for the omission have always seemed to me unsatisfactory. [I find in Sir
G. Staunton's account of Macartney's Embassy (II. p. 185) this most
amusing explanation of the reason why Marco Polo did not mention the wall:
"A copy of Marco Polo's route to China, taken from the Doge's Library at
Venice, is sufficient to decide this question. By this route it appears
that, in fact, that traveller did not pass through Tartary to Pekin, but
that after having followed the usual track of the caravans, as far to the
eastward from Europe as Samarcand and Cashgar, he bent his course to the
south-east across the River Ganges to Bengal (!), and, keeping to the
southward of the Thibet mountains, reached the Chinese province of
Shensee, and through the adjoining province of Shansee to the capital,
without interfering with the line of the Great Wall."--H. C.] We shall see
presently that the Great Wall is spoken of by Marco's contemporaries
Rashiduddin and Abulfeda. Yet I think, if we read "between the lines," we
shall see reason to believe that the Wall _was_ in Polo's mind at this
point of the dictation, whatever may have been his motive for withholding
distincter notice of it.[7] I cannot conceive why he should say: "Here is
what we call the country of Gog and Magog," except as intimating "Here we
are _beside the_ GREAT WALL known as the Rampart of Gog and Magog," and
being there he tries to find a reason why those names should have been
applied to it. Why they were really applied to it we have already seen.
(Supra, ch. iv. note 3.) Abulfeda says: "The Ocean turns northward along
the east of China, and then expands in the same direction till it passes
China, and comes opposite to the Rampart of Yajuj and Majuj;" whilst the
same geographer's definition of the boundaries of China exhibits that
country as bounded on the west by the Indo-Chinese wildernesses; on the
south, by the seas; on the east, by the Eastern Ocean; on the north, by
the _land of Yajuj and Majuj_, and other countries unknown. Ibn Batuta,
with less accurate geography in his head than Abulfeda, maugre his
travels, asks about the Rampart of Gog and Magog (_Sadd Yajuj wa Majuj_)
when he is at Sin Kalan, i.e. Canton, and, as might be expected, gets
little satisfaction.

[Illustration: The Rampart of Gog and Magog]

Apart from this interesting point Marsden seems to be right in the general
bearing of his explanation of the passage, and I conceive that the two
classes of people