they are fourteen, and then send them to the fathers. Such is the custom of these two Islands. The wives do nothing but nurse their children and gather such fruits as their Island produces; for their husbands do furnish them with all necessaries.[NOTE 1]

NOTE 1.--It is not perhaps of much use to seek a serious identification of the locality of these Islands, or, as Marsden has done, to rationalise the fable. It ran from time immemorial, and as n.o.body ever found the Islands, their locality shifted with the horizon, though the legend long hung about Socotra and its vicinity. Coronelli's Atlas (Venice, 1696) identifies these islands with those called Abdul Kuri near Cape Gardafui, and the same notion finds favour with Marsden. No islands indeed exist in the position indicated by Polo if we look to his direction "south of Kesmacoran," but if we take his indication of "half-way between Mekran and Socotra," the Kuria Muria Islands on the Arabian coast, in which M.

Pauthier longs to trace these veritable Male and Female Isles, will be nearer than any others. Marco's statement that they had a bishop subject to the metropolitan of Socotra certainly looks as if certain concrete islands had been a.s.sociated with the tale. Friar Jorda.n.u.s (p. 44) also places them between India the Greater and India Tertia (i.e. with him Eastern Africa). Conti locates them not more than 5 miles from Socotra, and yet 100 mile distant from one another. "Sometimes the men pa.s.s over to the women, and sometimes the women pa.s.s over to the men, and each return to their own respective island before the expiration of six months. Those who remain on the island of the others beyond this fatal period die immediately" (p. 21). Fra Mauro places the islands to the south of Zanzibar, and gives them the names of _Mangla_ and _Nebila_. One is curious to know whence came these names, one of which seems to be Sanskrit, the other (also in Sanudo's map) Arabic; (_Nabilah_, Ar., "Beautiful"; _Mangala_, Sansk. "Fortunate").

A savour of the story survived to the time of the Portuguese discoveries, and it had by that time attached itself to Socotra. (_De Barros_, Dec. II.

Liv. i. cap. 3; _Bartoli, H. della Comp. di Gesu_, Asia, I. p. 37; _P.

Vincenzo_, p. 443.)

The story was, I imagine, a mere ramification of the ancient and wide-spread fable of the Amazons, and is substantially the same that Palladius tells of the Brahmans; how the men lived on one side of the Ganges and the women on the other. The husbands visited their wives for 40 days only in June, July, and August, "those being their cold months, as the sun was then to the north." And when a wife had once borne a child the husband returned no more. (_Muller's Ps. Callisth._ 105.) The Mahabharata celebrates the Amazon country of Rana Paramita, where the regulations were much as in Polo's islands, only male children were put to death, and men if they overstayed a month. (_Wheelers India_, I. 400.)

Hiuen Tsang's version of the legend agrees with Marco's in placing the Woman's Island to the south of Persia. It was called the _Kingdom of Western Women_. There were none but women to be seen. It was under _Folin_ (the Byzantine Empire), and the ruler thereof sent husbands every year; if boys were born, the law prohibited their being brought up. (_Vie et Voyages_, p. 268.) Alexander, in Ferdusi's poem, visits the City of Women on an island in the sea, where no man was allowed.

The Chinese accounts, dating from the 5th century, of a remote Eastern Land called Fusang, which Neumann fancied to have been Mexico, mention that to the east of that region again there was a Woman's Island, with the usual particulars. (_La.s.sen_, IV. 751.) [Cf. _G. Schlegel, Niu Kouo, T'oung Pao_, III. pp. 495-510.--H.C.] Oddly enough, Columbus heard the same story of an island called Mat.i.tyna or Matinino (apparently Martinique) which he sighted on his second voyage. The Indians on board "a.s.serted that it had no inhabitants but women, who at a certain time of the year were visited by the Cannibals (Caribs); if the children born were boys they were brought up and sent to their fathers, if girls they were retained by the mothers. They reported also that these women had certain subterranean caverns in which they took refuge if any one went thither except at the established season," etc. (_P. Martyr_ in _Ramusio_, III. 3 v. and see 85.) Similar Amazons are placed by Adam of Bremen on the Baltic Sh.o.r.es, a story there supposed to have originated in a confusion between Gwenland, i.e. Finland, and a land of _Cwens_ or Women.

Mendoza heard of the like in the vicinity of j.a.pan (perhaps the real Fusang story), though he opines judiciously that "this is very doubtful to be beleeved, although I have bin certified by religious men that have talked with persons that within these two yeares have beene at the saide ilands, and have seene the saide women." (_H. of China_, II. 301.) Lane quotes a like tale about a horde of Cossacks whose wives were said to live apart on certain islands in the Dnieper. (_Arab. Nights_, 1859, III. 479.) The same story is related by a missionary in the _Lettres edifiantes_ of certain unknown islands supposed to lie south of the Marian group.

Pauthier, from whom I derive this last instance, draws the conclusion: "On voit que le recit de Marc Pol est loin d'etre imaginaire." Mine from the premises would be different!

Sometimes the fable took another form; in which the women are entirely isolated, as in that which Mela quotes from Hanno (III. 9). So with the Isle of Women which Kazwini and Bakui place to the South of China. They became enceinte by the Wind, or by eating a particular fruit [or by plunging into the sea; cf. _Schlegel_, l.c.--H.C.], or, as in a Chinese tradition related by Magaillans, by looking at their own faces in a well!

The like fable is localised by the Malays in the island of Engano off Sumatra, and was related to Pigafetta of an island under Great Java called Ocoloro, perhaps the same.

(_Magail._ 76; _Gildem._ 196; _N. et Ex._ II. 398; _Pigafetta_, 173; _Marsden's Sumatra_, 1st ed. p. 264.)

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

CONCERNING THE ISLAND OF SCOTRA.

When you leave those two Islands and go about 500 miles further towards the south, then you come to an Island called SCOTRA. The people are all baptized Christians; and they have an Archbishop. They have a great deal of ambergris; and plenty also of cotton stuffs and other merchandize; especially great quant.i.ties of salt fish of a large and excellent kind.

They also eat flesh and milk and rice, for that is their only kind of corn; and they all go naked like the other Indians.

[The ambergris comes from the stomach of the whale, and as it is a great object of trade, the people contrive to take the whales with barbed iron darts, which, once they are fixed in the body, cannot come out again. A long cord is attached to this end, to that a small buoy which floats on the surface, so that when the whale dies they know where to find it. They then draw the body ash.o.r.e and extract the ambergris from the stomach and the oil from the head.[NOTE 1]]

There is a great deal of trade there, for many ships come from all quarters with goods to sell to the natives. The merchants also purchase gold there, by which they make a great profit; and all the vessels bound for Aden touch at this Island.

Their Archbishop has nothing to do with the Pope of Rome, but is subject to the great Archbishop who lives at Baudas. He rules over the Bishop of that Island, and over many other Bishops in those regions of the world, just as our Pope does in these.[NOTE 2]

A mult.i.tude of corsairs frequent the Island; they come there and encamp and put up their plunder to sale; and this they do to good profit, for the Christians of the Island purchase it, knowing well that it is Saracen or Pagan gear.[NOTE 3]

And you must know that in this Island there are the best enchanters in the world. It is true that their Archbishop forbids the practice to the best of his ability; but 'tis all to no purpose, for they insist that their forefathers followed it, and so must they also. I will give you a sample of their enchantments. Thus, if a ship be sailing past with a fair wind and a strong, they will raise a contrary wind and compel her to turn back.

In fact they make the wind blow as they list, and produce great tempests and disasters; and other such sorceries they perform, which it will be better to say nothing about in our Book.[NOTE 4]

NOTE 1.--Mr. Blyth appears to consider that the only whale met with nowadays in the Indian Sea _north of the line_ is a great Rorqual or _Balaenoptera_, to which he gives the specific name of _Indica_. (See _J.A.S.B._ XXVIII. 481.) The text, however (from Ramusio), clearly points to the Spermaceti whale; and Maury's Whale-Chart consists with this.

"The best ambergris," says Mas'udi, "is found on the islands and coasts of the Sea of Zinj (Eastern Africa); it is round, of a pale blue, and sometimes as big as an ostrich egg.... These are morsels which have been swallowed by the fish called _Awal_. When the sea is much agitated it casts up fragments of amber almost like lumps of rock, and the fish swallowing these is choked thereby, and floats on the surface. The men of Zinj, or wherever it be, then come in their canoes, and fall on the creature with harpoons and cables, draw it ash.o.r.e, cut it up, and extract the ambergris" (I. 134).

Kazwini speaks of whales as often imprisoned by the ebb tide in the channels about Basra. The people harpooned them, and got much oil _out of the brain_, which they used for lamps, and smearing their ships. This also is clearly the sperm whale. (_Ethe_, p. 268.)

After having been long doubted, scientific opinion seems to have come back to the opinion that ambergris is an excretion from the whale. "Ambergris is a morbid secretion in the intestines of the cachalot, deriving its origin either from the stomach or biliary ducts, and allied in its nature to gall-stones, ... whilst the ma.s.ses found floating on the sea are those that have been voided by the whale, or liberated from the dead animal by the process of putrefaction." (_Bennett, Whaling Voyage Round the Globe_, 1840, II. 326.)

["The _Pen ts'ao_, ch. xliii. fol. 5, mentions ambergris under the name _lung sien hiang_ (dragon's saliva perfume), and describes it as a sweet-scented product, which is obtained from the south-western sea. It is greasy, and at first yellowish white; when dry, it forms pieces of a yellowish black colour. In spring whole herds of dragons swim in that sea, and vomit it out. Others say that it is found in the belly of a large fish.

This description also doubtless points to ambergris, which in reality is a pathological secretion of the intestines of the spermaceti whale (_Physeter macrocephalus_), a large cetaceous animal. The best ambergris is collected on the Arabian coast. In the _Ming shi_ (ch. cccxxvi.) _lung sien hiang_ is mentioned as a product of _Bu-la-wa_ (_Brava_ on the east coast of Africa), and _an-ba-rh_ (evidently also ambergris) amongst the products of _Dsu-fa-rh_ (_Dsahfar_, on the south coast of Arabia)." (_Bretschneider, Med. Res._ I. p. 152, note.)--H.C.]

NOTE 2.--_Scotra_ probably represented the usual p.r.o.nunciation of the name SOCOTRA, which has been hypothetically traced to a Sanskrit original, _Dvipa-Sukhadhara_, "the Island Abode of Bliss," from which (contracted _Diuskadra_) the Greeks made "the island of _Dioscorides_."

So much painful interest attaches to the history of a people once Christian, but now degenerated almost to savagery, that some detail maybe permitted on this subject.

The _Periplus_ calls the island very large, but desolate; ... the inhabitants were few, and dwelt on the north side. They were of foreign origin, being a mixture of Arabs, Indians, and Greeks, who had come thither in search of gain.... The island was under the king of the Incense Country.... Traders came from _Muza_ (near Mocha) and sometimes from _Limyrica_ and _Barygaza_ (Malabar and Guzerat), bringing rice, wheat, and Indian muslins, with female slaves, which had a ready sale. Cosmas (6th century) says there was in the island a bishop, appointed from Persia. The inhabitants spoke Greek, having been originally settled there by the Ptolemies. "There are clergy there also, ordained and sent from Persia to minister among the people of the island, and a mult.i.tude of Christians. We sailed past the island, but did not land. I met, however, with people from it who were on their way to Ethiopia, and they spoke Greek."

The ecclesiastical historian Nicephorus Callistus seems to allude to the people of Socotra, when he says that among the nations visited by the missionary Theophilus, in the time of Constantius, were "the a.s.syrians on the verge of the outer ocean towards the East ... whom Alexander the Great, after driving them from Syria, sent thither to settle, and to this day they keep their mother tongue, though all of the blackest, through the power of the sun's rays." The Arab voyagers of the 9th century say that the island was colonised with Greeks by Alexander the Great, in order to promote the culture of the Socotrine aloes; when the other Greeks adopted Christianity these did likewise, and they had continued to retain their profession of it. The colonising by Alexander is probably a fable, but invented to account for facts.

[Edrisi says (_Jaubert's transl._ pp. 47, seqq.) that the chief produce of Socotra is aloes, and that most of the inhabitants of this island are Christians; for this reason: when Alexander had subjugated Porus, his master Aristotle gave him the advice to seek after the island producing aloes; after his conquest of India, Alexander remembered the advice, and on his return journey from the Sea of India to the Sea of Oman, he stopped at Socotra, which he greatly admired for its fertility and the pleasantness of its climate. Acting on the advice of Aristotle, Alexander removed the inhabitants from their island, and established in their place a colony of Ionians, to whom he entrusted the care of cultivating aloes.

These Greeks were converted when the Christian religion was preached to them, and their descendants have remained Christians.--H.C.]

In the list of the metropolitan Sees of the Nestorian Church we find one called _Kotrobah_, which is supposed to stand for Socotra. According to Edrisi, Kotrobah was an island inhabited by Christians; he speaks of Socotra separately, but no island suits his description of Kotrobah but Socotra itself; and I suspect that we have here geography in duplicate, no uncommon circ.u.mstance. There is an epistle extant from the Nestorian Patriarch Jesujabus (A.D. 650-660), _ad Episcopos Catarensium_, which a.s.semani interprets of the Christians in Socotra and the adjacent coasts of Arabia (III. 133).[1] Abulfeda says the people of Socotra were Nestorian Christians and pirates. Nicolo Conti, in the first half of the 15th century, spent two months on the island (_Sechutera_). He says it was for the most part inhabited by Nestorian Christians.

[Professor W.R. Smith, in a letter to Sir H. Yule, dated Cambridge, 15th June, 1886, writes: "The authorities for Kotrobah seem to be (1) Edrisi, (2) the list of Nestorian Bishops in a.s.semani. There is no trace of such a name anywhere else that I can find. But there is a place called Katar about which most of the Arab Geographers know very little, but which is mentioned in poetry. Bekri, who seems best informed, says that it lay between Bahrain and Oman.... Istakhri and Ibn Haukal speak of the Katar pirates. Their collective name is the Katariya."]

Some indications point rather to a connection of the island's Christianity with the Jacobite or Abyssinian Church. Thus they practised circ.u.mcision, as mentioned by Maffei in noticing the proceedings of Alboquerque at Socotra. De Barros calls them Jacobite Christians of the Abyssinian stock.

Barbosa speaks of them as an olive-coloured people, Christian only in name, having neither baptism nor Christian knowledge, and having for many years lost all acquaintance with the Gospel. Andrea Corsali calls them Christian shepherds of Ethiopian race, like Abyssinians. They lived on dates, milk, and b.u.t.ter; some rice was imported. They had churches like mosques, but with altars in Christian fashion.

When Francis Xavier visited the island there were still distinct traces of the Church. The people reverenced the cross, placing it on their altars, and hanging it round their necks. Every village had its minister, whom they called _Kashis_ (_Ar._ for a Christian Presbyter), to whom they paid t.i.the. No man could read. The Kashis repeated prayers antiphonetically in a forgotten tongue, which De Barros calls Chaldee, frequently scattering incense; a word like _Alleluia_ often recurred. For bells they used wooden rattles. They a.s.sembled in their churches four times a day, and held St.

Thomas in great veneration. The Kashises married, but were very abstemious. They had two Lents, and then fasted strictly from meat, milk, and fish.