Some critics cry out against personal detail in books of Travel; but as
regards him who would not welcome a little more egotism! In his Book
impersonality is carried to excess; and we are often driven to discern
by indirect and doubtful indications alone, whether he is speaking of
a place from personal knowledge or only from hearsay. In truth, though
there are delightful exceptions, and nearly every part of the book
suggests interesting questions, a desperate meagreness and baldness
does extend over considerable tracts of the story. In fact his book
reminds us sometimes of his own description of Khorasan:—“_On chevauche
par beaus plains et belles costieres, là où il a moult beaus herbages
et bonne pasture et fruis assez.... Et aucune fois y treuve l’en un
desert de soixante milles ou de mains, esquels desers ne treuve l’en
point d’eaue; mais la convient porter o lui!_”
Still, some shadowy image of the man may be seen in the Book; a
practical man, brave, shrewd, prudent, keen in affairs, and never
losing his interest in mercantile details, very fond of the chase,
sparing of speech; with a deep wondering respect for Saints, even
though they be Pagan Saints, and their asceticism, but a contempt for
Patarins and such like, whose consciences would not run in customary
grooves, and on his own part a keen appreciation of the World’s pomps
and vanities. See, on the one hand, his undisguised admiration of
the hard life and long fastings of Sakya Muni; and on the other how
enthusiastic he gets in speaking of the great Kaan’s command of the
good things of the world, but above all of his matchless opportunities
of sport![5]
Of humour there are hardly any signs in his Book. His almost solitary
joke (I know but one more, and it pertains to the οὐκ ἀνήκοντα)
occurs in speaking of the Kaan’s paper-money when he observes that
Kúblái might be said to have the true Philosopher’s Stone, for he
made his money at pleasure out of the bark of Trees.[6] Even the
oddest eccentricities of outlandish tribes scarcely seem to disturb
his gravity; as when he relates in his brief way of the people called
Gold-Teeth on the frontier of Burma, that ludicrous custom which Mr.
Tylor has so well illustrated under the name of the _Couvade_. There is
more savour of laughter in the few lines of a Greek Epic, which relate
precisely the same custom of a people on the Euxine:—
————“In the Tibarenian Land
When some good woman bears her lord a babe,
’Tis _he_ is swathed and groaning put to bed;
Whilst _she_, arising, tends his baths, and serves
Nice possets for her husband in the straw.”[7]
[Illustration: Probable View OF MARCO POLO’S OWN GEOGRAPHY
Lit. Frauenfelder, Palermo]
[Sidenote: Absence of scientific notions.]