国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
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The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 | |
マルコ=ポーロ卿の記録 : vol.1 |
434
MARCO POLO BOOK II.
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which they find all the rooms furnished with fine beds
and all other necessary articles in rich silk, and where
they are provided with everything they can want. If
even a king were to arrive at one of these, he would find
himself well lodged.
At some of these stations, moreover, there shall be
posted 'some four hundred horses standing ready for the
use of the messengers ; at others there shall be two
hundred, according to the requirements, and to what
the Emperor has established in each case. At every
twenty-five miles, as I said, or anyhow at every thirty
miles, you find one of these stations, on all the principal
highways leading to the different provincial govern-
ments ; and the same is the case throughout all the
chief provinces subject to the Great Kaan.3 Even
when the messengers have to pass through a roadless
tract where neither house nor hostel exists, still there
the station-houses have been established just the same,
excepting that the intervals are somewhat greater, and
the day's journey is fixed at thirty-five to forty-five
miles, instead of twenty-five to thirty. But they are
provided with horses and all the other necessaries just
like those we have described, so that the Emperor's
messengers, come they from what region they may, find
everything ready for them.
And in sooth this is a thing done on the greatest
scale of magnificence that ever was seen. Never had
emperor, king, or lord, such wealth as this manifests !
For it is a fact that on all these posts taken together
there are more than 300,000 horses kept up, specially
for the use of the messengers. And the great buildings
that I have mentioned are more than z o,000 in number,
all richly furnished, as I told you. The thing is on a
scale so wonderful and costly that it is hard to bring
oneself to describe it.4
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