69. Of scientific notions, such as we find in the unveracious Maundevile,
we have no trace in truthful Marco. The former, "lying with a
circumstance," tells us boldly that he was in 33 deg. of South Latitude; the
latter is full of wonder that some of the Indian Islands where he had been
lay so far to the south that you lost sight of the Pole-star. When it
rises again on his horizon he estimates the Latitude by the Pole-star's
being so many cubits high. So the gallant Baber speaks of the sun having
mounted spear-high when the onset of battle began at Paniput. Such
expressions convey no notion at all to such as have had their ideas
sophisticated by angular perceptions of altitude, but similar expressions
are common among Orientals,[8] and indeed I have heard them from educated
Englishmen. In another place Marco states regarding certain islands in the
Northern Ocean that they lie so very far to the north that in going
thither one actually leaves the Pole-star a trifle behind towards the
south; a statement to which we know only one parallel, to wit, in the
voyage of that adventurous Dutch skipper who told Master Moxon, King
Charles II.'s Hydrographer, that he had sailed two degrees beyond the
Pole!
[Sidenote: Map constructed on Polo's data.]
70. The Book, however, is full of bearings and distances, and I have
thought it worth while to construct a map from its indications, in order
to get some approximation to Polo's own idea of the face of that world
which he had traversed so extensively. There are three allusions to maps
in the course of his work (II. 245, 312, 424).
In his own bearings, at least on land journeys, he usually carries us
along a great general traverse line, without much caring about small
changes of direction. Thus on the great outward journey from the frontier
of Persia to that of China the line runs almost continuously "entre
Levant et Grec" or E.N.E. In his journey from Cambaluc or Peking to Mien
or Burma, it is always Ponent or W.; and in that from Peking to Zayton
in Fo-kien, the port of embarkation for India, it is Sceloc or S.E. The
line of bearings in which he deviates most widely from truth is that of
the cities on the Arabian Coast from Aden to Hormuz, which he makes to run
steadily vers Maistre or N.W., a conception which it has not been very
easy to realise on the map.[9]
[Sidenote: Singular omissions of Polo in regard to China; Historical
inaccuracies.]
71. In the early part of the Book we are told that Marco acquired several
of the languages current in the Mongol Empire, and no less than four
written characters.
