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Voyages faites principalement dans les 12, 13, 14, and 15 siècles, par Benjamin de Tudela, Carpin, Ancilin, Rubruquis, Marco Polo, Haiton, Mandeville, et Contarini; publiés par P. Bergerin, avec des Cartes Géographiques. La Haye, 1735. 2 vols. 4to. This is a valuable collection, except so far as regards Marco Polos' Travels, the translation of which is neither elegant nor faithful.
According to Leake, writing about 1577, 'About 1528 began the first spinning on the distaffe and making of Coxall clothes.... These Coxall clothes weare first taught by one Bonvise, an Italian. Quoted V.C.H. Essex, II, p. 382. PLATE I. Bodo at his work PLATE II. Embarkation of the Polos at Venice
Odoric of Pordenone, another friar, and a very good observer too, set forth in 1316 and sailed round India and through the Spice Islands by the same sea route by which the Polos had brought their Tartar princess back to Persia, and so reached Canton, 'a city as big as three Venices ... and all Italy hath not the amount of craft that this one city hath. He left a wonderful account of his travels in China, including descriptions of Peking and Hangchow, and ends his stories with the words, 'As for me, from day to day I prepare myself to return to those countries, in which I am content to die, if it pleaseth Him from whom all good things do come' no doubt where he had left his heart, but he died at Udine in Italy.
The Polos accordingly remained at Giazza, where these two monks arrived with letters and presents of great value for the khan, and furnished with ample powers and privileges, and authority to ordain priests and bishops, and to grant absolution in all cases, as fully as if the pope were present.
They invented the gnomon and the polos, two kinds of sundial, by means of which they were able to measure time during the day, and to fix the true length of the solar day, with sufficient accuracy. They determined correctly within a small fraction the length of the synodic revolution of the moon. They knew that the true length of the solar year was 365 days and a quarter, nearly.
They were laughed to scorn as pretenders and impostors; for the three missing members of the Polo family had been gone away from Venice some twenty-odd years; it was in 1271 that the Polos were last heard from, then at Acre, journeying into the Far East. But the three somehow gained access to their own house, then in the possession of one of their relations.
At length, the three Polos returned to Venice, in 1295, after an absence of twenty-five or twenty-six years, during which long period they had never been heard of by their friends and countrymen, seventeen years of which Marco had been employed in the service of the great khan.
What could the most admirable of Polos have written to have created such an effect? I accepted all with a benign smile, and answered that I only had America and my fur-lined coat and boa to offer in return. We had so many instructions given to us as to what to do and what not to do in this perfidious climate that we were quite bewildered. Never to go out in the sun.
The three Polos traveled across Persia into China, and across the Desert of Gobi to the northwest, where they found the great ruler, Kublai Khan. This monarch was a kind-hearted and able man. He wanted to help his subjects to become civilized and learned, as the Europeans were. So Kublai Khan assisted the two elder Polos in their business of trading, and took Marco into his service.
The Dominicans may have been profound theologians, but they were somewhat chicken-hearted adventurers, and when rumours reached them of wars in the district of Armenia, through which they had to pass, they hastily handed over their letters to the Venetians, put themselves under the protection of the Knights Templars, and scuttled back to the coast and safety as fast as they could go, leaving the Polos, 'undismayed by perils and difficulties, to which they had long been inured, to proceed alone.
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