11 - The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Volume 2.

11 - The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Volume 2.  
11 - Book Third, Chapters 6 to 10. Concerning the great island of Java. The isles of Sondur and Condur. Of the island called Pentam and the city Malaiur. The island of Java the Less. The knigdoms of Ferlec and Basma. The knigdoms of Samara and Dragoian.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section eleven of the Book of San Marco Polo the Venetian,
concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, Volume two.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Ramon Escimia Conway, Arkansas,

(00:27):
Chapter six, concerning the Great Island of Java. When you
sail from Chamba fifteen hundred miles in a course between
south and southeast, you come to a great island called Java.
And the experienced mariners of those islands, who know the
matter well, say that it is the greatest island in

(00:48):
the world, and has a compass of more than three
thousand miles. It is subject to a great king and
tributary to no one else in the world. The people
are idolaters. The island is of surpassing wealth, producing black pepper, nutmegs, spikenard, galangale, kubeibs, cloves,

(01:09):
and all other kinds of spices. This island is also
frequented by a vast amount of shipping and by merchants
who buy and sell costly goods from which they reap
great profit. Indeed, the treasure of this island is so
great as to be past telling. And I can assure
you the Great Khan never could get possession of this

(01:29):
island on account of its great distance and the great
expense of an expedition. Thither, the merchants of Zaiton and
Manzi draw annually great returns from this country. Chapter seven,
wherein the isles of Soundur and Kondur are spoken of,
and the kingdom of Lokok. When you leave Chamba and

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sail for seven hundred miles on a course between south
and southwest, you arrive at two islands, a greater and
a less The one is called Sounder and the other Kndur.
As there is nothing about them worth mentioning, let us
go on five hundred miles beyond Sounder, and then we
find another country, which is called Lokok. It is a

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good country and a rich It is on the mainland,
and it has a king of its own. The people
are idolaters and have a peculiar language, and pay tribute
to nobody. For their country is so situated that no
one can enter it to do them ill. Indeed, if
it were possible to get at it, the Great Khan

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would soon bring them under subjection to him. In this country,
the Brazil, which we make use of, grows in great plenty,
and they also have gold in incredible quantity. They have
elephants likewise, and much game. In this kingdom, too, are
gathered all the porcelain shells which are used for small

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change in all those regions. As I have told you before,
there is nothing else to mention except that this is
a very wild region visited by few people. Nor does
the king desire that any stranger should frequent the country
and so find out about his treasure and other resources.
We will now proceed and tell you of something else.

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Chapter eight of the island called Pentam and the city Malayre.
When you leave Locoq and sail for five hundred miles
towards the south, you come to an island called Pentam,
a very wild place. All the wood that grows thereon
consists of odoriferous trees. There is no more to say

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about it, So let us sail about sixty miles further
between those two islands. Throughout this distance there is but
four paces depth of water, so that great ships in
passing this channel have to lift their rudders, for they
draw nearly as much water as that. And when you
have gone those sixty miles and again about thirty more,

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you come to an island which forms a kingdom and
is called Malayre. The people have a king of their
own and a peculiar language. The city is a fine
and noble one, and there is great trade carried on there.
All kinds of spicery are to be found there, and
all other necessaries of life. Chapter nine concerning the Island

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of Java the Less, the kingdoms of Ferlach and Bosma.
When you leave the island of Pentam and sale about
a hundred miles, you reach the island of Java the Less.
For all its name tis none so small, but that
it has a compass of two thousand miles or more.
Now I will tell you all about this island. You see,

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there are upon it eight kingdoms and eight crowned kings.
The people are all idolaters. When every kingdom has a
language of its own. The island hath great abundance of treasure,
with costly spices, line aloes and spikenard, and many others
that never come into our parts. Now I am going

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to tell you all about these eight kingdoms, or at
least the greater part of them. But let me premise
one marvelous thing, and that is the fact that this
island lies so far to the south that the north star,
little or much, is never to be seen. Now let
us resume our subject, and first I will tell you
of the kingdom of Faerluc. This kingdom, you must know,

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is so much frequented by the Saaracen merchants that they
have converted the natives to the law of Mohammet. I
mean the townspeople only for the hill people live for
all the world like beasts, and eat human flesh as
well as all other kinds of flesh, clean or unclean.
And they worship this, that and the other thing. For

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in fact, the first thing that they see on rising
in the morning that they do worship for the rest
of the day. Having told you of the kingdom of Ferluc,
I will now tell of another, which is called Bosma.
When you quit the kingdom of Ferluc, you enter upon
that of Bosma. This also is an independent kingdom, and

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the people have a language of their own. But they
are just like beasts, without laws or religion. They call
themselves subjects of the Great Khan, but they pay him
no tribute. Indeed, they are so far away that his
men could not go thither. Still, all these islanders declare
themselves to be his subjects, and sometimes they send him

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curiosities as presents. There are wild elephants in the country,
and numerous unicorns, which are very nearly as big. They
have hair like that of a buffalo, feet like those
of an elephant, and a horn in the middle of
the forehead, which is black and very thick. They do
no mischief, however, with the horn, but with a tongue alone,

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for this is covered all over with long and strong prickles,
And when savage with any one, they crush him under
their knees and then rasp him with their tongue. The
head resembles that of a wild boar, and they carry
it ever bent toward the ground. They delight much to
abide in mire and mud. Tis a passing, ugly beast

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to look upon, and is not in the least like
that which our stories tell of as being caught in
the lap of a virgin. In fact, tis altogether different
from what we fancied. There are also monkeys here in
great numbers, and of sundry kinds, and goshawks as black
as crows. These are very large birds and capital for fowling.

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I may tell you moreover that when people bring home pigmies,
which they allege to come from India, tis all a
lie and a cheat, for those little men, as they
call them, are manufactured on this island. And I will
tell you you see, there is on the island a
kind of monkey which is very small and has a
face just like a man's. They take these and pluck

(08:09):
out all the hair except the hair of the beard
and on the breast, and then they dry them and
stuff them and daub them with saffron and other things,
until they look like men. But you see, it is
all a cheat. For nowhere in India, nor anywhere else
in the world, were there ever men seem so small
as these pretended pygmies. Now I will say no more

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of the Kingdom of Bosma, but tell you of the
others in succession, Chapter ten, the kingdoms of Samara and
de Croyan. So you must know that when you leave
the Kingdom of Bosma, you come to another kingdom called Samara,
on the same island. And in that kingdom, Messer Marco

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Polo was detained five months by the weather which would
not allow of his going on. I tell you that
here again neither the Pole star nor the stars of
the Maestro were to be seen much or little. The
people here are wild idolaters. They have a king who
is great and rich, but they also call themselves subjects

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of the great Khan. When Messer Mark was detained on
this island five months by contrary winds, he landed with
about two thousand men in his company. They dug large
ditches on the landward side to encompass the party resting
at either end on the sea haven. And within these
ditches they made bulwarks or stockades of timber, for fear

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of those brutes of man eaters. For there is great
store of wood there, and the islanders, having confidence in
the party, supplied them with victuals and other things needful.
There is abundance of fish to be had, the best
in the world. The people have no wheat, but live
on rice. Nor have they any wine, except such as
I shall now describe. You must know that they derive

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it from a certain kind of tree that they have.
When they want wine, they cut a branch of this
and attach a great pot to the stem of the
tree at the place where the branch was cut. In
a day and a night they will find the pot filled.
This wine is excellent drink, and is got both white
and red. It is of such surpassing virtue that it

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cures dropsy and tizzick and spleen. The trees resemble small
date palms, and when cutting a branch no longer gives
a flow of wine, they water the root of the tree,
and before long the branches again begin to give out
wine as before. They also have great quantities of Indian nuts,
as big as a man's head, which are good to

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eat when fresh, being sweet and savory and white as milk.
The inside of the meat of the nut is filled
with a liquor like clear fresh water, but better to
the taste, and more delicate than wine or any other
drink that ever existed. Now we have done telling you
about this kingdom. Let us quit it, and we will

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tell you of Degroian. When you leave the kingdom of Samara,
you come to another which is called de Groyan. It
is an independent kingdom and has a language of its own.
The people are very wild, but they call themselves the
subjects of the Great Khan, I will tell you a
wicked custom of theirs. When one of them is ill,

(11:29):
they send for their sorcerers and put the question to
them whether the sick man shall recover of his sickness
or no. If they say that he will recover, then
they let him alone till he gets better. But if
the sorcerers foretell that the sick man is to die,
the friends send for certain judges of theirs to put

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to death him who has thus been condemned by the
sorcerers to die. These men come and lay so many
clothes upon the sick man's mouth that they suffocate. And
when he is dead, they have him cooked, and gather
together all the dead man's kin and eat him. And
I assure you they do suck the very bones till

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not a particle of marrow remains in them. For they
say that if any nourishment remained in the bones, this
would breed worms, and then the worms would die for
want of food, and the death of those worms would
be laid to the charge of the deceased man's soul.
And so they eat him up, stump and rump. And
when they have thus eaten him, they collect his bones

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and put them in fine chests, and carry them away
and place them in caverns among the mountains, where no
beast nor other creature can get at them. And you
must know also that if they take prisoner a man
of another country, and he cannot pay a ransom in coin,
they kill him and eat him straight away. It is
a very evil custom and a parlous Now that I

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have told you about this kingdom, let us leave it.
I will tell you of Lambrie. End of section eleven.
Recording by Ramon Escamilla, Conway, Arkansas. R A M O
n E. S c A M I L l A
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