Asia -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Mongols -- History; Polo, Marco, 1254-1323?; Voyages and travels
After leaving the river that I spoke of, you go five days’ journey
towards the west, meeting with numerous towns and villages. The country
is one in which excellent horses are bred, and the people live by
cattle and agriculture. They have a language of their own which is
passing hard to understand. At the end of those five days’ journey you
come to the capital, which is called YACHI, a very great and noble
city, in which are numerous merchants and craftsmen.{1}
[Illustration: _Pa-y_ script.]
The people are of sundry kinds, for there are not only Saracens and
Idolaters, but also a few Nestorian Christians.{2} They have wheat and
rice in plenty. Howbeit they never eat wheaten bread, because in that
country it is unwholesome.{3} Rice they eat, and make of it sundry
messes, besides a kind of drink which is very clear and good, and makes
a man drunk just as wine does.
Their money is such as I will tell you. They use for the purpose
certain white porcelain shells that are found in the sea, such as are
sometimes put on dogs’ collars; and 80 of these porcelain shells pass
for a single weight of silver, equivalent to two Venice groats, _i.e._
24 piccoli. Also eight such weights of silver count equal to one such
weight of gold.{4}
They have brine-wells in this country from which they make salt, and
all the people of those parts make a living by this salt. The King,
too, I can assure you, gets a great revenue from this salt.{5}
There is a lake in this country of a good hundred miles in compass, in
which are found great quantities of the best fish in the world; fish of
great size, and of all sorts.
They reckon it no matter for a man to have intimacy with another’s
wife, provided the woman be willing.
Let me tell you also that the people of that country eat their meat
raw, whether it be of mutton, beef, buffalo, poultry, or any other
kind. Thus the poor people will go to the shambles, and take the raw
liver as it comes from the carcase and cut it small, and put it in
a sauce of garlic and spices, and so eat it; and other meat in like
manner, raw, just as we eat meat that is dressed.{6}
Now I will tell you about a further part of the Province of Carajan, of
which I have been speaking.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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