Some Heroes of Travel, or, Chapters from the History of Geographical Discovery and Enterprise

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Adams William Henry Davenport. Some Heroes of Travel, or, Chapters from the History of Geographical Discovery and Enterprise

PREFACE

SIR MARCO POLO, THE VENETIAN, AND HIS TRAVELS IN ASIA

MR. GEORGE F. RUXTON, AND HIS ADVENTURES IN MEXICO AND THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

DOCTOR BARTH, AND CENTRAL AFRICA

I

II

III

MR. THOMAS WITLAM ATKINSON, AND HIS ADVENTURES IN SIBERIA AND CENTRAL ASIA

I

II

III

IV

ALEXINA TINNÉ AND HER WANDERINGS IN THE SOUDAN

MR. J. A. MACGAHAN, AND CAMPAIGNING ON THE OXUS

I

II

COLONEL EGERTON WARBURTON, AND EXPLORATION IN WEST AUSTRALIA

MAJOR BURNABY, AND A RIDE TO KHIVA

I

II

SIR SAMUEL BAKER, AND THE SOURCES OF THE NILE

I

II

Отрывок из книги

We should be inclined to consider Sir Marco Polo as one of the greatest travellers the world has ever seen. It is true he was not a man of genius; that he was not, like Columbus, inspired by a lofty enthusiasm; that he displayed no commanding superiority of character. But when we remember the vast compass of his journeys, and the circumstances under which they were carried out; when we remember, too, how close an observer he was, and how rigidly accurate, and his plenitude of energy and perseverance – we feel that he is, beyond all cavil or question, entitled to be recognized as the king of mediæval travellers. Let us take Colonel Yule’s summary of his extraordinary achievements: —

“He was the first Traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude of Asia, naming and describing kingdom after kingdom which he had seen with his own eyes; the Deserts of Persia, the flowering plateaux and wild gorges of Badakshan, the jade-bearing rivers of Khotan; the Mongolian steppes, cradle of the power that had so lately threatened to swallow up Christendom; the new and brilliant Court that had been established at Cambaluc: the first Traveller to reveal China in all its wealth and vastness, its mighty rivers, its huge cities, its rich manufactures, its swarming population, the inconceivably vast fleets that quickened its seas and its inland waters; to tell us of the nations on its borders, with all their eccentricities of manners and worship; of Tibet, with its sordid devotees; of Burma, with its golden pagodas and their tinkling crowns; of Laos, of Siam, of Cochin China; of Japan, the Eastern Thule, with its rosy pearls and golden-roofed palaces: the first to speak of that Museum of Beauty and Wonder, still so imperfectly ransacked, the Indian Archipelago, source of those aromatics then so highly prized and whose origin was so dark; of Java, the Pearl of Islands; of Sumatra, with its many kings, its strange costly products, and its cannibal races; of the dusky savages of Nicobar and Andaman; of Ceylon, the Isle of Gems, with its sacred Mountain and its tomb of Adam; of India the Great, not as a dreamland of Alexandrian fables, but as a country seen and partially explored, with its virtuous Brahmans, its obscene ascetics, its diamonds and the strange tales of their acquisition, its sea-beds of pearl, and its powerful sun: the first in mediæval times to give any distinct account of the secluded Christian Empire of Abyssinia and the semi-Christian island of Socotra; to speak, though indeed dimly, of Zanzibar, with its negroes and its ivory, and of the vast and distant Madagascar, bordering on the Dark Ocean of the South, with its Roc 1 and other monstrosities; and, in a remotely opposite region, of Siberia and the Arctic Ocean, of dog-sledges, white bears, and reindeer-riding Tunguses.”

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“When you have ridden three days from the city of Chagan Nor [Chagan Balghassan], between north-east and north, you come to a city called Chandu, which was built by the Khan now reigning. There is at this place a very fine marble palace, the rooms of which are all gilt and painted with figures of men and beasts and birds, and with a variety of trees and flowers, all wrought with such exquisite art that you regard them with delight and astonishment.

“Round this palace is built a wall, enclosing a compass of sixteen miles, and inside the park are fountains and rivers and brooks and beautiful meadows, with all kinds of wild animals (excluding such as are of ferocious nature), which the Emperor has produced and placed there to supply food for the gerfalcons and hawks which he keeps in mew. Of these the gerfalcons alone number more than two hundred, without reckoning the other hawks. The Khan himself goes every week to see his birds sitting in mew, and sometimes he rides through the park with a leopard behind him on his horse’s croup; and then, if he sees any animal that takes his fancy, he lets loose his leopard at it, and the game when taken is used to feed the hawks in mew. This he does for diversion.

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