The travels of Marco Polo the Venetian Author:Marco Polo Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO BOOK I. PROLOGUE.' Ye emperors, kings, dukes, marquises, earls, and knights, and all other people desirous of knowing the d... more »iversities of the races of mankind, as well as the diversities of kingdoms, provinces, and regions of all parts of the East, read through this book, and ye will find in it the greatest and most marvellous characteristies of the peoples especially of Armenia, Persia, India, and Tartary, as they are severally related in the present work by Marco Polo, a wise and learned citizen of Venice, who states distinctly what things he saw and what things he heard from others. For this book will be a truthful one. It must be known, then, that from the creation of Adam to the present day, no man, whether Pagan, or Saracen, or Christian, or other, of whatever progeny or generation he may have been, ever saw or inquired into so many and such great things as Marco Polo above mentioned. Who, wishing in his secret thoughts that the things he had seen and heard should bo made public by the present work, for the benefit of those who could not see them with their own eyes, he himself being in the year of our Lord 1295 - in prison at Genoa, caused the things which are contained in the present work to be written by master Rustigielo, a citizen of Pisa, who was with him in. the- same prison at Genoa; and he divided it into three parts. 1 This prologue, omitted by JIarsden, is here translated from the Latin text published by the French Geographical Society. It is found in the early French version published by the same society, and in some of the Italian manuscripts; but is only given in an abridged form in Boni's Italian text. 2 The early French translation gives the date 1298, with which the Italian prologues seem to agree. CHAPTER I. ...« less