The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1

Excerpt: ...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 soudanc, et establiz pour le cors le soudanc garder;" in Baudouin de Sebourc, "De l'amour Bauduin esprise et enflambée." 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," etc.       (In Schilteri Thesaurus Antiq. Teuton. tom. i.1) 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 towns-people and said, 'We have to show thee something passing strange, O...