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

40

passes struck the route which leads past Murtägh-Ata and on

towards the Gez defile. In the brief supplementary notes con-

tributed to Professor Cordier's critical analysis of this portion

of Marco Polo's itinerary, I have pointed out how thoroughly

the great Venetian's description of the forty days' journey to the

E.N.E. of the Pāmīr Lake can be appreciated by any one who

has passed through the Pämīr region and followed the valleys

stretching round the Murtāgh-Ata range on the west and north

(cf. Yule, Marco Polo, II., pp. 593 seq.). After leaving Täsh-

kurghān and Tagharma there is no local produce to be obtained

until the oasis of Tāshmalik is reached. In the narrow valley

of the Yamān-yār river, forming the Gez defile, there is scarcely

any grazing ; its appearance down to its opening into the plain

is, in fact, far more desolate than that of the elevated Pāmīr

regions.

" In the absence of any data as to the manner and season

in which Marco Polo's party travelled, it would serve no useful

purpose to hazard explanations as to why he should assign a

duration of forty days to a journey which for a properly equipped

traveller need not take more than fifteen or sixteen days, even

when the summer floods close the passage through the lower

Gez defile, and render it necessary to follow the circuitous track

over the Tokuk Dawān or ` Nine Passes.' But it is certainly

worth mention that Benedict Goëz, too, speaks of the desert of

` Pāmech' (Pämr) as taking forty days to cross if the snow was

extensive, a record already noted by Sir H. Yule (Cathay, II.,

pp. 563 seq.). It is also instructive to refer once more to the

personal experience of the missionary traveller on the alternative

route by the Chichiklik Pass. According to the record quoted

above, he appears to have spent no less than twenty-eight days

in the journeys from the hamlets of ` Sarcil ' (Sarkol, i.e. Täsh-

kurghān) to ` Hiarchan ' (Yarkand)—a distance of some 188 miles,

now reckoned at ten days' march." (Stein, Ancient Khotan,

pp. 40-42.)

XXXII., p. 171.   The Plain is called PAMIER, and you ride across

it for twelve days together, finding nothing but a desert without habita-

tions or any green thing, so that travellers are obliged to carry with

them whatever they have need of."

At Sarhad, Afghan Wakhan, Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay,

I., p. 69, writes : " There was little about the low grey houses,

or rather hovels, of mud and rubble to indicate the importance

which from early times must have attached to Sarhad as the

MARCO POLO.   VOL. I. BK. I.