National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

CHAP. XXVI. p. 149.

ROAD TO SAPURGAN.

33

I,

passes into fertile country with many villages.* Then there

comes a boundless dreary steppe to the south. At the village

Seng-i-kal-i-deh you enter an undulating country with immense

flocks of sheep. ` The first stretch of the road between Shurab

and Nishapur led us through perfect desert . . . ; but the land-

scape soon changed its aspect ; the desert passed by degrees

into cultivated lands, and we rode past several villages surrounded

by fields and gardens. . . . We here entered the most fertile

and densely peopled region in Khorasan, in the midst of which

the town of Nishapur is situated.' Of the tract to the east of

Nishapur I say : ` Here are found innumerable villages. The

plain and slopes are dotted with them. This district is extra-

ordinarily densely inhabited and well cultivated.' But then all

this magnificence comes to an end, and of the last day's journey

between Kademgah and Meshed I write : ` The country rose

and we entered a maze of low intricate hillocks. . . . The

country was exceedingly dreary and bare. Some flocks of sheep

were seen, however, but what the fat and sleek sheep lived on was

a puzzle to me. . . . This dismal landscape was more and more

enlivened by travellers. . . . To the east stretched an undulating

steppe up to the frontier of Aghanistan.'

" The road between Sebsevar and Meshed is, in short, of such

a character that it can hardly it in with Marco Polo's enthusiastic

description of the six days. And as these came just before

Sapurgan, one cannot either identify the desert regions named with

the deserts about the middle course of the Murgab which extend

between Meshed and Shibirkhan. He must have crossed desert

first, and it may be identified with the nemek-sar or salt desert

east of Tun and Kain. The six days must have been passed

in the ranges Paropamisus, Firuz-kuh, and Bend-i-Turkestan.

Marco Polo is not usually wont to scare his readers by descrip-

tions of mountainous regions, but at this place he speaks of

mountains and valleys and rich pastures. As it was, of course,

his intention to travel on into the heart of Asia, to make a

détour through Sebsevar was unnecessary and out of his way.

If he had travelled to Sebsevar, Nishapur, and Meshed, he would

scarcely call the province of Tun-o-Kain the extremity of Persia

towards the north, even as the political boundaries were then

situated.

" From Balkh his wonderful journey proceeded further east-

wards, and therefore we take leave of him. Precisely in Eastern

Persia his descriptions are so brief that they leave free room for

* Genom Khorasan och Turkestan, I., pp. 123 seq.