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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
'É!
I 72
MARCO POLO BooK I.
north-east, we travel a good forty days, continually passing
over mountains and hills, or through valleys, and crossing
many rivers and tracts of wilderness. And in all this
way you find neither habitation of man, nor any green
thing, but must carry with you whatever you require.
The country is called BoLOR. The people dwell high up
in the mountains, and are savage Idolaters, living only
by the chase, and clothing themselves in the skins of
beasts. They are in truth an evil race.'
NOTE I.—[ " The length of Little Pamir, according to Trotter, is 68 miles
To find the twelve days' ride in the plain of Marco Polo, it must be admitted, says Severtsof (Bul. Soc. GCo.). XI. 1890, pp. 588-589), that he went down a considerable distance along the south-north course of the Aksu, in the Aktash Valley, and did not turn towards Tásh Kurgán, by the Neza Tash Pass, crossed by Gordon and Trotter. The descent from this pass to Tásh Kurgán finishes with a difficult and narrow defile, which may well be overflowed at the great melting of snow, from the end of May till the middle of June, even to July.
" Therefore he must have left the Aksu Valley to cross the Pass of Tagharma, about 5o or 6o kilometres to the north of the Neza Tash Pass ; thence to Kashgar, the distance, in a straight line, is about 200 kilometres, and less than boo by the shortest route which runs from the Tagharma Pass to little Kara Kul, and from there down to Yangi Hissar, along the Ghidjik. And Marco Polo assigns forty days for this route, while he allows but thirty for the journey of 500 kilometres (at least) from J erm to the foot of the Tagharma Pass."
Professor Paquier (Bul. Soc. Grog. 6e Sér. XII. pp. 121-125) remarks that the Moonshee, sent by Captain Trotter to survey the Oxus between Ishkashm and Kilo. Wamőr, could not find at the spot marked by Yule on his map, the mouth of the Shakh-Dara, but northward 7 or 8 miles from the junction of the MIurghab with the Oxus, he saw the opening of an important water-course, the Suchnan River, formed by the ShakhDara and the Ghund-Dara. Marco arrived at a place between Northern Wakhán and Shingnan ; from the Central Pamir, Polo would have taken a route identical with that of the Mirza (1868-1869) by the Chichiklik Pass. Professor Paquier adds : " I have no hesitation in belie'ing that Marco Polo was in the neighbourhood of that great commercial road, which by the Vallis Comedarum reached the foot of the Imaiis. He probably did not venture on a journey of fifty marches in an unknown country. At the top of the Shihgnan Valley, he doubtless found a road marked out to Little Bukharia. This was the road followed in ancient times from Bactrian to Serica ; and Ptolemy has, so to speak, given us its landmarks after Marinus of Tyre, by the Vallis Comedarum (Valley of actual Shingnan) ; the Tigris Lapidea and the Statio Mercatorum, neighbourhood of Tash Kurgan, capital of the present province of Sar-i-kol."
I must say that accepting, as I do, for Polo's Itinerary, the route from Wakhán to Kashgar by the Taghdum-Bash Pamir, and Tásh Kurgán, I do not agree with Professor Paquier's theory. But though I prefer Sir H. Yule's route from Badakhshan, by the River Vardoj, the Pass of Ishkashm, the Panja, to Wakhán, I do not accept his views for the Itinerary from Wakhán to Kashgar ; see p. 175.—H. C.]
The river along which Marco travels from Badakhshan is no doubt the upper stream of the Oxus, known locally as the Panja, along which Wood also travelled, followed
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