The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 / Page 462 (Color Image)

0462	The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2

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MARCO POLO I3ooK III.

404

CHAPTER XXXI.

DISCOURSETH OF THE TWO ISLANDS CALLED MALE AND FEMALE, AND WHY THEY ARE SO CALLED.

1~1110 ~ ;

WHEN you leave this kingdom of Kesmacoran, which is

on the mainland, you go by sea some 500 miles towards

the south ; and then you find the two Islands, MALE and

FEMALE, lying about 3o miles distant from one another.

The people are all baptized Christians, but maintain the

ordinances of the Old Testament ; thus when their wives

are with child they never go near them till their confine-

ment, or for forty days thereafter.

In the Island however which is called Male, dwell

the men alone, without their wives or any other women.

Every year when the month of March arrives the men

all set out for the other Island, and tarry there for three

months, to wit, March, April, May, dwelling with their

wives for that space. At the end of those three months

they return to their own Island, and pursue their

husbandry and trade for the other nine months.

They find on this Island very fine ambergris. They

live on flesh and milk and rice. They are capital fisher-

men, and catch a great quantity of fine large sea-fish, and

these they dry, so that all the year they have plenty of

food, and also enough to sell to the traders who go

thither. They have no chief except a bishop, who is

subject to the archbishop of another Island, of which we

shall presently speak, called SCOTRA. They have also a

peculiar language.

As for the children which their wives bear to them,

if they be girls they abide with their mothers ; but if they

be boys the mothers bring them up till they are fourteen,

and then send them to the fathers. Such is the custom

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