Chapter CXVI: Section XXI

_Of Madagascar, Ethiopia, Abyssinia, and several other Countries[1]_.

A thousand miles south from Socotora is Magaster[2] or Madagascar, one of the largest and richest islands in the world[3], 3000 miles in circumference, which is inhabited by Saracens, and governed by four old men. The currents of the sea in those parts are of prodigious force. The people live by merchandize, and sell vast quantifies of elephants teeth [4]. Mariners report strange stories of a prodigiously large bird like an eagle, called _Ruch_, said to be found in this country.

Zensibar or Zanguebar, is also said to be of great extent, and inhabited by a very deformed people; and the country abounds in elephants and antelopes, and a species of sheep very unlike to ours.

I have heard from mariners and skilful pilots, much versant in the Indian seas, and have seen in their writings, that these seas contain 12,700 islands, inhabited or desert.

In the Greater India, which is between Moabar or the Coromandel coast on the east, round to Chesmacoran on the north-west, there are thirteen kingdoms. India Minor is from Ziambo to Murfili[5], in which are eight kingdoms and many islands.

The second or Middle India is called Abascia[6], of which the chief king is a Christian, who has six other kings subject to his authority, three of whom are Christians and three of them Mahometans; there are also Jews in his dominions. St Thomas, after preaching in Nubia, came to Abascia, where he preached for some time, and then went to Moabar or Coromandel. The Abyssinians are valiant soldiers, always at war with the sultan of Aden and the people of Nubia. I was told, that in 1288, the great emperor of the Abyssinians was extremely desirous to have visited Jerusalem; but being dissuaded from the attempt, on account of the Saracen kingdoms which were in the way, he sent a pious bishop to perform his devotions for him at the holy sepulchre. On his return, the bishop was made prisoner by the sultan of Aden, and circumcised by force. On this affront, the Abyssinian monarch raised an army, with which he defeated the sultan and two other Saracen kings, and took and destroyed the city of Aden. Abyssinia is, rich in gold. Escier, subject to Aden, is forty miles distant to the south-east, and produces abundance of fine white frankincense, which is procured by making incisions in the bark of certain small trees, and is a valuable merchandize. Some of the people on that coast, from want of corn, use fish, which they have in great abundance, instead of bread, and also feed their beasts on fish. They are most abundantly taken in the months of March, April, and May.

I now return to some provinces more to the north, where many Tartars dwell, who have a king called Caidu, of the race of Zingis, but who is entirely independent. These Tartars, observant of the customs of their ancestors, dwell not in cities, castles, or fortresses, but continually roam about, along with their king, in the plains and forests, and are esteemed true Tartars. They have no corn of any kind, but have multitudes of horses, cattle, sheep, and other beasts, and live on flesh and milk, in great peace. In their country there are white bears of large size, twenty palms in length; very large wild asses, little beasts called _rondes_, from which we have the valuable fur called sables, and various other animals producing fine furs, which the Tartars are very skilful in taking. This country abounds in great lakes, which are frozen over, except for a few months in every year, and in summer it is hardly possible to travel, on account of marshes and waters; for which reason, the merchants who go to buy furs, and who have to travel for fourteen days through the desert, have wooden houses at the end of each days journey, where they barter with the inhabitants, and in winter they travel in sledges without wheels, quite flat at the bottom, and rising semicircularly at the top, and these are drawn by great dogs, yoked in couples, the sledgeman only with his merchant and furs, sitting within[7].

Beyond these Tartars is a country reaching to the extremest north, called the _Obscure land_, because the sun never appears during the greatest part of the winter months, and the air is perpetually thick and darkish, as is the case with us sometimes in hazy mornings. The inhabitants are pale and squat, and live like beasts, without law, religion, or king. The Tartars often rob them of their cattle during the dark months; and lest they might lose their way in these expeditions they ride on mares which have sucking foals, leaving these at the entrance of the country, under a guard; and when they have got possession of any booty, they give the reins to the mares, which make the best of their way to rejoin their foals. In their, long-continued summer[8], these northern people take many of the finest furs, some of which are carried into Russia, which is a great country near that northern land of darkness. The people in Russia have fair complexions, and are Greek Christians, paying tribute to the king of the Tartars in the west, on whom they border. In the eastern parts of Russia there is abundance of fine furs, wax, and mines of silver; and I am told the country reaches to the northern ocean, in which there are islands which abound in falcons and ger-falcons.

[1] This concluding section may be considered as a kind of appendix, in
which Marco has placed several unconnected hearsay notices of
countries where he never had been personally.--E.

[2] Mandeigascar in the Trevigi edition, and certainly meant for
Madagascar.--E.

[3] Madagascar has no pretensions to riches or trade, and never had; so
that Marco must have been imposed upon by some Saracen or Arab
mariner. Its size, climate, and soil certainly fit it for becoming a
place of vast riches and population; but it is one almost continued
forest, inhabited by numerous independent and hostile tribes of
barbarians. Of this island, a minute account will appear in an after
part of this work.--E.

[4] There are no elephants in Madagascar, yet these teeth might have been
procured from southern Africa.--E.

[5] By India Minor he obviously means what is usually called farther India,
or India beyond the Ganges, from the frontiers of China to Moabar, or
the north part of the Coromandel coast, including the islands.--E.

[6] Abyssinia, here taken in the most extended sense, including all the
western coast of the Red Sea, and Eastern Africa.--E.

[7] This paragraph obviously alludes to the Tartar kingdom of Siberia.--E.

[8] The summer in this northern country of the Samojeds is extremely short;
but the expression here used, must allude to the long-continued summer
day, when, for several months, the sun never sets.--E.

CHAP. XII.

_Travels of Oderic of Portenau, into China and the East, in_ 1318[1].