[Illustration: H. Yule

  _T. B. Wirgman, del. et. sc._    _Walker & Cockerell, ph. sc._]

                            THE TRAVELS OF
                              MARCO POLO

                             THE COMPLETE
                         YULE-CORDIER EDITION

           Including the unabridged third edition (1903) of
            Henry Yule’s annotated translation, as revised
            by Henri Cordier; together with Cordier’s later
                  volume of notes and addenda (1920)

                            IN TWO VOLUMES

                               VOLUME I

           _Containing the first volume of the 1903 edition_

                              DEDICATION.

                           TO THE MEMORY OF
    SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON, BART., K.C.B., G.C.ST.A., G.C.ST.S.,
                                 ETC.
                          THE PERFECT FRIEND
         WHO FIRST BROUGHT HENRY YULE AND JOHN MURRAY TOGETHER
              (HE ENTERED INTO REST, OCTOBER 22ND, 1871,)
                 AND TO THAT OF HIS MUCH LOVED NIECE,
                      HARRIET ISABELLA MURCHISON,
             WIFE OF KENNETH ROBERT MURCHISON, D.L., J.P.,
              (SHE ENTERED INTO REST, AUGUST 9TH, 1902,)
          UNDER WHOSE EVER HOSPITABLE ROOF MANY OF THE PROOF
                SHEETS OF THIS EDITION WERE READ BY ME,
                     I DEDICATE THESE VOLUMES FROM
                        THE OLD MURCHISON HOME,
                IN THANKFUL REMEMBRANCE OF ALL I OWE TO
         THE ABIDING AFFECTION, SYMPATHY, AND EXAMPLE OF BOTH.

  TARADALE,                             AMY FRANCES YULE.
      ROSS-SHIRE,                             SEPTEMBER 11TH, 1902.
          SCOTLAND.

       *     *     *     *
      Ed è da noi sì strano,
    Che quando ne ragiono
      I’ non trovo nessuno,
    Che l’abbia navicato,
       *     *     *     *
    Le parti del Levante,
      Là dove sono tante
    Gemme di gran valute
      E di molta salute:
    E sono in quello giro
      Balsamo, e ambra, e tiro,
    E lo pepe, e lo legno
      Aloe, ch’è sì degno,
    E spigo, e cardamomo,
      Giengiovo, e cennamomo;
    E altre molte spezie,
      Ciascuna in sua spezie,
    E migliore, e più fina,
      E sana in medicina.
    Appresso in questo loco
      Mise in assetto loco
    Li tigri, e li grifoni,
      Leofanti, e leoni
    Cammelli, e dragomene,
      Badalischi, e gene,
    E pantere, e castoro,
      Le formiche dell’oro,
    E tanti altri animali,
      Ch’io non so ben dir quali,
    Che son sì divisati,
      E sì dissomigliati
    Di corpo e di fazione,
      Di sì fera ragione,
    E di sì strana taglia,
      Ch’io non credo san faglia,
    Ch’alcun uomo vivente
      Potesse veramente
    Per lingua, o per scritture
      Recitar le figure
    Delle bestie, e gli uccelli....

  —From _Il Tesoretto di Ser Brunetto Latini_ (_circa_ MDCCLX.).
              (_Florence_, 1824, pp. 83 _seqq._)

    Ἂνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
    Πλάγχθη   .   .   .   .   .   .   .
    Πολλῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω.

                                              _Odyssey_, I.

         ————“I AM BECOME A NAME;
    FOR ALWAYS ROAMING WITH A HUNGRY HEART
    MUCH HAVE I SEEN AND KNOWN; CITIES OF MEN,
    AND MANNERS, CLIMATES, COUNCILS, GOVERNMENTS,
    MYSELF NOT LEAST, BUT HONOURED OF THEM ALL.”

                                                  TENNYSON.

    “_A SEDER CI PONEMMO IVI AMBODUI
        VÔLTI A LEVANTE, OND’ERAVAM SALITI;
        CHÈ SUOLE A RIGUARDAR GIOVARE ALTRUI._”

                                    DANTE, _Purgatory_, IV.

[Illustration: Messer Marco Polo, with Messer Nicolo and Messer Maffeo,
  returned from xxvi years’ sojourn in the Orient, is denied entrance to
  the Ca’ Polo. (See _Int._ p. _4_)]

                          CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

                                                                    page
  DEDICATION                                                         iii

  NOTE BY MISS YULE                                                    v

  PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION                                           vii

  PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION                                           xi

  ORIGINAL PREFACE                                                   xxi

  ORIGINAL DEDICATION                                                xxv

  MEMOIR OF SIR HENRY YULE BY AMY FRANCES YULE, L.A.SOC. ANT.
      SCOT.                                                        xxvii

  A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SIR HENRY YULE’S WRITINGS                       lxxv

  SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS                                           lxxxiii

  EXPLANATORY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I.                     xcvii

  INTRODUCTORY NOTICES                                           _1–144_

  THE BOOK OF MARCO POLO.

                           NOTE BY MISS YULE.

I desire to take this opportunity of recording my grateful sense of
the unsparing labour, learning, and devotion, with which my father’s
valued friend, Professor Henri Cordier, has performed the difficult and
delicate task which I entrusted to his loyal friendship.

Apart from Professor Cordier’s very special qualifications for the
work, I feel sure that no other Editor could have been more entirely
acceptable to my father. I can give him no higher praise than to say
that he has laboured in Yule’s own spirit.

The slight Memoir which I have contributed (for which I accept all
responsibility), attempts no more than a rough sketch of my father’s
character and career, but it will, I hope, serve to recall pleasantly
his remarkable individuality to the few remaining who knew him in his
prime, whilst it may also afford some idea of the man, and his work and
environment, to those who had not that advantage.

No one can be more conscious than myself of its many shortcomings,
which I will not attempt to excuse. I can, however, honestly say that
these have not been due to negligence, but are rather the blemishes
almost inseparable from the fulfilment under the gloom of bereavement
and amidst the pressure of other duties, of a task undertaken in more
favourable circumstances.

Nevertheless, in spite of all defects, I believe this sketch to be such
a record as my father would himself have approved, and I know also that
he would have chosen my hand to write it.

In conclusion, I may note that the first edition of this work was
dedicated to that very noble lady, the Queen (then Crown Princess)
Margherita of Italy. In the second edition the Dedication was
reproduced within brackets (as also the original preface), but not
renewed. That precedent is again followed.

I have, therefore, felt at liberty to associate the present edition
of my father’s work with the Name MURCHISON, which for more than a
generation was the name most generally representative of British
Science in Foreign Lands, as of Foreign Science in Britain.

                                                          A. F. YULE.

                       PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.

Little did I think, some thirty years ago, when I received a copy
of the first edition of this grand work, that I should be one day
entrusted with the difficult but glorious task of supervising the
third edition. When the first edition of the _Book of Ser Marco Polo_
reached “Far Cathay,” it created quite a stir in the small circle
of the learned foreigners, who then resided there, and became a
starting-point for many researches, of which the results have been
made use of partly in the second edition, and partly in the present.
The Archimandrite PALLADIUS and Dr. E. BRETSCHNEIDER, at Peking, ALEX.
WYLIE, at Shang-hai—friends of mine who have, alas! passed away, with
the exception of the Right Rev. Bishop G. E. MOULE, of Hang-chau, the
only survivor of this little group of hard-working scholars,—were the
first to explore the Chinese sources of information which were to yield
a rich harvest into their hands.

When I returned home from China in 1876, I was introduced to Colonel
HENRY YULE, at the India Office, by our common friend, Dr. REINHOLD
ROST, and from that time we met frequently and kept up a correspondence
which terminated only with the life of the great geographer, whose
friend I had become. A new edition of the travels of Friar Odoric
of Pordenone, our “mutual friend,” in which Yule had taken the
greatest interest, was dedicated by me to his memory. I knew that Yule
contemplated a third edition of his _Marco Polo_, and all will regret
that time was not allowed to him to complete this labour of love, to
see it published. If the duty of bringing out the new edition of _Marco
Polo_ has fallen on one who considers himself but an unworthy successor
of the first illustrious commentator, it is fair to add that the work
could not have been entrusted to a more respectful disciple. Many of
our tastes were similar; we had the same desire to seek the truth,
the same earnest wish to be exact, perhaps the same sense of humour,
and, what is necessary when writing on Marco Polo, certainly the same
love for Venice and its history. Not only am I, with the late CHARLES
SCHEFER, the founder and the editor of the _Recueil de Voyages et de
Documents pour servir à l’Histoire de la Géographie depuis le XIIIᵉ
jusqu’à la fin du XVIᵉ siècle_, but I am also the successor, at the
École des langues Orientales Vivantes, of G. PAUTHIER, whose book on
the Venetian Traveller is still valuable, so the mantle of the last two
editors fell upon my shoulders.

I therefore, gladly and thankfully, accepted Miss AMY FRANCIS YULE’S
kind proposal to undertake the editorship of the third edition of the
_Book of Ser Marco Polo_, and I wish to express here my gratitude to
her for the great honour she has thus done me.[1]

Unfortunately for his successor, Sir Henry Yule, evidently trusting
to his own good memory, left but few notes. These are contained in an
interleaved copy obligingly placed at my disposal by Miss Yule, but I
luckily found assistance from various other quarters. The following
works have proved of the greatest assistance to me:—The articles of
General HOUTUM-SCHINDLER in the _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_,
and the excellent books of Lord CURZON and of Major P. MOLESWORTH
SYKES on Persia, M. GRENARD’S account of DUTREUIL de RHINS’ Mission
to Central Asia, BRETSCHNEIDER’S and PALLADIUS’ remarkable papers
on Mediæval Travellers and Geography, and above all, the valuable
books of the Hon. W. W. ROCKHILL on Tibet and Rubruck, to which the
distinguished diplomatist, traveller, and scholar kindly added a list
of notes of the greatest importance to me, for which I offer him my
hearty thanks.

My thanks are also due to H.H. Prince ROLAND BONAPARTE, who kindly
gave me permission to reproduce some of the plates of his _Recueil
de Documents de l’Époque Mongole_, to M. LÉOPOLD DELISLE, the
learned Principal Librarian of the Bibliothèque Nationale, who gave
me the opportunity to study the inventory made after the death of
the Doge Marino Faliero, to the Count de SEMALLÉ, formerly French
Chargé d’Affaires at Peking, who gave me for reproduction a number
of photographs from his valuable personal collection, and last, not
least, my old friend Comm. NICOLÒ BAROZZI, who continued to lend me the
assistance which he had formerly rendered to Sir Henry Yule at Venice.

Since the last edition was published, more than twenty-five years
ago, Persia has been more thoroughly studied; new routes have been
explored in Central Asia, Karakorum has been fully described, and
Western and South-Western China have been opened up to our knowledge
in many directions. The results of these investigations form the main
features of this new edition of _Marco Polo_. I have suppressed hardly
any of Sir Henry Yule’s notes and altered but few, doing so only when
the light of recent information has proved him to be in error, but
I have supplemented them by what, I hope, will be found useful, new
information.[2]

Before I take leave of the kind reader, I wish to thank sincerely Mr.
JOHN MURRAY for the courtesy and the care he has displayed while this
edition was going through the press.

                                                       HENRI CORDIER.
  PARIS, _1st of October, 1902_.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Miss Yule has written the Memoir of her father and the new
    Dedication.

[2] Paragraphs which have been altered are marked thus ✛; my own
    additions are placed between brackets [ ].—H. C.

    “=Now strike your Sailes yee jolly Mariners,
    For we be come into a quiet Rode=”....

                          —THE FAERIE QUEENE, I. xii. 42.]

                      PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

The unexpected amount of favour bestowed on the former edition of this
Work has been a great encouragement to the Editor in preparing this
second one.

Not a few of the kind friends and correspondents who lent their aid
before have continued it to the present revision. The contributions
of Mr. A. WYLIE of Shang-hai, whether as regards the amount of labour
which they must have cost him, or the value of the result, demand
above all others a grateful record here. Nor can I omit to name again
with hearty acknowledgment Signor Comm. G. BERCHET of Venice, the Rev.
Dr. CALDWELL, Colonel (now Major-General) R. MACLAGAN, R.E., Mr. D.
HANBURY, F.R.S., Mr. EDWARD THOMAS, F.R.S. (Corresponding Member of the
Institute), and Mr. R. H. MAJOR.

But besides these old names, not a few new ones claim my thanks.

The Baron F. VON RICHTHOFEN, now President of the Geographical Society
of Berlin, a traveller who not only has trodden many hundreds of miles
in the footsteps of our Marco, but has perhaps travelled over more of
the Interior of China than Marco ever did, and who carried to that
survey high scientific accomplishments of which the Venetian had not
even a rudimentary conception, has spontaneously opened his bountiful
stores of new knowledge in my behalf. Mr. NEY ELIAS, who in 1872
traversed and mapped a line of upwards of 2000 miles through the almost
unknown tracts of Western Mongolia, from the Gate in the Great Wall at
Kalghan to the Russian frontier in the Altai, has done likewise.[1] To
the Rev. G. MOULE, of the Church Mission at Hang-chau, I owe a mass
of interesting matter regarding that once great and splendid city,
the KINSAY of our Traveller, which has enabled me, I trust, to effect
great improvement both in the Notes and in the Map, which illustrate
that subject. And to the Rev. CARSTAIRS DOUGLAS, LL.D., of the English
Presbyterian Mission at Amoy, I am scarcely less indebted. The learned
Professor BRUUN, of Odessa, whom I never have seen, and have little
likelihood of ever seeing in this world, has aided me with zeal and
cordiality like that of old friendship. To Mr. ARTHUR BURNELL, Ph.D.,
of the Madras Civil Service, I am grateful for many valuable notes
bearing on these and other geographical studies, and particularly for
his generous communication of the drawing and photograph of the ancient
Cross at St. Thomas’s Mount, long before any publication of that
subject was made on his own account. My brother officer, Major OLIVER
ST. JOHN, R.E., has favoured me with a variety of interesting remarks
regarding the Persian chapters, and has assisted me with new data, very
materially correcting the Itinerary Map in Kerman.

Mr. BLOCHMANN of the Calcutta Madrasa, Sir DOUGLAS FORSYTH, C.B.,
lately Envoy to Kashgar, M. de MAS LATRIE, the Historian of Cyprus,
Mr. ARTHUR GROTE, Mr. EUGENE SCHUYLER of the U.S. Legation at St.
Petersburg, Dr. BUSHELL and Mr. W. F. MAYERS, of H.M.’s Legation at
Peking, Mr. G. PHILLIPS of Fuchau, Madame OLGA FEDTCHENKO, the widow of
a great traveller too early lost to the world, Colonel KEATINGE, V.C.,
C.S.I., Major-General KEYES, C.B., Dr. GEORGE BIRDWOOD, Mr. BURGESS, of
Bombay, my old and valued friend Colonel W. H. GREATHED, C.B., and the
Master of Mediæval Geography, M. D’AVEZAC himself, with others besides,
have kindly lent assistance of one kind or another, several of them
spontaneously, and the rest in prompt answer to my requests.

Having always attached much importance to the matter of
illustrations,[2] I feel greatly indebted to the liberal action of Mr.
Murray in enabling me largely to increase their number in this edition.
Though many are original, we have also borrowed a good many;[3]
a proceeding which seems to me entirely unobjectionable when the
engravings are truly illustrative of the text, and not hackneyed.

I regret the augmented bulk of the volumes. There has been some
excision, but the additions visibly and palpably preponderate. The
truth is that since the completion of the first edition, just four
years ago, large additions have been made to the stock of our knowledge
bearing on the subjects of this Book; and how these additions have
continued to come in up to the last moment, may be seen in Appendix
L,[4] which has had to undergo repeated interpolation after being put
in type. KARAKORUM, for a brief space the seat of the widest empire
the world has known, has been visited; the ruins of SHANG-TU, the
“Xanadu of Cublay Khan,” have been explored; PAMIR and TANGUT have been
penetrated from side to side; the famous mountain Road of SHEN-SI has
been traversed and described; the mysterious CAINDU has been unveiled;
the publication of my lamented friend Lieutenant Garnier’s great
work on the French Exploration of Indo-China has provided a mass of
illustration of that YUN-NAN for which but the other day Marco Polo
was well-nigh the most recent authority. Nay, the last two years have
thrown a promise of light even on what seemed the wildest of Marco’s
stories, and the bones of a veritable RUC from New Zealand lie on the
table of Professor Owen’s Cabinet!

M. VIVIEN de St. MARTIN, during the interval of which we have been
speaking, has published a History of Geography. In treating of Marco
Polo, he alludes to the first edition of this work, most evidently with
no intention of disparagement, but speaks of it as merely a revision
of Marsden’s Book. The last thing I should allow myself to do would be
to apply to a Geographer, whose works I hold in so much esteem, the
disrespectful definition which the adage quoted in my former Preface[5]
gives of the _vir qui docet quod non sapit_; but I feel bound to say
that on this occasion M. Vivien de St. Martin has permitted himself to
pronounce on a matter with which he had not made himself acquainted;
for the perusal of the very first lines of the Preface (I will say
nothing of the Book) would have shown him that such a notion was
utterly unfounded.

In concluding these “forewords” I am probably taking leave of Marco
Polo,[6] the companion of many pleasant and some laborious hours,
whilst I have been contemplating with him (“_vôlti a levante_”) that
Orient in which I also had spent years not a few.

                     •       •       •       •       •

And as the writer lingered over this conclusion, his thoughts wandered
back in reverie to those many venerable libraries in which he had
formerly made search for mediæval copies of the Traveller’s story;
and it seemed to him as if he sate in a recess of one of these with
a manuscript before him which had never till then been examined with
any care, and which he found with delight to contain passages that
appear in no version of the Book hitherto known. It was written in
clear Gothic text, and in the Old French tongue of the early 14th
century. Was it possible that he had lighted on the long-lost original
of Ramusio’s Version? No; it proved to be different. Instead of the
tedious story of the northern wars, which occupies much of our Fourth
Book, there were passages occurring in the later history of Ser Marco,
some years after his release from the Genoese captivity. They appeared
to contain strange anachronisms certainly; but we have often had
occasion to remark on puzzles in the chronology of Marco’s story![7]
And in some respects they tended to justify our intimated suspicion
that he was a man of deeper feelings and wider sympathies than the book
of Rusticiano had allowed to appear.[8] Perhaps this time the Traveller
had found an amanuensis whose faculties had not been stiffened by
fifteen years of Malapaga?[9] One of the most important passages ran
thus:—

  “_Bien est voirs que, après ce que |Messires Marc Pol| avoit pris
  fame et si estoit demouré plusours ans de sa vie a |Venysse|, il
  avint que mourut |Messires Mafés| qui oncles |Monseignour Marc|
  estoit: (et mourut ausi ses granz chiens mastins qu’avoit amenei
  dou Catai,[10] et qui avoit non |Bayan| pour l’amour au bon
  chievetain |Bayan Cent-iex|); adonc n’avoit oncques puis |Messires
  Marc| nullui, fors son esclave |Piere le Tartar|, avecques lequel
  pouvoit penre soulas à s’entretenir de ses voiages et des choses
  dou Levant. Car la gent de |Venysse| si avoit de grant piesce
  moult anuy pris des loncs contes |Monseignour Marc|; et quand
  ledit |Messires Marc| issoit de l’uys sa meson ou Sain Grisostome,
  souloient li petit marmot es voies dariere-li courir en cryant
  |Messer Marco Miliòn! cont’a nu un busiòn!| que veult dire en
  François ‘Messires Marcs des millions di-nous un de vos gros
  mensonges.’ En oultre, la Dame |Donate| fame anuyouse estoit, et de
  trop estroit esprit, et plainne de convoitise.[11] Ansi avint que
  |Messires Marc| desiroit es voiages rantrer durement._

  _“Si se partist de |Venisse| et chevaucha aux parties d’occident.
  Et demoura mainz jours es contrées de |Provence| et de |France| et
  puys fist passaige aux Ysles de la tremontaingne et s’en retourna
  par |la Magne|, si comme vous orrez cy-après. Et fist-il escripre
  son voiage atout les devisements les contrées; mes de la France
  n’y parloit mie grantment pour ce que maintes genz la scevent
  apertement. Et pour ce en lairons atant, et commencerons d’autres
  choses, assavoir, de |BRETAINGNE LA GRANT|._

   =Cy devyse dou roiaume de Bretaingne la grant.=

  _“Et sachiés que quand l’en se part de |Calés|, et l’en nage |XX|
  ou |XXX| milles à trop grant mesaise, si treuve l’en une grandisme
  Ysle qui s’appelle |Bretaingne la Grant|. Elle est à une grant royne
  et n’en fait treuage à nulluy. Et ensevelissent lor mors, et ont
  monnoye de chartres et d’or et d’argent, et ardent pierres noyres,
  et vivent de marchandises et d’ars, et ont toutes choses de vivre
  en grant habondance mais non pas à bon marchié. Et c’est une Ysle
  de trop grant richesce, et li marinier de celle partie dient que
  c’est li plus riches royaumes qui soit ou monde, et qu’il y a li
  mieudre marinier dou monde et li mieudre coursier et li mieudre
  chevalier (ains ne chevauchent mais lonc com François). Ausi ont-il
  trop bons homes d’armes et vaillans durement (bien que maint n’y
  ait), et les dames et damoseles bonnes et loialles, et belles com
  lys souef florant. Et quoi vous en diroie-je? Il y a citez et
  chasteau assez, et tant de marchéanz et si riches qui font venir
  tant d’avoir-de-poiz et de toute espece de marchandise qu’il n’est
  hons qui la verité en sceust dire. Font venir |d’Ynde| et d’autres
  parties coton a grant planté, et font venir soye de |Manzi| et de
  |Bangala|, et font venir laine des ysles de la Mer Occeane et de
  toutes parties. Et si labourent maintz bouquerans et touailles et
  autres draps de coton et de laine et de soye. Encores sachiés que
  ont vaines d’acier assez, et si en labourent trop soubtivement de
  tous hernois de chevalier, et de toutes choses besoignables à ost;
  ce sont espées et glaive et esperon et heaume et haches, et toute
  espèce d’arteillerie et de coutelerie, et en font grant gaaigne
  et grant marchandise. Et en font si grant habondance que tout li
  mondes en y puet avoir et à bon marchié._

  =Encores cy devise dou dyt roiaume, et de ce qu’en dist Messires
  Marcs.=

  _“Et sachiés que tient icelle Royne la seigneurie de l’|Ynde
  majeure| et de |Mutfili| et de |Bangala|, et d’une moitié de
  |Mien|. Et moult est saige et noble dame et pourvéans, si que
  est elle amée de chascun. Et avoit jadis mari; et depuys qu’il
  mourut bien |XIV| ans avoit; adonc la royne sa fame l’ama tant que
  oncques puis ne se voult marier a nullui, pour l’amour le prince
  son baron, ançois moult maine quoye vie. Et tient son royaume ausi
  bien ou miex que oncques le tindrent li roy si aioul. Mes ores en
  ce royaume li roy n’ont guieres pooir, ains la poissance commence
  a trespasser à la menue gent. Et distrent aucun marinier de celes
  parties à |Monseignour Marc| que hui-et-le jour li royaumes soit
  auques abastardi come je vous diroy. Car bien est voirs que
  ci-arrières estoit ciz pueple de |Bretaingne la Grant| bonne et
  granz et loialle gent qui servoit Diex moult volontiers selonc lor
  usaige; et tuit li labour qu’il labouroient et portoient a vendre
  estoient honnestement labouré, et dou greigneur vaillance, et
  chose pardurable; et se vendoient à jouste pris sanz barguignier.
  En tant que se aucuns labours portoit l’estanpille |Bretaingne
  la Grant| c’estoit regardei com pleges de bonne estoffe. Mes
  orendroit li labours n’est mie tousjourz si bons; et quand l’en
  achate pour un quintal pesant de toiles de coton, adonc, par trop
  souvent, si treuve l’en de chascun |C| pois de coton, bien |XXX|
  ou |XL| pois de plastre de gifs, ou de blanc d’Espaigne, ou de
  choses semblables. Et se l’en achate de cammeloz ou de tireteinne
  ou d’autre dras de laine, cist ne durent mie, ains sont plain
  d’empoise, ou de glu et de balieures._

  _“Et bien qu’il est voirs que chascuns hons egalement doit de son
  cors servir son seigneur ou sa commune, pour aler en ost en tens
  de besoingne; et bien que trestuit li autre royaume d’occident
  tieingnent ce pour ordenance, ciz pueple de |Bretaingne la
  Grant| n’en veult nullement, ains si dient: ‘Veez-là: n’avons
  nous pas la |Manche| pour fossé de nostre pourpris, et pourquoy
  nous penerons-nous pour nous faire homes d’armes, en lessiant
  nos gaaignes et nos soulaz? Cela lairons aus soudaiers.’ Or li
  preudhome entre eulx moult scevent bien com tiex paroles sont
  nyaises; mes si ont paour de lour en dire la verité pour ce que
  cuident desplaire as bourjois et à la menue gent._

  _“Or je vous di sanz faille que, quand |Messires Marcs Pols| sceust
  ces choses, moult en ot pitié de cestui pueple, et il li vint à
  remembrance ce que avenu estoit, ou tens |Monseignour Nicolas| et
  |Monseignour Mafé|, à l’ore quand |Alau|, frère charnel dou Grant
  Sire |Cublay|, ala en ost seur |Baudas|, et print le |Calife| et sa
  maistre cité, atout son vaste tresor d’or et d’argent, et l’amère
  parolle que dist ledit Alau au Calife, com l’a escripte li Maistres
  Rusticiens ou chief de cestui livre.[12]_

  _“Car sachiés tout voirement que |Messires Marc| moult se deleitoit
  à faire appert combien sont pareilles au font les condicions des
  diverses regions dou monde, et soloit-il clorre son discours si
  disant en son language de |Venisse:| ‘|Sto mondo xe fato tondo|,
  com uzoit dire mes oncles Mafés.’_

  _“Ore vous lairons à conter de ceste matière et retournerons à
  parler de la Loy des genz de |Bretaingne la Grant|._

  =Cy devise des diverses créances de la gent Bretaingne la Grant et
  de ce qu’en cuidoit Messires Marcs.=

  _“Il est voirs que li pueples est Crestiens, mes non pour le
  plus selonc la foy de l’Apostoille Rommain, ains tiennent le en
  mautalent assez. Seulement il y en a aucun qui sont féoil du
  dit Apostoille et encore plus forment que li nostre prudhome de
  |Venisse|. Car quand dit li Papes: ‘Telle ou telle chose est
  noyre,’ toute ladite gent si en jure: ‘Noyre est com poivre.’ Et
  puis se dira li Papes de la dite chose: ‘Elle est blanche,’ si
  en jurera toute ladite gent: ‘Il est voirs qu’elle est blanche;
  blanche est com noifs.’ Et dist |Messires Marc Pol|: ‘Nous n’avons
  nullement tant de foy à |Venyse|, ne li prudhome de |Florence| non
  plus, com l’en puet savoir bien apertement dou livre Monseignour
  |Dantès Aldiguiere|, que j’ay congneu a |Padoe| le meisme an que
  Messires |Thibault de Cepoy| à |Venisse| estoit.[13] Mes c’est
  joustement ce que j’ay veu autre foiz près le Grant |Bacsi| qui est
  com li Papes des Ydres.’_

  _“Encore y a une autre manière de gent; ce sont de celz qui
  s’appellent filsoufes;[14] et si il disent: ‘S’il y a Diex n’en
  scavons nul, mes il est voirs qu’il est une certeinne courance
  des choses laquex court devers le bien.’ Et fist |Messires Marcs|:
  ‘Encore la créance des |Bacsi| qui dysent que n’y a ne Diex Eternel
  ne Juge des homes, ains il est une certeinne chose laquex s’appelle
  |Kerma|.’[15]_

  _“Une autre foiz avint que disoit un des filsoufes à |Monseignour
  Marc|: ‘Diex n’existe mie jeusqu’ores, ainçois il se fait
  desorendroit.’ Et fist encore |Messires Marcs|: ‘Veez-là, une autre
  foiz la créance des ydres, car dient que li seuz Diex est icil
  hons qui par force de ses vertuz et de son savoir tant pourchace
  que d’home il se face Diex presentement. Et li Tartar l’appelent
  |Borcan|. Tiex Diex |Sagamoni Borcan| estoit, dou quel parle li
  livres Maistre |Rusticien|.’[16]_

  _“Encore ont une autre manière de filsoufes, et dient-il: ‘Il n’est
  mie ne Diex ne |Kerma| ne courance vers le bien, ne Providence,
  ne Créerres, ne Sauvours, ne sainteté ne pechiés ne conscience de
  pechié, ne proyère ne response à proyère, il n’est nulle riens fors
  que trop minime grain ou paillettes qui ont à nom |atosmes|, et
  de tiex grains devient chose qui vive, et chose qui vive devient
  une certeinne creature qui demoure au rivaige de la Mer: et ceste
  creature devient poissons, et poissons devient lezars, et lezars
  devient blayriaus, et blayriaus devient gat-maimons, et gat-maimons
  devient hons sauvaiges qui menjue char d’homes, et hons sauvaiges
  devient hons crestien.’_

  _“Et dist |Messires Marc|: ‘Encore une foiz, biaus sires, li
  |Bacsi| de |Tebet| et de |Kescemir| et li prestre de |Seilan|, qui
  si dient que l’arme vivant doie trespasser par tous cez changes de
  vestemens; si com se treuve escript ou livre |Maistre Rusticien|
  que |Sagamoni Borcan| mourut iiij vint et iiij foiz et tousjourz
  resuscita, et à chascune foiz d’une diverse manière de beste, et
  à la derreniere foyz mourut hons et devint diex, selonc ce qu’il
  dient.’[17] Et fist encore |Messires Marc|: ‘A moy pert-il trop
  estrange chose se juesques à toutes les créances des ydolastres
  deust dechéoir ceste grantz et saige nation. Ainsi peuent jouer
  Misire li filsoufe atout lour propre perte, mes à l’ore quand tiex
  fantaisies se respanderont es joenes bacheliers et parmy la menue
  gent, celz averont pour toute Loy =manducemus et bibamus, cras
  enim moriemur=; et trop isnellement l’en raccomencera la descente
  de l’eschiele, et d’home crestien deviendra hons sauvaiges, et
  d’home sauvaige gat-maimons, et de gat-maimon blayriaus.’ Et fist
  encores |Messires Marc|: ‘Maintes contrées et provinces et ysles
  et citéz je |Marc Pol| ay veues et de maintes genz de maintes
  manières ay les condicionz congneues, et je croy bien que il est
  plus assez dedens l’univers que ce que li nostre prestre n’y
  songent. Et puet bien estre, biaus sires, que li mondes n’a estés
  creés à tous poinz com nous creiens, ains d’une sorte encore
  plus merveillouse. Mes cil n’amenuise nullement nostre pensée de
  Diex et de sa majesté, ains la fait greingnour. Et contrée n’ay
  veue ou Dame Diex ne manifeste apertement les granz euvres de sa
  tout-poissante saigesse; gent n’ay congneue esquiex ne se fait
  sentir li fardels de pechié, et la besoingne de Phisicien des
  maladies de l’arme tiex com est nostre Seignours Ihesus Crist, Beni
  soyt son Non. Pensez doncques à cel qu’a dit uns de ses Apostres:
  =Nolite esse prudentes apud vosmet ipsos=; et uns autres: =Quoniam
  multi pseudo-prophetae exierint=; et uns autres: =Quod venient in
  novissimis diebus illusores ... dicentes, Ubi est promissio?= et
  encores aus parolles que dist li Signours meismes: =Vide ergo ne
  lumen quod in te est tenebrae sint=._

  =Commant Messires Marcs se partist de l’ysle de Bretaingne et de la
  proyère que fist=.

  _“Et pourquoy vous en feroie-je lonc conte? Si print nef |Messires
  Marcs| et se partist en nageant vers la terre ferme. Or |Messires
  Marc Pol| moult ama cel roiaume de |Bretaingne la grant| pour son
  viex renon et s’ancienne franchise, et pour sa saige et bonne Royne
  (que Diex gart), et pour les mainz homes de vaillance et bons
  chaceours et les maintes bonnes et honnestes dames qui y estoient.
  Et sachiés tout voirement que en estant delez le bort la nef, et
  en esgardant aus roches blanches que l’en par dariere-li lessoit,
  |Messires Marc| prieoit Diex, et disoit-il: ‘Ha Sires Diex ay merci
  de cestuy vieix et noble royaume; fay-en pardurable forteresse de
  liberté et de joustice, et garde-le de tout meschief de dedens et
  de dehors; donne à sa gent droit esprit pour ne pas Diex guerroyer
  de ses dons, ne de richesce ne de savoir; et conforte-les fermement
  en ta foy’ ...”_

A loud _Amen_ seemed to peal from without, and the awakened reader
started to his feet. And lo! it was the thunder of the winter-storm
crashing among the many-tinted crags of Monte Pellegrino,—with the wind
raging as it knows how to rage here in sight of the Isles of Æolus,
and the rain dashing on the glass as ruthlessly as it well could have
done, if, instead of Æolic Isles and many-tinted crags, the window had
fronted a dearer shore beneath a northern sky, and looked across the
grey Firth to the rain-blurred outline of the Lomond Hills.

But I end, saying to Messer Marco’s prayer, Amen.

PALERMO, _31st December, 1874_.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] It would be ingratitude if this Preface contained no acknowledgment
    of the medals awarded to the writer, mainly for this work, by the
    Royal Geographical Society, and by the Geographical Society of
    Italy, the former under the Presidence of Sir Henry Rawlinson,
    the latter under that of the Commendatore C. Negri. Strongly as
    I feel the too generous appreciation of these labours implied
    in such awards, I confess to have been yet more deeply touched
    and gratified by practical evidence of the approval of the two
    distinguished Travellers mentioned above; as shown by Baron von
    Richthofen in his spontaneous proposal to publish a German version
    of the book under his own immediate supervision (a project in
    abeyance, owing to circumstances beyond his or my control); by Mr.
    Ney Elias in the fact of his having carried these ponderous volumes
    with him on his solitary journey across the Mongolian wilds!

[2] I am grateful to Mr. de Khanikoff for his especial recognition of
    these in a kindly review of the first edition in the _Academy_.

[3] Especially from Lieutenant Garnier’s book, mentioned further on;
    the only existing source of illustration for many chapters of Polo.

[4] [Merged into the notes of the present edition.—H. C.]

[5] See page xxix.

[6] Writing in Italy, perhaps I ought to write, according to too
    prevalent modern Italian custom, _Polo Marco_. I have already
    _seen_, and in the work of a writer of reputation, the Alexandrian
    geographer styled _Tolomeo Claudio_! and if this preposterous
    fashion should continue to spread, we shall in time have _Tasso
    Torquato_, _Jonson Ben_, Africa explored by _Park Mungo_, Asia
    conquered by _Lane Tamer_, Copperfield David by _Dickens Charles_,
    Homer Englished by _Pope Alexander_, and the Roman history done
    into French from the original of _Live Tite_!

[7] Introduction p. _24_, and _passim_ in the notes.

[8] _Ibid._, p. _112_.

[9] See Introduction, pp. _51_, _57_.

[10] See Title of present volumes.

[11] Which quite agrees with the story of the document quoted at p.
    _77_ of Introduction.

[12] Vol. i. p. 64, and p. 67.

[13] _I.e._ 1306; see Introduction, pp. _68–69_.

[14] The form which Marco gives to this word was probably a
    reminiscence of the Oriental corruption _failsúf_. It recalls to
    my mind a Hindu who was very fond of the word, and especially of
    applying it to certain of his fellow-servants. But as he used it,
    _bara failsúf_,—“great philosopher”—meant exactly the same as the
    modern slang “_Artful Dodger_”!

[15] See for the explanation of _Karma_, “the power that controls the
    universe,” in the doctrine of atheistic Buddhism, Hardy’s _Eastern
    Monachism_, p. 5.

[16] Vol. ii. p. 316 (see also i. 348).

[17] Vol. ii. pp. 318–319.

                           ORIGINAL PREFACE.

The amount of appropriate material, and of acquaintance with the
mediæval geography of some parts of Asia, which was acquired during the
compilation of a work of kindred character for the Hakluyt Society,[1]
could hardly fail to suggest as a fresh labour in the same field
the preparation of a new English edition of Marco Polo. Indeed one
kindly critic (in the _Examiner_) laid it upon the writer as a duty to
undertake that task.

Though at least one respectable English edition has appeared since
Marsden’s,[2] the latter has continued to be the standard edition, and
maintains not only its reputation but its market value. It is indeed
the work of a sagacious, learned, and right-minded man, which can never
be spoken of otherwise than with respect. But since Marsden published
his quarto (1818) vast stores of new knowledge have become available
in elucidation both of the contents of Marco Polo’s book and of its
literary history. The works of writers such as Klaproth, Abel Rémusat,
D’Avezac, Reinaud, Quatremère, Julien, I. J. Schmidt, Gildemeister,
Ritter, Hammer-Purgstall, Erdmann, D’Ohsson, Defrémery, Elliot,
Erskine, and many more, which throw light directly or incidentally
on Marco Polo, have, for the most part, appeared since then. Nor, as
regards the literary history of the book, were any just views possible
at a time when what may be called the _Fontal_ MSS. (in French) were
unpublished and unexamined.

Besides the works which have thus occasionally or incidentally
thrown light upon the Traveller’s book, various editions of the book
itself have since Marsden’s time been published in foreign countries,
accompanied by comments of more or less value. All have contributed
something to the illustration of the book or its history; the last and
most learned of the editors, M. Pauthier, has so contributed in large
measure. I had occasion some years ago[3] to speak freely my opinion
of the merits and demerits of M. Pauthier’s work; and to the latter at
least I have no desire to recur here.

Another of his critics, a much more accomplished as well as more
favourable one,[4] seems to intimate the opinion that there would
scarcely be room in future for new commentaries. Something of the
kind was said of Marsden’s at the time of its publication. I imagine,
however, that whilst our libraries endure the _Iliad_ will continue
to find new translators, and Marco Polo—though one hopes not so
plentifully—new editors.

The justification of the book’s existence must however be looked
for, and it is hoped may be found, in the book itself, and not in
the Preface. The work claims to be judged as a whole, but it may be
allowable, in these days of scanty leisure, to indicate below a few
instances of what is believed to be new matter in an edition of Marco
Polo; by which however it is by no means intended that all such matter
is claimed by the editor as his own.[5]

From the commencement of the work it was felt that the task was
one which no man, though he were far better equipped and much more
conveniently situated than the present writer, could satisfactorily
accomplish from his own resources, and help was sought on special
points wherever it seemed likely to be found. In scarcely any quarter
was the application made in vain. Some who have aided most materially
are indeed very old and valued friends; but to many others who have
done the same the applicant was unknown; and some of these again, with
whom the editor began correspondence on this subject as a stranger, he
is happy to think that he may now call friends.

To none am I more indebted than to the Comm. GUGLIELMO BERCHET, of
Venice, for his ample, accurate, and generous assistance in furnishing
me with Venetian documents, and in many other ways. Especial thanks
are also due to Dr. WILLIAM LOCKHART, who has supplied the materials
for some of the most valuable illustrations; to Lieutenant FRANCIS
GARNIER, of the French Navy, the gallant and accomplished leader
(after the death of Captain Doudart de la Grée) of the memorable
expedition up the Mekong to Yun-nan; to the Rev. Dr. CALDWELL, of
the S. P. G. Mission in Tinnevelly, for copious and valuable notes
on Southern India; to my friends Colonel ROBERT MACLAGAN, R.E., Sir
ARTHUR PHAYRE, and Colonel HENRY MAN, for very valuable notes and
other aid; to Professor A. SCHIEFNER, of St. Petersburg, for his
courteous communication of very interesting illustrations not otherwise
accessible; to Major-General ALEXANDER CUNNINGHAM, of my own corps, for
several valuable letters; to my friends Dr. THOMAS OLDHAM, Director
of the Geological Survey of India, Mr. DANIEL HANBURY, F.R.S., Mr.
EDWARD THOMAS, Mr. JAMES FERGUSSON, F.R.S., Sir BARTLE FRERE, and Dr.
HUGH CLEGHORN, for constant interest in the work and readiness to
assist its progress; to Mr. A. WYLIE, the learned Agent of the B. and
F. Bible Society at Shang-hai, for valuable help; to the Hon. G. P.
MARSH, U.S. Minister at the Court of Italy, for untiring kindness in
the communication of his ample stores of knowledge, and of books. I
have also to express my obligations to Comm. NICOLÒ BAROZZI, Director
of the City Museum at Venice, and to Professor A. S. MINOTTO, of the
same city; to Professor ARMINIUS VÁMBÉRY, the eminent traveller;
to Professor FLÜCKIGER of Bern; to the Rev. H. A. JAESCHKE, of the
Moravian Mission in British Tibet; to Colonel LEWIS PELLY, British
Resident in the Persian Gulf; to Pandit MANPHUL, C.S.I. (for a most
interesting communication on Badakhshan); to my brother officer,
Major T. G. MONTGOMERIE, R.E., of the Indian Trigonometrical Survey;
to Commendatore NEGRI the indefatigable President of the Italian
Geographical Society; to Dr. ZOTENBERG, of the Great Paris Library, and
to M. CH. MAUNOIR, Secretary-General of the Société de Géographie; to
Professor HENRY GIGLIOLI, at Florence; to my old friend Major-General
ALBERT FYTCHE, Chief Commissioner of British Burma; to Dr. ROST and
Dr. FORBES-WATSON, of the India Office Library and Museum; to Mr.
R. H. MAJOR, and Mr. R. K. DOUGLAS, of the British Museum; to Mr.
N. B. DENNYS, of Hong-kong; and to Mr. C. GARDNER, of the Consular
Establishment in China. There are not a few others to whom my thanks
are equally due; but it is feared that the number of names already
mentioned may seem ridiculous, compared with the result, to those who
do not appreciate from how many quarters the facts needful for a work
which in its course intersects so many fields required to be collected,
one by one. I must not, however, omit acknowledgments to the present
Earl of DERBY for his courteous permission, when at the head of the
Foreign Office, to inspect Mr. Abbott’s valuable unpublished Report
upon some of the Interior Provinces of Persia; and to Mr. T. T. COOPER,
one of the most adventurous travellers of modern times, for leave to
quote some passages from his unpublished diary.

  PALERMO, _31st December, 1870_.

                       [_Original Dedication._]

                                  TO
                          HER ROYAL HIGHNESS,
                              MARGHERITA,
                        _Princess of Piedmont_,
            THIS ENDEAVOUR TO ILLUSTRATE THE LIFE AND WORK
                         OF A RENOWNED ITALIAN
                                  IS
              BY HER ROYAL HIGHNESS’S GRACIOUS PERMISSION
                              =Dedicated=
                       WITH THE DEEPEST RESPECT
                                  BY
                                                     H. YULE.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] _Cathay and The Way Thither, being a Collection of Minor Medieval
    Notices of China_. London, 1866. The necessities of the case have
    required the repetition in the present work of the substance of
    some notes already printed (but hardly published) in the other.

[2] Viz. Mr. Hugh Murray’s. I mean no disrespect to Mr. T. Wright’s
    edition, but it is, and professes to be, scarcely other than a
    reproduction of Marsden’s, with abridgment of his notes.

[3] In the _Quarterly Review_ for July, 1868.

[4] M. Nicolas Khanikoff.

[5] In the Preliminary Notices will be found new matter on the Personal
    and Family History of the Traveller, illustrated by Documents; and
    a more elaborate attempt than I have seen elsewhere to classify and
    account for the different texts of the work, and to trace their
    mutual relation.

    As regards geographical elucidations, I may point to the
    explanation of the name _Gheluchelan_ (i. p. 58), to the discussion
    of the route from Kerman to Hormuz, and the identification of the
    sites of Old Hormuz, of _Cobinan_ and _Dogana_, the establishment
    of the position and continued existence of _Keshm_, the note on
    _Pein_ and _Charchan_, on _Gog_ and _Magog_, on the geography of
    the route from _Sindafu_ to _Carajan_, on _Anin_ and _Coloman_, on
    _Mutafili_, _Cail_, and _Ely_.

    As regards historical illustrations, I would cite the notes
    regarding the Queens _Bolgana_ and _Cocachin_, on the _Karaunahs_,
    etc., on the title of King of _Bengal_ applied to the K. of Burma,
    and those bearing upon the Malay and Abyssinian chronologies.

    In the interpretation of outlandish phrases, I may refer to the
    notes on _Ondanique_, _Nono_, _Barguerlac_, _Argon_, _Sensin_,
    _Keshican_, _Toscaol_, _Bularguchi_, _Gat-paul_, etc.

    Among miscellaneous elucidations, to the disquisition on the _Arbre
    Sol_ or _Sec_ in vol. i., and to that on Mediæval Military Engines
    in vol. ii.

    In a variety of cases it has been necessary to refer to Eastern
    languages for pertinent elucidations or etymologies. The editor
    would, however, be sorry to fall under the ban of the mediæval
    adage:

    “_Vir qui docet quod non sapit Definitur Bestia!_”

    and may as well reprint here what was written in the Preface to
    _Cathay_:

    “I am painfully sensible that in regard to many subjects dealt
    with in the following pages, nothing can make up for the want of
    genuine Oriental learning. A fair familiarity with Hindustani for
    many years, and some reminiscences of elementary Persian, have been
    useful in their degree; but it is probable that they may sometimes
    also have led me astray, as such slender lights are apt to do.”

                      TO
                  HENRY YULE.

    Until you raised dead monarchs from the mould
      And built again the domes of Xanadu,
      I lay in evil case, and never knew
    The glamour of that ancient story told
    By good Ser Marco in his prison-hold.
      But now I sit upon a throne and view
      The Orient at my feet, and take of you
    And Marco tribute from the realms of old.

    If I am joyous, deem me not o’er bold;
      If I am grateful, deem me not untrue;
    For you have given me beauties to behold,
      Delight to win, and fancies to pursue,
    Fairer than all the jewelry and gold
      Of Kublaï on his throne in Cambalu.

                                          E. C. BABER.

  _20th July, 1884._

                       MEMOIR OF SIR HENRY YULE.

Henry Yule was the youngest son of Major William Yule, by his first
wife, Elizabeth Paterson, and was born at Inveresk, in Midlothian, on
1st May, 1820. He was named after an _aunt_ who, like Miss Ferrier’s
immortal heroine, owned a man’s name.

On his father’s side he came of a hardy agricultural stock,[1] improved
by a graft from that highly-cultured tree, Rose of Kilravock.[2]
Through his mother, a somewhat prosaic person herself, he inherited
strains from Huguenot and Highland ancestry. There were recognisable
traces of all these elements in Henry Yule, and as was well said
by one of his oldest friends: “He was one of those curious racial
compounds one finds on the east side of Scotland, in whom the hard
Teutonic grit is sweetened by the artistic spirit of the more genial
Celt.”[3] His father, an officer of the Bengal army (born 1764, died
1839), was a man of cultivated tastes and enlightened mind, a good
Persian and Arabic scholar, and possessed of much miscellaneous
Oriental learning. During the latter years of his career in India, he
served successively as Assistant Resident at the (then independent)
courts of Lucknow[4] and Delhi. In the latter office his chief was the
noble Ouchterlony. William Yule, together with his younger brother
Udny,[5] returned home in 1806. “A recollection of their voyage was
that they hailed an outward bound ship, somewhere off the Cape, through
the trumpet: ‘What news?’ Answer: ‘The King’s mad, and Humfrey’s beat
Mendoza’ (two celebrated prize-fighters and often matched). ‘Nothing
more?’ ‘Yes, Bonapart_y_’s made his _Mother_ King of Holland!’

“Before his retirement, William Yule was offered the
Lieut.-Governorship of St. Helena. Two of the detailed privileges
of the office were residence at Longwood (afterwards the house of
Napoleon), and the use of a certain number of the Company’s slaves.
Major Yule, who was a strong supporter of the anti-slavery cause
till its triumph in 1834, often recalled both of these offers with
amusement.”[6]

William Yule was a man of generous chivalrous nature, who took large
views of life, apt to be unfairly stigmatised as Radical in the narrow
Tory reaction that prevailed in Scotland during the early years of the
19th century.[7] Devoid of literary ambition, he wrote much for his
private pleasure, and his knowledge and library (rich in Persian and
Arabic MSS.) were always placed freely at the service of his friends
and correspondents, some of whom, such as Major C. Stewart and Mr.
William Erskine, were more given to publication than himself. He never
travelled without a little 8vo MS. of Hafiz, which often lay under his
pillow. Major Yule’s only printed work was a lithographed edition of
the _Apothegms_ of ’Ali, the son of Abu Talib, in the Arabic, with an
old Persian version and an English translation interpolated by himself.
“This was privately issued in 1832, when the Duchesse d’Angoulême was
living at Edinburgh, and the little work was inscribed to her, with
whom an accident of neighbourhood and her kindness to the Major’s
youngest child had brought him into relations of goodwill.”[8]

Henry Yule’s childhood was mainly spent at Inveresk. He used to say
that his earliest recollection was sitting with the little cousin,
who long after became his wife, on the doorstep of her father’s house
in George Street, Edinburgh (now the Northern Club), listening to the
performance of a passing piper. There was another episode which he
recalled with humorous satisfaction. Fired by his father’s tales of
the jungle, Yule (then about six years old) proceeded to improvise an
elephant pit in the back garden, only too successfully, for soon, with
mingled terror and delight, he saw his uncle John[9] fall headlong
into the snare. He lost his mother before he was eight, and almost his
only remembrance of her was the circumstance of her having given him
a little lantern to light him home on winter nights from his first
school. On Sundays it was the Major’s custom to lend his children,
as a picture-book, a folio Arabic translation of the Four Gospels,
printed at Rome in 1591, which contained excellent illustrations from
Italian originals.[10] Of the pictures in this volume Yule seems never
to have tired. The last page bore a MS. note in Latin to the effect
that the volume had been read in the Chaldæan Desert by _Georgius
Strachanus_, _Milnensis_, _Scotus_, who long remained unidentified, not
to say mythical, in Yule’s mind. But George Strachan never passed from
his memory, and having ultimately run him to earth, Yule, sixty years
later, published the results in an interesting article.[11]

Two or three years after his wife’s death, Major Yule removed to
Edinburgh, and established himself in Regent’s Terrace, on the face
of the Calton Hill.[12] This continued to be Yule’s home until his
father’s death, shortly before he went to India. “Here he learned to
love the wide scenes of sea and land spread out around that hill—a
love he never lost, at home or far away. And long years after, with
beautiful Sicilian hills before him and a lovely sea, he writes words
of fond recollection of the bleak Fife hills, and the grey Firth of
Forth.”[13]

Yule now followed his elder brother, Robert, to the famous High School,
and in the summer holidays the two made expeditions to the West
Highlands, the Lakes of Cumberland, and elsewhere. Major Yule chose his
boys to have every reasonable indulgence and advantage, and when the
British Association, in 1834, held its first Edinburgh meeting, Henry
received a member’s ticket. So, too, when the passing of the Reform
Bill was celebrated in the same year by a great banquet, at which Lord
Grey and other prominent politicians were present, Henry was sent to
the dinner, probably the youngest guest there.[14]

At this time the intention was that Henry should go to Cambridge (where
his name was, indeed, entered), and after taking his degree study for
the Bar. With this view he was, in 1833, sent to Waith, near Ripon, to
be coached by the Rev. H. P. Hamilton, author of a well-known treatise,
_On Conic Sections_, and afterwards Dean of Salisbury. At his tutor’s
hospitable rectory Yule met many notabilities of the day. One of them
was Professor Sedgwick.

There was rumoured at this time the discovery of the first known (?)
fossil monkey, but its tail was missing. “Depend upon it, Daniel
O’Conell’s got hold of it!” said ‘Adam’ briskly.[15] Yule was very
happy with Mr. Hamilton and his kind wife, but on his tutor’s removal
to Cambridge other arrangements became necessary, and in 1835 he was
transferred to the care of the Rev. James Challis, rector of Papworth
St. Everard, a place which “had little to recommend it except a
dulness which made reading almost a necessity.”[16] Mr. Challis had at
this time two other resident pupils, who both, in most diverse ways,
attained distinction in the Church. These were John Mason Neale, the
future eminent ecclesiologist and founder of the devoted Anglican
Sisterhood of St. Margaret, and Harvey Goodwin, long afterwards the
studious and large-minded Bishop of Carlisle. With the latter, Yule
remained on terms of cordial friendship to the end of his life. Looking
back through more than fifty years to these boyish days, Bishop Goodwin
wrote that Yule then “showed much more liking for Greek plays and for
German than for mathematics, though he had considerable geometrical
ingenuity.”[17] On one occasion, having solved a problem that puzzled
Goodwin, Yule thus discriminated the attainments of the three pupils:
“The difference between you and me is this: You like it and can’t do
it; I don’t like it and can do it. Neale neither likes it nor can do
it.” Not bad criticism for a boy of fifteen.[18]

On Mr. Challis being appointed Plumerian Professor at Cambridge, in the
spring of 1836, Yule had to leave him, owing to want of room at the
Observatory, and he became for a time, a most dreary time, he said, a
student at University College, London.

By this time Yule had made up his mind that not London and the Law,
but India and the Army should be his choice, and accordingly in Feb.
1837 he joined the East India Company’s Military College at Addiscombe.
From Addiscombe he passed out, in December 1838, at the head of the
cadets of his term (taking the prize sword[19]), and having been duly
appointed to the Bengal Engineers, proceeded early in 1839 to the
Headquarters of the Royal Engineers at Chatham, where, according to
custom, he was enrolled as a “local and temporary Ensign.” For such
was then the invidious designation at Chatham of the young Engineer
officers of the Indian army, who ranked as full lieutenants in their
own Service, from the time of leaving Addiscombe.[20] Yule once
audaciously tackled the formidable Pasley on this very grievance. The
venerable Director, after a minute’s pondering, replied: “Well, I don’t
remember what the reason was, but I have _no_ doubt (_staccato_) it ...
was ... a very ... _good_ reason.”[21]

“When Yule appeared among us at Chatham in 1839,” said his friend
Collinson, “he at once took a prominent place in our little Society by
his slightly advanced age [he was then 18½], but more by his strong
character.... His earlier education ... gave him a better classical
knowledge than most of us possessed; then he had the reserve and
self-possession characteristic of his race; but though he took small
part in the games and other recreations of our time, his knowledge,
his native humour, and his good comradeship, and especially his strong
sense of right and wrong, made him both admired and respected.... Yule
was not a scientific engineer, though he had a good general knowledge
of the different branches of his profession; his natural capacity lay
rather in varied knowledge, combined with a strong understanding and
an excellent memory, and also a peculiar power as a draughtsman, which
proved of great value in after life.... Those were nearly the last
days of the old _régime_, of the orthodox double sap and cylindrical
pontoons, when Pasley’s genius had been leading to new ideas, and when
Lintorn Simmons’ power, G. Leach’s energy, W. Jervois’ skill, and
R. Tylden’s talent were developing under the wise example of Henry
Harness.”[22]

In the Royal Engineer mess of those days (the present anteroom), the
portrait of Henry Yule now faces that of his first chief, Sir Henry
Harness. General Collinson said that the pictures appeared to eye each
other as if the subjects were continuing one of those friendly disputes
in which they so often engaged.[23]

It was in this room that Yule, Becher, Collinson, and other young
R.E.’s, profiting by the temporary absence of the austere Colonel
Pasley, acted some plays, including _Pizarro_. Yule bore the humble
part of one of the Peruvian Mob in this performance, of which he has
left a droll account.[24]

On the completion of his year at Chatham, Yule prepared to sail for
India, but first went to take leave of his relative, General White. An
accident prolonged his stay, and before he left he had proposed to and
been refused by his cousin Annie. This occurrence, his first check,
seems to have cast rather a gloom over his start for India. He went
by the then newly-opened Overland Route, visiting Portugal, stopping
at Gibraltar to see his cousin, Major (afterwards General) Patrick
Yule, R.E.[25] He was under orders “to stop at Aden (then recently
acquired), to report on the water supply, and to deliver a set of
meteorological and magnetic instruments for starting an observatory
there. The overland journey then really meant so; tramping across the
desert to Suez with camels and Arabs, a proceeding not conducive to the
preservation of delicate instruments; and on arriving at Aden he found
that the intended observer was dead, the observatory not commenced, and
the instruments all broken. There was thus nothing left for him but to
go on at once” to Calcutta,[26] where he arrived at the end of 1840.

His first service lay in the then wild Khasia Hills, whither he was
detached for the purpose of devising means for the transport of the
local coal to the plains. In spite of the depressing character of
the climate (Cherrapunjee boasts the highest rainfall on record),
Yule thoroughly enjoyed himself, and always looked back with special
pleasure on the time he spent here. He was unsuccessful in the object
of his mission, the obstacles to cheap transport offered by the dense
forests and mighty precipices proving insurmountable, but he gathered
a wealth of interesting observations on the country and people, a
very primitive Mongolian race, which he subsequently embodied in two
excellent and most interesting papers (the first he ever published).[27]

In the following year, 1842, Yule was transferred to the irrigation
canals of the north-west with head-quarters at Kurnaul. Here he had
for chief Captain (afterwards General Sir William) Baker, who became
his dearest and most steadfast friend. Early in 1843 Yule had his
first experience of field service. The death without heir of the
Khytul Rajah, followed by the refusal of his family to surrender the
place to the native troops sent to receive it, obliged Government to
send a larger force against it, and the canal officers were ordered
to join this. Yule was detailed to serve under Captain Robert Napier
(afterwards F.-M. Lord Napier of Magdala). Their immediate duty was to
mark out the route for a night march of the troops, barring access to
all side roads, and neither officer having then had any experience of
war, they performed the duty “with all the elaborate care of novices.”
Suddenly there was an alarm, a light detected, and a night attack
awaited, when the danger resolved itself into Clerk Sahib’s _khansamah_
with welcome hot coffee![28] Their hopes were disappointed, there
was no fighting, and the Fort of Khytul was found deserted by the
enemy. It “was a strange scene of confusion—all the paraphernalia and
accumulation of odds and ends of a wealthy native family lying about
and inviting loot. I remember one beautiful crutch-stick of ebony with
two rams’ heads in jade. I took it and sent it in to the political
authority, intending to buy it when sold. There was a sale, but my
stick never appeared. Somebody had a more developed taste in jade....
Amid the general rummage that was going on, an officer of British
Infantry had been put over a part of the palace supposed to contain
treasure, and they—officers and all—were helping themselves. Henry
Lawrence was one of the politicals under George Clerk. When the news of
this affair came to him I was present. It was in a white marble loggia
in the palace, where was a white marble chair or throne on a basement.
Lawrence was sitting on this throne in great excitement. He wore an
Afghan _choga_, a sort of dressing-gown garment, and this, and his thin
locks, and thin beard were streaming in the wind. He always dwells in
my memory as a sort of pythoness on her tripod under the afflatus.”[29]

During his Indian service, Yule had renewed and continued by letters
his suit to Miss White, and persistency prevailing at last, he soon
after the conclusion of the Khytul affair applied for leave to go home
to be married. He sailed from Bombay in May, 1843, and in September of
the same year was married, at Bath, to the gifted and large-hearted
woman who, to the end, remained the strongest and happiest influence in
his life.[30]

Yule sailed for India with his wife in November 1843. The next two
years were employed chiefly in irrigation work, and do not call
for special note. They were very happy years, except in the one
circumstance that the climate having seriously affected his wife’s
health, and she having been brought to death’s door, partly by illness,
but still more by the drastic medical treatment of those days, she was
imperatively ordered back to England by the doctors, who forbade her
return to India.

Having seen her on board ship, Yule returned to duty on the canals.
The close of that year, December, 1845, brought some variety to his
work, as the outbreak of the first Sikh War called nearly all the
canal officers into the field. “They went up to the front by long
marches, passing through no stations, and quite unable to obtain any
news of what had occurred, though on the 21st December the guns of
Ferozshah were distinctly heard in their camp at Pehoa, at a distance
of 115 miles south-east from the field, and some days later they came
successively on the fields of Moodkee and of Ferozshah itself, with
all the recent traces of battle. When the party of irrigation officers
reached head-quarters, the arrangements for attacking the Sikh army
in its entrenchments at Sobraon were beginning (though suspended till
weeks later for the arrival of the tardy siege guns), and the opposed
forces were lying in sight of each other.”[31]

Yule’s share in this campaign was limited to the sufficiently arduous
task of bridging the Sutlej for the advance of the British army. It is
characteristic of the man that for this reason he always abstained
from wearing his medal for the Sutlej campaign.

His elder brother, Robert Yule, then in the 16th Lancers, took part in
that magnificent charge of his regiment at the battle of Aliwal (Jan.
28, 1846) which the Great Duke is said to have pronounced unsurpassed
in history. From particulars gleaned from his brother and others
present in the action, Henry Yule prepared a spirited sketch of the
episode, which was afterwards published as a coloured lithograph by
M‘Lean (Haymarket).

At the close of the war, Yule succeeded his friend Strachey as
Executive Engineer of the northern division of the Ganges Canal, with
his head-quarters at Roorkee, “the division which, being nearest the
hills and crossed by intermittent torrents of great breadth and great
volume when in flood, includes the most important and interesting
engineering works.”[32]

At Roorkee were the extensive engineering workshops connected with the
canal. Yule soon became so accustomed to the din as to be undisturbed
by the noise, but the unpunctuality and carelessness of the native
workmen sorely tried his patience, of which Nature had endowed him with
but a small reserve. Vexed with himself for letting temper so often get
the better of him, Yule’s conscientious mind devised a characteristic
remedy. Each time that he lost his temper, he transferred a fine of
two rupees (then about five shillings) from his right to his left
pocket. When about to leave Roorkee, he devoted this accumulation of
self-imposed fines to the erection of a sun-dial, to teach the natives
the value of time. The late Sir James Caird, who told this legend of
Roorkee as he heard it there in 1880, used to add, with a humorous
twinkle of his kindly eyes, “It was a _very_ handsome dial.”[33]

From September, 1845, to March, 1847, Yule was much occupied
intermittently, in addition to his professional work, by service on a
Committee appointed by Government “to investigate the causes of the
unhealthiness which has existed at Kurnal, and other portions of the
country along the line of the Delhi Canal,” and further, to report
“whether an injurious effect on the health of the people of the Doab
is, or is not, likely to be produced by the contemplated Ganges Canal.”

“A very elaborate investigation was made by the Committee, directed
principally to ascertaining what relation subsisted between certain
physical conditions of the different districts, and the liability of
their inhabitants to miasmatic fevers.” The principal conclusion of the
Committee was, “that in the extensive epidemic of 1843, when Kurnaul
suffered so seriously ... the greater part of the evils observed had
not been the necessary and unavoidable results of canal irrigation,
but were due to interference with the natural drainage of the country,
to the saturation of stiff and retentive soils, and to natural
disadvantages of site, enhanced by excess of moisture. As regarded
the Ganges Canal, they were of opinion that, with due attention to
drainage, improvement rather than injury to the general health might
be expected to follow the introduction of canal irrigation.”[34] In an
unpublished note written about 1889, Yule records his ultimate opinion
as follows: “At this day, and after the large experience afforded by
the Ganges Canal, I feel sure that a verdict so favourable to the
sanitary results of canal irrigation would not be given.” Still the
fact remains that the Ganges Canal has been the source of unspeakable
blessings to an immense population.

The Second Sikh War saw Yule again with the army in the field,
and on 13th Jan. 1849, he was present at the dismal ‘Victory’ of
Chillianwallah, of which his most vivid recollection seemed to be the
sudden apparition of Henry Lawrence, fresh from London, but still clad
in the legendary Afghan cloak.

On the conclusion of the Punjab campaign, Yule, whose health had
suffered, took furlough and went home to his wife. For the next three
years they resided chiefly in Scotland, though paying occasional visits
to the Continent, and about 1850 Yule bought a house in Edinburgh.
There he wrote “The African Squadron vindicated” (a pamphlet which was
afterwards re-published in French), translated Schiller’s _Kampf mit
dem Drachen_ into English verse, delivered Lectures on Fortification at
the, now long defunct, Scottish Naval and Military Academy, wrote on
Tibet for his friend Blackwood’s Magazine, attended the 1850 Edinburgh
Meeting of the British Association, wrote his excellent lines, “On
the Loss of the _Birkenhead_,” and commenced his first serious study
of Marco Polo (by whose wondrous tale, however, he had already been
captivated as a boy in his father’s library—in Marsden’s edition
probably). But the most noteworthy literary result of these happy
years was that really fascinating volume, entitled _Fortification for
Officers of the Army and Students of Military History_, a work that has
remained unique of its kind. This was published by Blackwood in 1851,
and seven years later received the honour of (unauthorised) translation
into French. Yule also occupied himself a good deal at this time with
the practice of photography, a pursuit to which he never after reverted.

In the spring of 1852, Yule made an interesting little
semi-professional tour in company with a brother officer, his
accomplished friend, Major R. B. Smith. Beginning with Kelso, “the
only one of the Teviotdale Abbeys which I had not as yet seen,” they
made their way leisurely through the north of England, examining
with impartial care abbeys and cathedrals, factories, brick-yards,
foundries, timber-yards, docks, and railway works. On this occasion
Yule, contrary to his custom, kept a journal, and a few excerpts may be
given here, as affording some notion of his casual talk to those who
did not know him.

At Berwick-on-Tweed he notes the old ramparts of the town: “These,
erected in Elizabeth’s time, are interesting as being, I believe, the
only existing sample in England of the bastioned system of the 16th
century.... The outline of the works seems perfect enough, though both
earth and stone work are in great disrepair. The bastions are large
with obtuse angles, square orillons, and double flanks originally
casemated, and most of them crowned with cavaliers.” On the way to
Durham, “much amused by the discussions of two passengers, one a
smooth-spoken, semi-clerical looking person; the other a brusque
well-to-do attorney with a Northumbrian burr. Subject, among others,
Protection. The Attorney all for ‘cheap bread’— ‘You wouldn’t rob the
poor man of his loaf,’ and so forth. ‘You must go with the _stgheam_,
sir, you must go with the stgheam.’ ‘I never did, Mr. Thompson, and I
never will,’ said the other in an oily manner, singularly inconsistent
with the sentiment.” At Durham they dined with a dignitary of the
Church, and Yule was roasted by being placed with his back to an
enormous fire. “Coals are cheap at Durham,” he notes feelingly, adding,
“The party we found as heavy as any Edinburgh one. Smith, indeed,
evidently has had little experience of really stupid Edinburgh parties,
for he had never met with anything approaching to this before.” (Happy
Smith!) But thanks to the kindness and hospitality of the astronomer,
Mr. Chevalier, and his gifted daughter, they had a delightful visit
to beautiful Durham, and came away full of admiration for the (then
newly established) University, and its grand _locale_. They went on
to stay with an uncle by marriage of Yule’s, in Yorkshire. At dinner
he was asked by his host to explain Foucault’s pendulum experiment.
“I endeavoured to explain it somewhat, I hope, to the satisfaction of
his doubts, but not at all to that of Mr. G. M., who most resolutely
declined to take in _any_ elucidation, coming at last to the conclusion
that he entirely differed with me as to what North meant, and that
it was useless to argue until we could agree about that!” They
went next to Leeds, to visit Kirkstall Abbey, “a mediæval fossil,
curiously embedded among the squalid brickwork and chimney stalks of
a manufacturing suburb. Having established ourselves at the hotel, we
went to deliver a letter to Mr. Hope, the official assignee, a very
handsome, aristocratic-looking gentleman, who seemed as much out of
place at Leeds as the Abbey.” At Leeds they visited the flax mills
of Messrs. Marshall, “a firm noted for the conscientious care they
take of their workpeople.... We mounted on the roof of the building,
which is covered with grass, and formerly was actually grazed by a
few sheep, until the repeated inconvenience of their tumbling through
the glass domes put a stop to this.” They next visited some tile and
brickworks on land belonging to a friend. “The owner of the tile works,
a well-to-do burgher, and the apparent model of a West Riding Radical,
received us in rather a dubious way: ‘There are a many people has
come and brought introductions, and looked at all my works, and then
gone and set up for themselves close by. Now des you mean to say that
you be really come all the way from Beng_u_l?’ ‘Yes, indeed we have,
and we are going all the way back again, though we didn’t exactly
come from there to look at your brickworks.’ ‘Then you’re not in the
brick-making line, are you?’ ‘Why we’ve had a good deal to do with
making bricks, and may have again; but we’ll engage that if we set up
for ourselves, it shall be ten thousand miles from you.’ This seemed in
some degree to set his mind at rest....”

“A dismal day, with occasional showers, prevented our seeing Sheffield
to advantage. On the whole, however, it is more cheerful and has more
of a country-town look than Leeds—a place utterly without beauty of
aspect. At Leeds you have vast barrack-like factories, with their usual
suburbs of squalid rows of brick cottages, and everywhere the tall
spiracles of the steam, which seems the pervading power of the place.
Everything there is machinery—the machine is the intelligent agent, it
would seem, the man its slave, standing by to tend it and pick up a
broken thread now and then. At Sheffield ... you might go through most
of the streets without knowing anything of the kind was going on. And
steam here, instead of being a ruler, is a drudge, turning a grindstone
or rolling out a bar of steel, but all the accuracy and skill of hand
is the Man’s. And consequently there was, we thought, a healthier
aspect about the men engaged. None of the Rodgers remain who founded
the firm in my father’s time. I saw some pairs of his scissors in the
show-room still kept under the name of _Persian_ scissors.”[35]

From Sheffield Yule and his friend proceeded to Boston, “where there
is the most exquisite church tower I have ever seen,” and thence to
Lincoln, Peterborough, and Ely, ending their tour at Cambridge, where
Yule spent a few delightful days.

In the autumn the great Duke of Wellington died, and Yule witnessed the
historic pageant of his funeral. His furlough was now nearly expired,
and early in December he again embarked for India, leaving his wife
and only child, of a few weeks old, behind him. Some verses dated
“Christmas Day near the Equator,” show how much he felt the separation.

Shortly after his return to Bengal, Yule received orders to proceed
to Aracan, and to examine and report upon the passes between Aracan
and Burma, as also to improve communications and select suitable
sites for fortified posts to hold the same. These orders came to Yule
quite unexpectedly late one Saturday evening, but he completed all
preparations and started at daybreak on the following Monday, 24th Jan.
1853.

From Calcutta to Khyook Phyoo, Yule proceeded by steamer, and thence
up the river in the _Tickler_ gunboat to Krenggyuen. “Our course lay
through a wilderness of wooded islands (50 to 200 feet high) and bays,
sailing when we could, anchoring when neither wind nor tide served
... slow progress up the river. More and more like the creeks and
lagoons of the Niger or a Guiana river rather than anything I looked
for in India. The densest tree jungle covers the shore down into the
water. For miles no sign of human habitation, but now and then at
rare intervals one sees a patch of hillside rudely cleared, with the
bare stems of the burnt trees still standing.... Sometimes, too, a
dark tunnel-like creek runs back beneath the thick vault of jungle,
and from it silently steals out a slim canoe, manned by two or three
wild-looking Mugs or Kyens (people of the Hills), driving it rapidly
along with their short paddles held vertically, exactly like those of
the Red men on the American rivers.”

At the military post of Bokhyong, near Krenggyuen, he notes (5th Feb.)
that “Captain Munro, the adjutant, can scarcely believe that I was
present at the Duke of Wellington’s funeral, of which he read but a
few days ago in the newspapers, and here am I, one of the spectators,
a guest in this wild spot among the mountains—2½ months since I left
England.”

Yule’s journal of his arduous wanderings in these border wilds is
full of interest, but want of space forbids further quotation. From
a note on the fly-leaf it appears that from the time of quitting the
gun-boat at Krenggyuen to his arrival at Toungoop he covered about 240
miles on foot, and that under immense difficulties, even as to food.
He commemorated his tribulations in some cheery humorous verse, but
ultimately fell seriously ill of the local fever, aided doubtless by
previous exposure and privation. His servants successively fell ill,
some died and others had to be sent back, food supplies failed, and
the route through those dense forests was uncertain; yet under all
difficulties he seems never to have grumbled or lost heart. And when
things were nearly at the worst, Yule restored the spirits of his
local escort by improvising a wappenshaw, with a Sheffield gardener’s
knife, which he happened to have with him, for prize! When at last Yule
emerged from the wilds and on 25th March marched into Prome, he was
taken for his own ghost! “Found Fraser (of the Engineers) in a rambling
phoongyee house, just under the great gilt pagoda. I went up to him
announcing myself, and his astonishment was so great that he would
scarcely shake hands!” It was on this occasion at Prome that Yule first
met his future chief Captain Phayre—“a very young-looking man—very
cordial,” a description no less applicable to General Sir Arthur Phayre
at the age of seventy!

After some further wanderings, Yule embarked at Sandong, and returned
by water, touching at Kyook Phyoo and Akyab, to Calcutta, which he
reached on 1st May—his birthday.

The next four months were spent in hard work at Calcutta. In August,
Yule received orders to proceed to Singapore, and embarked on the 29th.
His duty was to report on the defences of the Straits Settlements, with
a view to their improvement. Yule’s recommendations were sanctioned by
Government, but his journal bears witness to the prevalence then, as
since, of the penny-wise-pound-foolish system in our administration. On
all sides he was met by difficulties in obtaining sites for batteries,
etc., for which heavy compensation was demanded, when by the exercise
of reasonable foresight, the same might have been secured earlier at a
nominal price.

Yule’s journal contains a very bright and pleasing picture of
Singapore, where he found that the majority of the European population
“were evidently, from their tongues, from benorth the Tweed, a
circumstance which seems to be true of four-fifths of the Singaporeans.
Indeed, if I taught geography, I should be inclined to class Edinburgh,
Glasgow, Dundee, and Singapore together as the four chief towns of
Scotland.”

Work on the defences kept Yule in Singapore and its neighbourhood until
the end of November, when he embarked for Bengal. On his return to
Calcutta, Yule was appointed Deputy Consulting Engineer for Railways
at Head-quarters. In this post he had for chief his old friend Baker,
who had in 1851 been appointed by the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie,
Consulting Engineer for Railways to Government. The office owed its
existence to the recently initiated great experiment of railway
construction under Government guarantee.

The subject was new to Yule, “and therefore called for hard and anxious
labour. He, however, turned his strong sense and unbiased view to the
general question of railway communication in India, with the result
that he became a vigorous supporter of the idea of narrow gauge and
cheap lines in the parts of that country outside of the main trunk
lines of traffic.”[36]

The influence of Yule, and that of his intimate friends and ultimate
successors in office, Colonels R. Strachey and Dickens, led to the
adoption of the narrow (metre) gauge over a great part of India. Of
this matter more will be said further on; it is sufficient at this
stage to note that it was occupying Yule’s thoughts, and that he had
already taken up the position in this question that he thereafter
maintained through life. The office of Consulting Engineer to
Government for Railways ultimately developed into the great Department
of Public Works.

As related by Yule, whilst Baker “held this appointment, Lord Dalhousie
was in the habit of making use of his advice in a great variety of
matters connected with Public Works projects and questions, but which
had nothing to do with guaranteed railways, there being at that time no
officer attached to the Government of India, whose proper duty it was
to deal with such questions. In August, 1854, the Government of India
sent home to the Court of Directors a despatch and a series of minutes
by the Governor-General and his Council, in which the constitution of
the Public Works Department as a separate branch of administration,
both in the local governments and the government of India itself, was
urged on a detailed plan.”

In this communication Lord Dalhousie stated his desire to appoint Major
Baker to the projected office of Secretary for the Department of Public
Works. In the spring of 1855 these recommendations were carried out by
the creation of the Department, with Baker as Secretary and Yule as
Under Secretary for Public Works.

Meanwhile Yule’s services were called to a very different field, but
without his vacating his new appointment, which he was allowed to
retain. Not long after the conclusion of the second Burmese War, the
King of Burma sent a friendly mission to the Governor-General, and
in 1855 a return Embassy was despatched to the Court of Ava, under
Colonel Arthur Phayre, with Henry Yule as Secretary, an appointment
the latter owed as much to Lord Dalhousie’s personal wish as to
Phayre’s good-will. The result of this employment was Yule’s first
geographical book, a large volume entitled _Mission to the Court of Ava
in 1855_, originally printed in India, but subsequently re-issued in
an embellished form at home (see over leaf). To the end of his life,
Yule looked back to this “social progress up the Irawady, with its many
quaint and pleasant memories, as to a bright and joyous holiday.”[37]
It was a delight to him to work under Phayre, whose noble and lovable
character he had already learned to appreciate two years before in
Pegu. Then, too, Yule has spoken of the intense relief it was to escape
from the monotonous scenery and depressing conditions of official
life in Bengal (Resort to Simla was the exception, not the rule, in
these days!) to the cheerfulness and unconstraint of Burma, with its
fine landscapes and merry-hearted population. “It was such a relief
to find natives who would laugh at a joke,” he once remarked in the
writer’s presence to the lamented E. C. Baber, who replied that he had
experienced exactly the same sense of relief in passing from India to
China.

Yule’s work on Burma was largely illustrated by his own sketches. One
of these represents the King’s reception of the Embassy, and another,
the King on his throne. The originals were executed by Yule’s ready
pencil, surreptitiously within his cocked hat, during the audience.

From the latter sketch Yule had a small oil-painting executed under his
direction by a German artist, then resident in Calcutta, which he gave
to Lord Dalhousie.[38]

The Government of India marked their approval of the Embassy by an
unusual concession. Each of the members of the mission received a
souvenir of the expedition. To Yule was given a very beautiful and
elaborately chased small bowl, of nearly pure gold, bearing the signs
of the Zodiac in relief.[39]

On his return to Calcutta, Yule threw himself heart and soul into the
work of his new appointment in the Public Works Department. The nature
of his work, the novelty and variety of the projects and problems
with which this new branch of the service had to deal, brought Yule
into constant, and eventually very intimate association with Lord
Dalhousie, whom he accompanied on some of his tours of inspection.
The two men thoroughly appreciated each other, and, from first to
last, Yule experienced the greatest kindness from Lord Dalhousie. In
this intimacy, no doubt the fact of being what French soldiers call
_pays_ added something to the warmth of their mutual regard: their
forefathers came from the same _airt_, and neither was unmindful of the
circumstance. It is much to be regretted that Yule preserved no sketch
of Lord Dalhousie, nor written record of his intercourse with him, but
the following lines show some part of what he thought:

“At this time [1849] there appears upon the scene that vigorous and
masterful spirit, whose arrival to take up the government of India had
been greeted by events so inauspicious. No doubt from the beginning the
Governor-General was desirous to let it be understood that although new
to India he was, and meant to be, master; ... Lord Dalhousie was by no
means averse to frank dissent, provided _in the manner_ it was never
forgotten that he was Governor-General. Like his great predecessor Lord
Wellesley, he was jealous of all familiarity and resented it.... The
general sentiment of those who worked under that ἄναξ ανδρῶν was one of
strong and admiring affection ... and we doubt if a Governor-General
ever embarked on the Hoogly amid deeper feeling than attended him who,
shattered by sorrow and physical suffering, but erect and undaunted,
quitted Calcutta on the 6th March 1856.”[40]

His successor was Lord Canning, whose confidence in Yule and personal
regard for him became as marked as his predecessor’s.

In the autumn of 1856, Yule took leave and came home. Much of his
time while in England was occupied with making arrangements for the
production of an improved edition of his book on Burma, which so
far had been a mere government report. These were completed to his
satisfaction, and on the eve of returning to India, he wrote to his
publishers[41] that the correction of the proof sheets and general
supervision of the publication had been undertaken by his friend the
Rev. W. D. Maclagan, formerly an officer of the Madras army (and now
Archbishop of York).

Whilst in England, Yule had renewed his intimacy with his old friend
Colonel Robert Napier, then also on furlough, a visitor whose kindly
sympathetic presence always brought special pleasure also to Yule’s
wife and child. One result of this intercourse was that the friends
decided to return together to India. Accordingly they sailed from
Marseilles towards the end of April, and at Aden were met by the
astounding news of the outbreak of the Mutiny.

On his arrival in Calcutta Yule, who retained his appointment of Under
Secretary to Government, found his work indefinitely increased. Every
available officer was called into the field, and Yule’s principal
centre of activity was shifted to the great fortress of Allahabad,
forming the principal base of operations against the rebels. Not only
had he to strengthen or create defences at Allahabad and elsewhere,
but on Yule devolved the principal burden of improvising accommodation
for the European troops then pouring into India, which ultimately
meant providing for an army of 100,000 men. His task was made the
more difficult by the long-standing chronic friction, then and long
after, existing between the officers of the Queen’s and the Company’s
services. But in a far more important matter he was always fortunate.
As he subsequently recorded in a Note for Government: “Through all
consciousness of mistakes and shortcomings, I have felt that I had the
confidence of those whom I served, a feeling which has lightened many a
weight.”

It was at Allahabad that Yule, in the intervals of more serious work,
put the last touches to his Burma book. The preface of the English
edition is dated, “Fortress of Allahabad, Oct. 3, 1857,” and contains
a passage instinct with the emotions of the time. After recalling
the “joyous holiday” on the Irawady, he goes on: “But for ourselves,
standing here on the margin of these rivers, which a few weeks ago were
red with the blood of our murdered brothers and sisters, and straining
the ear to catch the echo of our avenging artillery, it is difficult to
turn the mind to what seem dreams of past days of peace and security;
and memory itself grows dim in the attempt to repass the gulf which
the last few months has interposed between the present and the time to
which this narrative refers.”[42]

When he wrote these lines, the first relief had just taken place, and
the second defence of Lucknow was beginning. The end of the month saw
Sir Colin Campbell’s advance to the second—the real—relief of Lucknow.
Of Sir Colin, Yule wrote and spoke with warm regard: “Sir Colin was
delightful, and when in a good humour and at his best, always reminded
me very much, both in manner and talk, of the General (_i.e._ General
White, his wife’s father). The voice was just the same and the quiet
gentle manner, with its underlying keen dry humour. But then if you did
happen to offend Sir Colin, it was like treading on crackers, which was
not our General’s way.”

When Lucknow had been relieved, besieged, reduced, and finally
remodelled by the grand Roads and Demolitions Scheme of his friend
Napier, the latter came down to Allahabad, and he and Yule sought
diversion in playing quoits and skittles, the only occasion on which
either of them is known to have evinced any liking for games.

Before this time Yule had succeeded his friend Baker as _de facto_
Secretary to Government for Public Works, and on Baker’s retirement
in 1858, Yule was formally appointed his successor.[43] Baker and
Yule had, throughout their association, worked in perfect unison,
and the very differences in their characters enhanced the value of
their co-operation; the special qualities of each friend mutually
strengthened and completed each other. Yule’s was by far the more
original and creative mind, Baker’s the more precise and, at least in
a professional sense, the more highly-trained organ. In chivalrous
sense of honour, devotion to duty, and natural generosity, the men
stood equal; but while Yule was by nature impatient and irritable, and
liable, until long past middle age, to occasional sudden bursts of
uncontrollable anger, generally followed by periods of black depression
and almost absolute silence,[44] Baker was the very reverse. Partly by
natural temperament, but also certainly by severe self-discipline, his
manner was invincibly placid and his temper imperturbable.[45] Yet none
was more tenacious in maintaining whatever he judged right.

Baker, whilst large-minded in great matters, was extremely conventional
in small ones, and Yule must sometimes have tried his feelings
in this respect. The particulars of one such tragic occurrence
have survived. Yule, who was colour-blind,[46] and in early life
whimsically obstinate in maintaining his own view of colours, had
selected some cloth for trousers undeterred by his tailor’s timid
remonstrance of “Not _quite_ your usual taste, sir.” The result was
that the Under-Secretary to Government startled official Calcutta by
appearing in brilliant claret-coloured raiment. Baker remonstrated:
“Claret-colour! Nonsense, my trousers are silver grey,” said Yule, and
entirely declined to be convinced. “I think I _did_ convince him at
last,” said Baker with some pride, when long after telling the story to
the present writer. “And _then_ he gave them up?” “Oh, no,” said Sir
William ruefully, “he wore those claret-coloured trousers to the very
end.” That episode probably belonged to the Dalhousie period.

When Yule resumed work in the Secretariat at Calcutta at the close of
the Mutiny, the inevitable arrears of work were enormous. This may be
the proper place to notice more fully his action with respect to the
choice of gauge for Indian railways already adverted to in brief. As
we have seen, his own convictions led to the adoption of the metre
gauge over a great part of India. This policy had great disadvantages
not at first foreseen, and has since been greatly modified. In
justice to Yule, however, it should be remembered that the conditions
and requirements of India have largely altered, alike through the
extraordinary growth of the Indian export, especially the grain, trade,
and the development of new necessities for Imperial defence. These new
features, however, did but accentuate defects inherent in the system,
but which only prolonged practical experience made fully apparent.

At the outset the supporters of the narrow gauge seemed to have the
stronger position, as they were able to show that the cost was much
less, the rails employed being only about ⅔rds the weight of those
required by the broad gauge, and many other subsidiary expenses also
proportionally less. On the other hand, as time passed and practical
experience was gained, its opponents were able to make an even stronger
case against the narrow gauge. The initial expenses were undoubtedly
less, but the durability was also less. Thus much of the original
saving was lost in the greater cost of maintenance, whilst the small
carrying capacity of the rolling stock and loss of time and labour in
shifting goods at every break of gauge, were further serious causes of
waste, which the internal commercial development of India daily made
more apparent. Strategic needs also were clamant against the dangers
of the narrow gauge in any general scheme of Indian defence. Yule’s
connection with the Public Works Department had long ceased ere the
question of the gauges reached its most acute stage, but his interest
and indirect participation in the conflict survived. In this matter
a certain parental tenderness for a scheme which he had helped to
originate, combined with his warm friendship for some of the principal
supporters of the narrow gauge, seem to have influenced his views
more than he himself was aware. Certainly his judgment in this matter
was not impartial, although, as always in his case, it was absolutely
sincere and not consciously biased.

In reference to Yule’s services in the period following the Mutiny,
Lord Canning’s subsequent Minute of 1862 may here be fitly quoted. In
this the Governor-General writes: “I have long ago recorded my opinion
of the value of his services in 1858 and 1859, when with a crippled
and overtaxed staff of Engineer officers, many of them young and
inexperienced, the G.-G. had to provide rapidly for the accommodation
of a vast English army, often in districts hitherto little known, and
in which the authority of the Government was barely established, and
always under circumstances of difficulty and urgency. I desire to
repeat that the Queen’s army in India was then greatly indebted to
Lieut.-Colonel Yule’s judgment, earnestness, and ability; and this to
an extent very imperfectly understood by many of the officers who held
commands in that army.

“Of the manner in which the more usual duties of his office have
been discharged it is unnecessary for me to speak. It is, I believe,
known and appreciated as well by the Home Government as by the
Governor-General in Council.”

In the spring of 1859 Yule felt the urgent need of a rest, and took
the, at that time, most unusual step of coming home on three months’
leave, which as the voyage then occupied a month each way, left him
only one month at home. He was accompanied by his elder brother George,
who had not been out of India for thirty years. The visit home of the
two brothers was as bright and pleasant as it was brief, but does not
call for further notice.

In 1860, Yule’s health having again suffered, he took short leave to
Java. His journal of this tour is very interesting, but space does
not admit of quotation here. He embodied some of the results of his
observations in a lecture he delivered on his return to Calcutta.

During these latter years of his service in India, Yule owed much
happiness to the appreciative friendship of Lord Canning and the ready
sympathy of Lady Canning. If he shared their tours in an official
capacity, the intercourse was much more than official. The noble
character of Lady Canning won from Yule such wholehearted chivalrous
devotion as, probably, he felt for no other friend save, perhaps in
after days, Sir Bartle Frere. And when her health failed, it was to
Yule’s special care that Lord Canning entrusted his wife during a tour
in the Hills. Lady Canning was known to be very homesick, and one day
as the party came in sight of some ilexes (the evergreen oak), Yule
sought to cheer her by calling out pleasantly: “Look, Lady Canning!
There are _oaks_!” “No, no, Yule, _not_ oaks,” cried Sir C. B. “They
are (solemnly) IBEXES.” “No, _not_ Ibexes, Sir C., you mean SILEXES,”
cried Capt. ——, the A.D.C.; Lady Canning and Yule the while almost
choking with laughter.

On another and later occasion, when the Governor-General’s camp was
peculiarly dull and stagnant, every one yawning and grumbling, Yule
effected a temporary diversion by pretending to tap the telegraph
wires, and circulating through camp, what purported to be, the usual
telegraphic abstract of news brought to Bombay by the latest English
mail. The news was of the most astounding character, with just enough
air of probability, in minor details, to pass muster with a dull
reader. The effect was all he could wish—or rather more—and there was
a general flutter in the camp. Of course the Governor-General and one
or two others were in the secret, and mightily relished the diversion.
But this pleasant and cheering intercourse was drawing to its mournful
close. On her way back from Darjeeling, in November, 1861, Lady Canning
(not then in Yule’s care) was unavoidably exposed to the malaria of a
specially unhealthy season. A few days’ illness followed, and on 18th
November, 1861, she passed calmly to

    “That remaining rest where night and tears are o’er.”[47]

It was to Yule that Lord Canning turned in the first anguish of his
loss, and on this faithful friend devolved the sad privilege of
preparing her last resting-place. This may be told in the touching
words of Lord Canning’s letter to his only sister, written on the day
of Lady Canning’s burial, in the private garden at Barrackpoor[48]:—

“The funeral is over, and my own darling lies buried in a spot which
I am sure she would have chosen of all others.... From the grave can
be seen the embanked walk leading from the house to the river’s edge,
which she made as a landing-place three years ago, and from within 3
or 4 paces of the grave there is a glimpse of the terrace-garden and
its balustrades, which she made near the house, and of the part of
the grounds with which she most occupied herself.... I left Calcutta
yesterday ... and on arriving here, went to look at the precise spot
chosen for the grave. I could see by the clear full moon ... that it
was exactly right. Yule was there superintending the workmen, and
before daylight this morning a solid masonry vault had been completely
finished.

“Bowie [Military Secretary] and Yule have done all this for me. It
has all been settled since my poor darling died. She liked Yule.
They used to discuss together her projects of improvement for this
place, architecture, gardening, the Cawnpore monument, etc., and they
generally agreed. He knew her tastes well....”

The coffin, brought on a gun-carriage from Calcutta, “was carried by
twelve soldiers of the 6th Regiment (Queen’s), the A.D.C.’s bearing
the pall. There were no hired men or ordinary funeral attendants of
any kind at any part of the ceremony, and no lookers-on.... Yule was
the only person not of the household staff. Had others who had asked”
to attend “been allowed to do so, the numbers would have been far too
large.

“On coming near the end of the terrace walk I saw that the turf
between the walk and the grave, and for several yards all round the
grave, was strewed thick with palm branches and bright fresh-gathered
flowers—quite a thick carpet. It was a little matter, but so exactly
what she would have thought of.”[49]

And, therefore, Yule thought of this for her! He also recorded the
scene two days later in some graceful and touching lines, privately
printed, from which the following may be quoted:

    “When night lowered black, and the circling shroud
     Of storm rolled near, and stout hearts learned dismay;
     Not Hers! To her tried Lord a Light and Stay
     Even in the Earthquake and the palpable cloud
     Of those dark months; and when a fickle crowd
     Panted for blood and pelted wrath and scorn
     On him she loved, her courage never stooped:
     But when the clouds were driven, and the day
     Poured Hope and glorious Sunshine, she who had borne,
     The night with such strong Heart, withered and drooped,
     Our queenly lily, and smiling passed away.
     Now! let no fouling touch profane her clay,
     Nor odious pomps and funeral tinsels mar
     Our grief. But from our England’s cannon car
     Let England’s soldiers bear her to the tomb
     Prepared by loving hands. Before her bier
     Scatter victorious palms; let Rose’s bloom
     Carpet its passage....”

Yule’s deep sympathy in this time of sorrow strengthened the friendship
Lord Canning had long felt for him, and when the time approached for
the Governor-General to vacate his high office, he invited Yule, who
was very weary of India, to accompany him home, where his influence
would secure Yule congenial employment. Yule’s weariness of India at
this time was extreme. Moreover, after serving under such leaders as
Lord Dalhousie and Lord Canning, and winning their full confidence and
friendship, it was almost repugnant to him to begin afresh with new
men and probably new measures, with which he might not be in accord.
Indeed, some little clouds were already visible on the horizon. In
these circumstances, it is not surprising that Yule, under an impulse
of lassitude and impatience, when accepting Lord Canning’s offer,
also ‘burnt his boats’ by sending in his resignation of the service.
This decision Yule took against the earnest advice of his anxious and
devoted wife, and for a time the results justified all her misgivings.
She knew well, from past experience, how soon Yule wearied in the
absence of compulsory employment. And in the event of the life in
England not suiting him, for even Lord Canning’s good-will might
not secure perfectly congenial employment for his talents, she knew
well that his health and spirits would be seriously affected. She,
therefore, with affectionate solicitude, urged that he should adopt the
course previously followed by his friend Baker, that is, come home on
furlough, and only send in his resignation after he saw clearly what
his prospects of home employment were, and what he himself wished in
the matter.

Lord Canning and Yule left Calcutta late in March, 1862; at Malta
they parted never to meet again in this world. Lord Canning proceeded
to England, and Yule joined his wife and child in Rome. Only a few
weeks later, at Florence, came as a thunderclap the announcement of
Lord Canning’s unexpected death in London, on 17th June. Well does
the present writer remember the day that fatal news came, and Yule’s
deep anguish, not assuredly for the loss of his prospects, but for
the loss of a most noble and magnanimous friend, a statesman whose
true greatness was, both then and since, most imperfectly realised by
the country for which he had worn himself out.[50] Shortly after Yule
went to England,[51] where he was cordially received by Lord Canning’s
representatives, who gave him a touching remembrance of his lost
friend, in the shape of the silver travelling candlesticks, which had
habitually stood on Lord Canning’s writing-table.[52] But his offer to
write Lord Canning’s _Life_ had no result, as the relatives, following
the then recent example of the Hastings family, in the case of another
great Governor-General, refused to revive discussion by the publication
of any Memoir.

Nor did Yule find any suitable opening for employment in England, so
after two or three months spent in visiting old friends, he rejoined
his family in the Black Forest, where he sought occupation in renewing
his knowledge of German. But it must be confessed that his mood both
then and for long after was neither happy nor wholesome. The winter
of 1862 was spent somewhat listlessly, partly in Germany and partly
at the Hôtel des Bergues, Geneva, where his old acquaintance Colonel
Tronchin was hospitably ready to open all doors. The picturesque figure
of John Ruskin also flits across the scene at this time. But Yule was
unoccupied and restless, and could neither enjoy Mr. Ruskin’s criticism
of his sketches nor the kindly hospitality of his Genevan hosts. Early
in 1863 he made another fruitless visit to London, where he remained
four or five months, but found no opening. Though unproductive of work,
this year brought Yule official recognition of his services in the
shape of the C.B., for which Lord Canning had long before recommended
him.[53]

On rejoining his wife and child at Mornex in Savoy, Yule found the
health of the former seriously impaired. During his absence, the kind
and able English Doctor at Geneva had felt obliged to inform Mrs. Yule
that she was suffering from disease of the heart, and that her life
might end suddenly at any moment. Unwilling to add to Yule’s anxieties,
she made all necessary arrangements, but did not communicate this
intelligence until he had done all he wished and returned, when she
broke it to him very gently. Up to this year Mrs. Yule, though not
strong and often ailing, had not allowed herself to be considered an
invalid, but from this date doctor’s orders left her no choice in the
matter.[54]

About this time, Yule took in hand the first of his studies of mediæval
travellers. His translation of the _Travels of Friar Jordanus_ was
probably commenced earlier; it was completed during the leisurely
journey by carriage between Chambéry and Turin, and the Dedication
to Sir Bartle Frere written during a brief halt at Genoa, from which
place it is dated. Travelling slowly and pleasantly by _vetturino_
along the Riviera di Levante, the family came to Spezzia, then little
more than a quiet village. A chance encounter with agreeable residents
disposed Yule favourably towards the place, and a few days later he
opened negotiations for land to build a house! Most fortunately for
himself and all concerned these fell through, and the family continued
their journey to Tuscany, and settled for the winter in a long rambling
house, with pleasant garden, at Pisa, where Yule was able to continue
with advantage his researches into mediæval travel in the East. He paid
frequent visits to Florence, where he had many pleasant acquaintances,
not least among them Charles Lever (“Harry Lorrequer”), with whom
acquaintance ripened into warm and enduring friendship. At Florence he
also made the acquaintance of the celebrated Marchese Gino Capponi, and
of many other Italian men of letters. To this winter of 1863–64 belongs
also the commencement of a lasting friendship with the illustrious
Italian historian, Villari, at that time holding an appointment at
Pisa. Another agreeable acquaintance, though less intimate, was formed
with John Ball, the well-known President of the Alpine Club, then
resident at Pisa, and with many others, among whom the name of a very
cultivated German scholar, H. Meyer, specially recurs to memory.

In the spring of 1864, Yule took a spacious and delightful old villa,
situated in the highest part of the Bagni di Lucca,[55] and commanding
lovely views over the surrounding chestnut-clad hills and winding river.

Here he wrote much of what ultimately took form in _Cathay and
the Way Thither_. It was this summer, too, that Yule commenced his
investigations among the Venetian archives, and also visited the
province of Friuli in pursuit of materials for the history of one
of his old travellers, the _Beato Odorico_. At Verona—then still
Austrian—he had the amusing experience of being arrested for sketching
too near the fortifications. However, his captors had all the usual
Austrian _bonhomie_ and courtesy, and Yule experienced no real
inconvenience. He was much more disturbed when, a day or two later, the
old mother of one of his Venetian acquaintances insisted on embracing
him on account of his supposed likeness to Garibaldi!

As winter approached, a warmer climate became necessary for Mrs. Yule,
and the family proceeded to Sicily, landing at Messina in October,
1864. From this point, Yule made a very interesting excursion to the
then little known group of the Lipari Islands, in the company of that
eminent geologist, the late Robert Mallet, F.R.S., a most agreeable
companion.

On Martinmas Day, the Yules reached the beautiful capital of Sicily,
Palermo, which, though they knew it not, was to be their home—a very
happy one—for nearly eleven years.

During the ensuing winter and spring, Yule continued the preparation
of _Cathay_, but his appetite for work not being satisfied by this,
he, when in London in 1865, volunteered to make an Index to the third
decade of the _Journal of the Royal Geographical Society_, in exchange
for a set of such volumes as he did not possess. That was long before
any Index Society existed; but Yule had special and very strong views
of his own as to what an Index should be, and he spared no labour
to realise his ideal.[56] This proved a heavier task than he had
anticipated, and he got very weary before the Index was completed.

In the spring of 1866, _Cathay and the Way Thither_ appeared, and
at once took the high place which it has ever since retained. In the
autumn of the same year Yule’s attention was momentarily turned in a
very different direction by a local insurrection, followed by severe
reprisals, and the bombardment of Palermo by the Italian Fleet. His
sick wife was for some time under rifle as well as shell fire; but
cheerfully remarking that “every bullet has its billet,” she remained
perfectly serene and undisturbed. It was the year of the last war with
Austria, and also of the suppression of the Monastic Orders in Sicily;
two events which probably helped to produce the outbreak, of which Yule
contributed an account to _The Times_, and subsequently a more detailed
one to the _Quarterly Review_.[57]

Yule had no more predilection for the Monastic Orders than most of
his countrymen, but his sense of justice was shocked by the cruel
incidence of the measure in many cases, and also by the harshness with
which both it and the punishment of suspected insurgents was carried
out. Cholera was prevalent in Italy that year, but Sicily, which had
maintained stringent quarantine, entirely escaped until large bodies
of troops were landed to quell the insurrection, when a devastating
epidemic immediately ensued, and re-appeared in 1867. In after years,
when serving on the Army Sanitary Committee at the India Office, Yule
more than once quoted this experience as indicating that quarantine
restrictions may, in some cases, have more value than British medical
authority is usually willing to admit.

In 1867, on his return from London, Yule commenced systematic work on
his long projected new edition of the _Travels of Marco Polo_. It was
apparently in this year that the scheme first took definite form, but
it had long been latent in his mind. The Public Libraries of Palermo
afforded him much good material, whilst occasional visits to the
Libraries of Venice, Florence, Paris, and London, opened other sources.
But his most important channel of supply came from his very extensive
private correspondence, extending to nearly all parts of Europe
and many centres in Asia. His work brought him many new and valued
friends, indeed too many to mention, but amongst whom, as belonging
specially to this period, three honoured names must be recalled here:
Commendatore (afterwards Baron) CRISTOFORO NEGRI, the large-hearted
Founder and First President of the Geographical Society of Italy,
from whom Yule received his first public recognition as a geographer,
Commendatore GUGLIELMO BERCHET (affectionately nicknamed _il Bello e
Buono_), ever generous in learned help, who became a most dear and
honoured friend, and the Hon. GEORGE P. MARSH, U.S. Envoy to the Court
of Italy, a man, both as scholar and friend, unequalled in his nation,
perhaps almost unique anywhere.

Those who only knew Yule in later years, may like some account of
his daily life at this time. It was his custom to rise fairly early;
in summer he sometimes went to bathe in the sea,[58] or for a walk
before breakfast; more usually he would write until breakfast, which
he preferred to have alone. After breakfast he looked through his
notebooks, and before ten o’clock was usually walking rapidly to the
library where his work lay. He would work there until two or three
o’clock, when he returned home, read the _Times_, answered letters,
received or paid visits, and then resumed work on his book, which he
often continued long after the rest of the household were sleeping. Of
course his family saw but little of him under these circumstances, but
when he had got a chapter of _Marco_ into shape, or struck out some
new discovery of interest, he would carry it to his wife to read. She
always took great interest in his work, and he had great faith in her
literary instinct as a sound as well as sympathetic critic.

The first fruits of Yule’s Polo studies took the form of a review of
Pauthier’s edition of _Marco Polo_, contributed to the _Quarterly
Review_ in 1868.

In 1870 the great work itself appeared, and received prompt generous
recognition by the grant of the very beautiful gold medal of the
Geographical Society of Italy,[59] followed in 1872 by the award of
the Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, while the
Geographical and Asiatic Societies of Paris, the Geographical Societies
of Italy and Berlin, the Academy of Bologna, and other learned bodies,
enrolled him as an Honorary Member.

Reverting to 1869, we may note that Yule, when passing through Paris
early in the spring, became acquainted, through his friend M. Charles
Maunoir, with the admirable work of exploration lately performed by
Lieut. Francis Garnier of the French Navy. It was a time of much
political excitement in France, the eve of the famous _Plébiscite_,
and the importance of Garnier’s work was not then recognised by his
countrymen. Yule saw its value, and on arrival in London went straight
to Sir Roderick Murchison, laid the facts before him, and suggested
that no other traveller of the year had so good a claim to one of the
two gold medals of the R.G.S. as this French naval Lieutenant. Sir
Roderick was propitious, and accordingly in May the Patron’s medal
was assigned to Garnier, who was touchingly grateful to Yule; whilst
the French Minister of Marine marked his appreciation of Yule’s good
offices by presenting him with the magnificent volumes commemorating
the expedition.[60]

Yule was in Paris in 1871, immediately after the suppression of the
Commune, and his letters gave interesting accounts of the extraordinary
state of affairs then prevailing. In August, he served as President of
the Geographical Section of the British Association at its Edinburgh
meeting.

On his return to Palermo, he devoted himself specially to the
geography of the Oxus region, and the result appeared next year in his
introduction and notes to Wood’s _Journey_. Soon after his return to
Palermo, he became greatly interested in the plans, about which he was
consulted, of an English church, the gift to the English community of
two of its oldest members, Messrs Ingham and Whitaker. Yule’s share in
the enterprise gradually expanded, until he became a sort of volunteer
clerk of the works, to the great benefit of his health, as this
occupation during the next three years, whilst adding to his interests,
also kept him longer in the open air than would otherwise have been the
case. It was a real misfortune to Yule (and one of which he was himself
at times conscious) that he had no taste for any out-of-door pursuits,
neither for any form of natural science, nor for gardening, nor for
any kind of sport nor games. Nor did he willingly ride.[61] He was
always restless away from his books. There can be no doubt that want of
sufficient air and exercise, reacting on an impaired liver, had much
to do with Yule’s unsatisfactory state of health and frequent extreme
depression. There was no lack of agreeable and intelligent society
at Palermo (society that the present writer recalls with cordial
regard), to which every winter brought pleasant temporary additions,
both English and foreign, the best of whom generally sought Yule’s
acquaintance. Old friends too were not wanting; many found their way to
Palermo, and when such came, he was willing to show them hospitality
and to take them excursions, and occasionally enjoyed these. But though
the beautiful city and surrounding country were full of charm and
interest, Yule was too much pre-occupied by his own special engrossing
pursuits ever really to get the good of his surroundings, of which
indeed he often seemed only half conscious.

By this time Yule had obtained, without ever having sought it, a
distinct and, in some respects, quite unique position in geographical
science. Although his _Essay on the Geography of the Oxus Region_
(1872) received comparatively little public attention at home, it had
yet made its mark once for all,[62] and from this time, if not earlier,
Yule’s high authority in all questions of Central Asian geography was
generally recognised. He had long ere this, almost unconsciously,
laid the broad foundations of that “Yule method,” of which Baron von
Richthofen has written so eloquently, declaring that not only in his
own land, “but also in the literatures of France, Italy, Germany,
and other countries, the powerful stimulating influence of the Yule
method is visible.”[63] More than one writer has indeed boldly compared
Central Asia before Yule to Central Africa before Livingstone!

Yule had wrought from sheer love of the work and without expectation
of public recognition, and it was therefore a great surprise as well
as gratification to him, to find that the demand for his _Marco Polo_
was such as to justify the appearance of a second edition only a few
years after the first. The preparation of this enlarged edition, with
much other miscellaneous work (see subjoined bibliography), and the
superintendence of the building of the church already named, kept him
fully occupied for the next three years.

Amongst the parerga and miscellaneous occupations of Yule’s leisure
hours in the period 1869–74, may be mentioned an interesting
correspondence with Professor W. W. Skeat on the subject of _William of
Palerne_ and Sicilian examples of the Werwolf; the skilful analysis and
exposure of Klaproth’s false geography;[64] the purchase and despatch
of Sicilian seeds and young trees for use in the Punjab, at the request
of the Indian Forestry Department; translations (prepared for friends)
of tracts on the cultivation of Sumach and the collection of Manna as
practised in Sicily; also a number of small services rendered to the
South Kensington Museum, at the request of the late Sir Henry Cole.
These latter included obtaining Italian and Sicilian bibliographic
contributions to the Science and Art Department’s _Catalogue of Books
on Art_, selecting architectural subjects to be photographed;[65]
negotiating the purchase of the original drawings illustrative of
Padre B. Gravina’s great work on the Cathedral of Monreale; and
superintending the execution of a copy in mosaic of the large mosaic
picture (in the Norman Palatine Chapel, Palermo,) of the Entry of our
Lord into Jerusalem.

In the spring of 1875, just after the publication of the second
edition of _Marco Polo_, Yule had to mourn the loss of his noble wife.
He was absent from Sicily at the time, but returned a few hours after
her death on 30th April. She had suffered for many years from a severe
form of heart disease, but her end was perfect peace. She was laid to
rest, amid touching tokens of both public and private sympathy, in the
beautiful camposanto on Monte Pellegrino. What her loss was to Yule
only his oldest and closest friends were in a position to realise.
Long years of suffering had impaired neither the soundness of her
judgment nor the sweetness, and even gaiety, of her happy, unselfish
disposition. And in spirit, as even in appearance, she retained to the
very last much of the radiance of her youth. Nor were her intellectual
gifts less remarkable. Few who had once conversed with her ever forgot
her, and certainly no one who had once known her intimately ever ceased
to love her.[66]

Shortly after this calamity, Yule removed to London, and on the
retirement of his old friend, Sir William Baker, from the India Council
early that autumn, Lord Salisbury at once selected him for the vacant
seat. Nothing would ever have made him a party-man, but he always
followed Lord Salisbury with conviction, and worked under him with
steady confidence.

In 1877 Yule married, as his second wife, the daughter of an old
friend,[67] a very amiable woman twenty years his junior, who made
him very happy until her untimely death in 1881. From the time of his
joining the India Council, his duties at the India Office of course
occupied a great part of his time, but he also continued to do an
immense amount of miscellaneous literary work, as may be seen by
reference to the subjoined bibliography, (itself probably incomplete).
In Council he invariably “showed his strong determination to endeavour
to deal with questions on their own merits and not only by custom and
precedent.”[68] Amongst subjects in which he took a strong line of his
own in the discussions of the Council, may be specially instanced his
action in the matter of the cotton duties (in which he defended native
Indian manufactures as against hostile Manchester interests); the
Vernacular Press Act, the necessity for which he fully recognised; and
the retention of Kandahar, for which he recorded his vote in a strong
minute. In all these three cases, which are typical of many others,
his opinion was overruled, but having been carefully and deliberately
formed, it remained unaffected by defeat.

In all matters connected with Central Asian affairs, Yule’s opinion
always carried great weight; some of his most competent colleagues
indeed preferred his authority in this field to that of even Sir Henry
Rawlinson, possibly for the reason given by Sir M. Grant Duff, who has
epigrammatically described the latter as good in Council but dangerous
in counsel.[69]

Yule’s courageous independence and habit of looking at all public
questions by the simple light of what appeared to him right, yet
without fads or doctrinairism, earned for him the respect of the
successive Secretaries of State under whom he served, and the warm
regard and confidence of his other colleagues. The value attached to
his services in Council was sufficiently shown by the fact that when
the period of ten years (for which members are usually appointed),
was about to expire, Lord Hartington (now Duke of Devonshire), caused
Yule’s appointment to be renewed for life, under a special Act of
Parliament passed for this purpose in 1885.

His work as a member of the Army Sanitary Committee, brought him into
communication with Miss Florence Nightingale, a privilege which he
greatly valued and enjoyed, though he used to say: “She is worse than a
Royal Commission to answer, and, in the most gracious charming manner
possible, immediately finds out all I don’t know!” Indeed his devotion
to the “Lady-in-Chief” was scarcely less complete than Kinglake’s.

In 1880, Yule was appointed to the Board of Visitors of the Government
Indian Engineering College at Cooper’s Hill, a post which added to his
sphere of interests without materially increasing his work. In 1882, he
was much gratified by being named an Honorary Fellow of the Society of
Antiquaries of Scotland, more especially as it was to fill one of the
two vacancies created by the deaths of Thomas Carlyle and Dean Stanley.

Yule had been President of the Hakluyt Society from 1877, and in
1885 was elected President also of the Royal Asiatic Society. He
would probably also have been President of the Royal Geographical
Society, but for an untoward incident. Mention has already been made
of his constant determination to judge all questions by the simple
touchstone of what he believed to be right, irrespective of personal
considerations. It was in pursuance of these principles that, at the
cost of great pain to himself and some misrepresentation, he in 1878
sundered his long connection with the Royal Geographical Society,
by resigning his seat on their Council, solely in consequence of
their adoption of what he considered a wrong policy. This severance
occurred just when it was intended to propose him as President. Some
years later, at the personal request of the late Lord Aberdare, a
President in all respects worthy of the best traditions of that great
Society, Yule consented to rejoin the Council, which he re-entered as a
Vice-President.

In 1883, the University of Edinburgh celebrated its Tercentenary, when
Yule was selected as one of the recipients of the honorary degree
of LL.D. His letters from Edinburgh, on this occasion, give a very
pleasant and amusing account of the festivity and of the celebrities
he met. Nor did he omit to chronicle the envious glances cast, as he
alleged, by some British men of science on the splendours of foreign
Academic attire, on the yellow robes of the Sorbonne, and the Palms
of the Institute of France! Pasteur was, he wrote, the one most
enthusiastically acclaimed of all who received degrees.

I think it was about the same time that M. Renan was in England, and
called upon Sir Henry Maine, Yule, and others at the India Office.