The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 548 (Color Image)

0548	The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1

MARCO POLO BOOK I.

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2g.6

the sovereign now reigning, and is more potent than

any of the five who went before him ; in fact, if you

were to take all those five together, they would not be

so powerful as he is 2 Nay, I will say yet more ; for

if you were to put together all the Christians in the

world, with their Emperors and their Kings, the whole

of these Christians, aye, and throw in the Saracens

to boot, would not have such power, or be able to do

so much as this Cublay, who is the Lord of all the

Tartars in the world, those of the Levant and of the

Ponent included ; for these are all his liegemen and

subjects. I mean to show you all about this great

power of his in this book of ours.

You should be told also that all the Grand Kaans,

and all the descendants of Chinghis their first Lord,

are carried to a mountain that is called ALTAY to be

interred. Wheresoever the Sovereign may die, he is

carried to his burial in that mountain with his pre-

decessors ; no matter an the place of his death were

z 0o days' journey distant, thither must he be carried to

his burial.'

Let me tell you a strange thing too. When they

are carrying the body of any Emperor to be buried with

the others, the convoy that goes with the body doth

put to the sword all whom they fall in with on the road,

saying : " Go and wait upon your Lord in the other

world ! " For they do in sooth believe that all such as

they slay in this manner do go to serve their Lord in

the other world. They do the same too with horses ;

for when the Emperor dies, they kill all his best horses,

in order that he may have the use of them in the

other world, as they believe. And I tell you as a

certain truth, that when Mongou Kaan died, more than

20,000 persons, who chanced to meet the body on its

way, were slain in the manner I have told.4

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