fairly navigable to that station by steamers drawing not more than four feet of water.

Meanwhile, early in 1868, Mr. T. T. Cooper made an attempt to traverse the unknown region between the Chinese province Szechuen and Assam, but was turned back by the Chinese authorities at Bathang, after making a successful journey up the Yang-tse and Taitow-ho rivers and through the frontier town of Tai-tsian-loo. He then endeavoured to cross to Burmah viâ Yunnan, but found this also impracticable. We have placed the title of his narrative, recently published, at the head of this article as illustrating that portion of Marco Polo's story at which we have now arrived. It is one of those racy descriptions of exciting adventure which we can only look for from men of high pluck, and not too often from them. Better than this-although, from no deficiencies of his own, he was unable to complete the great task which he had proposed to himself-he knew perfectly well what he was about, and, having a definite object as a 'Pioneer of Commerce,' did uncommonly good service.

Among the recognisable places in Polo's mission is Singan-fu, formerly Changgan, the capital of Shenshi, the most celebrated city in Chinese history, and the capital of several of the most potent dynasties. To the south-east of the city was an artificial lake with palaces, gardens, park, &c., originally formed by the Emperor Hiaowu, B.C. 100. It has been recently visited by Mr. Williamson, who says that the site of the palace is still to be seen, as well as a celebrated Christian inscription, still perfect, in a ruined temple outside the west gate of the city.

Another notable city is Sindafu, i.e. Chingtufu, the capital of Szechuen, twenty miles in compass. It had a great stone bridge half a mile in length, with columns of marble bearing a richly painted timber roof from one end to the other, and on the bridge houses in which much trade was carried on. The modern French missions have a bishop there, and Mr. Wylie, who has visited it recently, says that the covered bridge with the stalls is still in existence. In speaking of the province of Caindu, in Eastern Thibet, Marco Polo tells us that there grows in this country a quantity of clove. The tree is a small one, with leaves like laurel, but longer and narrower, and with a small white flower like the clove.' M. Pauthier will have it that Marco was here the discoverer of Assam tea, on which Colonel Yule remarks- Assam is, indeed, far out of our range, but Polo's notice of this plant, with the laurel-like leaf and white flower, was brought strongly to my recollection in reading Mr. Cooper's repeated notices, in this very region, of the large-leaved tea-tree, with its white flowers; and, again, of the hills covered with tea-oil trees, all white with

flowers.'

flowers. And a hill between Bathang and the Kinsha Kiang is called the Hill of the Tea Trees' (Ritter iv. 201). Still, one does not clearly see why Polo should give tea-trees the name of cloves. Colonel Yule conjectures them to be cassia-buds.

'In Thibet,' Polo says, their custom is that when travellers come that way, the old women take the unmarried girls and make them over to whomsoever will accept them.' Mr. Cooper's Journal gives a startling illustration of the continuance of this

custom

'On the banks of the Kinsha-Kiang, west of Bathang,' he says, 'we alighted at a roadside house, near a grove of walnut-trees, when to my surprise I was invited by a group of girls and two elderly women to partake of a repast under the trees. . . . Having finished, I lighted my pipe and threw myself on the grass, when after a few seconds, they brought a young girl of about fifteen, tall and very fair, placed her on the grass beside me, and forming a ring round us, began to sing and dance. The little maid, however, was bathed in tears. All this puzzled me, when Philip, the Chinese servant, with a long face, came to me, saying," Well, Sir, this is a bad business, they are marrying you." Good heavens! how startled I was.'

These people of Thibet, says Polo, have mastiff dogs as big as donkeys, which are capital at seizing wild beasts. These large dogs are now well known. They would seem to have been the same that are so admirably represented in the lion-hunts on the Assyrian reliefs, and were doubtless the same as those the prowess of which against a lion, Quintus Curtius describes as exhibited by Sophites to Alexander. Mr. Cooper, at Tatsianlu, notes that the Thibetans keep very large dogs, as large as Newfoundlands. Mr. Cooper also notices the eager demand at Bathang for coral, specialised by Polo as being sought for by the Thibetans at a high price to hang round the necks of their women and their idols.' That ludicrous and wide-spread custom, so well illustrated by Mr. Tylor under the name of the 'Couvade,' is described by Polo as practised by the Zardandan, or Gold Teeth' people in Western Yunnan. When a woman has borne a child, her husband takes her place in the bed, while she gets up, attends to the household, and nurses the pseudoinvalid with the utmost care. That this practice exists in the neighbouring province of Kweichan has lately been shown from a Chinese MS. by Mr. Douglas, of the British Museum.

A very interesting pictorial illustration is supplied by Colonel Yule of a restoration of the ancient city of Pagán, in Burmah, with its towers of gold and silver (the Mien of Polo), compiled from the Colonel's own sketches on the spot.

Polo's

Polo's description of China concludes with an ample notice of the magnificence of Kinsay, better known by us as Hang-chow, and of Zaiton (Chincheu), the famous seaport, principally visited at that period by navigators from the West.

The very favour in which the three Polos stood with the Khan seemed to preclude all hope of their return to Europe, for he would not let them go, and but for a happy chance, we should have lost all account of our great mediaval traveller and his doings. An experienced escort was needed for a royal lady who had to make a voyage from China to the Court of Kublai's nephew, Arghun, Khan of Persia, whom she was to marry; and the Venetians were selected. It was an ill-starred voyage, and involved long detentions on the coast of Sumatra, and in the south of India, to which, however, we are indebted for some of the best chapters in the book; and two years elapsed before they arrived in Persia. At length, after a long stay at Tabriz, they made their way to Venice, arriving some time in 1295.

It was probably from the officers of the ships in this and in his former voyage to India that Marco Polo learned what little he knew of the great island of Zipangri, or Japan. The people were fair, gentle in their manners, and governed by their own princes. Gold-its exportation being prohibited-was so plentiful, that the roof of the prince's palace was covered with it. The prodigious opulence of this country tempted the ambition or rapacity of Kublai Khan, who, with a vast fleet and army, attempted to annex it to his empire, but without success. It was Marco's brief description of this insular El Dorado, which is supposed to have kindled the spirit of discovery and adventure in the great soul of Columbus. islands and thickly sprinkled Archipelagoes of the Indian The vast Ocean now successively presented themselves to our traveller, and appeared like another world. Champa (Cochin-China), with its woods of ebony; Borneo, with its spices and gold; Locach (Cambodia), with its brazil-wood, elephants, and gold; these were the new and strange countries at which they touched on the way to Java, the pearl of islands, and to Java the less, or Sumatra, an island which he describes as 2000 miles in circumference, and divided into eight kingdoms, inhabited partly by Mahommedans, though numerous savage tribes still roamed among the mountains, feeding on human flesh and every unclean animal.

One of these wild races had a very extraordinary practice :whenever any individual was ill, his relatives enquired of the priests or magicians whether he would recover or not; if not, Vol. 132.-No. 263.

Q

the

the patient was instantly strangled, cut in pieces, and devoured, even to the very marrow of the bones. This, they alleged, was to prevent the generation of worms in any portion of the body, which by gnawing and defacing it, would torture the soul of the dead. Strangers, from the same humane motives, were eaten in an equally friendly way.

ever

seen in

Here were hairy men with tails, and trees from 10 feet to 12 feet in circumference, from which a kind of meal was made. This was sago, the first specimen of which Europe was brought to Venice by Marco Polo. The wood of the tree, which was heavy, and sunk in the water like iron, was used in making spears. From Sumatra they sailed to the Nicobar and Andaman islands, the natives of which were then, and are still, but naked savages. They next touched at Ceylon, in Marco's eyes the finest island in the world. Here no grain, except rice, was cultivated; but the country produced a profusion of oil, sesamum, palm wine, sapphires, topazes, amethysts, and rubies. Of this last kind of gem the king possessed the finest specimen in existence, as long as a man's hand, and as thick as a man's arm, and glowing like fire. From Ceylon they proceeded to Maabar, which, however, is not Malabar, but the coast of Coromandel. Here he reverts also to the old Sinbad story of diamonds lying in inaccessible valleys, upon which men throw down pieces of meat, which are pounced upon by eagles, and brought up to the hill top. When the eagles are frightened away, the diamonds are found adhering to the meat. The story is as old as the fourth century, being told, not of the diamond but of the jacinth, by St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus. There was in Marco's time a great and noble city in Tinnevelly named Cail, at which all the ships touched that came from the west. The site of this port Colonel Yule, with the aid of Dr. Caldwell, has been able to identify. Passing Cape Comorin, Polo sailed along the coasts of Malabar, where he notices the abundance of pepper and ginger; then along those of Guzerat and Cambaia, and so, across the Indian Ocean, home. In his enquiries and explorations, Marco Polo took pains to acquaint himself with the natural history of each country, and with such products as might become valuable as articles of commerce to a maritime and commercial people like the Venetians. The commerce of India he found stretching, like an immense chain, from the territories of Kublai Khan to the shores of the Persian Gulf and of the Red Sea. He traces down as far south as Madagascar the nautical explorations of the Asiatics of the Middle Ages, and suggests to us why those early

navigators

navigators failed in discovering the southernmost point of Africa. They cannot go,' he says, 'further south than this island and that of Zanguebar, because the current draws them so strongly towards the south, that they cannot turn back again.' The age of great maritime discovery had not yet arrived, and if the monsoons presented opportunities of boldly sailing out of sight of land, they at the same time exposed adventurous navigators to a new kind of danger, by carrying them far away to the south, across an ocean to which they found no limit. In Madagascar we meet with the fabulous story of the gigantic bird, the Rukh, the nearest illustration of which is the Æpyornis, the egg of which, in the British Museum, will hold nearly two gallons and a half. Colonel Yule has given in the volume a representation of this egg of the full size. The name of our rook in chess is taken from that of this same bird.

We would not close this paper without one or two retrospective remarks. When Marco Polo, six centuries ago, had achieved his wonderful journey, his narrative was thought to be so full of exaggeration and untruth, that long after his death, it is said that in the Venetian masques one individual always assumed the character of Marco Milioni to amuse the vulgar with his Munchausen-like stories. In some sense the belief was correct, especially with reference to those accounts which Polo delivered from hearsay. It is undeniable, also, that he had a tendency to describe his own experiences ore rotundo. When, however, on his death-bed, he was asked by his friends to correct his book, by removing everything that went beyond the facts, he replied that he had not told one half of what he had really seen. It has often been charged against him, that he did not mention tea, the fishing cormorant, the compressed feet of the women, &c., items which, if prominently remarkable to us, were not so to him, amid the thousand and one things that he had to record. the reader reflect on the amount of confirmation of his statements which the learning and the travel of recent times have produced, and we think his death-bed declaration will be accepted as true. Meanwhile, the application of that learning and that travel is due to Colonel Yule; but it is certain that no mere review can convey an adequate idea of the admirable manner in which he has dealt with his Herculean task.

Let