Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [147]
Such maneuvers were undertaken to bring the larger vessels in for refurbishing. “When the great ship…has sailed a year or more and needs repair, they…nail yet another board over the two all round the ship, and then there are three of them and they also caulk and oil it.” This arduous procedure was repeated as necessary until there were six layers of boards, at which point “the ship is condemned and they sail no more in her on too high seas but [only] in near journeys and good weather.” In the end, Marco says, “they dismantle and break them up.”
DESPITE THEIR superior technology, the sailors of India slavishly followed bizarre nautical superstitions. Marco was startled to learn how they predicted the outcome of a voyage. A ship, a strong wind, and a hapless drunk were required.
“The men of the ship will have a hurdle, that is, a grating made of wickerwork, and at each corner and side of the hurdle will be tied a cord, so that there will be eight cords, and they will all be tied at the other end with a long rope,” he explains. “They will find some stupid or drunken [man] and will bind him on the hurdle; for no wise or sane man would expose himself to that danger. When a strong wind prevails, they set up the hurdle opposite the wind, and the wind lifts the hurdle and carries it into the sky and the men hold it by a long rope…. If the hurdle makes for the sky, they say that the ship for which that proof has been made will make a quick and profitable voyage, and all the merchants flock to her for the sake of sailing and going with her. And if the hurdle has not been able to go up, no merchant will be willing to enter the ship for which the proof was made, because they say that she could not finish her voyage and many disasters would afflict her. So that ship stays in port that year.” Marco notes this behavior as dispassionately as an ethnologist observing an unusual tribal custom.
Having seen and experienced so much more of the world than other Europeans, he brought a mature sense of judgment, tolerance, and skepticism to bear on his experiences in India, etched in bulletins from the farthest reaches of the globe.
INDONESIA
At the outset, Marco describes Indonesia as having eight kingdoms, six of which he visited, “namely,…the kingdoms of Ferlec, Basman, Sumatra, Dagroian, Lambri, and Fansur.” Perhaps the most primitive was Basman, whose inhabitants had “no law except like beasts.” He remarks, “They are claimed by the Great Khan, but they make him no tribute because they are so far off that the people of the Great Khan will not go there.”
It was an enchanted kingdom, stocked with a varied bestiary including elephants, unicorns, “and specially of a kind of black goshawk.” Once again, Marco’s “unicorn” was the Asian rhinoceros, as his gruesome description makes clear: “It has the hair of the buffalo; it has the feet made like an elephant. It has one horn in the middle of its forehead very thick and black. And I tell you that it does no harm to men and beasts with its horn, but only with its tongue and knees, for on its tongue it has very long spines and sharp; so that when it wishes to hurt anyone it tramples and presses him down with the knees, afterward inflicting the harm with its tongue.”
The “monkeys” of Basman were even more disturbing. “In this isle there is a kind of monkey which is very small and has a face that is altogether like the face of men, and they have other parts of the body resembling them. So they say these monkeys are men and deceive others.” The monkeys provided