Some things indeed there be therein which he beheld not but these he heard from men of credit and veracity. For ye shall find therein all kinds of wonderful things, and the divers histories of the Great Hermenia, and of Persia, and of the Land of the Tartars, and of India, and of many another country of which our Book doth speak, particularly and in regular succession, according to the description of Messer Marco Polo, a wise and noble citizen of Venice, as he saw them with his own eyes. Polo's writings included descriptions of cannibals and spice-growers.Great Princes, Emperors, and Kings, Dukes and Marquises, Counts, Knights, and Burgesses! and People of all degrees who desire to get knowledge of the various races of mankind and of the diversities of the sundry regions of the World, take this Book and cause it to be read to you. Book Four describes some of the then-recent wars among the Mongols and some of the regions of the far north, like Russia. Book Three describes some of the coastal regions of the East: Japan, India, Sri Lanka, South-East Asia, and the east coast of Africa.
Book Two describes China and the court of Kublai Khan. Book One describes the lands of the Middle East and Central Asia that Marco encountered on his way to China. He tells the story of the holy shoemaker, the wicked caliph and the three kings, among a great many others, evoking a remote and long-vanished world with color and immediacy. The accounts of his travels provide a fascinating glimpse of the different societies he encountered: their religions, customs, ceremonies, and way of life on the spices and silks of the East on precious gems, exotic vegetation, and wild beasts. On his return to the West, he was made a prisoner of war and met Rustichello of Pisa, with whom he collaborated on this book.
His voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China, after which he served the Kublai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions. Marco Polo was the most famous traveler of his time. The Travels of Marco Polo, is a 13th-century travelogue compiled by Rustichello da Pisa from stories told by Italian explorer Marco Polo, describing Polo's travels through Asia between 12, and his experiences at the court of Kublai Khan. Revised from Marsden's translation and edited with introduction by Manuel Komroff. Facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software.
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