Polo

Polo, MARCO, the greatest of mediæval travellers, was born of a noble family of Dalmatian origin, at Venice, in 1254. His father, Nicolo Polo, and his uncle, Maffeo Polo, both enterprising merchants, had, previous to his birth, set out on a mercantile expedition, visiting Constantinople, the Crimea, and the court of Barka Khan at Sarai. Thence they travelled round the north side of the Caspian Sea to Bokhara, and here they fell in with some envoys returning from Hulagu in Persia to his brother the Great Khan Kublai, and by them were persuaded to accompany them to Cathay. They were well received by Kublai, then either at Cambaluc (Peking) or his summer residence at Shangtu (Coleridge's Xanadu), north of the Great Wall. He listened eagerly to their reports concerning the peoples and mode of government in Europe, and commissioned them as envoys to the pope, bearing letters requesting him to send 100 Europeans learned in the sciences and arts, to act as instructors to the Mongols. They reached Venice in 1269, found Rome in the confusion of a long interregnum, and, after the new pope (Gregory X.) was elected, could only get two Dominicans, and even these had hardly commenced the journey when they lost heart and turned back. The Polos made their final start in the November of 1271, taking with them young Marco, and arrived again at the court of Kublai Khan in the spring of 1275, after travelling by Sivas, Mosul, Bagdad, Hormuz, through Khorassan, up the Oxus to the Pamir, by Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan, Lob Nor, and across the great desert of Gobi to Tangut, thence to Shangtu. Their second reception was still more honourable than the first, and the khan took special notice of Marco, from the rapidity with which he learned the customs and language of the Mongols. His wisdom and intelligence also recommended him as a fit envoy to the various neighbouring rulers; and during his residence at their several courts Marco observed closely the manners and customs of the country, and delivered on his return a detailed report to the khan. In various missions he visited the western provinces on the borders of Tibet, Yunnan, northern Burma (Mien), Karakorum, Champa or southern Cochin-China, and Southern India. For three years he served as governor of the town of Yang-chow, and with his uncle helped to reduce the city of Saianfu by constructing mangonels for casting stones. The khan long refused to think of the Polos leaving his court, but at length in the beginning of 1292 they succeeded in obtaining permission to join the escort of a Mongol princess, who was travelling to marry Arghun, khan of Persia, grandson of Kublai's brother Hulagu. They sailed from Chwan-chow in Fukién (Zaitún), but were detained long on the coasts of Sumatra and Southern India, and only reached Persia after two years had passed. Two of the three envoys and most of their attendants had perished. Arghun Khan himself was dead, but the three Polos and the young princess were safe, and she married the late khan's brother and successor. The Venetians finally reached their native city about the end of 1295, and Ramusio tells the story how like Ulysses they were recognised by none of their kinsfolk, and repulsed from the door. They brought with them much wealth in the portable form of precious stones, the fruits of their trading. In 1298 Marco fought his own galley in the great battle of Curzola, in which the Venetians under Dandolo were defeated by the Genoese under Doria, and was taken prisoner and immured for a year in a dungeon at Genoa. Here he dictated to another captive, one Rusticiano of Pisa, an account of his journey through the East. After his liberation he returned to Venice, where he died in 1324, and was buried in the church of S. Lorenzo. The traveller bore among his contemporaries the surname or nickname of Marco Millioni, most probably from his having frequently used that word in his attempts to describe the wealth and splendour of the khan. The wonders he narrated seem to have excited incredulity—even long after Sir Thomas Browne commends the circumspection of the reader who 'shall carry a wary eye on Paulus Venetus, Jovius, Olaus Magnus, Nierembergius, and many others.'

Marco Polo's book consists of two parts: (1) a Prologue, the only part containing personal narrative; (2) a long series of chapters descriptive of notable sights, manners of different states of Asia, especially that of Kublai Khan; and ends with a dull chronicle of the interecine wars of the House of Genghis during the second half of the 13th century. Ser Marco Polo succeeds in almost entirely effacing himself, yet despite his modesty is unconsciously revealed to the eyes of his reader as a man truthful, brave, shrewd, keen-eyed, grave, of few words, fond of sport, with all the due respect of the prosperous man for wealth. He shows throughout a singular lack of humour—Sir Henry Yule cites as almost the solitary instance that in speaking of the khan's paper-money he observes that Kublai might be said to have the true Philosopher's Stone, for he made his money at pleasure out of the bark of trees. Nothing disturbs the even tenor of his narrative—not even when he has to tell of so strange a custom as the couvade among the Gold-teeth on the frontier of Burma. He is no less sparing of scientific observations, and his geographical data are not infrequently the reverse of clear and adequate. He tells us that he acquired several of the languages current in the Mongol empire, and as many as four written characters, but of these Sir Henry Yule thinks Chinese was not one. His work is poorer in information relating to the Chinese proper than anywhere else. Thus, he does not mention the Great Wall, nor yet customs so striking and distinctive as the use of tea, the compressed feet of the ladies, the fishing cormorant, artificial egg-hatching, nor the printing of books. An absurd assertion has been made that block-printing was carried to Europe by our traveller, by him shown to one Panfilo Castaldi, from whom it was learned by John Faust of Mainz; and indeed the printers of Lombardy, misled by patriotic feelings, have stultified themselves by erecting a statue at Feltre to Castaldi, 'the illustrious inventor of movable printing types.' Polo had learned more from men than books, yet it is evident that he had read romances, especially those dealing with the fabulous adventures of Alexander. To these he refers in his notices of the Iron Gate and of Gog and Magog, and of the Dry Tree (Arbre Sol or Arbre See) on the Khorassan frontier. Such stories as these, that of the Land of Darkness, of tailed men, of the great Roc, of trees yielding wine, and the like, go far to account for the grave and matter-of-fact Messer Marco Polo's nickname of Millioni.

Ramusio (1485-1557) assumed that the book was first written in Latin, Marsden supposed in the Venetian dialect, Baldelli-Boni showed in his edition (Flor. 1827) that it was French. There exists an old French text, published by the Paris Société de Géographie in 1824, which M. Paulin-

Paris describes as the French of a foreigner. This Colonel Yule believes the nearest possible approach to Marco's own oral narrative. About eighty MSS. are in existence, showing considerable variations. These fall naturally into four groups: (1) the old French version already mentioned; (2) a revised French version, the basis of M. Pauthier's edition (1865); (3) a considerably abridged Latin version by Francesco Pipino (about 1490)—not identical with, although similar to, the Latin version published by Gryneus at Basel in the Novus Orbis (1532), itself the parent of the 16th-century French editions; (4) a form of the text now alone represented by the Italian recension of Ramusio, published (1559) in vol. ii. of the Navigationi e Viaggi. This last text has been subjected to considerable literary modifications, but undoubtedly contains many new circumstances which are substantially supplementary recollections of Marco Polo himself.

The notes of Marsden's excellent English edition (1818) were abridged by T. Wright for Bohn's 'Antiquarian Library' (1854). Another good English edition is that of Hugh Murray (1844); but all its predecessors were set aside by the admirable edition of Colonel Sir Henry Yule (1871; 2d ed. 1875), containing a faithful English translation from an eclectic text, an exhaustive introduction, notes, and other illustrations from the editor's wide learning and intimate knowledge of the East. French or Italian editions worthy of mention are those of the Soc. de Géog. of Paris (1824), Baldelli-Boni (1827), Lazari (1847), Bartoli (1863), and Pauthier (1865). Sir Francis Palgrave's Merchant and Friar (1837) is of course a mere work of imagination, in which Roger Bacon and Marco Polo are brought together.