Thus Malabar is substituted wrongly for Maabar in
one place, and by a grosser error for Dalivar in another. The age of
young Marco, at the time of his father's first return to Venice, has been
arbitrarily altered from 15 to 19, in order to correspond with a date
which is itself erroneous. Thus also Polo is made to describe Ormus as on
an Island, contrary to the old texts and to the fact; for the city of
Hormuz was not transferred to the island, afterwards so famous, till some
years after Polo's return from the East. It is probably also the editor
who in the notice of the oil-springs of Caucasus (i. p. 46) has
substituted camel-loads for ship-loads, in ignorance that the site of
those alluded to was probably Baku on the Caspian.
Other erroneous statements, such as the introduction of window-glass as
one of the embellishments of the palace at Cambaluc, are probably due only
to accidental misunderstanding.
[Sidenote: Genuine statements peculiar to Ramusio.]
62. Of circumstances certainly genuine, which are peculiar to this edition
of Polo's work, and which it is difficult to assign to any one but
himself, we may note the specification of the woods east of Yezd as
composed of date trees (vol. i pp. 88-89); the unmistakable allusion to
the subterranean irrigation channels of Persia (p. 123); the accurate
explanation of the term Mulehet applied to the sect of Assassins (pp.
139-142); the mention of the Lake (Sirikul?) on the plateau of Pamer, of
the wolves that prey on the wild sheep, and of the piles of wild rams'
horns used as landmarks in the snow (pp.
