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Romance and Poetry: Marco

Many of the strange stories related by Marco Polo have been considered extravagant or fictitious, and when the work first appeared it was ridiculed as such. After his death, the same feeling of incredulity prevailed, and he was personated (a la Munchausen) at masquerades by some wit or droll. Many learned men of past times have borne testimony to his character, and most of the substantial parts of his work have been authenticated by subsequent travellers. A most able and ample vindication of Marco Polo is in the English translation of his works by William Marsden, F.R.S., and especially in the exhaustive "Book of Ser Marco Polo," by Colonel Henry Yule, C.B. Marco Polo, writing of the kingdom of Mutfili (Motupalle), tells us "how diamonds are got." Among the mountains, "there are certain great and deep valleys, to the bottom of which there is no access. Wherefore the men who go in search of the diamonds take with them pieces of flesh, as lean as they can get, and these they cast into the bottom of a valley. Now there are numbers of white eagles that haunt these mountains, and feed upon the serpents. When the eagles see the meat thrown down, they pounce upon it, and carry it up to some rocky hill-top, where they begin to rend it. But there are men on the watch, and as soon as they see that the eagles have settled, they raise a loud shouting to drive them away. And when the eagles are thus frightened away, the men recover the pieces of meat, and find them full of diamonds, which have stuck to the meat down at the bottom. For the abundance of diamonds down there in the depths of the valleys is astonishing, but nobody can get down, and if one could, it would be only to be incontinently devoured by the serpents which are so rife there. "There is also another way of getting the diamonds. The people go to the nests of those white eagles, of which there are many, and in their droppings they find plenty of diamonds which the birds have swallowed in devouring the meat that was cast into the valleys. And when the eagles are taken, diamonds are found in their stomachs." "The strange legend related here," observes Colonel Yule, in his "Travels of Messer Marco Polo," "is very ancient and very widely diffused. Its earliest known occurrence is in the Treatise of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, concerning the twelve jewels in the Rationale, or breastplate of the Hebrew high-priest, a work written before the end of the fourth century, wherein the tale is told of the jacinth. It is distinctly alluded to by Edrisi, who assigns its locality to the land of the Kirkhir (probably Khirghiz), in Upper Asia. It appears in Kazwini's 'Wonders of Creation,' and is assigned by him to the Valley of the Moon, among the mountains of Serendib. Sindbad the Sailor relates the story, as is well known, and his version is the closest of all to our author's. It is found in the Chinese Narrative of the Campaigns of Hulaku, translated by both Remusat and Pauthier. It is told in two different versions, once of the diamond and again of the jacinth of Serendib, in the work on Precious Stones by Ahmed Taifashi. Nicolo Conti relates it of a mountain called Albenigaras, fifteen days' journey in a northerly direction from Vijayanagar; and it is told again, apparently after Conti, by Julius Caesar Scaliger. It is related of diamonds and balasses in the old Genoese MS. called that of Usodimare. A feeble form of the tale is quoted contemptuously by Garcias from one Francisco de Tamarra; and Haxthausen found it a popular legend in Armenia." Marco Barbaro, in his account of the Polo family, gives the following tradition:--"From ear to ear the story has passed till it reached mine, that when the three kinsmen arrived at their home, they were dressed in the most shabby and sordid manner, insomuch that the wife of one of them gave away to a beggar that came to the door one of those garments of his, all torn, patched, and dirty, as it was. The next day he asked his wife for that mantle of his, in order to put away the jewels that were sewn up in it; but she told him she had given it to a poor man, whom she did not know. Now, the stratagem that he employed to recover it was this. He went to the bridge of Rialto, and stood there turning a wheel, to no apparent purpose, but as if he were a madman, and to all those who crowded round to see what prank was this, and asked him why he did it, he answered, 'He'll come if God pleases.' So after two or three days he recognized his old coat on the back of one of those who came to stare at his mad proceeding, and got it back again. Then, indeed, he was judged to be quite the reverse of a madman! And from those jewels he built in the contrada of S. Giovanni Grisotomo a very fine palace for those days, and the family got among the vulgar the name of the Ca Million, because the report was that they had jewels to the value of a million of ducats; and the palace has kept that name to the present day--viz., 1566."