Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [84]
To cover longer distances, footmen yielded to horses trained for the task. “Messengers on horseback go expressly to tell the great lord news from any land which may be in rebellion against him.” Each of these messengers carried special identification in the form of a tablet bearing the image of a falcon, as a sign that he wished to go “at express speed.” The messengers “never have any but good animals and fresh for their needs. They take horses from the post, where they are ready for them, and if they are two, they set out from the place where they are on two good horses strong and swift; they bind up their belly and wrap up their heads, and set themselves to ride at full gallop to the utmost of their power, and gallop until they come to the next post at twenty-five miles, and then they find two other horses ready, fresh, and rested and swift.”
Marco praised the system as a model of efficiency. “They mount so quickly that they do not rest themselves, and when they are mounted they set themselves immediately at full gallop, and do not cease to gallop till they are come to the next post; and there they find the other horses and men ready to change for the others, and they mount themselves as quickly and set themselves on the road. And so they do till the evening. And in this way,” Marco concludes with vicarious pride and satisfaction, “messengers like these go two hundred and fifty miles in one day to carry news to the great lord speedily from distant parts, and also when there is need they go three hundred. And if it is a very grave case they ride at night; and if the moon does not shine, the men of the post go running before them with torches to the next post.”
THERE WAS STILL more that Marco wished his readers to appreciate about Kublai Khan’s splendid realm. Rows of towering trees marked the straight roads traveled by Kublai’s messengers. Marco himself studied the sight as he followed in their tracks at a more leisurely pace. “The [trees] are so large that they can well be seen from very far,” he reports. “The Great Khan has this done so that each may see the roads, and that merchants may rest in the shade, and that they may not lose their way either by day or by night when they go through desert places.” And there was one other surprising benefit, according to Marco. “The Great Khan has [the trees] planted all the more gladly because his diviners and astrologers say that he who has trees planted lives a long time.”
In the midst of surveying the Mongols’ practical accomplishments, Marco pauses to praise the local rice wine, boiled and mixed with potent spices. He says it has “such a flavor that it is better than any other wine. It is clear and beautiful. It makes a man become drunken sooner than other wine because it is very hot.” It is easy to imagine the young Venetian in an alcoholic daze gleefully admiring Kublai Khan’s messengers, his trees, and all the other wonders of his realm—the perpetually burning stones, for instance.
Wherever he traveled in China, Marco came across “large black stones that are dug from the mountains as veins, which burn like logs.” Everywhere, people put them to use. “They keep up the fire better than wood does,” he notes. “If you put them on the fire in the evening and make them catch well, I tell you they keep fire all the night so that one finds some in the morning.” These black stones gave off long-lasting, intense heat. They were so useful that Kublai Khan’s subjects rarely resorted to burning wood, which was in short supply. “So great is the multitude of people, and stoves, and baths, which are continually heated, that the wood could not be enough” in a country where everyone bathed “at least three times a week, and in the winter every day if they can do so,” in stark contrast to Mongols and Venetians.
The plentiful black stones making possible all this cooking, heating,