Asia -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Mongols -- History; Polo, Marco, 1254-1323?; Voyages and travels
“=Et quant l’en est alés ceste dix jornée adonc treuve-l’en un grant
flun qe est apéle Brius, auquel se fenist la provence de Cheindu.=”]
The musk animals are very abundant in that country, and thus of musk
also they have great store. They have likewise plenty of fish which
they catch in the lake in which the pearls are produced. Wild animals,
such as lions, bears, wolves, stags, bucks and roes, exist in great
numbers; and there are also vast quantities of fowl of every kind. Wine
of the vine they have none, but they make a wine of wheat and rice and
sundry good spices, and very good drink it is.{6} There grows also in
this country a quantity of clove. The tree that bears it is a small
one, with leaves like laurel but longer and narrower, and with a small
white flower like the clove.{7} They have also ginger and cinnamon in
great plenty, besides other spices which never reach our countries, so
we need say nothing about them.
Now we may leave this province, as we have told you all about it. But
let me tell you first of this same country of Caindu that you ride
through it ten days, constantly meeting with towns and villages, with
people of the same description that I have mentioned. After riding
those ten days you come to a river called BRIUS, which terminates the
province of Caindu. In this river is found much gold-dust, and there is
also much cinnamon on its banks. It flows to the Ocean Sea.
There is no more to be said about this river, so I will now tell you
about another province called Carajan, as you shall hear in what
follows.
NOTE 1.—Ramusio’s version here enlarges: “Don’t suppose from my
saying _towards the west_ that these countries really lie in what
we call the _west_, but only that we have been travelling from
regions in the east-north-east _towards_ the west, and hence we
speak of the countries we come to as lying towards the west.”
NOTE 2.—Chinese authorities quoted by Ritter mention
_mother-o’-pearl_ as a product of Lithang, and speak of turquoises
as found in Djaya to the west of Bathang. (_Ritter_, IV. 235–236.)
Neither of these places is, however, within the tract which we
believe to be Caindu. Amyot states that pearls are found in a
certain river of Yun-nan. (See _Trans. R. A. Soc._ II. 91.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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