The Travels of Marco Polo Volume I Part 61

C.] The actual distance from Bamm to the City of Dakia.n.u.s is, by Abbott's Journal, about 66 miles.

The name of REOBARLES, which Marco applies to the plain intermediate between the two descents, has given rise to many conjectures. Marsden pointed to _Rudbar_, a name frequently applied in Persia to a district on a river, or intersected by streams--a suggestion all the happier that he was not aware of the fact that there is a district of RUDBAR exactly in the required position. The last syllable still requires explanation.

I ventured formerly to suggest that it was the Arabic _La.s.s_, or, as Marco would certainly have written it, _Les_, a robber. Reobarles would then be RUDBAR-I-La.s.s, "Robber's River District." The appropriateness of the name Marco has amply ill.u.s.trated; and it appeared to me to survive in that of one of the rivers of the plain, which is mentioned by both Abbott and Smith under the t.i.tle of _Rudkhanah-i-Duzdi_, or Robbery River, a name also applied to a village and old fort on the banks of the stream. This etymology was, however, condemned as an inadmissible combination of Persian and Arabic by two very high authorities both as travellers and scholars--Sir H. Rawlinson and Mr. Khanikoff. The _Les_, therefore, has still to be explained.[1]

[Major Sykes (_Geog. Journal_, 1902, p. 130) heard of robbers, some five miles from Minab, and he adds: "However, nothing happened, and after crossing the Gardan-i-Pichal, we camped at Birinti, which is situated just above the junction of Rudkhana Duzdi, or 'River of Theft,' and forms part of the district of Rudan, in Fars."

"The Jiruft and Rudbar plains belong to the germsir (hot region), dates, pistachios, and konars (apples of Paradise) abound in them. Reobarles is Rudbar or Rudbaris." (_Houtum-Schindler_, l.c. 1881, p. 495.)--H. C.]

We have referred to Marco's expressions regarding the great cold experienced on the pa.s.s which formed the first descent; and it is worthy of note that the t.i.tle of "The Cold Mountains" is applied by Edrisi to these very mountains. Mr. Abbott's MS. Report also mentions in this direction, _Sardu_, said to be a cold country (as its name seems to express [see above,--H. C.]), which its population (Iliyats) abandon in winter for the lower plains. It is but recently that the importance of this range of mountains has become known to us. Indeed the _existence_ of the chain, as extending continuously from near Kashan, was first indicated by Khanikoff in 1862. More recently Major St. John has shown the magnitude of this range, which rises into summits of 15,000 feet in alt.i.tude, and after a course of 550 miles terminates in a group of volcanic hills some 50 miles S.E. of Bamm. Yet practically this chain is ignored on all our maps!

Marco's description of the "Plain of Formosa" does not apply, now at least, to the _whole_ plain, for towards Bander Abbasi it is barren. But to the eastward, about Minao, and therefore about Old Hormuz, it has not fallen off. Colonel Pelly writes: "The district of Minao is still for those regions singularly fertile. Pomegranates, oranges, pistachio-nuts, and various other fruits grow in profusion. The source of its fertility is of course the river, and you can walk for miles among lanes and cultivated ground, partially sheltered from the sun." And Lieutenant Kempthorne, in his notes on that coast, says of the same tract: "It is termed by the natives the Paradise of Persia. It is certainly most beautifully fertile, and abounds in orange-groves, and orchards containing apples, pears, peaches, and apricots; with vineyards producing a delicious grape, from which was at one time made a wine called _amber-rosolli_"--a name not easy to explain. _'Ambar-i-Rasul_, "The Prophet's Bouquet!" would be too bold a name even for Persia, though names more sacred are so profaned at Naples and on the Moselle. Sir H. Rawlinson suggests _'Ambar-'asali_, "Honey Bouquet," as possible.

When Nearchus beached his fleet on the sh.o.r.e of _Harmozeia_ at the mouth of the _Anamis_ (the River of Minao), Arrian tells us he found the country a kindly one, and very fruitful in every way except that there were no olives. The weary mariners landed and enjoyed this pleasant rest from their toils. (_Indica_, 33; _J. R. G. S._ V. 274.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARCO POLO'S ITINERARIES No. II.

Kerman to Hormuz (Bk I. Ch. 19)]

The name Formosa is probably only Rusticiano's misunderstanding of _Harmuza_, aided, perhaps, by Polo's picture of the beauty of the plain.

We have the same change in the old _Mafomet_ for Mahomet, and the converse one in the Spanish _hermosa_ for _formosa_. Teixeira's Chronicle says that the city of Hormuz was founded by Xa Mahamed Dranku, i.e. Shah Mahomed Dirhem-Ko, in "a plain of the same name."

The statement in Ramusio that Hormuz stood upon an island, is, I doubt not, an interpolation by himself or some earlier transcriber.

When the ships of Nearchus launched again from the mouth of the Anamis, their first day's run carried them past a certain desert and bushy island to another which was large and inhabited. The desert isle was called _Organa_; the large one by which they anch.o.r.ed _Oaracta_. (_Indica_, 37.) Neither name is quite lost; the latter greater island is Kishm or _Brakht_; the former _Jerun_,[2] perhaps in old Persian _Gerun_ or _Geran_, now again desert though no longer bushy, after having been for three centuries the site of a city which became a poetic type of wealth and splendour. An Eastern saying ran, "Were the world a ring, Hormuz would be the jewel in it."

["The _Yuan shi_ mentions several seaports of the Indian Ocean as carrying on trade with China; Hormuz is not spoken of there. I may, however, quote from the Yuan History a curious statement which perhaps refers to this port. In ch. cxxiii., biography of Arsz-lan, it is recorded that his grandson Hurdutai, by order of Kubilai Khan, accompanied _Bu-lo no-yen_ on his mission to the country of _Ha-rh-ma-sz_. This latter name may be intended for Hormuz. I do not think that by the Noyen _Bulo_, M. Polo could be meant, for the t.i.tle Noyen would hardly have been applied to him.

But Rashid-eddin mentions a distinguished Mongol, by name _Pulad_, with whom he was acquainted in Persia, and who furnished him with much information regarding the history of the Mongols. This may be the _Bu-lo no-yen_ of the Yuan History." (Bretschneider, _Med. Res._ II. p. 132.)--H.

C.]

NOTE 2.--A spirit is still distilled from dates in Persia, Mekran, Sind, and some places in the west of India. It is mentioned by Strabo and Dioscorides, according to Kampfer, who says it was in his time made under the name of a medicinal stomachic; the rich added _Radix Chinae_, ambergris, and aromatic spices; the poor, liquorice and Persian absinth.

(_Sir B. Frere_; _Amoen. Exot._ 750; _Macd. Kinneir_, 220.)

["The _date_ wine with spices is not now made at Bender 'Abbas. Date arrack, however, is occasionally found. At Kerman a sort of wine or arrack is made with spices and alcohol, distilled from sugar; it is called Ma-ul-Hayat (water of life), and is recommended as an aphrodisiac. Grain in the Shamil plain is harvested in April, dates are gathered in August."

(_Houtum-Schindler_, l.c. p. 496.)

See "Remarks on the Use of Wine and Distilled Liquors among the Mohammedans of Turkey and Persia," pp. 315-330 of _Narrative of a Tour through Armenia, Kurdistan, Persia, and Mesopotamia_.... By the Rev.

Horatio Southgate,... London, 1840, vol. ii.--H. C.]

[Sir H. Yule quotes, in a MS. note, these lines from Moore's _Light of the Harem_:

"Wine, too, of every clime and hue, Around their liquid l.u.s.tre threw _Amber Rosolli_[3]--the bright dew From vineyards of the Green Sea gushing."] See above, p. 114.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Double or Latin Rudder, as shown in the Navicella of Giotto. (From Eastlake.)]

The date and dry-fish diet of the Gulf people is noticed by most travellers, and P. del a Valle repeats the opinion about its being the only wholesome one. Ibn Batuta says the people of Hormuz had a saying, "_Khorma wa mahi lut-i-Padshahi_," i.e. "Dates and fish make an Emperor's dish!" A fish, exactly like the tunny of the Mediterranean in general appearance and habits, is one of the great objects of fishery off the Sind and Mekran coasts. It comes in pursuit of shoals of anchovies, very much like the Mediterranean fish also. (_I. B._ II. 231; _Sir B. Frere_.)

[Friar Odoric (_Cathay_, I. pp. 55-56) says: "And there you find (before arriving at Hormuz) people who live almost entirely on dates, and you get forty-two pounds of dates for less than a groat; and so of many other things."]

NOTE 3.--The st.i.tched vessels of Kerman ([Greek: ploiaria rapta]) are noticed in the _Periplus_. Similar accounts to those of our text are given of the ships of the Gulf and of Western India by Jorda.n.u.s and John of Montecorvino. (_Jord._ p. 53; _Cathay_, p. 217.) "St.i.tched vessels," Sir B. Frere writes, "are still used. I have seen them of 200 tons burden; but they are being driven out by iron-fastened vessels, as iron gets cheaper, except where (as on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts) the pliancy of a st.i.tched boat is useful in a surf. Till the last few years, when steamers have begun to take all the best horses, the Arab horses bound to Bombay almost all came in the way Marco Polo describes." Some of them do still, standing over a date cargo, and the result of this combination gives rise to an extraordinary traffic in the Bombay bazaar. From what Colonel Pelly tells me, the st.i.tched build in the Gulf is _now_ confined to fishing-boats, and is disused for sea-going craft.

[Friar Odoric (_Cathay_, I. p. 57) mentioned these vessels: "In this country men make use of a kind of vessel which they call _Jase_, which is fastened only with st.i.tching of twine. On one of these vessels I embarked, and I could find no iron at all therein." _Jase_ is for the Arabic _Djehaz_.--H. C.]

The fish-oil used to rub the ships was whale-oil. The old Arab voyagers of the 9th century describe the fishermen of Siraf in the Gulf as cutting up the whale-blubber and drawing the oil from it, which was mixed with other stuff, and used to rub the joints of ships' planking. (_Reinaud_, I. 146.)

Both Montecorvino and Polo, in this pa.s.sage, specify _one rudder_, as if it was a peculiarity of these ships worth noting. The fact is that, in the Mediterranean at least, the double rudders of the ancients kept their place to a great extent through the Middle Ages. A Ma.r.s.eilles MS. of the 13th century, quoted in Ducange, says: "A ship requires three rudders, two in place, and one to spare." Another: "Every two-ruddered bark shall pay a groat each voyage; every one-ruddered bark shall," etc. (See Due. under _Timonus_ and _Temo_.) Numerous proofs of the use of two rudders in the 13th century will be found in "_Doc.u.menti inediti riguardanti le due Crociate di S. Ludovico IX., Re di Francia_, etc., da _L. T. Belgrano_, Genova, 1859." Thus in a specification of ships to be built at Genoa for the king (p. 7), each is to have "_Timones duo_, affaiticos, grossitudinis palmorum viiii et dimidiae, longitudinis cubitorum xxiiii." Extracts given by Capmany, regarding the equipment of galleys, show the same thing, for he is probably mistaken in saying that one of the _dos timones_ specified was a spare one. Joinville (p. 205) gives incidental evidence of the same: "Those Ma.r.s.eilles ships have each two rudders, with each a tiller (?

_tison_) attached to it in such an ingenious way that you can turn the ship right or left as fast as you would turn a horse. So on the Friday the king was sitting upon one of these tillers, when he called me and said to me," etc.[4] Francesco da Barberino, a poet of the 13th century, in the 7th part of his _Doc.u.menti d'Amore_ (printed at Rome in 1640), which instructs the lover to whose lot it may fall to escort his lady on a sea-voyage (instructions carried so far as to provide even for the case of her death at sea!), alludes more than once to these plural rudders. Thus--

"---- se vedessi avenire Che vento ti rompesse _Timoni_ ...

In luogo di timoni Fa spere[5] e in aqua poni." (P. 272-273.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: ILl.u.s.tRATIONS OF THE DOUBLE RUDDER OF THE MIDDLE AGES 12th Century Illumination (After Pertz) Seal of Winchelsea.

12th Century Illumination (After Pertz) From Leaning Tower (After Jal) After Spinello Aretini at Siena From Monument of St Peter Martyr]

And again, when about to enter a port, it is needful to be on the alert and ready to run in case of a hostile reception, so the galley should enter stern foremost--a movement which he reminds his lover involves the reversal of the ordinary use of the two rudders:--

"_L' un timon leva suso L' altro leggier tien giuso_, Ma convien levar mano Non mica com soleano, Ma per contraro, e face Cosi 'l guidar verace." (P. 275.)

A representation of a vessel over the door of the Leaning Tower at Pisa shows this arrangement, which is also discernible in the frescoes of galley-fights by Spinello Aretini, in the Munic.i.p.al Palace at Siena.

[G.o.dinho de Eredia (1613), describing the smaller vessels of Malacca which he calls _balos_ in ch. 13, _De Embarcacoes_, says: "At the p.o.o.p they have two rudders, one on each side to steer with." E por poupa dos ballos, tem 2 lemes, hum en cada lado pera o governo. (_Malacca, l'Inde merid. et le Cathay_, Bruxelles, 1882, 4to, f. 26.)--H. C.]

The midship rudder seems to have been the more usual in the western seas, and the double quarter-rudders in the Mediterranean. The former are sometimes styled _Navarresques_ and the latter _Latins_. Yet early seals of some of the Cinque Ports show vessels with the double rudder; one of which (that of Winchelsea) is given in the cut.

In the Mediterranean the latter was still in occasional use late in the 16th century. Captain Pantero Pantera in his book, _L'Armata Navale_ (Rome, 1614, p. 44), says that the Galea.s.ses, or great galleys, had the helm _alla Navarresca_, but also a great oar on each side of it to a.s.sist in turning the ship. And I observe that the great galea.s.ses which precede the Christian line of battle at Lepanto, in one of the frescoes by Vasari in the Royal Hall leading to the Sistine Chapel, have the quarter-rudder very distinctly.

The Chinese appear occasionally to employ it, as seems to be indicated in a woodcut of a vessel of war which I have traced from a Chinese book in the National Library at Paris. (See above, p. 37.) [For the Chinese words for _rudder_, see p. 126 of J. Edkins' article on _Chinese Names for Boats and Boat Gear, Jour. N. China Br. R. As. Soc._ N.S. XI. 1876.--H. C.] It is also used by certain craft of the Indian Archipelago, as appears from Mr. Wallace's description of the Prau in which he sailed from Maca.s.sar to the Aru Islands. And on the Caspian, it is stated in Smith's "Dict. of Antiquities" (art. _Gubernaculum_), the practice remained in force till late times. A modern traveller was nearly wrecked on that sea, because the two rudders were in the hands of two pilots who spoke different languages, and did not understand each other!

(Besides the works quoted see _Jal, Archeologie Navale_, II. 437-438, and _Capmany, Memorias_, III. 61.)

[Major Sykes remarks (_Persia_, ch. xxiii.): "Some unrecorded event, probably the sight of the unseaworthy craft, which had not an ounce of iron in their composition, made our travellers decide that the risks of the sea were too great, so that we have the pleasure of accompanying them back to Kerman and thence northwards to Khorasan."--H. C.]

NOTE 4.--So also at Bander Abbasi Tavernier says it was so unhealthy that foreigners could not stop there beyond March; everybody left it in April.

Not a hundredth part of the population, says Kampfer, remained in the city. Not a beggar would stop for any reward! The rich went to the towns of the interior or to the cool recesses of the mountains, the poor took refuge in the palm-groves at the distance of a day or two from the city. A place called 'Ishin, some 12 miles north of the city, was a favourite resort of the European and Hindu merchants. Here were fine gardens, s.p.a.cious baths, and a rivulet of fresh and limpid water.

The custom of lying in water is mentioned also by Sir John Maundevile, and it was adopted by the Portuguese when they occupied Insular Hormuz, as P.

della Valle and Linschoten relate. The custom is still common during great heats, in Sind and Mekran (Sir B. F.).

An anonymous ancient geography (_Liber Junioris Philosophi_) speaks of a people in India who live in the Terrestrial Paradise, and lead the life of the Golden Age.... The sun is so hot _that they remain all day in the river!_

The heat in the Straits of Hormuz drove Abdurrazzak into an antic.i.p.ation of a verse familiar to English schoolboys: "Even the bird of rapid flight was burnt up in the heights of heaven, as well as the fish in the depths of the sea!" (_Tavern._ Bk. V. ch. xxiii.; _Am. Exot._ 716, 762; _Muller, Geog. Gr. Min._ II. 514; _India in XV. Cent._ p. 49.)

NOTE 5.--A like description of the effect of the _Simum_ on the human body is given by Ibn Batuta, Chardin, A. Hamilton, Tavernier, Thevenot, etc.; and the first of these travellers speaks specially of its prevalence in the desert near Hormuz, and of the many graves of its victims; but I have met with no reasonable account of its poisonous action. I will quote Chardin, already quoted at greater length by Marsden, as the most complete parallel to the text: "The most surprising effect of the wind is not the mere fact of its causing death, but its operation on the bodies of those who are killed by it. It seems as if they became decomposed without losing shape, so that you would think them to be merely asleep, when they are not merely dead, but in such a state that if you take hold of any part of the body it comes away in your hand. And the finger penetrates such a body as if it were so much dust." (III. 286.)

Burton, on his journey to Medina, says: "The people a.s.sured me that this wind never killed a man in their Allah-favoured land. I doubt the fact. At Bir Abbas the body of an Arnaut was brought in swollen, and decomposed rapidly, the true diagnosis of death by the poison-wind." Khanikoff is very distinct as to the immediate fatality of the desert wind at Khabis, near Kerman, but does not speak of the effect on the body after death.

This Major St. John does, describing a case that occurred in June, 1871, when he was halting, during intense heat, at the post-house of Pasangan, a few miles south of Kom. The bodies were brought in of two poor men, who had tried to start some hours before sunset, and were struck down by the poisonous blast within half-a-mile of the post-house. "It was found impossible to wash them before burial.... Directly the limbs were touched they separated from the trunk." (_Oc. Highways, ut. sup._) About 1790, when Timur Shah of Kabul sent an army under the Sirdar-i-Sirdaran to put down a revolt in Meshed, this force on its return was struck by Simum in the Plain of Farrah, and the Sirdar perished, with a great number of his men. (_Ferrier, H. of the Afghans_, 102; _J. R. G. S._ XXVI. 217; _Khan.

Mem._ 210.)

NOTE 6.--The History of Hormuz is very imperfectly known. What I have met with on the subject consists of--(1) An abstract by Teixeira of a chronicle of Hormuz, written by Thuran Shah, who was himself sovereign of Hormuz, and died in 1377; (2) some contemporary notices by Wa.s.saf, which are extracted by Hammer in his History of the Ilkhans; (3) some notices from Persian sources in the 2nd Decade of De Barros (ch. ii.). The last do not go further back than Gordun Shah, the father of Thuran Shah, to whom they erroneously ascribe the first migration to the Island.

One of Teixeira's Princes is called _Ruknuddin Mahmud_, and with him Marsden and Pauthier have identified Polo's Ruomedam Acomet, or as he is called on another occasion in the Geog. Text, _Maimodi Acomet_. This, however, is out of the question, for the death of Ruknuddin is a.s.signed to A.H. 675 (A.D. 1277), whilst there can, I think, be no doubt that Marco's account refers to the period of his return from China, viz. 1293 or thereabouts.