Old Roads and New Roads

by William Bodham Donne

“In the city of Lop,” says the hardy and veracious merchant of Venice, “they who desire to pass over the desert cause all necessaries to be provided for them; and when victuals begin to fail in the desert, they kill their camels and asses and eat them. They mostly make it their choice to use camels, because they are sustained with little meat, and bear great burdens. They must purvey victuals for a month to cross it only, for to go through it lengthways would require a year’s time. They go through the sands and barren mountains, and daily find water; yet at times it is so little that it will hardly suffice fifty or a hundred men with their beasts; and in three or four places the water is salt and bitter. The rest of the road, for eight-and-twenty days, is very good. In it there are not either beasts or birds; they say that there dwell many spirits in this wilderness, which cause great and marvellous illusions to travellers, and make them perish; for if any stay behind, and cannot see his company, he shall be called by his name, and so going out of the way be lost. [94a] In night they hear as it were the noise of a company, which, taking to be theirs, they perish likewise. Concerts of musical instruments are sometimes heard in the air, like noise of drums and armies. [94b] They go therefore close together, hang bells on their beasts’ neck, and set marks, if any stray.”

The Hebrews, dispersed over every region of the world, civilized or uncivilized, were necessarily

great travellers. There was, in the first place, their central connection with Palestine, which they generally visited once in their lives, and whither thousands of them, as age advanced, flocked to lay their bones. There were the claims of kindred, prompting them to seek out and visit the children of dispersion, whether seated on the banks of the Vistula, the Euphrates, or the Nile; and there were the incentives of commerce, which drew them through the perils of land and sea. From the instructions given to their travelling agents in the medieval period, we derive much curious information respecting the internal state of Europe. It were indeed much to be wished that competent Hebrew scholars, instead of devoting themselves to the inane obscurity of the Rabbins, would employ their learning upon the history of the Jews in the Middle Ages. Much curious and interesting knowledge might be disinterred from the piles of Hebrew manuscripts that now lie amid the dust and spiders’ webs of the Escurial. Above all things the itineraries of the Jewish travellers should be explored, as containing probably the most minute and accurate description of the social state of Europe at that period. Both for their personal security and for the despatch of their affairs, it was essential for the Jews to obtain and circulate the most exact information of the markets and population of the cities on their route. They required to know whom to shun and whom to seek; the towns in which the

Jews’ quarter was most commodious and secure; and the intervening tracts, often many days’ journey in extent, which were most free from robbers or feudal oppressors. The following draft of instructions for a Spanish Jew, whose occasions led him from Spain to Greece, will afford the reader some conception of the historical value of such itineraries. Its date is apparently not later than the sixteenth century:—

“Whoever wants to go from Saragossa, Huesca, Teruel, or any other town in Arragon, to Constantinople, the great city where the Turk reigns, must follow the route herein contained, and beware of the dangers that we are going to specify. The fugitive must first of all go to Jaca, where they will ask him the object of his voyage; he must say that he escapes to France, on account of his creditors, and he will not be disturbed. Thence he will go to Canfranc, and thence to Oleron, the first town in France, where, if questioned respecting the object of his voyage, he must say that he is going on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Loretto. From Oleron to Pau, to Tarbes, to Toulouse, to Gaillac, to Villefranche, and to Lyons: in this latter place the traveller will be obliged to show whatever money he carries, and pay one out of every forty pieces, whether silver or gold. At Lyons he will ask his way to Milan, and say that he is going to visit St. Mark of Venice; but when within five leagues of the former city, he must leave it on the right, and pass behind the mountain, so as not to enter the territory of the emperor. From thence he must direct his course towards the State of Venice; and when he arrives at Verona, not go through the city, for they make every one pay one real at the gates. In Verona he must ask his way to Padua, where he will embark on the river and go to Venice; the passage will cost him half a real. He will land on the Piazza di San Marco, and then he must look out for an inn to go to; he must be cautious in making his bargain with the innkeeper first; he must not pay more than half a real a day for his bed; and he is warned not to let the landlord provide him with anything, for he will charge him double for everything. On the day after his arrival he must go to the Piazza di San Marco, and there he will see some men with white turbans, and others with yellow; the first are Turks, the latter Jews. From these he will get every assistance and advice, whether he wants to go to Salonica or to any port of Greece.”

At the time when Marco Polo, Rubruquis, Benjamin of Tudela, etc., journeyed in Asia, the East was still unspoiled—it was still the authentic Ophir of gold and barbaric pearl, and gorgeous armour, and solemn processions. At the same time Asia was but little behind Europe in the general elements of civilization, so that the contrast which is so glaring at the present day, between the state of a sultan and a pasha, and the squalid poverty of his

subjects and servants, was then less startling. The courts of Europe were comparatively poor and mean, while the palaces of the oriental monarchs powerfully affected the imagination of the traveller. At a time too when the manners of the European nobility exhibited little refinement, the dignified courtesy and elaborate ceremonies of Bagdad and Ispahan were not less imposing than the pomp and splendour of their garb and its decorations. The Eastern chivalry also was to the full as efficient as that of the West; for what it lacked in weight of metal, it gained in superior adroitness in the use of weapons, in the greater facility of its movements, and the better temper and flexibility of its armour. All these features of a high—though, as it proved, a less enduring—civilization are noted with wonder and applause by the early travellers, who cannot sufficiently express their admiration of such opulence and such brilliant displays.

But for our immediate purpose, we can only speak of the great roads and inns of “Cathaian Khan.” Marco Polo thus describes the great roads and excellent inns in the neighbourhood of Cambalu.

“There are many public roads from the city of Cambalu, which conduct to the neighbouring provinces, and in every one of them, at the end of five-and-twenty or thirty miles, are lodgings or inns built, called lambs, that is, post-houses, with large and fair courts, chambers furnished with beds and other provisions, every way fit to entertain great men, nay, even to lodge a king. The provisions are laid in from the country adjacent: there are about four hundred horses, which are in readiness for messengers and ambassadors, who there leave their tired horses, and take fresh; and in mountainous places, where are no villages, the Great Khan sends people to inhabit, about ten thousand at a place, where these lambs or post-houses are built, and the people cultivating the ground for their provisions. These excellent regulations continue unto the utmost limits of the empire, so that, on the public ways throughout the whole of the Khan’s dominions, about ten thousand of the king’s inns are found; and the number of the horses appointed for the service of the messengers in those inns are more than two hundred thousand—a thing almost incredible: hence it is that in a little while, with change of men and horses, intelligence comes, without stop, to the court. The horses are employed by turns, so that of the four hundred, two hundred are in the stables ready, the other two hundred at grass, each a month at a time. Their cities also, that are adjoining to rivers and lakes, are appointed to have ferry-boats in readiness for the posts, and cities on the borders of deserts are directed to have horses and provisions for the use of such as pass through those deserts: and they have a reasonable allowance for this service from the Khan. In cases of great moment the posts will ride two hundred miles a-day, or sometimes two hundred and fifty. Also they ride all night, foot-posts running by them with lights, if the moon does not shine.

“There are also between these inns other habitations, three or four miles distant from one another, in which there are a few houses, where foot-posts live, having each of them his girdle hung full of shrill-sounding bells. These keep themselves always ready, and as often as the Khan’s letters are sent to them convey them speedily to the posts at the next village, who, hearing the sound of the foot-post coming when at a distance, expect him and receive his letters, and presently carry them to the next watch; and so, the letters passing through several hands, are conveyed, without delay, to the place whither they ought to come; and it often happens that by this the king learns news, or receives new fruits, from a place ten days’ journey distant, in two days. As, for instance, fruits growing at Cambalu in the morning, by the next day at night are at Xanadu.”

Such were the general features of the old roads of Asia and Europe centuries ago. But it must be regarded as one of the caprices of civilization that the only roads, in the fifteenth century, which rivalled the Roman Viæ, were constructed in another hemisphere, and by a people whom the Europeans were wont to regard with disdain, as barbarous. The gold and silver furniture of the Peruvian palaces excited the cupidity of the Spanish