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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
4o6 MARCO POLO BOOK III.
~i
boys they were brought up and sent to their fathers, if girls they were retained by the mothers. They reported also that these women had certain subterranean caverns in which they took refuge if any one went thither except at the established season," etc. (P. Martyr in h'azzzuszo, III. 3 v. and see 85.) Similar Amazons are placed by Adam of Bremen on the Baltic Shores, a story there supposed to have originated in a confusion between Gwenland, i.e. Finland, and a land of Cweus or Women.
Mendoza heard of the like in the vicinity of Japan (perhaps the real Fusang story), though he opines judiciously that "this is very doubtfull to be beleeved, although I have bin certified by religious men that have talked with persons that within these two yeares have beene at the saide ilands, and have seene the saide women." (H. of China, II. 301.) Lane quotes a like tale about a horde of Cossacks whose wives were said to live apart on certain islands in the Dnieper. (Arab. Nights, 1859, III. 479.) The same story is related by a missionary in the Lettres Edifiantes of certain unknown islands supposed to lie south of the Marian group. . Pauthier, from whom I derive this last instance, draws the conclusion : " On voit que le récit de Marc Pol est loin d'être imaginaire." Mine from the premises would be different !
Sometimes the fable took another form ; in which the women are entirely isolated, as in that which Mela quotes from Hanno (III. 9). So with the Isle of Women which Kazwini and Bakui place to the South of China. They became enceinte by the Wind, or by eating a particular fruit [or by plunging into the sea ; cf. Schlegel, l.c. —H. C.], or, as in a Chinese tradition related by Magaillans, by looking at their own faces in a well ! The like fable is localised by the Malays in the island of Engano off Sumatra, and was related to Pigafetta of an island under Great Java called Ocoloro, perhaps the same.
(Hagan. 76 ; Gilde;,z. 196 ; N. et Ex. II. 398 ; Pigafetta, 173 ; 1lMarsden's Sumatra, i st ed. p. 264.)
CHAPTER XXXII.
CONCERNING THE ISLAND OF SCOTRA.
WHEN you leave those two Islands and go about 500
miles further towards the south, then you come to an
Island called SCOTRA. The people are all baptized
Christians ; and they have an Archbishop. They have a
great deal of ambergris ; and plenty also of cotton stuffs
and other merchandize ; especially great quantities of
salt fish of a large and excellent kind. They also eat
flesh and milk and rice, for that is their only kind of
corn ; and they all go naked like the other Indians.
[The ambergris comes from the stomach of the whale,
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