The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 750 (Color Image)

0750	The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1

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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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