Now we will have done with the Soldan of Aden, and I will tell you of a city which is subject to Aden, called Esher.

NOTE 1.—­This is from Pauthier’s text, which is here superior to the G.T.  The latter has:  “They put the goods in small vessels, which proceed on a river about seven days.” Ram. has, “in other smaller vessels, with which they make a voyage on a gulf of the sea for 20 days, more or less, as the weather may be.  On reaching a certain port they load the goods on camels, and carry them a 30 days’ journey by land to the River Nile, where they embark them in small vessels called Zerms, and in these descend the current to Cairo, and thence by an artificial cut, called Calizene, to Alexandria.”  The last looks as if it had been edited; Polo never uses the name Cairo.  The canal, the predecessor of the Mahmudiah, is also called Il Caligine in the journey of Simon Sigoli (Frescobaldi p. 168).  Brunetto Latini, too, discoursing of the Nile, says:—­

  “Cosi serva su’ filo,
  Ed e chiamato Nilo. 
  D’un su’ ramo si dice,
  Ch’ e chiamato Calice.”
      —­Tesoretto, pp. 81-82.

Also in the Sfera of Dati:—­

  —­“Chiamasi il Caligine
  Egion e Nilo, e non si sa l’origine.”  P. 9.

The word is (Ar.) Khalij, applied in one of its senses specially to the canals drawn from the full Nile.  The port on the Red Sea would be either Suakin or Aidhab; the 30 days’ journey seems to point to the former.  Polo’s contemporary, Marino Sanudo, gives the following account of the transit, omitting entirely the Red Sea navigation, though his line correctly represented would apparently go by Kosseir:  “The fourth haven is called AHADEN, and stands on a certain little island joining, as it were, to the main, in the land of the Saracens.  The spices and other goods from India are landed there, loaded on camels, and so carried by a journey of nine days to a place on the River Nile, called Chus (Kus, the ancient Cos below Luqsor), where they are put into boats and conveyed in 15 days to Babylon.  But in the month of October and thereabouts the river rises to such an extent that the spices, etc., continue to descend the stream from Babylon and enter a certain long canal, and so are conveyed over the 200 miles between Babylon and Alexandria.” (Bk.  I. pt. i. ch. i.)

Makrizi relates that up to A.H. 725 (1325), from time immemorial the Indian ships had discharged at Aden, but in that year the exactions of the Sultan induced a shipmaster to pass on into the Red Sea, and eventually the trade came to Jidda. (See De Sacy, Chrest.  Arabe, II. 556.)

+Aden is mentioned (A-dan) in ch. cccxxxvi. of the Ming History as having sent an embassy to China in 1427.  These embassies were subsequently often repeated.  The country, which lay 22 days’ voyage west of Kuli (supposed Calicut, but perhaps Kayal), was devoid of grass or trees. (Bretschneider, Med.  Res., II. pp. 305-306.)