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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
MARCO POLO BOOK III.
424
subject to those that I have described. It is a fact that
in this Sea of India there are 12,700 Islands, inhabited
and uninhabited, according to the charts and documents
of experienced mariners who navigate that Indian Sea.'
INDIA THE GREATER iS that which extends from Ma-
abar to Kesmacoran ; and it contains 13 great kingdoms,
of which we have described ten. These are all on the
mainland.
INDIA THE LESSER extends from the Province of
Champa to Mutfili, and contains eight great kingdoms.
These are likewise all on the mainland. And neither of
these numbers includes the Islands, among which also
there are very numerous kingdoms, as I have told you.'
NOTE I.—ZANGIBAR, " the Region of the Blacks," known to the ancients as Zingis and Ziizgium. The name was applied by the Arabs, according to De Barros, to the whole stretch of coast from the Kilimanchi River, which seems to be the Jubb, to Cape Corrientes beyond the Southern Tropic, i.e. as far as Arab traffic extended ; Burton says now from the Jubb to Cape Delgado. According to Abulfeda, the King of Zinjis dwelt at Mombasa. In recent times the name is by Europeans almost appropriated to the Island on which resides the Sultan of the Maskat family, to whom Sir B. Frere lately went as envoy. Our author's " Island " has no reference to this ; it is an error simply.
Our traveller's information is here, I think, certainly at second hand, though no doubt he had seen the negroes whom he describes with such disgust, and apparently the sheep and the giraffes.
NOTE 2.—These sheep are common at Aden, whither they are imported from the opposite African coast. They have hair like smooth goats, no wool. Varthema also describes them (p. 87). In the Cairo Museum, among ornaments found in the mummy-pits, there is a little figure of one of these sheep, the head and neck in some blue stone and the body in white agate. (Note by Author of the sketch on next pace. )
NOTE 3.—A giraffe—made into a seraph by the Italians—had been frequently seen in Italy in the early part of the century, there being one in the train of the Emperor Frederic II. Another was sent by Bibars to the Imperial Court in 1261, and several to Barka Khan at Sarai in 1263 ; whilst the King of Nubia was bound by treaty in 1275 to deliver to the Sultan three elephants, three giraffes, and five she-panthers. (Kington, I. 471 ; Makrizi, I. 216 ; II. 106, Io8.) The giraffe is sometimes wrought in the patterns of mediaval Saracenic damasks, and in Sicilian ones imitated from the former. Of these there are examples in the Kensington Collection.
I here omit a passage about the elephant. It recounts an old and long-persistent fable, exploded by Sir T. Brown, and indeed before him by the sensible Garcia de Orta.
NOTE 4.—The port of Zanzibar is probably the chief ivory mart in the world. Ambergris is mentioned by Burton among miscellaneous exports, but it is not now of any consequence. Owen speaks of it as brought for sale at Delagoa Bay in the south.
NOTE 5.—Mas'udi more correctly says : " The country abounds with wild elephants, but you don't find a single tame one. The Zinjes employ them neither in
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