| | | HORSES & ARMOUR AND POISON IN CARAGIAN ,MARCO POLO vs dear. For you may know that it is much prized because great medicine is made of R v v it, and amongst the rest • it has three important virtues. For the first is, if a man is bitten FB FB by a mad dog' and one gives him a little, as much as would be the weight of a small R V dinar, to drink in wine he is healed immediately. And again the second virtue, when a lady cannot give birth and has pain and cries aloud, then they give her a little of z z that serpents gall in drink and then the lady is set free from the pains and gives birth v immediately as soon as she has drunk it. The third virtue is that when one has any FB R eruption like a boil or other worse thing • which grows on the body, then one puts a little vB of this gall on it, and then it is healed in a few days. And it is used in many of their R medicines for many other things. And for this reason which I have told you this gall of this great serpent is held very dear in that province. And again I tell you that they sell the flesh of this serpent very dear because it is very good to eat and they FB FB eat it very gladly. Moreover I tell you that this serpent goes sometimes when it is V FB hungry to the places where the wolves and the lions and the bears and the other great FB fierce wild beasts bring forth their cubs and, wherever the cubs are found, it eats the FB large and the small, while their fathers and their mothers cannot defend them; and if it can FB catch them it eats the large also, for they make no provision to defend themselves from them. FB And again I tell you that great horses and good are bred in this province and they R carry them when they are young into Indie to sell. Moreover you may know that they R take out from all one joint, two joints, or three from the bone of the tail, so that the horse may not be able [54b1 to swish the tail to strike him who is on it, or L R R move the tail. this way and that when it runs, but it remains hanging down. For it seems to them too ugly a thing when the horse runs and swishes its tail. And again you z z may know that these people ride keeping the stirrups long like Frenchmen among us. And it is called long for this reason, because the Tartars and almost all other people carry them short for the sake of shooting, because when they shoot they raise themselves up straight FB on the horses. And they have armour covered with boiled buffalo hide, and they have VA lances & arrows and shields, and they have cross-bows, and they poison all the FB R Z cross-bow quarrels. And it was told me for a sure thing • that all, as well women as men, and R z specially those who purpose to do evil, • always • carry poison with them so that, if by chance anyone is caught after something has been committed for which he ought to be put to torture, before he will bear the pains of the lash he puts poison into his mouth and swallows it, that he may die through it as soon as possible. But because the government is aware of this, dog's dung is always kept ready so that if anyone after being taken were to swallow poison for the said reason, one may immediately make him swallow the said dung in order that he may vomit |
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