After travelling for five days they entered the beautiful and well watered plain of Cormos or Ormuz, and after two days' further march they reached the shores of the Persian Gulf and the town of Ormuz, which forms the sea-port of the kingdom of Kirman. This country they found very warm und unhealthy, but rich in date and spice trees, in grain, precious stones, silk and golden stuffs, and elephants' tusks, wine made from the date and other merchandise being brought into the town ready for shipment on board ships with but one mast, which came in numbers to the port; but many were lost on the voyage to India, as they were only built with wooden pegs, not iron nails, to fasten them together.
From Ormuz, Marco Polo, going up again towards the north-east, visited Kirman; then he ventured by dangerous roads across a sandy desert, where there was only brackish water to be found, the desert across which, 1500 years before, Alexander had led his army to meet Nearchus. Seven days afterwards he entered the town of Khabis. On leaving this town he crossed for eight days the great plains to Tonokan, the capital of the province of Kumis, probably Damaghan. At this point of his narrative Marco Polo gives an account of the "Old Man of the Mountain," the chief of the Mahometan sect called the Hashishins, who were noted for their religious fanaticism and terrible cruelty. He next visited the Khorassan town of Cheburgan, a city celebrated for its sweet melons, and then the noble city of Balkh, situated near the source of the Oxus. Next he crossed a country infested by lions to Taikan, a great salt-market frequented by a large number of merchants, and to Scasem; this town seems to be the Kashme spoken of by Marsden, the Kishin or Krishin of Hiouen-Tsang, which Sir Henry Rawlinson has identified with the hill of Kharesm of Zend-Avesta, that some commentators think must be the modern Koundouz. In this part of the country he says porcupines abound, and when they are hunted they curl themselves up, darting out the prickles on their sides and backs at the dogs that are hunting them. We now know how much faith to put in this pretended power of defence said to be possessed by the porcupine.
Marco Polo now entered the rocky mountainous kingdom of the Balkhs, whose kings claim descent from Alexander the Great; a cold country, producing good fast horses, excellent falcons, and all kinds of game. Here, too, are prolific ruby-mines worked by the king and which yield large quantities, but they are so strictly enclosed that no one on pain of death may set foot on the Sighinan mountain containing the mines. In other places silver is found, and many precious stones, of which he says "they make the finest azure in the world," meaning lapis-lazuli; his stay in this part of the country must have been a long one to have enabled him to observe so many of its characteristics. Ten days' journey from hence he entered a province which must be the Peshawur of the present day, whose dark-skinned inhabitants were idolaters; then after seven days' further march, about mid-day he came to the kingdom of Cashmere, where the temperature is cool, and towns and villages are very numerous. Had Marco Polo continued his route in the same direction he would soon have reached the territory of India, but instead of that he took a northerly course, and in twelve days was in Vaccan, a land watered by the Upper Oxus, which runs through splendid pastures, where feed immense flocks of wild sheep, called mufflons. Thence he went through a mountainous country, lying between the Altai and Himalayan ranges to Kashgar. Here Marco Polo's route is the same as that of his uncle and his father during their first voyage, when from Bokhara they were taken to the residence of the great khan. From Kashgar, Marco Polo diverged a little to the west, to Samarcand, a large town inhabited by Saracens and Christians, then to Yarkand, a city frequented by caravans trading between India and Northern Asia; passing by Khotan, the capital of the province of that name, and by Pein, a town whose situation is uncertain, but in a part of the country where chalcedony and jasper abound. He came to the kingdom of Kharachar, which extends along the borders of the desert of Jobe; then after five days' further travelling over sandy plains, where there was no water fit to drink, he rested for eight days in the city of Lob, a place now in ruins, while he prepared to cross the desert lying to the east, "so great a desert," he says, "that it would require a year to traverse its whole length, a haunted wilderness, where drums and other instruments are heard, though invisible."
After spending a year crossing this desert, Marco Polo reached Tcha-tcheou, in the province of Tangaut, a town built on the western limits of the Chinese empire. There are but few merchants here, the greater part of the population being agricultural. The custom that seems to have struck him the most in the province of Tangaut, was that of burning their dead only on a day fixed by the astrologers; "all the time that the dead remain in their houses, the relations stay there with them, preparing a place at each meal as well as providing both food and drink for the corpse, as though it were still alive."
Marco Polo and his companions made an excursion to the north-east, to the city of Amil, going on as far as Ginchintalas, a town inhabited by idolaters, Mahometans, and Nestorian Christians, whose situation is disputed. From this town Marco Polo returned to Tcha-tcheou, and went eastward across Tangaut, by the town of So-ceu, over a tract of country particularly favourable to the cultivation of rhubarb, and by Kanpiceon, the Khan-tcheou of the Chinese, then the capital of the province of Tangaut, an important town, whose numerous chiefs are idolaters and polygamists. The three Venetians remained a year in this large city; it is easy to understand, from their long halts and deviations, why they required three years for their journey across Central Asia.
They left Khan-tcheou, and after riding for twelve days they reached the borders of a sandy desert, and entered the city of Etzina. This was another détour, as it lay directly north of their route, but they wished to visit Kara-Korum, the celebrated capital of Tartary, where Rubruquis had been in 1254. Marco Polo was certainly an explorer by nature; fatigue was nothing to him if he had any geographical studies to complete, which is proved by his spending forty days crossing an uninhabited desert without vegetation, in order to reach the Tartar town.
When he arrived there, he found a city measuring three miles in circumference, which had been for a long time the capital of the Empire, before it was conquered by Gengis-Khan, the grandfather of the reigning emperor. Here Marco Polo makes an historical digression, in which he gives an account of the wars of the Tartar chiefs against the famous Prester John who held all this part of the country under his dominion.
Marco Polo after returning to Khan-tcheou left it again, marching five days towards the east, and arriving at the town of Erginul. Thence he went a little to the south to visit Sining-foo, across a tract of country where grazed great wild oxen and the valuable species of goat which is called the "musk-bearer." Returning to Erginul, they went eastward to Cialis, where there is the best manufactory of cloth made from camels' hair in the world, to Tenduc, a town in the province of the same name, where a descendant of Prester John reigned, but who had given in his submission to the great khan; this was a busy flourishing town: from hence the travellers went to Sinda-tchou, and on beyond the great wall of China as far as Ciagannor, which must be Tzin-balgassa, a pretty town where the emperor lives when he wishes to hawk; for cranes, storks, pheasants, and partridges abound in this neighbourhood.
At last Marco Polo, his father, and his uncle, reached Ciandu or Tchan-tchou of the present day, called elsewhere in this narrative Clemen-foo. Here Kublaï-Khan received the papal envoys, for he was occupying his summer palace beyond the great wall, north of Pekin, which was then the capital of the empire. The traveller does not tell us what reception he met with, but he describes most carefully the palace, the grandeur of the building of stone and marble, standing in the middle of a park surrounded by walls, enclosing menageries and fountains. Also a building made of reeds, so closely interlaced as to be impenetrable to water; it was a sort of movable kiosk that the great khan inhabited during the fine months of June, July, and August. The weather during the emperor's sojourn in this summer palace could not but be beautiful, for, according to Marco Polo, the astrologers who were attached to the khan's court were charged to scatter all rain and fog by their sorcery, and the travellers seem to believe in the power of these magicians. "These astrologers," he says, "belong to two races, both idolaters; they are learned in all magic and enchantments, above any other men, and what they do is done by the aid of the devil, but they make others believe that they owe their power to the help of God, and their own holiness. These people have the following strange custom: when a man has been condemned and put to death, they take the body, cook, and eat it; but in the case of a natural death they do not eat the body. And you must know that these people of whom I am speaking, who know so many kinds of enchantments, work the wonder I am about to relate. When the great khan is seated at dinner in the principal dining-hall, the table of which is eight cubits in length, and the cups are on the floor ten paces from the table, filled with wine, milk, and other good beverages, these clever magicians, by their arts, make these cups rise by themselves, and without any one touching them, they are placed before the great khan. This has been done before an immense number of people, and is the exact truth; and those skilled in necromancy will tell you that it is quite possible to do this."
Marco Polo next gives a history of Kublaï, whom he considers to possess more lands and treasures than any man since our first father, Adam. He tells how the great khan ascended the throne in the year 1256, being then eighty-five; he was a man of middle height, rather stout, but of a fine figure, with a good complexion and black eyes. He was a good commander in war, and his talents were put to the proof when his uncle Naïan, having rebelled against him, wished to dispute his power at the head of 400,000 cavalry. Kublaï-Khan collected (in secret) a force of 300,000 horsemen, and 100,000 foot-soldiers, and marched against his uncle. The battle was a most terrible one, so many men being killed, but the khan was victorious, and Naïan, as a prince of the blood royal, was condemned to be sewn up tightly in a carpet, and died in great suffering. After his victory the khan made a triumphal entry into Cathay, capital of Cambaluc, or, as it is now called, Pekin. When Marco Polo arrived at this city he made a long stay there, remaining until the emperor needed his services to undertake various missions into the interior of China. The emperor had a splendid palace at Cambaluc, and the traveller gives so graphic an account of the riches and magnificence of the Mongol sovereigns, that we give it word for word. "The palace is surrounded by a great wall, a mile long each way, four miles in length altogether, very thick, ten feet in height, all white and battlemented. At each corner of this wall is a palace beautiful and rich, in which all the trappings of war belonging to the great khan are kept; his bows, quivers, the saddles and bridles of the horses, the bow-strings, in fact everything that would be wanted in time of war; in the midst of each square is another building, like those at the corner, so that there are eight in all, and each building contains one particular kind of harness or trapping. In the wall on the south side are five doors, the middle or large door only being opened when the emperor wishes to go in or out; near this great gate on either side is a smaller one through which other people may pass, and two others for the same purpose. Inside this wall is another, having also eight buildings to be used in the same manner."