CHAPTER XXII.

OF A CERTAIN DESERT THAT CONTINUES FOR EIGHT DAYS' JOURNEY.

WHEN you depart from this City of Cobinan, you find yourself again in a Desert of surpassing aridity, which lasts for some eight days; here are neither fruits nor trees to be seen, and what water there is is bitter and bad, so that you have to carry both food and water. The cattle must needs drink the bad water, will they nill they, because of their great thirst. At the end of those eight days you arrive at a Province which is called TONOCAIN. It has a good many towns and villages, and forms the extremity of Persia towards the North. It also contains an immense plain on which is found the ARBRE SOL, which we Christians call the Arbre Sec; and I will tell you what it is like. It is a tall and thick tree, having the bark on one side green and the other white; and it produces a rough husk like that of a chestnut, but without anything in it. The wood is yellow like box, and very strong, and there are no other trees near it nor within a hundred miles of it, except on one side where you find trees within about ten miles' distance. And there, the people of the country tell you, was fought the battle between Alexander and King Darius.2

The towns and villages have great abundance of everything good, for the climate is extremely temperate, being neither very hot nor very cold. The natives all worship Mahommet, and are a very fine-looking people, especially the women, who are surpassingly beautiful.

66

NOTE 1.-All that region has been described as a country divided into deserts that are salt, and deserts that are not salt" (Vigne, I. 16). Tonocain, as we have seen (chap. xv. note 1), is the Eastern Kuhistan of Persia, but extended by Polo, it would seem, to include the whole of Persian Khorasan. No city in particular is indicated as visited by the

traveller, but the view I take of the position of the Arbre Sec, as well as his route through Koh-Banan, would lead me to suppose that he reached the Province of TUN-O-KAIN about Tabbas.

NOTE 2. This is another subject on which a long and somewhat discursive note is inevitable.

One of the Bulletins of the Soc. de Géographie (ser. 3. tom. iii p. 187) contains a perfectly inconclusive endeavour, by M. Roux de Rochelle, to identify the Arbre Sec or Arbre Sol with a manna-bearing oak alluded to by Q. Curtius as growing in Hyrcania. There can be no doubt that the tree described is, as Marsden points out, a Chinár or Oriental Plane. Mr. Ernst Meyer, in his learned Geschichte der Botanik (Königsberg, 1854-57, IV. 123), objects that Polo's description of the wood does not answer to that tree. But, with due allowance, compare with his whole account that which Olearius gives of the Chinar, and say if the same tree be not meant. "The trees are as tall as the pine, and have very large leaves, closely resembling those of the vine. The fruit looks like a chestnut, but has no kernel, so it is not eatable. The wood is of a very brown colour, and full of veins; the Persians employ it for doors and window-shutters, and when these are rubbed with oil they are incomparably handsomer than our walnut-wood joinery" (I. 526).

The Chinar-wood is used in Kashmir for gunstocks.

The whole tenor of the passage seems to imply that some eminent individual Chinar is meant. The appellations given to it vary in the different texts. In the G. T. it is styled in this passage "The Arbre Scule which the Christians call the Arbre Sec," whilst in ch. cci, of the same (infra Book IV. chap. v.) it is called “L'Arbre Sol, which in the Book of Alexander is called L'Arbre Seche." Pauthier has here "L'Arbre Solque, que nous appelons L'Arbre See," and in the later passage L'Arbre Seul, que le Livre Alexandre apelle Arbre Sec;" whilst Ramusio has here "L'Albero del Sole che si chiama per i Cristiani L'Albor Secco," and does not contain the later passage. So also I think all the old Latin and French printed texts, which are more or less based on Pipino's version, have "The Tree of the Sun, which the Latins call the Dry Tree."

66

Pauthier, building as usual on the reading of his own text (Solque), endeavours to show that this odd word represents Thoulk, the Arabic name of a tree to which Forskal gave the title of Ficus Vasta, and this Ficus Vasta he will have to be the same as the Chinar. Ficus Vasta would be a strange name surely to give to a Plane-tree, but Forskal may be acquitted of such an eccentricity. The Tholak (for that seems to be the proper vocalisation) is a tree of Arabia Felix, very different from the Chinar, for it is the well-known Indian Banyan, or a closely-allied species, as may be seen in Forskal's description. The latter indeed says that the Arab botanists called it Delb, and that (or Dulb) is really a synonyme for the Chinar. But De Sacy has already commented upon

this supposed application of the name Delb to the Tholak as erroneous (see Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica, p. cxxiv and 179; Abdallatif, Rel. de Egypte, p. 80; J. R. G. S. VIII. 275; Ritter, VI. 662, 679).

The fact is that the Solque of M. Pauthier's text is a mere copyist's error in the reduplication of the pronoun que. In his chief MS. which he cites as A (No. 10,260 of Bibl. Impériale, now Fr. 5631) we can even see how this might easily happen, for one line ends with Solque and the next begins with que. The true reading is I doubt not that which this MS. points to, and which the G. Text gives us in the second passage quoted above, viz., Arbre SOL, occurring in Ramusio as Albero del SOLE. To make this easier of acceptation I must premise two remarks: first, that Sol is "the Sun" in both Venetian and Provençal; and, secondly, that in the French of that age the prepositional sign is not necessary to the genitive. Thus, in Pauthier's own text we find in one of the passages quoted above, “Le Livre Alexandre, i.e. Liber Alexandri ;" elsewhere, "Cazan le fils Argon," "à la mère sa femme," "Le corps Monseigneur Saint Thomas si est en ceste Province;" in Joinville, “le commandemant Mahommet," ceux de la Haulequa estoient logiez entour les héberges le soudane, et establis pour le cors le soudane garder;" in Baudouin de Sebourg," "De l'amour Bauduin esprise et enflambée."

66

Moreover it is the TREE OF THE SUN that is prominent in the legendary History of Alexander, a fact sufficient in itself to rule the reading. A character in an old English play says:

"Peregrine. Drake was a didapper to Mandevill:
Candish and Hawkins, Frobisher, all our Voyagers
Went short of Mandevil. But had he reached

To this place-here-yes, here--this wilderness,
And seen the Trees of the Sun and Moon, that speak
And told King Alexander of his death;

He then

Had left a passage ope to Travellers

That now is kept and guarded by Wild Beasts."

-Broome's Antipodes, in Lamb's Specimens.

The same trees are alluded to in an ancient Low German poem in honour of St. Anno of Cologne. Speaking of the Four Beasts of Daniel's Vision :—

"The third Beast was a Libbard ;

Four Eagle's Wings he had;

This signified the Grecian Alexander,

Who with four Hosts went forth to conquer lands

Even to the World's End,

Known by its Golden Pillars.

In India he the Wilderness broke through

With Trees twain he there did speak," &c.

*

-In Schilteri Thesaurus Antiq. Teuton. tom. i.*

"Daz dritte Dier was ein Lebarte

Vier arin Vederich her havite;

Der beceichnote den Criechiskin Alexanderin,

These oracular Trees of the Sun and Moon, somewhere on the confines of India, appear in all the fabulous histories of Alexander from the Pseudo-Callisthenes downwards. Thus Alexander is made to tell the story in a letter to Aristotle: "Then came some of the townspeople and said, 'We have to show thee something, passing strange, O King, and worth thy visiting; for we can show thee trees that talk with human speech.' So they led me to a certain park, in the midst of which were the Sun and Moon, and round about them a guard of priests of the Sun and Moon. And there stood the two trees of which they had spoken, like unto cypress trees; and round about them were trees like the myrobolans of Egypt, and with similar fruit. And I addressed the two trees that were in the midst of the park, the one which was male in the Masculine gender, and the one that was female in the Feminine gender. And the name of the Male Tree was the Sun, and of the female Tree the Moon, names which were in that language Muthu and Emausae.* And the stems were clothed with the skins of animals; the male tree with the skins of he-beasts, and the female tree with the skins of she-beasts. . . . . And at the setting of the Sun, a voice, speaking in the Indian tongue, came forth from the (Sun) Tree; and I ordered the Indians who were with me to interpret it. But they were afraid and would not," &c. (Pseudo-Callisth. ed. Müller, III. 17.)

The story as related by Firdusi keeps very near to the Greek as just quoted, but does not use the term "Tree of the Sun." The chapter of the Shah Námeh containing it is entitled Didan Sikandar dirakht-igoyárá, "Alexander's interview with the Speaking Tree." (Livre des Rois, V. 229.) In the Chanson d'Alixandre of Lambert le Court and Alex. Bernay, these trees are introduced as follows:

666

Signor,' fait Alixandre, 'je vus voel demander,
Se des merveilles d'Inde me saves rien conter.'
Cil li ont respondu: 'Se tu vius escouter
Ja te dirons merveilles, s'es poras esprover.
La sus en ces desers pues ii Arbres trover
Qui c pies ont de haut, et de grossor sunt per.
Li Solaus et La Lune les ont fait si serer

Que sevent tous langages et entendre et parler.'"

- Ed. 1861 (Dinan), p. 357.

Der mit vier Herin vür aftir Landin,

Unz her die Werilt einde,

Bi guldinin Siulin bikante.

In India her die Wusti durchbrach,

Mit zwein Boumin her sich da gesprach," &c.

* It is odd how near the word Emausae comes to the E. African Mwesi; and perhaps more odd that "the elders of U-nya-Mwezi ('the Land of the Moon') declare that their patriarchal ancestor became after death the first Tree, and afforded shade to his children and descendants. According to the Arabs the people still perform pilgrimage to a holy tree, and believe that the penalty of sacrilege in cutting off a twig would be visited by sudden and mysterious death." (Burton in J.R.G.S. XXIX. 167-168.)

"A 15

Maundevile informs us precisely where these trees are: journeys in lengthe, goynge be the Deserts of the tother side of the Ryvere Beumare," if one could only tell where that is!* A medieval chronicler also tells us that Ogerus the Dane (temp. Caroli Magni) conquered all the parts beyond sea from Hierusalem to the Trees of the Sun. In the old Italian romance also of Guerino detto il Meschino, still a chap-book in S. Italy, the Hero (chap. Ixiii.) visits the Trees of the Sun and Moon. But this is mere imitation of the Alexandrian story, and has nothing of interest. Maundevile, p. 297-8; Fasciculus Tem

porum in Germ. Script. Pistorii Nidani, II.)

It will be observed that the letter ascribed to Alexander describes the two oracular trees as resembling two cypress-trees. As such the Trees of the Sun and Moon are represented on several extant ancient medals, e.g. on two struck at Perga in Pamphylia in the time of Aurelian. And Eastern story tells us of two vast cypress-trees, sacred among the Magians, which grew in Khorasan, one at Kashmar near Turshiz, and the other at Farmad near Tuz, and which were said to have risen from shoots that Zoroaster brought from Paradise. The former of these was sacrilegiously cut down by the order of the Khalif Motawakkil, in the 9th century. The trunk was despatched to Baghdad on rollers at a vast expense, whilst the branches alone formed a load for 1300 camels. The night that the convoy reached within one stage of the palace, the Khalif was cut in pieces by his own guards. This tree was said to be 1450 years old, and to measure 33 cubits in girth. The locality of this "Arbor Sol" we see was in Khorasan, and possibly its fame may have been transferred to a representative of another species. The plane, as well as the cypress, was one of the distinctive trees of the Magian Paradise.

In the Peutingerian Tables we find in the N.E. of Asia the rubric "Hic Alexander Responsum accepit," which looks very like an allusion to the tale of the Oracular Trees. If so, it is remarkable as a suggestion of the antiquity of the Alexandrian Legends, though the rubric may of course be an interpolation. The Trees of the Sun and Moon appear as located in India Ultima to the East of Persia, in a map which is found in MSS. (12th century) of the Floridus of Lambertus; and they are indicated more or less precisely in several maps of the succeeding centuries. (Ouseley's Travels, I. 387; Dabistan, I. 307-8; Santarem, H. de la Cosmog. II. 189, III. 506-513, &c.)

Nothing could show better how this legend had possessed men in the Middle Ages, than the fact that Vincent of Beauvais discerns an allusion to these Trees of the Sun and Moon in the blessing of Moses on Joseph

"The River Buemar, in the furthest forests of India," appears to come up in one of the versions of Alexander's Letter to Aristotle, though I do not find it in Müller's edition (see Zacher's Pseudo-Callisthenes, p. 160). 'Tis perhaps Ab-i-Amú!