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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
270 MARCO POLO BOOK I.
and are very strong in flight. And when the Grand
Kaan wants Peregrines from the nest, he sends thither
to procure them.' It is also on islands in that sea that
the Gerfalcons are bred. You must know that the
place is so far to the north that you leave the North
Star somewhat behind you towards the south ! The
gerfalcons are so abundant there that the Emperor
can have as many as he likes to send for. And you
must not suppose that those gerfalcons which the
Christians carry into the Tartar dominions go to the
Great Kaan ; they are carried only to the Prince of
the Levant.'
Now I have told you all about the provinces north-
ward as far as the Ocean Sea, beyond which there is
no more land at all ; so I shall proceed to tell you
of the other provinces on the way to the Great Kaan.
Let us, then, return to that province of which I
spoke before, called Campichu.
NOTE I.—The readings differ as to the length of the journey. In Pauthier's text we seem to have first a journey of forty days from near Karakorúm to the Plain of Bargu, and then a journey of forty days more across the plain to the Northern Ocean. The G. T. seems to present only one journey of forty days (Ramusio, of sixty days), but leaves the interval from Karal'orúin undefined. I have followed the former, though with some doubt.
NOTE 2.—This paragraph from Ramusio replaces the following in Pauthier's text : "In the summer they got abundance of game, both beasts and birds, but in winter, there is none to be had because of the great cold."
Marco is here dealing, I apprehend, with hearsay geography, and, as is common in like cases, there is great compression of circumstances and characteristics, analogous to the like compression of little-known regions in medieval maps.
The name Bar;zt appears to be the same with that often mentioned in Mongol history as BARGUCHIN TUGRUM or BARGUTI, and which Rashiduddin calls the north& n limit of the inhabited earth. This commenced about Lake Baikal, where the name still survives in that of a river (Barguzin) falling into the Lake on the east side, and of a town on its banks (Ba;guzilzsk). Indeed, according to Rashid himself, BARGU was the name of one of the tribes occupying the plain ; and a quotation from Father Hyacinth would seem to show that the country is still called Baraklzu.
[The Archimandrite Palladius (Elucidations, 16-17) writes :—` ` In the Mongol text of Chingis Khan's biography, this country is called Barhu and Barhuchin ; it is to be supposed, according to Colonel Yule's identification of this name with the modern Barguzin, that this country was -near Lake Baikal. The fact that Merkits were in Bargu is confirmed by the following statement in Chingis Khan's biography :
When Chingis Khan defeated his enemies, the Merkits, they fled to Barhuchin
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