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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

THE DESCRIPTION OF THE WORLDS AND CANNOT GO BACK

beholding his greatness &gracious courtesy . And Berca Kaan took them very willingly and LT

they pleased him beyond measure . And like a gentle lord he made give them for them vs

other things which were well worth • more than twice as much as the jewels were worth, & also VA VA o R

very great & rich gifts; • the which things he sent them in several directions to sell, & they VA

were very well sold in those parts .1 And when they the said brothers had stayed in this city in VA • LT LT

the land of Berca through the round of one year and wished to return to Venese, then arose a LT P

most violent war between the said Berca Kaan and Ulau Kaan the lord of the Tartars of LT LT LT LT

the sunrising . They went the one against the other [4d] with all their might . They

fought together most bitterly and suffered there great loss of people both on the one side LT

and on the other, but yet at the last Berca the lord of the Tartars of the sunsetting was defeated. LT FB

and his army had the greatest discomfiture • and Ulau was conqueror . And by reason of that R FB

battle and of that war the roads not being safe, no man was able to go by road through those R LT

regions who was not taken, and that danger was towards the road whence they were FB FB

come; but forward they were well able to go riding safely and turn back. And then the FB

two brothers seeing that they could not go back said between themselves, Since we cannot LT

turn back to Constantinople with our merchandise, then let us go on proceeding farther LT

by the way of the sunrising until we go round the realm of Berca by unknown roads; so shall R

we be able to turn back at last to Venese2 by another way . They made themselves ready L LT

i illes enuoia.a parer en plosor parties efurent raout bien pares. The only other texts where I have found any trace of this sentence are VA's: le quai cosse egli lemandano auender in quelle parte sono molto ben vendute and VL: i quai doni loro mandano a uendere in diuerse parte. The latter appears in SANTAELLA'S Spanish, 1503, fol. i b.: los quales ellos embiaron a vender a diuersas partes (copied by FRAMPTON, 1579, ed. Pe p. i6: whiche they sent into dyuers partes to sell). I have ventured to use this contemporary version, supported by the word doni and to a slight extent by GODEFROY: parerie s.f., étalage, boutique, and lesquelles parefies les marchans portent vendre en divers royaumes (15 cent.). The text has also been translated by CHARTON, Voyageurs anç et mod., 1854, II, p. 259: il les envoya loger en plusieurs lieux ou ils furent moult bien refus; in B. p. 4: E le mind(?) a legare in pii luoghi e vennero legate assai bene(= RR p. 3: He sent the jewels to be set in various places, and they were very well set.); and in El Millie, 1934, p. 7: y les invito a pasar una temporada en varias partes del reino, en donde hallaronse con gran contentamiento. B. 's version conforms more exactly to the known meanings of the verbs parer or parare, but VA seems to give very much better sense; namely, that they were able to sell at a good profit in places in the neighbourhood the things which Berca gave them in exchange for the jewels. VA may well be right too in making enuoia plural.

2 retorner autaesse. The version is conjectural, based on the fact that if the original had been retorner au dereain a uenesse it might very easily have become corrupted to what we find, and on the following readings: L: ad taesse tamdem reuerti LT: ut per aliam uiam possent reuerti uenetias and F (c. 134 below): autature (for auenture, with exactly the same corruption which would here turn a uenesse into autaesse). B. (following VA, per tornar possa per trauersso) reads here retorner au traverse. cf. p. 519 n. 133. For R: uie incognite P reads vias oppositas.

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