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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
342 MARCO POLO BOOK III.
No wheat grows in this province, but rice only.
And another strange thing to be told is that there is
no possibility of breeding horses in this country, as bath
often been proved by trial. For even when a great
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blood-mare here has been covered by a great blood-
horse, the produce is nothing but a wretched wry-legged
weed, not fit to ride.13
The people of the country go to battle all naked, with
only a lance and a shield ; and they are most wretched
soldiers. They will kill neither beast nor bird, nor any-
thing that hath life ; and for such animal food as they
eat, they make the Saracens, or others who are not of
their own religion, play the butcher.
It is their practice that every one, male and female,
do wash the whole body twice every clay ; and those who
do not wash are looked on much as we look on the
Patarins. [You must know also that in eating they use
the right hand only, and would on no account touch their
food with the left hand. All cleanly and becoming uses
are ministered to by the right hand, whilst the left is
reserved for uncleanly and disagreeable necessities, such
as cleansing the secret parts of the body and the like.
So also they drink only from drinking vessels, and every
ir`*• man hath his own ; nor will any one drink from another's
vessel. And when they drink they do not put the
vessel to the lips, but hold it aloft and let the drink
spout into the mouth. No one would on any account
touch the vessel with his mouth, nor give a stranger
drink with it. But if the stranger have no vessel of his
own they will pour the drink into his hands and he may
thus drink from his hands as from a cup.]
i
They are very strict in etecuting justice upon
;~ a' • criminals, and as strict in abstaining from wine. Indeed
abstaining
they have made a rule that wine-drinkers and seafaring
men are never to be accepted as sureties. For they say
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