Half-Hours with the Early Explorers, etc

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HaLF~HOUF?S WITH THE PEARLY EXPLORERS. LOMBO IN SIGHT OF A NEW LAN Half- Hours AVITH THE Early Explorers. BY tt THOMAS FROST, Author of " History of the Indian Revolt," "Memoirs of the Madiais," etc. YtHtl; imnurcws TKustratioiis. CASSELL, PETTER, & GALPIN, LOXDOX, PARIS, AXD NEW YORK. Preface O period of the world's history presents us with more interesting records of zeal and enterprise, in the exploration of hitherto unknown lands and seas, than that between the middle os the thirteenth century and the close of the sixteenth. Marco Polo, following in the ' y tracks of the Minorite monk, William de Ruysbroeck, opened up far Cathay to the knowledge of Europeans ; and Sir John Mandeville, if he did little for geography, awakened curiosity as to the less-known countries of Asia and Africa by his wondrous narrative, which reads like a chapter of Herodotus pieced with fragments of the " Thousand and One Nights."

The invention of the mariner's compass prepared the way for the great enterprises which made famous the names of Colombo, and Gama, and Cabota, and Magalhaen. Though the polarity of the magnet was known long before, the discovery was not applied to navigation until the beginning of the fifteenth century. The results were the discovery of an ocean route to India, the opening of a new world to European enterprise, and the circumnavigation of the globe. For a century and a half, Spaniards, Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch vied with each other in the zeal and energy which they displayed in the navigation of distant seas and the exploration of unknown lands. As each State arrogated to itself the exclusive right to use the ocean routes discovered by its subjects, or by foreign navigators in its service, the skill and daring of explorers were tasked to the utmost for the discovery of seas and straits hitherto unknown. While Vespucci sought in the trackless Southern Ocean for a western passage to the

Preface

. East, Cabota, Verazzano, and Cartier sought it by northern navigation ; and, long after the route from the Atlantic to the Pacific had been found by Magalhaen, Willoughby, Chancellor, and Barentz ploughed the North Polar seas in search of a passage to China and India round the North Cape of Europe, and Frobisher and Davis pursued a similar quest in the frozen waters that so long, by their intricacies and perils, defied the endeavours made, down to our time, to penetrate from Baffin's Bay to the North Pole and to Behring's Strait. The courage, and rarer moral qualities, of these early explorers have scarcely been appreciated at their full worth. In these days, when mail steamers of two or three thousand tons, starting at a fixed day and hour, make rapid voyages across oceans completely surveyed and mapped, the hesitation with which the old navigators put to sea, the frequency with which they returned to port, and the slowness of their progress are apt to raise a smile.

But if we consider the smallness of their ships, the cumbrousness of their architecture, and the absence ofthe mechanical appliances of navigation now common, and even of charts, we must acknowledge that, in courage and in seamanship, the navigators of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have never been excelled. The narratives embraced within the limits of the present work, necessarily brief as they are, will, it is hoped, conduce to a just appreciation of the claims of the pioneers of geographical discovery during that period. They have been compiled from careful study of the originals, and of the maps and charts of the period, in the library of the British Museum ; and the illustrations have, for the most part, been copied from engravings made for early editions, and for other works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Co^TEpiT^.

The Circumnavigations of Oliver Van Noort and Sebald de Weert . 219—238 Half-Hours with the Early Explorers.

Chapter I. The Travels Of Marco Polo

MARCO POLO was the son of Nicolo Polo, a merchant of Venice, in which city he was born in or about 1250. His father was absent at the time on a journey through Central Asia, accompanied by his brother Matteo. Having penetrated into the hitherto unexplored region of Cathay, as China was then called, and been hospitably entertained by the renowned Khubla Khan, grandson of the no less celebrated Ghengis Khan, they remained at the Court of that potentate several years, returning in 1269 with an embassy to the Pope. Marco Polo, who had been bereft of his mother in the interval, was then about nineteen years of age. Two years after wards, his father and uncle, having settled their affairs in Venice, again set out for the far East, bearing letters and presents to Khubla Khan from Pope Gregory X. Marco accompanied them, and to his copious notes of the wonderful sights which they saw, and the strange adventures which befell them, we are indebted for the earliest reliable de scription of the distant and then almost unknown regions which they traversed.

SEAL OF GREGORY X. Landing on the coast of Syria, the travellers journeyed through Aljezirah, and thence through the northern provinces of Persia to the frontiers of the great empire of Mongolia. The magnificent palaces and lofty towers of Balkh had become heaps of ruins when the travellers reached that city, and they had some difficulty in procuring what they required for their journey over the vast steppes and deserts of Tartary. Nicolo Polo had received from Khubla Khan, on leaving the Court of that HALF-HOURS Jl'LTH THE EARLY EXPLORERS. 14 potentate, a golden tablet, which served as a passport, empowering them to provide themselves with guides, horses, provisions, and everything that they required in traversing his dominions ; and this talisman, which he had carefully preserved, was a protection against the savage tribes by whom they were sometimes threatened with molestation.

It was unavailing, however, against the wild beasts of the country, and they had often to do battle with the hyenas and jackals that prowled at night about their tents. At length they reached Kashgar, and found themselves in a fertile and MONGOLIAN cultivated country, abounding in gardens, orchards, and vineyards. Thence they journeyed on to Yarkand, which, after having been beyond the limits of European travel for centuries, is now acquiring interest from the efforts which have been made of late years to open a trade with Central Asia, through India, for British manufactures. The)- next arrived at the city of Lap, situated on the borders of the great Desert of Cobi. Here they heard strange stories of the malevolent genii who were said to inhabit the desert,. and to lure travellers to their destruction.

Sometimes these goblins appeared in bands, assuming the forms of armed men, advancing towards travellers,. and putting them to flight. At other times they filled the air with sounds resembling the clash of arms and the strains of martial music. They often assumed the likeness of one or another of a party of travellers, and, by engaging the others in conversation, endeavoured to lead them astray. At night they made sounds like the tramping of horses, with the same amiable intention ; and, when they had succeeded in separating the travellers, the) called upon each other by name, and thus lured them in opposite directions. The Polos were advised, as a precaution against the mischievous pranks of THE GRAND KHAN IN A ROOM CARRIED BY 10L.R ELEPHAisTS. these evil spirits, to attach bells to their horses and camels to prevent their going astray, and to adopt a code of signals for their guidance.

Undismayed by these weird stories, our travellers entered the desert, traversed it in safety, and rested themselves awhile in the fertile province of Karmel, where they found the people very friendly and hospitable. Resuming their journey they reached the borders of Cathay, and at Chandu beheld the summer palace of the Khan, its marble columns and gilded cupolas glittering * Frcm a woodcut in the Livre des Mervei.'les, an old French work. HALF-HOURS WITH THE EARLY EXPLORERS. in the sunlight. It stood in the midst of a park sixteen miles in circum ference, beautifully wooded and watered, abundantly stocked with deer, and surrounded by a high wall. The summer season being past, the Khan was not residing there ; and our travellers continued their journey through the Flowery Land, reaching the city of Cambalu (identified with Peking by Benedict Goez in the seventeenth century) in 1275, four years after their departure from Venice.

Khubla Khan, on receiving intelligence of their approach, dispatched messengers to meet them at the distance of forty days' journey from the capital, with instructions to show them every mark of honour and distinction, and to see that they wanted nothing by the way that was necessary to their comfort. On their arrival at Cambalu, they were presented to the Khan without delay, and, after prostrating themselves before him, according to the custom of the country, were conducted to the banquet-hall, where the table was covered with every luxury that the chase and the garden could supply. On a low platform, at the head of the festive board, stood the throne, spark ling with precious stones, on which sat Khubla Khan, with his four wives on the right and the left, each attended by a numerous train.

All the magnates of the empire were present, and the throng of guests and attendants, the flash of jewels and the waving plumes, the rich profusion of gold and silver plate, made a scene of oppressive and bewildering magnificence. When the feast was over, jugglers, acrobats, and minstrels were introduced, to contribute to the delectation of the guests ; and when all was done, the travellers were conducted to a magnificent palace, which was assigned to them as a residence, and where they were provided with every luxury, and waited upon by a numerous staff of attendants. On the following morning they again waited on the Khan, to whom Nicolo Polo presented the Pope's letter and a small bottle containing some of the oil used for the lamps in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, which Khubla received reverently, supposing, from the veneration with which the travellers regarded it, that it must possess rare virtues.

Then refresh ments were placed before them, and the' Khan began to inquire of them concerning the journey, their affairs, and the state of Europe, about which he exhibited an intelligent curiosity. As the elder Polos were thoroughly acquainted with the Mongol language, no interpreter was required, and their replies seemed to give the Khan great satisfaction. Towards the end of the v interview, he asked who Marco was, and, on learning his relationship to the others, he expressed an intention to take him under his protection, and appointed him at once to an honourable position in his household. Young Polo immediately applied himself diligently to the study of the language, laws, and customs of the country, in order that he might be as useful as possible to the Khan, with whom he soon became a great favourite.

The TARTARS ON THE ROAD (Livre des Merveilles). intelligence and discretion with which he executed every commission that was entrusted to him won the Khan's confidence, and he was employed, first in services to be performed in the neighbourhood of the capital, and afterwards on affairs of importance in various parts of the empire, sometimes to the distance of six months' journey. In this manner he acquired so much know ledge of the country that the fidelity of his topographical descriptions is recognised by travellers who have visited China within the last hundred years. It has been remarked, as a singular omission, that he makes no mention B HALF- HOURS WITH THE EARLY EXPLORERS. of the great wall of China, through which, it seems, he should have passed, and which must have made a deep impression on a mind so prone to the marvellous.

Marsden remarks that Polo did not merely arrive once in China, and depart by the same route, but "resided many years in the country, was actively employed in the service of the Chinese Emperor, who sent him occasionally upon foreign missions ; and, in the performance of his ordinary ELEPHANT HUNTING [Livre des Merveilles) duties, must have been incessantly passing and repassing between the capital, where was his master's winter residence, and the summer palaces, by the gates or fortified passes through which the great roads lead to Northern Tartary, where the character of the great national rampart well deserves the epithet of stupendous. In this quarter it is that the omission is a subject of surprise, and not in that where he, together with his father and uncle, may be presumed to have entered the Chinese .territory."

In these routes, his silence cannot be accounted for by the wall being, as it is described by Du Halde, in the western part, " merely made of earth, low, narrow, and sometimes buried in the sand." Marsden conjectures that the portion of Polo's MS. that described the great wall has been lost or designedly omitted, as too improbable ; and he supports this hypothesis by the fact that, in Ramusio's version of the narrative, a whole chapter has been omitted without notice, though it existed in the earlier Latin editions, was necessary for the connection of the subject, and is indirectly referred to in a subsequent chapter. But it is conceivable that the traveller may have passed the wall without being informed of its wonderful extent, or in what it differed from the other fortified posts which he notices ; and there are well-grounded reasons for beli'eving that the Chinese would not tell him anything about it, or in any way direct attention to it.

Lord Macartney passed it centuries afterwards without the slightest remark concerning it being made by any one of his numerous escort ; and we learn from Marsden's notes to his translation of Polo's narrative, " that in the Persian account of the journey performed by the ambassadors sent by Shah Rokh, in 1420, to the Emperor of China, and which in many respects is circumstantial, no notice whatever is taken of the wall ; although in their progress from Kan-cheu to the Kara-muran or Yellow-river, they must have coasted or traversed the line of its direction." And again, from the same authority, we learn that, " even by the geographers of Persia and Arabia, who were laborious in collecting information of that kind, and had the means of obtaining it from the Mahometans who traded between Bokhara, Kashgar, and China, no mention is made of any extensive rampart, either of masonry or earth, constructed for defending the borders of Khatai."

The portion of China which was subject to the Mongol Khans when the Polos arrived at Cambalu comprised the provinces north of the Kiang-ku, and Khubla was then successfully prosecuting a war with the rulers of the territory south of that river. The strong-walled city of Sa-yan-fu, situated on a branch of the Yang-tse-kiang, had, however, defied for three years his efforts to reduce it. The Polos suggested to the Khan the use of powerful catapults, such as were used in Europe before the invention of artillery for hurling enormous stones against the defences of beleaguered cities. Khubla was pleased with the idea, and placed the best smiths and carpenters in the capital at the disposal of the Polos for the construction of the machines. B Z HALF-HOURS WLTH THE EARLY EXPLORERS. 20 When the catapults were made, and their powers had been tested in his presence, he was filled with wonder and admiration ; and the Polos were immediately dispatched with the machines against the city which the Mongols had so long besieged in vain.

The huge stones propelled against the city, each crushing some building in its fall, inspired such terror and awe in the minds of the defenders that they immediately offered to menagerie OF the GREAT khan (Litre des Merueilles). capitulate. The banner of Khubla Khan soon waved above the walls and towers of Sa-yan-fu, and wealth and honours were showered upon the Polos with the utmost prodigality. It may be observed here, that, though the Chinese were acquainted with the composition and manufacture of gunpowder long before this time, they used it only for making fireworks ; and its use for military purposes was unknown in Europe for nearly a century after wards. Marco Polo, rising rapidly in the estimation of Khubla Khan, was ultimately created a magnate of the empire, and had assigned to him, in the city of Nan-qui, a palace and a retinue even larger and more magnificent than those which he had enjoyed before.

The civil administration of the province of which Nan-qui was the chief city was confided to him, and he discharged his functions in a manner which gave equal satisfaction to the Khan and to the people. LANDING OF MARCO POLO AT ORMUS .Livre des Merveilles). The Polos had been seventeen years in China, and had amassed enormous fortunes, when a desire to see Venice once more came upon them, and grew with the reflection that Khubla Khan had become a very old man, and that his decease might seriously affect their prospects. Nicolo and Matteo accordingly sought permission to return to their own country ; but this the Khan was indisposed to grant, so necessary had they become to him, and, though he offered them any other boon they should ask, the required per mission could not be obtained. HALF-HOURS WITH THE EARLY EXPLORERS. 22 There was at this time at the Court of Khubla Khan an embassy from Arshun. the Tartar monarch of Persia, who was a lineal descendant of Ghenghis Khan, and, therefore, a near relation of the ruler of Cathay.

Their mission was to obtain the hand of a Mongol princess for Arghun, and it had been successful ; but when they had travelled eight months on their journey homeward, with the princess and her attendants, they found war raging in the countries through which they had to pass, and were obliged to return to Cambalu. Marco Polo had just returned from a voyage in the Indian seas, and to him the Persian envoys applied, in order to learn whether it would be possible to return to Persia by sea. The Polos thought that this idea might be turned to account for their own purpose, and assured the envoys that such a voyage was perfectly practicable, and that, if the Khan would consent to his grand-daughter making the journey by sea, Marco, who was acquainted with the seas which they would have to navigate, should be their pilot, if they could obtain the Khan's permission for their own departure likewise.

Khubla received with favour the proposition that his grand-daughter should go to Persia by sea, but he consented very reluctantly to the departure of the Polos, and only on their promising to return to Cambalu when they had passed a short time in their own country. Fourteen ships, each fitted with four masts, manned by 250 men, and provisioned for two years, were equipped for the voyage. The Polos received full powers to act as am bassadors of the Khan to the Pope and all the Powers of Christendom ; and, as a last token of his esteem, were presented with caskets of rubies ahd other gems of enormous value. Three months were occupied in the voyage from China to Sumatra, though they had fair weather, and when that island was reached, they were detained there five months by adverse winds. Getting away again at last, they steered to the Nicobar and Andaman Islands, and thence to Ceylon, which Marco Polo pronounced the most beautiful island in the world.

Touching the coast of the Carnatic, and gleaning there some curious infor mation concerning the customs and superstitions of the Hindoos, he next steered for the Persian Gulf, and arrived at Ormus at the end of a voyage of eighteen months, during which two of the three Persian envoys, and no fewer than 600 of the retinue of the Mongol princess, had died. At Ormus they learned that both Arghun and Khubla Khan had departed this life, and, after a journey into Khorasan, where Kasan, the son of Arghun, was residing during his minority, they proceeded to Tauris, where the Court of the Regency was held, and remained there nine months. They then received tablets of gold from the Regent, and set out for Trebizond, on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, travelling through Kurdistan and Mingrelia. At Trebizond they took passages to Venice, and reached their native city in safety, after an absence of twenty-four years.

Their identity was at first doubted, but when they had proved that they were the Polos who had left Venice so long before, their fame soon spread far and wide. Shortly after their return, the reputation of Marco Polo as a skilful navigator caused him to be appointed to the command of a ship of the Venetian fleet, ind, war then existing between Venice and Genoa, he was taken prisoner in an engagement that quickly followed. It was while a prisoner at Genoa, where he remained four years, that he wrote the narrative of his travels and of his residence in China, which has made his name famous. He was liberated in 1300, and returned to Venice, where he died in 1323, when he was about seventy-three years of age.

Chapter II. The Travels Of Sir John Mandeville

THIS famous old traveller, whose quaintly-written narrative is as full of the wild and the wonderful as the story of Sinbad the Sailor, was not only the earliest English explorer, but also the first writer of English prose in any department of literature. He was born at St. Alban's in 1300, and received the liberal education required for the profession of medicine. He set out upon his travels on the 29th of September, 1332, and, as he states in his preface, " went through many lands, and many kingdoms, provinces and isles, and passed through Turkey, and through Armony the Little and the Great ; through Tartary, Suiy, Arabia, Egypt the High and the Low ; through Liby, Chaldea, and a great part of Æthiope ; through Amazony ; through India the Less and the More, and through many isles which are about India, where many dwell of divers shapes."

The narrative thus prefaced is vague and rambling, and affords few indi cations of the routes followed by the writer, while its value is further detracted from by the fact that, though he states that he visited all the countries described, the Munchausen-like stories which he tells of many of them throw a grave doubt upon his veracity. We gather from his first chapter that he passed through Germany, Hungary, Servia, and Bulgaria to Constantinople, which is the first place of which he gives any description. It was then the capital of the Greek empire, subverted by the Turks about seventy years after Mandeville's visit ; and, with its cathedral, circus, and hippodrome, one of the finest, as well as the largest, cities in Europe. From that port he appears to have sailed for the Greek islands, but the peculiar language in which he embodies his knowledge of them leaves the reader to guess which he visited, and which he describes from report.

Thus he says, after a brief notice of Candia : — " And thence men pass through the isles of Cophas and Largo, of SLR JOHN MANDEVILLE. 25 the which isles Ipocras was lord ; and some say that in the Isle of Largo is Ipocras his daughter, in the manner of a dragon, who is a hundred foot long, as men say, for I have not seen her, and they of the Isles call her the Lady of the Country ; and she lieth in an old castle, and showeth thrice in the year, and she doth no man harm ; and she is thus changed from a damsel to GROUP OF TEMPLARS. a dragon through a goddess that men call Diana; and some say that she shall dwell so unto the time that a knight come that is so hardy as to go and kiss her mouth, and then she shall turn again to her own kind, and be a woman, and after that she shall not live long."

HALF-HOURS WITH THE EARLY EXPLORERS. Such stories as this form a considerable portion of Mandeville's narrative. He devotes a whole chapter to this legend ofthe daughter of Hippocrates, while of the island of Rhodes, he relates only that it was taken from the Emperor of Greece by the Knights of St. John. There is a longer account of Cyprus, from which island he seems to have passed over to Sur, the ancient Tyre, CIRCUS AND HIPPODROME OF ANCIENT CONSTANTINOPLE. and thence to Jaffa, of which he says, " It is the oldest town in the world, for it was made before Noah's flood, and there be bones of a giant's side that be forty foot long." From Jaffa he went to Nice, and thence to Gaza, which he describes as, at that time, "a rich city, fair, and full of people." He indicates the route thence to Jerusalem, and then turns aside to notice Mount Sinai and the convent of St. Catherine there, "wherein are many lamps burning, and they have olive oil enough to eat and to burn, and that they SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE. 27 have by miracle, for they say there come certain of all manner of birds every year once, like pilgrims, and each of them bringeth a branch of olive, in token of offering, whereof they make oil."

Having traversed the desert, he visited Beersheba and the Vale of Hebron, where, in the side of a hill, he was shown the sepulchres of the patriarchs Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their wives. He relates the curious MOUNT ARARAT. legend that Adam and Eve were created on this spot, and thence removed to the Garden of Eden, where they abode only a single day, " for the same day that he was put into Paradise, the same day he was driven out, as soon as he had sinned." Two miles from Hebron he was shown the grave of Lot, and near it an oak which he was told had been there since the creation of the world. It bore leaves until the time of Christ, since which time it had been dry. There was a prophecy, he says, that a prince of the west should deliver HALF-HOURS WLTH THE EARLY EXPLORERS. 28 Palestine from the Saracens, and worship God beneath this tree, which should then bear leaves again.

From Hebron a ride of five miles through pleasant woods brought him to Bethlehem, where he pauses to relate a story of a fair maiden, who was wrongfully put to death, to which he devotes the greater part of a chapter. Mandeville has, naturally, much to say concerning Jerusalem, for, apart from the interest which it has always possessed as the scene of so many great events, the Crusades had caused its name to be in everybody's mouth. Several chapters are devoted to the remarkable places of the city, and then he takes us to Bethany, whence he rode to Jericho. A day's journey from this place brought him to the Jordan, and from that river he turned towards the Dead Sea, of which he says : " It is called the Dead Sea because it runneth not neither may any man or beast live therein ; and that hath been proved many times, for they have cast therein men that were judged to death : nor no man may drink of the water.

And if men cast iron therein, it cometh up again ; but if a man cast a feather therein, it sinketh ; which is against kind. And thereabouts grow trees that bear fruit of fair colour, and seeming ripe ; but when a man cutteth them, he findeth nought in them but coals and ashes, in token that through the vengeance of God those cities were burnt with the fire of hell. And some men call that lake the Lake of Asphaltis, and some call it the Pool of the Devil, and some call it the Stinking Pool, for the water thereof stinketh." Pausing at Nazareth to relate the monkish legends concerning the mother of Jesus, our traveller went on to Mount Tabor, and thence to Tiberias, where he is careful to state that the Sea of Galilee is not an inlet of the ocean, but a lake of fresh water. Thence he passes into Armenia, prefacing his account of the country by describing the route from Genoa or Venice to Trebizond.

His account of Mount Ararat is so characteristic of the writer that we must' quote it. " On that hill," he says, " a man may see very far in clear weather, for the hill is full seven miles of height ; and some say they have been there, and put their fingers in the holes where the fiend went out when Noah said Benedicite. But I judge that, for snow that is always upon that hill, both winter and summer, no man hath ever gone up since Noah was there ; but only one is said to have been there, who brought a plank that is yet in the abbey of the hill's foot ; for he had great desire to go up that hill, and when he was at the third part upward, he was so weary that he might not go SLR JOHN MANDEVILLE. 29 farther, and he rested him and slept ; and when he was awoke, he was down at the hill-foot, and then prayed he to God devoutly that He would suffer him to go to the upper part of the hill, and an angel said that he should have his THE DEAD SEA. desire, 'and so he did ; and since that time no man did ever come there.