The Travels of Marco Polo Volume I Part 63

[General A. Houtum-Schindler (_Jour. R. As. Soc._ N.S. XIII. October, 1881, p. 497) says: "The name Tutia for collyrium is now not used in Kerman. Tutia, when the name stands alone, is sulphate of copper, which in other parts of Persia is known as Kat-i-Kebud; Tutia-i-sabz (green Tutia) is sulphate of iron, also called Zaj-i-siyah. A piece of Tutia-i-zard (yellow Tutia) shown to me was alum, generally called Zaj-i-safid; and a piece of Tutia-i-safid (white Tutia) seemed to be an argillaceous zinc ore. Either of these may have been the earth mentioned by Marco Polo as being put into the furnace. The lampblack used as collyrium is always called Surmah. This at Kerman itself is the soot produced by the flame of wicks, steeped in castor oil or goat's fat, upon earthenware saucers. In the high mountainous districts of the province, Kubenan, Pariz, and others, Surmah is the soot of the Gavan plant (Garcia's goan). This plant, a species of Astragalus, is on those mountains very fat and succulent; from it also exudes the Tragacanth gum. The soot is used dry as an eye-powder, or, mixed with tallow, as an eye-salve. It is occasionally collected on iron gratings.

"Tutia is the Arabicised word dudha, Persian for smokes.

"The Shems-ul-loghat calls Tutia a medicine for eyes, and a stone used for the fabrication of Surmah. The Tohfeh says Tutia is of three kinds--yellow and blue mineral Tutia, Tutia-i-qalam (collyrium) made from roots, and Tutia resulting from the process of smelting copper ore. 'The best Tutia-i-qalam comes from Kerman.' It adds, 'Some authors say Surmah is sulphuret of antimony, others say it is a composition of iron'; I should say any _black_ composition used for the eyes is Surmah, be it lampblack, antimony, iron, or a mixture of all.

"Teixeira's Tutia was an impure oxide of zinc, perhaps the above-mentioned Tutia-i-safid, baked into cakes; it was probably the East India Company's Lapis Tutia, also called Tutty. The Company's Tutenague and Tutenage, occasionally confounded with Tutty, was the so-called 'Chinese Copper,'

an alloy of copper, zinc, and iron, brought from China."

Major Sykes (ch. xxiii.) writes: "I translated Marco's description of _tutia_ (which is also the modern Persian name), to a khan of Kubenan, and he a.s.sured me that the process was the same to-day; spodium he knew nothing about, but the sulphate of zinc is found in the hills to the east of Kubenan."

Heyd (_Com._ II. p. 675) says in a note: "Il resulte de l'ensemble de ce pa.s.sage que les matieres designees par Marco Polo sous le nom de 'espodie'

(spodium) etaient des scories metalliques; en general, le mot spodium designe les residus de la combustion des matieres vegetales ou des os (de l'ivoire)."--H. C.]

CHAPTER XXII.

OF A CERTAIN DESERT THAT CONTINUES FOR EIGHT DAYS' JOURNEY.

When you depart from this City of Cobinan, you find yourself again in a Desert of surpa.s.sing aridity, which lasts for some eight days; here are neither fruits nor trees to be seen, and what water there is is bitter and bad, so that you have to carry both food and water. The cattle must needs drink the bad water, will they nill they, because of their great thirst.

At the end of those eight days you arrive at a Province which is called TONOCAIN. It has a good many towns and villages, and forms the extremity of Persia towards the North.[NOTE 1] It also contains an immense plain on which is found the ARBRE SOL, which we Christians call the _Arbre Sec_; and I will tell you what it is like. It is a tall and thick tree, having the bark on one side green and the other white; and it produces a rough husk like that of a chestnut, but without anything in it. The wood is yellow like box, and very strong, and there are no other trees near it nor within a hundred miles of it, except on one side, where you find trees within about ten miles' distance. And there, the people of the country tell you, was fought the battle between Alexander and King Darius.[NOTE 2]

The towns and villages have great abundance of everything good, for the climate is extremely temperate, being neither very hot nor very cold. The natives all worship Mahommet, and are a very fine-looking people, especially the women, who are surpa.s.singly beautiful.

NOTE 1.--All that region has been described as "a country divided into deserts that are salt, and deserts that are not salt." (_Vigne_, I. 16.) _Tonocain_, as we have seen (ch. xv. note 1), is the Eastern Kuhistan of Persia, but extended by Polo, it would seem to include the whole of Persian Khorasan. No city in particular is indicated as visited by the traveller, but the view I take of the position of the _Arbre Sec_, as well as his route through Kuh-Banan, would lead me to suppose that he reached the Province of TUN-O-KAIN about Tabbas.

["Marco Polo has been said to have traversed a portion of (the Dash-i-Kavir, great Salt Desert) on his supposed route from Tabbas to Damghan, about 1272; although it is more probable that he marched further to the east, and crossed the northern portion of the Dash-i-Lut, Great Sand Desert, separating Khorasan in the south-east from Kerman, and occupying a sorrowful parallelogram between the towns of Neh and Tabbas on the north, and Kerman and Yezd on the south." (Curzon, _Persia_, II. pp. 248 and 251.) Lord Curzon adds in a note (p. 248): "The Tunogan of the text which was originally mistaken for Damghan, is correctly explained by Yule as Tun-o- (i.e. and) Kain." Major Sykes writes (ch. xxiii.): "The section of the Lut has not hitherto been rediscovered, but I know that it is desert throughout, and it is practically certain that Marco ended these unpleasant experiences at Tabas, 150 miles from Kubenan. To-day the district is known as Tun-o-Tabas, Kain being independent of it."--H. C.]

NOTE 2.--This is another subject on which a long and somewhat discursive note is inevitable.

One of the Bulletins of the Soc. de Geographie (ser. III. tom. iii. p.

187) contains a perfectly inconclusive endeavour, by M. Roux de Roch.e.l.le, to identify the _Arbre Sec_ or _Arbre Sol_ with a manna-bearing oak alluded to by Q. Curtius as growing in Hyrcania. There can be no doubt that the tree described is, as Marsden points out, a _Chinar_ or Oriental Plane. Mr. Ernst Meyer, in his learned _Geschichte der Botanik_ (Konigsberg, 1854-57, IV. 123), objects that Polo's description of the _wood_ does not answer to that tree. But, with due allowance, compare with his whole account that which Olearius gives of the Chinar, and say if the same tree be not meant. "The trees are as tall as the pine, and have very large leaves, closely resembling those of the vine. The fruit looks like a chestnut, but has no kernel, so it is not eatable. The wood is of a very brown colour, and full of veins; the Persians employ it for doors and window-shutters, and when these are rubbed with oil they are incomparably handsomer than our walnut-wood joinery." (I. 526.) The Chinar-wood is used in Kashmir for gunstocks.

The whole tenor of the pa.s.sage seems to imply that some eminent _individual_ Chinar is meant. The appellations given to it vary in the different texts. In the G. T. it is styled in this pa.s.sage, "The _Arbre Seule_ which the Christians call the _Arbre Sec_," whilst in ch. cci. of the same (infra, Bk. IV. ch. v.) it is called "_L'Arbre Sol_, which in the Book of Alexander is called _L'Arbre Seche_" Pauthier has here "_L'Arbre Solque_, que nous appelons _L'Arbre Sec_," and in the later pa.s.sage "_L'Arbre Soul_, que le Livre Alexandre apelle _Arbre Sec_;" whilst Ramusio has here "_L'Albero del Sole_ che si chiama per i Cristiani _L'Albor Secco_," and does not contain the later pa.s.sage. So also I think all the old Latin and French printed texts, which are more or less based on Pipino's version, have "The _Tree of the Sun_, which the Latins call the _Dry Tree_."

[G. Capus says (_A travers le roy. de Tamerlan_, p. 296) that he found at Khodjakent, the remains of an enormous plane-tree or _Chinar_, which measured no less than 48 metres (52 yards) in circ.u.mference at the base, and 9 metres diameter inside the rotten trunk; a dozen tourists from Tashkent one day feasted inside, and were all at ease.--H. C.]

Pauthier, building as usual on the reading of his own text (_Solque_), endeavours to show that this odd word represents _Thoulk_, the Arabic name of a tree to which Forskal gave the t.i.tle of _Ficus Vasta_, and this Ficus Vasta he will have to be the same as the Chinar. _Ficus Vasta_ would be a strange name surely to give to a Plane-tree, but Forskal may be acquitted of such an eccentricity. The _Tholak_ (for that seems to be the proper vocalisation) is a tree of Arabia Felix, very different from the Chinar, for it is the well-known Indian Banyan, or a closely-allied species, as may be seen in Forskal's description. The latter indeed says that the Arab botanists called it _Delb_, and that (or _Dulb_) is really a synonym for the Chinar. But De Sacy has already commented upon this supposed application of the name Delb to the _Tholak_ as erroneous. (See _Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica_, pp. cxxiv. and 179; _Abdallatif, Rel. de l'Egypte_, p. 80; _J. R. G. S._ VIII. 275; _Ritter_, VI. 662, 679.)

The fact is that the _Solque_ of M. Pauthier's text is a mere copyist's error in the reduplication of the p.r.o.noun _que_. In his chief MS. which he cites as A (No. 10,260 of Bibl. Nationale, now _Fr_. 5631) we can even see how this might easily happen, for one line ends with _Solque_ and the next begins with _que_. The true reading is, I doubt not, that which this MS.

points to, and which the G. Text gives us in the second pa.s.sage quoted above, viz. _Arbre_ SOL, occurring in Ramusio as _Albero del_ SOLE. To make this easier of acceptation I must premise two remarks: first, that _Sol_ is "the Sun" in both Venetian and Provencal; and, secondly, that in the French of that age the prepositional sign is not _necessary_ to the genitive. Thus, in Pauthier's own text we find in one of the pa.s.sages quoted above, "_Le Livre Alexandre_, i.e. Liber Alexandri;" elsewhere, "_Cazan le fils Argon_," "_a la mere sa femme_," "_Le corps Monseigneur Saint Thomas si est en ceste Province_;" in Joinville, "_le commandemant Mahommet_" "_ceux de la_ Haulequa _estoient logiez entour les heberges le soudanc, et establiz pour le cors le soudanc garder_;" in Baudouin de Sebourc, "_De l'amour Bauduin esprise et enflambee_."

Moreover it is the TREE OF THE SUN that is prominent in the legendary History of Alexander, a fact sufficient in itself to rule the reading. A character in an old English play says:--

"_Peregrine_. Drake was a didapper to Mandevill: Candish and Hawkins, Frobisher, all our Voyagers Went short of Mandevil. But had he reached To this place--here--yes, here--this wilderness, And seen the _Trees of the Sun and Moon_, that speak And told King Alexander of his death; He then Had left a pa.s.sage ope to Travellers That now is kept and guarded by Wild Beasts."

(_Broome's Antipodes_, in _Lamb's Specimens_.)

The same trees are alluded to in an ancient Low German poem in honour of St. Anno of Cologne. Speaking of the Four Beasts of Daniel's Vision:--

"The third beast was a Libbard; Four Eagle's Wings he had; This signified the Grecian Alexander, Who with four Hosts went forth to conquer lands Even to the World's End, Known by its Golden Pillars.

In India he the Wilderness broke through _With Trees twain he there did speak_," etc.

(In _Schilteri Thesaurus Antiq. Teuton._ tom. i.[1])

These oracular Trees of the Sun and Moon, somewhere on the confines of India, appear in all the fabulous histories of Alexander, from the Pseudo-Callisthenes downwards. Thus Alexander is made to tell the story in a letter to Aristotle: "Then came some of the towns-people and said, 'We have to show thee something pa.s.sing strange, O King, and worth thy visiting; for we can show thee trees that talk with human speech.' So they led me to a certain park, in the midst of which were the Sun and Moon, and round about them a guard of priests of the Sun and Moon. And there stood the two trees of which they had spoken, like unto cypress trees; and round about them were trees like the myrobolans of Egypt, and with similar fruit.

And I addressed the two trees that were in the midst of the park, the one which was male in the Masculine gender, and the one that was female in the Feminine gender. And the name of the Male Tree was the Sun, and of the female Tree the Moon, names which were in that language _Muthu_ and _Emausae_.[2] And the stems were clothed with the skins of animals; the male tree with the skins of he-beasts, and the female tree with the skins of she-beasts.... And at the setting of the Sun, a voice, speaking in the Indian tongue, came forth from the (Sun) Tree; and I ordered the Indians who were with me to interpret it. But they were afraid and would not," etc.

(_Pseudo-Callisth._ ed. Muller, III. 17.)

The story as related by Firdusi keeps very near to the Greek as just quoted, but does not use the term "Tree of the Sun." The chapter of the Shah Nameh containing it is ent.i.tled _Didan Sikandar dirakht-i-goyara_, "Alexander's interview with the Speaking Tree." (_Livre des Rois_, V.

229.) In the _Chanson d'Alixandre_ of Lambert le Court and Alex. de Bernay, these trees are introduced as follows:--

"'Signor,' fait Alixandre, 'je vus voel demander, Se des merveilles d'Inde me saves rien conter.'

Cil li ont respondu: 'Se tu vius escouter Ja te dirons merveilles, s'es poras esprover.

La sus en ces desers pues ii Arbres trover Qui c pies ont de haut, et de grossor sunt per.

Li Solaus et La Lune les ont fait si serer Que sevent tous langages et entendre et parler.'"

(Ed. 1861 (Dinan), p. 357.)

Maundevile informs us precisely where these trees are: "A 15 journeys in lengthe, goynge be the Deserts of the tother side of the Ryvere Beumare,"

if one could only tell where that is![3] A mediaeval chronicler also tells us that Ogerus the Dane (_temp. Caroli Magni_) conquered all the parts beyond sea from Hierusalem to the Trees of the Sun. In the old Italian romance also of _Guerino detto il Meschino_, still a chapbook in S. Italy, the Hero (ch. lxiii.) visits the Trees of the Sun and Moon. But this is mere imitation of the Alexandrian story, and has nothing of interest.

(_Maundevile_, pp. 297-298; _Fasciculus Temporum_ in _Germ. Script.

Pistorii Nidani_, II.)

It will be observed that the letter ascribed to Alexander describes the two oracular trees as resembling two cypress-trees. As such the Trees of the Sun and Moon are represented on several extant ancient medals, e.g. on two struck at Perga in Pamphylia in the time of Aurelian. And Eastern story tells us of two vast cypress-trees, sacred among the Magians, which grew in Khorasan, one at Kashmar near Turshiz, and the other at Farmad near Tuz, and which were said to have risen from shoots that Zoroaster brought from Paradise. The former of these was sacrilegiously cut down by the order of the Khalif Motawakkil, in the 9th century. The trunk was despatched to Baghdad on rollers at a vast expense, whilst the branches alone formed a load for 1300 camels. The night that the convoy reached within one stage of the palace, the Khalif was cut in pieces by his own guards. This tree was said to be 1450 years old, and to measure 33-3/4 cubits in girth. The locality of _this_ "Arbor Sol" we see was in Khorasan, and possibly its fame may have been transferred to a representative of another species. The plane, as well as the cypress, was one of the distinctive trees of the Magian Paradise.

In the Peutingerian Tables we find in the N.E. of Asia the rubric "_Hic Alexander Responsum accepit_," which looks very like an allusion to the tale of the Oracular Trees. If so, it is remarkable as a suggestion of the antiquity of the Alexandrian Legends, though the rubric may of course be an interpolation. The Trees of the Sun and Moon appear as located in India Ultima to the east of Persia, in a map which is found in MSS. (12th century) of the _Floridus of Lambertus_; and they are indicated more or less precisely in several maps of the succeeding centuries. (_Ouseley's Travels_, I. 387; _Dabistan_, I. 307-308; _Santarem, H. de la Cosmog._ II.

189, III. 506-513, etc.)

Nothing could show better how this legend had possessed men in the Middle Ages than the fact that Vincent of Beauvais discerns an allusion to these Trees of the Sun and Moon in the blessing of Moses on Joseph (as it runs in the Vulgate), "_de pomis fructuum Solis ac Lunae_." (Deut. x.x.xiii. 14.)

Marco has mixt up this legend of the Alexandrian Romance, on the authority, as we shall see reason to believe, of some of the recompilers of that Romance, with a famous subject of _Christian_ Legend in that age, the ARBRE SEC or Dry Tree, one form of which is related by Maundevile and by Johan Schiltberger. "A lytille fro Ebron," says the former, "is the Mount of Mambre, of the whyche the Valeye taketh his name. And there is a Tree of Oke that the Saracens clepen _Dirpe_, that is of Abraham's Tyme, the which men clepen THE DRYE TREE." [Schiltberger adds that the heathen call it _Kurru Thereck_, i.e. (Turkish) _Kuru Dirakht_ = Dry Tree.] "And theye seye that it hathe ben there sithe the beginnynge of the World; and was sumtyme grene and bare Leves, unto the Tyme that Oure Lord dyede on the Cros; and thanne it dryede; and so dyden alle the Trees that weren thanne in the World. And summe seyn be hire Prophecyes that a Lord, a Prynce of the West syde of the World, shalle wynnen the Lond of Promyssioun, i.e. the Holy Lond, withe Helpe of Cristene Men, and he schalle do synge a Ma.s.se under that Drye Tree, and than the Tree shall wexen grene and bere both Fruyt and Leves. And thorghe that Myracle manye Sarazines and Jewes schulle ben turned to Cristene Feithe. And, therefore, they dou gret Worschipe thereto, and kepen it fulle besyly. And alle be it so that it be drye, natheless yit he berethe great vertue," etc.

The tradition seems to have altered with circ.u.mstances, for a traveller of nearly two centuries later (Friar Anselmo, 1509) describes the oak of Abraham at Hebron as a tree of dense and verdant foliage: "The Saracens make their devotions at it, and hold it in great veneration, for it has remained thus green from the days of Abraham until now; and they tie sc.r.a.ps of cloth on its branches inscribed with some of their writing, and believe that if any one were to cut a piece off that tree he would die within the year." Indeed even before Maundevile's time Friar Burchard (1283) had noticed that though the famous old tree was dry, another had sprung from its roots. And it still has a representative.

As long ago as the time of Constantine a fair was held under the Terebinth of Mamre, which was the object of many superst.i.tious rites and excesses.

The Emperor ordered these to be put a stop to, and a church to be erected at the spot. In the time of Arculph (end of 7th century) the dry trunk still existed under the roof of this church; just as the immortal Banyan-tree of Prag exists to this day in a subterranean temple in the Fort of Allahabad.

It is evident that the story of the Dry Tree had got a great vogue in the 13th century. In the _Jus du Pelerin_, a French drama of Polo's age, the Pilgrim says:--

"S'ai puis en maint bon lieu et a maint saint este, S'ai este au _Sec-Arbre_ et dusc'a Dureste."

And in another play of slightly earlier date (_Le Jus de St. Nicolas_), the King of Africa, invaded by the Christians, summons all his allies and feudatories, among whom appear the Admirals of Coine (_Iconium_) and Orkenie (_Hyrcania_), and the _Amiral d'outre l'Arbre-Sec_ (as it were of "the Back of Beyond") in whose country the only current coin is millstones! Friar Odoric tells us that he heard at Tabriz that the _Arbor Secco_ existed in a mosque of that city; and Clavijo relates a confused story about it in the same locality. Of the _Durre Baum_ at Tauris there is also a somewhat pointless legend in a Cologne MS. of the 14th century, professing to give an account of the East. There are also some curious verses concerning a mystical _Durre Bom_ quoted by Fabricius from an old Low German Poem; and we may just allude to that other mystic _Arbor Secco_ of Dante--

--"una pianta dispogliata Di fiori e d'altra fronda in ciascun ramo,"

though the dark symbolism in the latter case seems to have a different bearing.

(_Maundevile_, p. 68; _Schiltberger_, p. 113; Anselm. in _Canisii Thesaurus_, IV. 781; _Pereg. Quat._ p. 81; _Niceph. Callist._ VIII. 30; _Theatre Francais au Moyen Age_, pp. 97, 173; _Cathay_, p. 48; _Clavijo_, p. 90; _Orient und Occident_, Gottingen, 1867, vol. i.; _Fabricii Vet.