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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
126
MARCO POLO BOOK II.
Moreover, when you travel on that river, and come to a
halt at night, unless you keep a good way from the bank
the lions will spring on the boat and snatch one of the
crew and make off with him and devour him. And but
for a certain help that the inhabitants enjoy, no one could
venture to travel in that province, because of the multitude
of those lions, and because of their strength and ferocity.
But you see they have in this province a large breed
of dogs, so fierce and bold that two of them together will
attack a lion.4 So every man who goes a journey takes
with him a couple of those dogs, and when a lion appears
they have at him with the greatest boldness, and the
lion turns on them, but can't touch them for they are very
deft at eschewing his blows. So they follow him, per-
petually giving tongue, and watching their chance to give
him a bite in the rump or in the thigh, or wherever they
may. The lion makes no reprisal except now and then
to turn fiercely on them, and then indeed were he to
catch the dogs it would be all over with them, but they
take good care that he shall not. So, to escape the
dogs' din, the lion makes off, and gets into the wood,
where mayhap he stands at bay against a tree to have
his rear protected from their annoyance. And when
the travellers see the lion in this plight they take to their
bows, for they are capital archers, and shoot their arrows
at him till he falls dead. And 'tis thus that travellers
in those parts do deliver themselves from those lions.
They have a good deal of silk and other products
which are carried up and down, by the river of which we
spoke, into various quarters.5
You travel along the river for twelve days more, find-
ing a good many towns all along, and the people always
Idolaters, and subject to the Great Kaan, with paper-
money current, and living by trade and handicrafts.
There are also plenty of fighting men. And after
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