This appears to have been the route pursued by Marco Polo when proceeding as the emperor’s ambassador into Western Tibet. Having travelled for ten days through plains of surpassing beauty and fertility, thickly sprinkled with cities, castles, towns, and villages, shaded by vast plantations of mulberry-trees, and cultivated like a garden, he arrived in the mountainous district of the province of Chunchian, which abounded with lions, bears, stags, roebucks, and wolves. The country through which his route now lay was an agreeable succession of hill, valley, and plain, adorned and improved by art, or reluctantly abandoned to the rude but sublime fantasies of nature.
On entering Tibet, indelible traces of the footsteps of war everywhere smote upon his eye. The whole country had been reduced by the armies of the khan to a desert; the city, the cheerful village, the gilded and gay-looking pagoda, the pleasant homestead, and the humble and secluded cottage, having been overthrown, and their smoking ruins trampled in the dust, had now been succeeded by interminable forests of swift-growing bamboos, from between whose thick and knotty stems the lion, the tiger, and other ferocious animals rushed out suddenly upon the unwary traveller. Not a soul appeared to cheer the eye, or offer provisions for money. All around was stillness and utter desolation. And at night, when they desired to taste a little repose, it was necessary to kindle an immense fire, and heap upon it large quantities of green reeds, which, by the crackling and hissing noise which they made in burning, might frighten away the wild beasts.
This pestilential desert occupied him twenty days in crossing, after which human dwellings, and other signs of life, appeared. The manners of the people among whom he now found himself were remarkably obscene and preposterous. Improving upon the superstitious libertinism of the ancient Babylonians, who sacrificed the modesty of their wives and daughters in the temple of Astarte once in their lives, these Tibetians invariably prostituted their young women to all strangers and travellers who passed through their country, and made it a point of honour never to marry a woman until she could exhibit numerous tokens of her incontinence. Thieving, like want of chastity, was among them no crime; and, although they had begun to cultivate the earth, they still derived their principal means of subsistence from the chase. Their clothing was suitable to their manners, consisting of the skins of wild beasts, or of a kind of coarse hempen garment, less comfortable, perhaps, and still more uncouth to sight. Though subject to China, as it is to this day, the paper money, current through all other parts of the empire, was not in use here; nor had they any better instrument of exchange than small pieces of coral, though their mountains abounded with mines of the precious metals, while gold was rolled down among mud and pebbles through the beds of their torrents. Necklaces of coral adorned the persons of their women and their gods, their earthly and heavenly idols being apparently rated at the same value. In hunting, enormous dogs, nearly the size of asses, were employed.
Still proceeding towards the west, he traversed the province of Kaindu, formerly an independent kingdom, in which there was an extensive salt-lake, so profusely abounding with white pearls, that to prevent their price from being immoderately reduced, it was forbidden, under pain of death, to fish for them without a license from the Great Khan. The turquoise mines found in this province were under the same regulations. The gadderi, or musk deer, was found here in great numbers, as were likewise lions, bears, stags, ounces, deer, and roebucks. The clove, extremely plentiful in Kaindu, was gathered from small trees not unlike the bay-tree in growth and leaves, though somewhat longer and straighter: its flowers were white, like those of the jasmin. Here manners were regulated by nearly the same principles as in the foregoing province, strangers assuming the rights of husbands in whatever houses they rested on their journey. Unstamped gold, issued by weight, and small solid loaves of salt, marked with the seal of the khan, were the current money.
Traversing the province of Keraian, of which little is said, except that its inhabitants were pagans, and spoke a very difficult language, our traveller next arrived at the city of Lassa, situated on the Dom or Tama river, a branch of the Bramahpootra. This celebrated and extensive city, the residence of the Dalai, or Great Lama, worshipped by the natives as an incarnation of the godhead, was then the resort of numerous merchants, and the centre of an active and widely-diffused commerce. Complete religious toleration prevailed, pagans, Mohammedans, and Christians dwelling together apparently in harmony; the followers of the established religion, a modification of Buddhism, being however by far the most numerous. Though corn was here plentiful, the inhabitants made no use of any other bread than that of rice, which they considered the most wholesome; and their wine, which was flavoured with several kinds of spices, and exceedingly pleasant, they likewise manufactured from the same grain. Cowries seem to have been used for money. The inhabitants, like the Abyssinians, ate the flesh of the ox, the buffalo, and the sheep raw, though they do not appear to have cut their steaks from the living animals. Here, as elsewhere in Tibet, women were subjected, under certain conditions, to the embraces of strangers.
From Lassa, Marco Polo proceeded to the province of Korazan, where veins of solid gold were found in the mountains, and washed down to the plains by the waters of the rivers. Cowries were here the ordinary currency. Among the usual articles of food was the flesh of the crocodile, which was said to be very delicate. The inhabitants carried on an active trade in horses with India. In their wars they made use of targets and other defensive armour, manufactured, like the shields of many of the Homeric heroes, from tough bull or buffalo hide. Their arms consisted of lances or spears, and crossbows, from which, like genuine savages, they darted poisonous arrows at their foes. When taken prisoners, they frequently escaped from the evils of servitude by self-slaughter, always bearing about their persons, like Mithridates and Demosthenes, a concealed poison, by which they could at any time open themselves a way to Pluto. Previous to the Mongol conquests, these reckless savages were in the habit of murdering in their sleep such strangers or travellers as happened to pass through their country, from the superstitious belief, it is said, that the good qualities of the dead would devolve upon those who killed them, of which it must be confessed they stood in great need; and perhaps from the better grounded conviction that they should thus, at all events, become the undoubted heirs of their wealth.
Journeying westward for five days our traveller arrived at the province of Kardandan, where the current money were cowries brought from India, and gold in ingots. Gold was here so plentiful that it was exchanged for five times its weight in silver; and the inhabitants, who had probably been subject to the toothache, were in the habit of covering their teeth with thin plates of this precious metal, which, according to Marco, were so nicely fitted that the teeth appeared to be of solid gold. The practice of tattooing, which seems to have prevailed at one time or other over the whole world, was in vogue here, men being esteemed in proportion as their skins were more disfigured. Riding, hunting, and martial exercises occupied the whole time of the men, while the women, aided by the slaves who were purchased or taken in war, performed all the domestic labours. Another strange custom, the cause and origin of which, though it has prevailed in several parts of the world, is hidden in obscurity, obtained here; when a woman had been delivered of a child, she immediately quitted her bed, and having washed the infant, placed it in the hands of her husband, who, lying down in her stead, personated the sick person, nursed the child, and remained in bed six weeks, receiving the visits and condolences of his friends and neighbours. Meanwhile the woman bestirred herself, and performed her usual duties as if nothing had happened. Marco Polo could discover nothing more of the religious opinions of this people than that they worshipped the oldest man in their family, probably as the representative of the generative principle of nature. Broken, rugged, and stupendous mountains, no doubt the Himmalaya, rendered this wild country nearly inaccessible to strangers, who were further deterred by a report that a fatal miasma pervaded the air, particularly in summer. The knowledge of letters had not penetrated into this region, and all contracts and obligations were recorded by tallies of wood, as small accounts are still kept in Normandy, and other rude provinces of Europe.
Ignorance, priestcraft, and magic being of one family, and thriving by each other, are always found together. These savages, like Lear, had thrown “physic to the dogs;” and when attacked by disease preferred the priest or the magician to the doctor. The priests, hoping to drive disease out of their neighbour’s body by admitting the Devil into their own, repaired, when called upon, to the chamber of the sick person; and there sung, danced, leaped, and raved, until a demon, in the language of the initiated, or, in other words, weariness, seized upon them, when they discontinued their violent gestures, and consented to be interrogated. Their answer, of course, was, that the patient had offended some god, who was to be propitiated with sacrifice, which consisted partly in offering up a portion of the patient’s blood, not to the goddess Phlebotomy, as with us, but to some member of the Olympian synod whose fame has not reached posterity. In addition to this, a certain number of rams with black heads were sacrificed, their blood sprinkled in the air for the benefit of the gods, and a great number of candles having been lighted up, and the house thoroughly perfumed with incense and wood of aloes, the priests sat down with their wives and families to dinner; and if after all this the sick man would persist in dying, it was no fault of theirs. Destiny alone was to blame.
The next journey which Marco Polo undertook, after his return from Tibet, was into the kingdom of Mangi, or Southern China, subdued by the arms of the khan in 1269. Fanfur, the monarch, who had reigned previous to the irruption of the Mongols, is represented as a mild, beneficent, and peaceful prince, intent upon maintaining justice and internal tranquillity in his dominions; but wanting in energy, and neglectful of the means of national defence. During the latter years of his reign he had abandoned himself, like another Sardanapalus, to sensuality and voluptuousness; though, when the storm of war burst upon him, he exhibited far less magnanimity than that Assyrian Sybarite; flying pusillanimously to his fleet with all his wealth, and relinquishing the defence of the capital to his queen, who, as a woman, had nothing to fear from the cruelty of the conqueror. A foolish story, no doubt invented after the fall of the city, is said to have inspired the queen with confidence, and encouraged her to resist the besiegers: the soothsayers, or haruspices, had assured Fanfur, in the days of his prosperity, that no man not possessing a hundred eyes should ever deprive him of his kingdom. Learning, however, with dismay that the name of the Tartar general now besieging the place signified “the Hundred-eyed,” she perceived the fulfilment of the prediction, and surrendered up the city. Kublai Khan, agreeably to the opinion of Fanfur, conducted himself liberally towards the captive queen; who, being conveyed to Cambalu, was received and treated in a manner suitable to her former dignity. The dwarf-minded emperor died about a year after, a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth.
The capital of Southern China, called Quinsai, or Kinsai, by Marco Polo, a name signifying the “Celestial City,” was a place of prodigious magnitude, being, according to the reports of the Chinese, not less than one hundred miles in circumference. This rough estimate of the extent of Kinsai, though beyond doubt considerably exaggerated, is after all not so very incredible as may at first appear. Within this circumference, if the place was constructed after the usual fashion of a Chinese city, would be included parks and gardens of immense extent, vast open spaces for the evolutions of the troops, besides the ten market-places, each two miles in circumference, mentioned by Marco Polo, and many other large spaces not covered with houses. By these means Kinsai might have been nearly one hundred miles in circuit, without approaching London in riches or population. That modern travellers have found no trace of such amazing extent in Hang-chen, Kua-hing, or whatever city they determine Kinsai to have been, by no means invalidates the assertion of Marco Polo; for considering the revolutions which China has undergone, and the perishable materials of the ordinary dwellings of its inhabitants, we may look upon the space of nearly six hundred years as more than sufficient to have changed the site of Kinsai into a desert. Were the seat of government to be removed from Calcutta to Agra or Delhi, the revolution of one century would reduce that “City of Palaces,” to a miserable village, or wholly bury it in the pestilential bog from which its sumptuous but perishable edifices originally rose like an exhalation.