File:The story of Marco Polo (1899) (14577318118).jpg

Identifier: storyofmarcopolo00polo (find matches)
Title: The story of Marco Polo
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Polo, Marco, 1254-1323? Brooks, Noah, 1830-1903, (from old catalog) ed
Subjects: Voyages and travels
Publisher: New York, The Century co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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his country since the spread of com-merce between China and the rest of the world.Marcos description is not exaggerated. The feathersof the pheasant are partly golden and partly azure,mingled with a reddish brown ; and the tail feathersare sometimes seven feet long. Marcos ten palms length was rather an understatement. Musk-deer are still hunted on the frontiers ofChina and Tibet; and the musk used in the per-fumery trade comes from China and Burmah,having been previously brought from the regionreferred to by Marco Polo. The little animal, how-ever, has only two canine teeth, or tusks, and notfour, as described by Marco. Formerly musk wasused as a medicine in various parts of the world ; butdoctors in civilised lands do not hold it in highrepute. In China it is still thought to be a very goodmedicine ; but the Chinese have queer notions aboutcures and charms. Abbe Hue, a distinguishedtraveller, says that when a Tatar doctor finds himselfwithout his drugs and medicines he is not in the
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CHINESE PHEASANT X.) PAPER PILLS. 97 least embarrassed. He writes the names of the neededdrugs on slips of paper, and these, being rolled up inlittle balls, are swallowed by the sick man. Toswallow the name of a remedy, or the remedy itself,say the Tatars, comes to precisely the same thing. CHAPTER XL WHO WERE GOG AND MAGOG ?—THE SPLENDOURS OF THE COURTOF KUBLAI KHAN—COLERIDGES POEM IN XANADU. T^URNING his face again to the eastward, Marco-*■ takes us to one of the localities near the GreatWall; for although he never once makes mentionof that wonder of the world, many eminent writerssuppose that he had in his mind its ramparts whenhe speaks thus of the region which he says isTenduc: Here also is what we call the country of Gog or Magog;they, however, call it Ung and Mungul, after the names oftwo races of people that existed in that province before themigration of the Tartars. Ung was the title of the peopleof the country, and Mungul a name sometimes applied toTartars. The Great

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