Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [127]
LION TRAPPING was common in the area, and Marco set about learning the technique as a matter of survival. The requirements were simple enough: parallel trenches and, as bait, an unlucky dog. When deployed correctly, they produced dramatic results.
“Two very deep pits are made one beside the other,” he writes. “It is true that between some ground is left perhaps for the width of one ell; and on the other side of the pits a high hedge is made, but nothing at the ends. At night, the owner of the pits will tie a little dog on the ground in the middle, and leaving him there will go away. Then the dog tied like this, when left by the master, will not cease to bark; and the dog shall be white. The lion, hearing from whatever distance thence the voice of the dog, will run to him with much fury, and when he shall see him gleaming white, wishing to leap hastily to catch him, will fall into the pit. In the morning, the master of the pits will come and will kill the lion in the pit. Then the flesh will be eaten up because it is good, and the skin will be sold, for they are very dear.”
Marco also recorded a way to capture a type of fox that he called a papione, which gnawed on sugarcane, damaging that valuable crop. Here is his recommended method for catching these four-legged pilferers: “They have great gourds that they cut in the knob at the top, making a mouth for the entry of a width calculated so that one of the papiones may put his head in with force.” To make certain that the papione would not damage the neck, the hunters drilled holes around it and threaded twine through the openings to strengthen it. To entice papiones to the gourd, the hunters placed a wad of tempting fat at the bottom, and distributed the traps around the perimeter of the caravan. “When the papiones come to the caravan to take something away, they perceive the smell of the fat in the gourds and go up to them, and, wishing to put their heads in, cannot. But pressing violently from greed for the food inside they force the head to enter. Then, being unable to draw it out, they lift and carry with them the gourds because they are light; and then they do not know where to go.”
The poor creatures wandered blindly until the merchants caught them.
IN THE CITY that Marco called Fugiu, his uncle Maffeo struck up a friendship with a “certain wise Saracen”—that is, a Muslim—and remarked to him about a “certain manner of people whose religion no one understands.” These were not Buddhists, from the looks of things, because there were no Buddhas, or idols, in evidence. Nor did they appear to be Muslims. Neither were they Zoroastrians, for they did not worship fire. One can see Maffeo suggesting to the wise Saracen, “May it please you that we go to them and speak with them; perhaps we will learn something about their life.” So they went, solely from curiosity, but their questions unsettled the objects of their inquiry, who feared that the three curious merchants were plotting to “take away their religion from them.”
“Do not be afraid,” Maffeo and Marco urged, “for we did not come here for your harm at all but only for good and the improvement of your condition.”
They returned the next day, slowly ingratiating themselves with the locals, “asking them about their business,” until they came upon the answer to the riddle. These secretive and suspicious people were, after all, Christians, “for they had books, and these Masters Maffeo and Marco reading in them began to interpret the writing and to translate from word to word and from tongue to tongue, so that they found it to be the words of the Psalter”—the Book of Psalms.
Astonished by this discovery of lost Christians in China, they asked how they came by their faith. “From our ancestors,” the locals replied.
Inspecting one of their temples, the merchants saw “three painted figures, who had been three apostles of the seventy who had gone preaching through the world; and they said that they were those who had taught their ancestors in that religion long ago,