IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
THE DESCRIPTION OF THE WORLD. AND COME UNTO PERSIE great sea of Indie quite eighteen' months before they were come to the land of king FB vB Argon where they wished to go, & in this journey they saw strange & Afferent things & R they find many great marvels which again we shall tell you in that book. And when they were come there they find that king Argon to whom these barons were going with y Lithe lady was already dead ; and his lady was given by the said ambassadors when they L V saw this to Caçan the son of Argon to wife. And I tell you without fail that P when they entered into the ships in the land of the great Kaan they were between ladies VA VB & men [9a1 quite six hundred persons without the sailors. And when they reached the VA land where they were going they made a count that they had all died on the way except VA P only eighteen. And of those three ambassadors there remained but one, • who was named V R Coja ; and of all the women and girls none died but one.' They find that one named R Quiacatu held the lordship of Argon for the boy who was not yet fit for rule, for he was P R young ; to whom it seemed right to them to send to say how, having brought that queen by order of the king Argon, they would do whatever seemed to him right. He made answer to them that they ought to give her to Cafan, son of the king Argon, who was at the time in the • distant • parts of the Dry Tree, on the borders of Persie, with sixty thousand men to L R guard certain passes that certain enemy people should not enter by them to spoil his land. And so they did. They entrust the lady to him and did all their embassy and their mission. And when Master Nicolau and Master Mafeu and Master Marc have done all the duties about the lady and the missions with which the great Kaan had charged them wholly,• they returned to Quiacatu, because their road must be that way, VA R and there they stayed nine months. And then they took leave of the lady and departed and V set themselves on the way. Moreover you may know quite truly that before they FB set out Quiacatu3 gives to those three messengers of the great Kaan ; they were Master Nicolau & Master Mafeu & Master Marc ; four tablets of gold of orders, FB the two with gerfalcons & the one with a lion and the other was plain,' each of R which was one cubit long and five fingers wide, of a weight of three or four marks each ; which
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1 V: nuoue VB: Komi disenoue
2 R: dal di, che introrno in mare, fino al giunger suo, morirono fra marinari, & altri, ch'erano in detti nani, da seicento persone. &c. V: et de queli tre anbassadori vno solo rimaxe e de .lento femene
che iera non rimaxe se no la regina et li do frateli chon misier marcho B. incorporates a modified
form of V in his Marco Polo, p. 17, though he retains the mysterious statement of F (below, p. 92) about the daughter of the king of Mangi which implies that at least two ladies survived. The total number is given "without the sailors" as follows : FA,P: 600 FB: 500 LT,TA: 700 (?60o men & ioo women) V: 600 persons, ioo women VB: between men and women more than 600 L: plusquam centum
3 FA,FB: cogatra la dame V: il dito signor
4 V: blaua L: palrnam
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