you have been told), but all the while continuing to
take his diversion in hunting and hawking as he goes along.

NOTE 1.--"_Vait vers midi jusques a la Mer Occeane, ou il y a deux
journees._" It is not possible in any way to reconcile this description as
it stands with truth, though I do not see much room for doubt as to the
direction of the excursion. Peking is 100 miles as the crow flies from the
nearest point of the coast, at least six or seven days' march for such a
camp, and the direction is south-east, or nearly so. The last circumstance
would not be very material as Polo's compass-bearings are not very
accurate. We shall find that he makes the general line of bearing from
Peking towards Kiangnan, _Sciloc_ or S. East, hence his _Midi_ ought in
consistency to represent _S. West_, an impossible direction for the Ocean.
It is remarkable that Ramusio has _Greco_ or _N. East_, which would by the
same relative correction represent _East_. And other circumstances point
to the frontier of Liao-tong as the direction of this excursion. Leaving
the _two days_ out of question, therefore, I should suppose the "Ocean
Sea" to be struck at Shan-hai-kwan near the terminus of the Great Wall,
and that the site of the standing hunting-camp is in the country to the
north of that point. The Jesuit Verbiest accompanied the Emperor Kanghi on
a tour in this direction in 1682, and almost immediately after passing the
Wall the Emperor and his party seem to have struck off to the left for
sport. Kublai started on the "1st of March," probably however the 1st of
the second Chinese month. Kanghi started from Peking on the 23rd of March,
on the hunting-journey just referred to.

NOTE 2.--We are told that Bajazet had 7000 falconers and 6000 dog-keepers;
whilst Sultan Mahomed Tughlak of India in the generation following Polo's,
is said to have had 10,000 falconers, and 3000 other attendants as
beaters. (_Not. et Ext._ XIII. p. 185.)

The Oriental practice seems to have assigned one man to the attendance on
every hawk. This Kaempfer says was the case at the Court of Persia at the
beginning of last century. There were about 800 hawks, and each had a
special keeper. The same was the case with the Emperor Kanghi's hawking
establishment, according to Gerbillon. (_Am. Exot._ p. 83; _Gerb._ 1st
Journey, in _Duhalde_.)

NOTE 3.--The French MSS. read _Toscaor_; the reading in the text I take
from Ramusio. It is Turki, _Toskaul_, [Arabic], defined as