Note {1} — Chapter XXI

Note 1.—In the Ramusian version we have a more intelligent representation of the facts regarding the Land of Darkness: “Because for most part of the winter months the sun appears not, and the air is dusky, as it is just before the dawn when you see and yet do not see;” and again below it speaks of the inhabitants catching the fur animals “in summer when they have continuous daylight.” It is evident that the writer of this version did and the writer of the original French which we have translated from did not understand what he was writing. The whole of the latter account implies belief in the perpetuity of the darkness. It resembles Pliny’s hazy notion of the northern regions:[1] “pars mundi damnata a rerum naturâ et densâ mersa caligine.” Whether the fault is due to Rustician’s ignorance or is Polo’s own, who can say? We are willing to debit it to the former, and to credit Marco with the improved version in Ramusio. In the Masálak-al-Absár, however, we have the following passage in which the conception is similar: “Merchants do not ascend (the Wolga) beyond Bolghar; from that point they make excursions through the province of Julman (supposed to be the country on the Kama and Viatka). The merchants of the latter country penetrate to Yughra, which is the extremity of the North. Beyond that you see no trace of habitation except a great Tower built by Alexander, after which there is nothing but Darkness.” The narrator of this, being asked what he meant, said: “It is a region of desert mountains, where frost and snow continually reign, where the sun never shines, no plant vegetates, and no animal lives. Those mountains border on the Dark Sea, on which rain falls perpetually, fogs are ever dense, and the sun never shows itself, and on tracts perpetually covered with snow.” (N. et Ex. XIII. i. 285.)