CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
VOYAGES AND TRAVELS
OF
MARCO POLO.
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE._
1891.
INTRODUCTION.
Marco Polo, born in the year 1254, belonged to a noble trading family
in Venice. His father, Nicolo Polo, was led, with a brother Maffei,
by the enterprise of trade, to visit the Crimea. Thence they went
forward to Bokhara, and from Bokhara they were drawn to the coast of
the great Emperor of China, Kubla Khan. Kubla ruled over the wide
regions extending to the coasts of China, which had been conquered by
the Tartar Genghis Khan and his immediate followers. It was Kubla
Khan who had removed the seat of Tartar government to Cambaluc--that
is, Pekin--which he enlarged and glorified. He had also a summer
palace at Shangtu, as Coleridge sang--
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree;
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
Here or at Pekin the Great Khan received, in the father and uncle of
Marco Polo, the first men from whom he heard descriptions of the
civilisation and religion of the West. As means of strength for the
new Eastern Empire, Kubla sent back the two Venetians as his envoys
to the Pope, offering to receive and support a body of men sent to
him by the Pope as teachers of liberal arts and of Christianity. But
when the brothers reached Venice again, the Pope was dead. Clement
IV. died in 1269, and hie successor, Gregory X., was not appointed
until September, 1271. Nicolo Polo found also that his wife was
dead. After staying in Venice for about two years, the brothers,
Nicolo and Maffei, started again for the East; Nicolo taking with him
his son Marco, then seventeen years old. Gregory X. had been
appointed Pope at the time when they started, but in reply to the
large invitation of Kubla to send to the East a company of civilisers
in arts and religion, Pope Gregory X. sent only two Dominicans to
teach theology; and even these men had not courage enough to complete
the journey into China.
Young Marco Polo, in company with his father and his uncle, now
travelled to Ornius, an island at the north side of the entrance of
the Persian Gulf, formed of rock coloured with impregnations of salt,
sulphur, iron, and copper, and about twelve miles round. It yields
now only a revenue from its salt; but in and after Marco Polo's time
it was the great meeting-place of traders between the West and East.
Its trade was transferred afterwards to Gambroon, but its old wealth
suggested Ormus to Milton when he painted, at the beginning of the
second book of "Paradise Lost," the pomp of Satan,
High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind;
Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand,
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold.
Travelling East in search of the barbaric gold [it was Virgil who
first gave it that adjective, Æneid II., 504] and failing to take
ship at Ormus, as they first intended, the Polos went through Persia,
reached the Hill Country of Badakhshan in Central Asia, where young
Marco, in the fresh air of the hills, and of the valleys through
which now some of the head streams of the Oxus, recovered from a long
illness. Thence onward they passed through many regions, not
described again until our own days, over the great desert of Gobi,
which is 1,200 miles long by about 600 broad, to the north-west
provinces of China. So in the spring of 1275 the two brothers had
found their way back to Kubla Khan "in Xanadu," with the young Marco
in their company.
If the brothers had not brought missionaries of civilisation to teach
the East what was known in the West, they had brought in Marco Polo
one quick-witted and observant youth, who studied languages and
customs, and in all ways fitted himself to be the man who should
first bring the East home to the West. Kubla Khan found him apt for
his service, and appointed him, in 1277, a second-class commissioner
attached to the Imperial Council. Young Marco Polo was sent
presently by Kubla Khan upon a mission to Yunnan, the remotest
province in South-western China, and he carried back those lively
accounts of the various peoples over whom he ruled, in which he knew
that Kubla found delight. The two elder Polos settled themselves in
the sunshine of the Great Khan's favour, helping him as they could
with suggestions for the application of convenient knowledge of the
West to his own uses, while Marco's young energy was fully employed.
He was sent again and again on distant missions, and at one time he
was governor, for three years, of the city of Yangchow.
The Polos were not easily to be spared by their great patron, and
their natural desire was to enjoy at home in Venice the fruits of
their toil and enterprise. But in 1292, their aid as experienced
travellers having been sought in taking safely to Tabreez a bride
chosen among the Mongols for a Persian Khan, who was allied in blood
to Kubla, Marco Polo, with his father and his uncle, sailed from
Chinchew. After two years of peril and adventure, in which many of
their companions perished, they delivered the bride safely, but not
to the royal bridegroom; for he was then dead, and she was married to
his son. After this the Polos, having safely weathered every storm,
went home.
In 1298 Marco Polo was among the prisoners taken by the Genoese in a
victory at sea over the Venetians. He remained a prisoner of war
till peace was made between the two republics in July of the next
following year. During this year's imprisonment, Marco Polo was
persuaded by a fellow captive, Rusticiano of Pisa, to amuse himself
by telling through the story of his travels, that, as his friend told
it, Rusticiano might shape all into a book. But for that sea-fight,
and the defeat of Andrea Dandolo and the Venetian navy, Marco Polo
and his travels might have left no more durable record than the
memory of friends whose social hours he had enlivened.
Marco Polo, after his return from the East, married and had three
daughters. Three years after the death of Dante, and three years
before Sir John Mandeville set out upon his travels, Marco Polo died,
at the age of seventy, in the year 1324.
Of the many varying texts of Marco Polo's travels, the oldest in
Italian is translated from a French original. But the original
record by Rusticiano of Pisa was, no doubt, written in Latin.
Rusticiano began with his fellow prisoner's personal record, but went
on to make the book in his own way from materials for which he drew
upon his friend's experience.
What follows belongs to John Pinkerton's edition of Marco Polo, which
is here reprinted.
H. M.
VOYAGES AND TRAVELS OF
MARCO POLO,
_Who in the middle of the thirteenth century passed through a great
part of Asia, all the Dominions of the Tartars, and returned home by
sea through the islands of the East Indies_.*
* Taken chiefly from the accurate edition of Ramusio, compared with
an original manuscript in His Prussian Majesty's library, and with
most of the translations hitherto published.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
It is with ancient writers as with ancient coins, such as understand
them value them above measure, while such as will not be at
sufficient pains to examine them, not only despise them, but also
such as admire them. Thus none are more governed by prejudice than
those who declaim against it, and none greater bigots than such as
are attached to their own opinions from a notion that they think
freely. Yet this zeal for freedom of thought ought to be amended
rather than discouraged, as being in itself commendable, though
sometimes dangerous, by being misapplied. It may, and to say the
truth, to many it does seem a tedious and disagreeable labour to look
so far back as the first springs and dawnings of knowledge; yet,
however they may colour this with pretences to refined taste, it is
in fact no better than an excuse for idleness, and a dislike to the
taking those pains which are requisite to succeed in such inquiries.
The travels of Marco Polo are indeed very old, and are come into our
hands with considerable defects, but they are very valuable for all
that, and very well worthy of our attention. He was the Columbus of
the East Indies, the first that gave a certain and distinct account
of the sea beyond China, and of the free passage thereby through all
the islands of the East Indies back into those countries that are
very well known. It is true that a great part of what he related,
though delivered with much solemnity, and confirmed by the strongest
asseverations, was much called in question, and thought in some
measure beyond all belief. But subsequent discoveries have banished
this incredulity, and what were once esteemed fables have been since
found true relations; and the discourses of Marco Polo, that were
rejected by the supercilious wits of his own time, have been raked
out of the dust of old libraries, deciphered, in a manner, from the
barbarous Latin of monkish translators, and brought into the form we
now have them by the indefatigable pains of the learned Ramusio; a
man whose countenance alone might be sufficient to give credit to
this or any other work; though from the notes we have added, it will
appear that there are intrinsic marks of its value in the performance
itself: yet we owe to Ramusio the being able to discover these, and,
therefore to him we willingly ascribe all glory that results from the
vindication of this curious piece, and the honour of its illustrious
author. To the same excellent person is due the account we have
received of several particulars relating to the personal history of
Marco Polo and his family, of which, in as few words as possible, we
shall give the reader a relation; which, though not absolutely
necessary to the understanding of the book, will be found useful and
entertaining.