e. Yarkand):

"_Et maior pars horum habent unum ex pedibus grossum et habent gosum
in gula_; et est hic fertilis contracta." (See i. p. 187.)

5. In the Desert of Lop:

"_Homines trasseuntes appendunt bestiis suis capanullas_ [i.e.
campanellas] _ut ipsas senciant et ne deviare possint_" (i. p. 197.)

6. "Ciagannor, _quod sonat in Latino STAGNUM ALBUM_." (i. p. 296.)

7. "Et in medio hujus viridarii est palacium sive logia, _tota super
columpnas. Et in summitate cujuslibet columnae est draco magnus
circundans totam columpnam, et hic substinet eorum cohoperturam cum
ore et pedibus_; et est cohopertura tota de cannis hoc modo," etc.
(See i. p. 299.)

[20] My valued friend Sir Arthur Phayre made known to me the passage in
_O'Curry's Lectures_. I then procured the extracts and further
particulars from Mr. J. Long, Irish Transcriber and Translator in
Dublin, who took them from the Transcript of the _Book of Lismore_, in
the possession of the Royal Irish Academy. [Cf. _Anecdota Oxoniensia.
Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore, edited with a
translation ... by_ Whitley Stokes, Oxford, 1890.--_Marco Polo_ forms
fo. 79 a, 1--fo. 89 b, 2, of the MS., and is described pp. xxii.-xxiv.
of Mr. Whitley Stokes' Book, who has since published the Text in the
_Zeit. f. Celtische Philol._ (See _Bibliography_, vol. ii. p. 573.)--
H. C.]

XI. SOME ESTIMATE OF THE CHARACTER OF POLO AND HIS BOOK.

[Sidenote: Grounds of Polo's pre-eminence among mediaeval travellers.]

66. That Marco Polo has been so universally recognised as the King of
Mediaeval Travellers is due rather to the width of his experience, the
vast compass of his journeys, and the romantic nature of his personal
history, than to transcendent superiority of character or capacity.

The generation immediately preceding his own has bequeathed to us, in the
Report of the Franciscan Friar William de Rubruquis,[1] on the Mission
with which St. Lewis charged him to the Tartar Courts, the narrative of
one great journey, which, in its rich detail, its vivid pictures, its
acuteness of observation and strong good sense, seems to me to form a Book
of Travels of much higher claims than _any one series_ of Polo's chapters;
a book, indeed, which has never had justice done to it, for it has few
superiors in the whole Library of Travel.

Enthusiastic Biographers, beginning with Ramusio, hav