MARCO POLO was of a noble Venetian family. Nicolo and Matthew, two brothers, had mercantile establishments at Constantinople and in the Crimea. They quitted Venice for the east in 1254, left Constantinople in 1260, and passed through Bokhara to the court of the Kablai Khan, who sent them back as ambassadors to the Pope, and they reached Acre in 1269, when Nicolo found his wife long dead, but his son Marco grown to 15 years of age. After two years' delay, the two Polo, Nicolo and Maffei, in 1271, taking with them Marco, the young son of the former, set out on their return along with a priest, who, however, soon left them, delivering the Pope's letters into their hands. Starting from Acre, on the eoast of Syria, the Polo were three years and a half upon this journey. They moved by Mosul, Baghdad, Hormuz, they traversed Ker man and Khorasan, Balkh and Baclakhshan, in which last country they seem to have been long detained by the illness of young Marco. From Badakhshan they ascended the Oxus to the lake of Sirikol, and the plateau of Pamir. They crossed the steppe of Pamir, and descended into Kashgar, whence they proceeded by Yarkand and Khoten, and across the great desert of Gobi to the Tangut province on the extreme N.W. • of China, partly within, partly without, the wall. Here they were met by a deputation sent by the Kablai Khan, who was at the time residing at Shang-Tu, about 50 miles north of the wall. Their journey had occupied 3i years. Upon their arrival at Pekin, which they call by the Tartar natue Cambala or Khanbalig, young Marco, then 21 years of age, was taken immediately into favog ; he learned the lang,uege, and for 26 years afterwards was a nobleman of the Great Khan's court, employed in several missions, and in other high offices of state. He came away at last, in A.D. 1294, in charge of a princess who was to be married to the Tartar sovereign of Persia. • lie was sent on a mission through Yunnan to the frontiers of Ave, and successively to Karakorum, to Champa or Southern Cochin-China, and to the Indian Seas, and afterwards by sea via Sumatra and India through Cambay to the Mongol tribe of Bayaut, to select a lady for tho Kablai's great nephew, Arghun Khan of Persia, which ho did, handing over the lady in 1294. Ile is the first
European who speaks of Sumatra. He returned to Venice A.D. 1295. Marco was subsequently taken prisoner at the battle of Curzola (near Lissa), on the 8th September 1298. On his return to his native country, he circulated his travels, in manuscript, amongst his friends. The narrative was in 1298 transcribed by a Genoese named Rustigielo, four years after the death of Kablai Khan. They were first published in Latin in 1320. A copy had been presented by the government of Venice to the Infante Don lienrique iu 1428, from which an edition was published at Lisbon in 1502. The earliest edition published in France bears date 1556. His book was entitled Viaggi di Messer Marco Polo Gentil huoino Venetian°. There are two translations of it into Latin. He treats in his book De Region ibus Orientis. Kablai Khan was the conqueror of Southern China, which the Arabs call Machin, and which Chengiz Khan, his grandfather, had charged his children to conquer, after he himself had gotten the Northern China called Khatai.
Marco Polo sojourned in the hills of Badakhshau for the sake of his health, and he describes the countries of Waken, Pamir, Bolor, and Kashmir. His book and life have been repeatedly published, and in most of the European languages. It was translated in 1818 .by Sir William Marsden, and Colonel Yule has since largely contributed to make the travels known.-1llarsden's Sumatra, p. 4 ; history of Genghiz Can, p. 443 ; Prinsep's Tibet, Tartary, Mongolia, p. 8; Yule's Cathay.