The Province of Tibet

After those five days’ march, you enter a province which has been sorely ravaged in the wars of Mongu Kaan.

In this region you find quantities of canes, full three palms in girth and fifteen paces in length, with some three palms’ interval between the joints.

Merchants and other travellers through that country are wont at nightfall to gather these canes and make fires of them; for as they burn they make such loud reports that the lions and bears and other wild beasts are greatly frightened, and make off as fast as possible;

in fact nothing will induce them to come nigh a fire of that sort. So you see the travellers make those fires to protect themselves and their cattle from the wild beasts which have so greatly multiplied since the devastation of the country.

This great multiplication of the wild beasts that prevents the country from being reoccupied.

In fact but for the help of these canes, which make such a noise in burning that the beasts are terrified and kept at a distance, no one would be able even to travel through the land.

I will tell you how it is that the canes make such a noise.

The people cut the green canes, of which there are vast numbers, and set fire to a heap of them at once.

After they have been awhile burning they burst asunder, and this makes such a loud report that you might hear it ten miles off.

In fact, any one unused to this noise, who should hear it unexpectedly, might easily go into a swound or die of fright. But those who are used to it care nothing about it.

Hence those who are not used to it stuff their ears well with cotton, and wrap up their heads and faces with all the clothes they can muster; and so they get along until they have become used to the sound.

’Tis just the same with horses. Those which are unused to these noises are so alarmed by them that they break away from their halters and heel-ropes, and many a man has lost his beasts in this way.

So those who would avoid losing their horses take care to tie all four legs and peg the ropes down strongly, and to wrap the heads and eyes and ears of the animals closely, and so they save them.

But horses also, when they have heard the noise several times, cease to mind it. I tell you the truth, however, when I say that the first time you hear it nothing can be more alarming.

And yet, in spite of all, the lions and bears and other wild beasts will sometimes come and do much mischief; for their numbers are great in those tracts.{2}

You ride for 20 days without finding any inhabited spot, so that travellers are obliged to carry all their provisions with them, and are constantly falling in with those wild beasts which are so numerous and so dangerous.

After that you come at length to a tract where there are towns and villages in considerable numbers.{3} The people of those towns have a strange custom in regard to marriage which I will now relate.

No man of that country would take to wife a girl who was a maid; for they say a wife is nothing worth unless she has been used to consort with men.

Their custom is that when travellers come that way, the old women of the place get ready, and take their unmarried daughters or other girls related to them, and go to the strangers who are passing, and make over the young women to whomsoever will accept them.

The travellers take them accordingly and do their pleasure; after which the girls are restored to the old women who brought them, for they are not allowed to follow the strangers away from their home.

In this manner people travelling that way, when they reach a village or hamlet or other inhabited place, shall find perhaps 20 or 30 girls at their disposal.

And if the travellers lodge with those people they shall have as many young women as they could wish coming to court them!

The traveller is expected to give the girl who has been with him a ring or some other trifle, something in fact that she can show as a lover’s token when she comes to be married.

And it is for this in truth and for this alone that they follow that custom; for every girl is expected to obtain at least 20 such tokens in the way I have described before she can be married.

Those who have most tokens, and so can show they have been most run after, are in the highest esteem, and most sought in marriage, because they say the charms of such an one are greatest.{4} But after marriage these people hold their wives very dear, and would consider it a great villainy for a man to meddle with another’s wife; and thus though the wives have before marriage 45acted as you have heard, they are kept with great care from light conduct afterwards.

Now I have related to you this marriage custom as a good story to tell, and to show what a fine country that is for young fellows to go to!

The people are Idolaters and an evil generation, holding it no sin to rob and maltreat: in fact, they are the greatest brigands on earth. They live by the chase, as well as on their cattle and the fruits of the earth.

In this country there are many of the animals that produce musk, which are called in the Tartar language Gudderi. Those rascals have great numbers of large and fine dogs, which are of great service in catching the musk-beasts, and so they procure great abundance of musk.

They have none of the Great Kaan’s paper money, but use salt instead of money. They are very poorly clad, for their clothes are only of the skins of beasts, and of canvas, and of buckram.{5} They have a language of their own, and they are called Tebet. And this country of Tebet forms a very great province, of which I will give you a brief account.

CHAPTER 46. The Land of Tibet

Tebet is of very great extent that it embraces eight kingdoms, and a vast number of cities and villages.{1}. Its people have a language of their own, and they are Idolaters, and they border on Manzi and sundry other regions. Moreover, they are very great thieves.

It contains in several quarters rivers and lakes, in which gold-dust is found in great abundance.{2} Cinnamon also grows there in great plenty.

Coral is in great demand in this country and fetches a high price, for they delight to hang it round the necks of their women and of their idols.{3} They have also in this country plenty of fine woollens and other stuffs, and many kinds of spices are produced there which are never seen in our country.

Among this people, too, you find the best enchanters and astrologers that exist in all that quarter of the world.

They perform such extraordinary marvels and sorceries by diabolic art, that it astounds one to see or even hear of them. So I will relate none of them in this book of ours; people would be amazed if they heard them, but it would serve no good purpose.{4}

These people of Tebet are an ill-conditioned race.

They have mastiff dogs as bigs as donkeys, which are capital at seizing wild beasts [and in particular the wild oxen which are called Beyamini, very great and fierce animals].

They have also sundry other kinds of sporting dogs, and excellent lanner falcons [and sakers], swift in flight and well-trained, which are got in the mountains of the country.{5}

Tebet is subject to the Great Kaan. So, likewise, all the other kingdoms, regions, and provinces which are described in this book are subject to the Great Kaan, nay, even those other kingdoms, regions, and provinces of which I had occasion to speak at the beginning of the book as belonging to the son of Argon, the Lord of the Levant, are also subject to the Emperor; for the former holds his dominion of the Kaan, and is his liegeman and 52kinsman of the blood Imperial. So you must know that from this province forward all the provinces mentioned in our book are subject to the Great Kaan; and even if this be not specially mentioned, you must understand that it is so.