The Voyages of Marco Polo. Марко Поло
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Por çou les enclot puis es estres desus.
Dusc' al tans Antecrist n'en istera mais nus."
According to some chroniclers, the Emperor Heraclius had already let loose the Shut-up Nations to aid him against the Persians, but it brought him no good, for he was beaten in spite of their aid, and died of grief.
The theory that the Tartars were Gog and Magog led to the Rampart of Alexander being confounded with the Wall of China (see infra, Bk. I. ch. lix.), or being relegated to the extreme N.E. of Asia, as we find it in the Carta Catalana.
These legends are referred to by Rabbi Benjamin, Hayton, Rubruquis, Ricold, Matthew Paris, and many more. Josephus indeed speaks of the Pass which Alexander fortified with gates of steel. But his saying that the King of Hyrcania was Lord of this Pass points to the Hyrcanian Gates of Northern Persia, or perhaps to the Wall of Gomushtapah, described by Vámbéry.
Ricold of Montecroce allows two arguments to connect the Tartars with the Jews who were shut up by Alexander; one that the Tartars hated the very name of Alexander, and could not bear to hear it; the other, that their manner of writing was very like the Chaldean, meaning apparently the Syriac (anté, p. 29). But he points out that they had no resemblance to Jews, and no knowledge of the law.
Edrisi relates how the Khalif Wathek sent one Salem the Dragoman to explore the Rampart of Gog and Magog. His route lay by Tiflis, the Alan country, and that of the Bashkirds, to the far north or north-east, and back by Samarkand. But the report of what he saw is pure fable.
In 1857, Dr. Bellew seems to have found the ancient belief in the legend still held by Afghan gentlemen at Kandahar.
At Gelath in Imeretia there still exists one valve of a large iron gate, traditionally said to be the relic of a pair brought as a trophy from Derbend by David, King of Georgia, called the Restorer (1089–1130). M. Brosset, however, has shown it to be the gate of Ganja, carried off in 1139.
(Bayer in Comment. Petropol. I. 401 seqq.; Pseudo-Callisth. by Müller, p. 138; Gott. Viterb. in Pistorii Nidani Script. Germ. II. 228; Alexandriade, pp. 310–311; Pereg. IV. p. 118; Acad. des Insc. Divers Savans, II. 483; Edrisi, II. 416–420, etc.)
NOTE 4.—The box-wood of the Abkhasian forests was so abundant, and formed so important an article of Genoese trade, as to give the name of Chao de Bux (Cavo di Bussi) to the bay of Bambor, N.W. of Sukum Kala', where the traffic was carried on. (See Elie de Laprim. 243.) Abulfeda also speaks of the Forest of Box (Shará' ul-buks) on the shores of the Black Sea, from which box-wood was exported to all parts of the world; but his indication of the exact locality is confused. (Reinaud's Abulf. I. 289.)
At the present time "Boxwood abounds on the southern coast of the Caspian, and large quantities are exported from near Resht to England and Russia. It is sent up the Volga to Tsaritzin, from thence by rail to the Don, and down that river to the Black Sea, from whence it is shipped to England." (MS. Note, H. Y.)
[Cf. V. Helm's Cultivated Plants, edited by J. S. Stallybrass, Lond., 1891, The Box Tree, pp. 176–179.—H. C.]
NOTE 5.—Jerome Cardan notices that "the best and biggest goshawks come from Armenia," a term often including Georgia and Caucasus. The name of the bird is perhaps the same as 'Afçi, "Falco montanus." (See Casiri, I. 320.) Major St. John tells me that the Terlán, or goshawk, much used in Persia, is still generally brought from Caucasus. (Cardan, de Rer. Varietate, VII. 35.)
NOTE 6.—A letter of Warren Hastings, written shortly before his death, and after reading Marsden's Marco Polo, tells how a fish-breeder of Banbury warned him against putting pike into his fish-pond, saying, "If you should leave them where they are till Shrove Tuesday they will be sure to spawn, and then you will never get any other fish to breed in it." (Romance of Travel, I. 255.) Edward Webbe in his Travels (1590, reprinted 1868) tells us that in the "Land of Siria there is a River having great store of fish like unto Salmon-trouts, but no Jew can catch them, though either Christian and Turk shall catch them in abundance with great ease." The circumstance of fish being got only for a limited time in spring is noticed with reference to Lake Van both by Tavernier and Mr. Brant.
But the exact legend here reported is related (as M. Pauthier has already noticed) by Wilibrand of Oldenburg of a stream under the Castle of Adamodana, belonging to the Hospitallers, near Naversa (the ancient Anazarbus), in Cilicia under Taurus. And Khanikoff was told the same story of a lake in the district of Akhaltziké in Western Georgia, in regard to which he explains the substance of the phenomenon as a result of the rise of the lake's level by the melting of the snows, which often coincides with Lent. I may add that Moorcroft was told respecting a sacred pond near Sir-i-Chashma, on the road from Kabul to Bamian, that the fish in the pond were not allowed to be touched, but that they were accustomed to desert it for the rivulet that ran through the valley regularly every year on the day of the vernal equinox, and it was then lawful to catch them.
Like circumstances would produce the same effect in a variety of lakes, and I have not been able to identify the convent of St. Leonard's. Indeed Leonard (Sant Lienard, G. T.) seems no likely name for an Armenian Saint; and the patroness of the convent (as she is of many others in that country) was perhaps Saint Nina, an eminent personage in the Armenian Church, whose tomb is still a place of pilgrimage; or possibly St. Helena, for I see that the Russian maps show a place called Elenovka on the shores of Lake Sevan, N.E. of Erivan. Ramusio's text, moreover, says that the lake was four days in compass, and this description will apply, I believe, to none but the lake just named. This is, according to Monteith, 47 miles in length and 21 miles in breadth, and as far as I can make out he travelled round it in three very long marches. Convents and churches on its shores are numerous, and a very ancient one occupies an island on the lake. The lake is noted for its fish, especially magnificent trout.
(Tavern. Bk. III. ch. iii.; J. R. G. S. X. 897; Pereg. Quat. p. 179; Khanikoff, 15; Moorcroft, II. 382; J. R. G. S. III. 40 seqq.)
Ramusio has: "In this province there is a fine city called TIFLIS, and round about it are many castles and walled villages. It is inhabited by Christians, Armenians, Georgians, and some Saracens and Jews, but not many."
NOTE 7.—The name assigned by Marco to the Caspian, "Mer de Gheluchelan" or "Ghelachelan," has puzzled commentators. I have no doubt that the interpretation adopted above is the correct one. I suppose that Marco said that the sea was called "La Mer de Ghel ou (de) Ghelan," a name taken from the districts of the ancient Gelae on its south-western shores, called indifferently Gíl or Gílán, just as many other regions of Asia have like duplicate titles (singular and plural), arising, I suppose, from the change of a gentile into a local name. Such are Lár, Lárán, Khutl, Khutlán, etc., a class to which Badakhshán, Wakhán, Shaghnán, Mungán, Chág-hanián, possibly Bámián, and many others have formerly belonged, as the adjectives in some cases surviving, Badakhshi, Shaghni, Wákhi, etc., show[2] The change exemplified in the induration of these gentile plurals into local singulars is everywhere traced in the passage from earlier to later geography. The old Indian geographical lists, such as are preserved in the Puránas, and in Pliny's extracts from Megasthenes, are, in the main, lists of peoples, not of provinces, and even where the real name seems to be local a gentile form is often given. So also Tochari and Sogdi are replaced by Tokháristán and Sughd; the Veneti and Taurini by Venice and Turin; the Remi and the Parisii, by Rheims and Paris; East-Saxons and South-Saxons by Essex and Sussex; not to mention the countless -ings that mark the tribal settlement of the Saxons in Britain.
Abulfeda, speaking of this territory, uses exactly Polo's phrase, saying that the districts in question are properly called Kíl-o-Kílán, but by the Arabs Jíl-o-Jílán. Teixeira gives the Persian name of the sea as Darya Ghiláni. (See Abulf. in Büsching, v. 329.)
[The province of Gíl (Gílán), which is situated between the mountains and the Caspian