IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
CHAP. LVI. THE PLAIN BEYOND CARACORON
269
desormais vueil retourner a mon conte que je lessai d'or plain quant nous comme;;çames des faiz des Tatars." The former reading looks very like a misunderstanding of one similar to the latter, where d'or plain seems to be an adverbial expression, with some such meaning as "just now," "a while ago." I have not, however, been able to trace the expression elsewhere. Cotgrave has or primes, " but even now," etc. ; and has also de plain, " presently, immediately, out of hand." It seems quite possible that d'or plain should have had the meaning suggested.
CHAPTER LVI.
SUNDRY PARTICULARS OF THE PLAIN BEYOND CARACORON.
AND when you leave Caracoron and the Altay, in which
they bury the bodies of the Tartar Sovereigns, as I told
you, you go north for forty days till .you reach a country
called the PLAIN OF BARGU.1 The people there are
called VIESCRIPT ; they are a very wild race, and live
by their cattle, the most of which are stags, and these
stags, I assure you, they used to ride upon. Their
customs are like those of the Tartars, and they are
subject to the Great Kaan. They have neither corn
nor wine. [They get birds for food, for the country
is full of lakes and pools and marshes, which are much
frequented by the birds when they are moulting, and
when they have quite cast their feathers and can't fly,
those people catch them. They also live partly on
fish.2]
And when you have travelled forty days over this
great plain you come to the ocean, at the place where
the mountains are in which the Peregrine falcons have
their nests. And in those mountains it is so cold that
you find neither man or woman, nor beast nor bird,
except one kind of bird called Barguerlac, on which
the falcons feed. They are as big as partridges, and
have feet like those of parrots and a tail like a swallow's,
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