Which I quote as G. T., makes the number 18, a fact that
I had overlooked till the sheets were printed off.
[21] Died 12th March, 1291.
[22] All dates are found so corrupt that even in this one I do not feel
absolute confidence. Marco in dictating the book is aware that Ghazan
had attained the throne of Persia (see vol. i. p. 36, and ii. pp. 50
and 477), an event which did not occur till October, 1295. The date
assigned to it, however, by Marco (ii. 477) is 1294, or the year
before that assigned to the return home.
The travellers may have stopped some time at Constantinople on their
way, or even may have visited the northern shores of the Black Sea;
otherwise, indeed, how did Marco acquire his knowledge of that Sea
(ii. 486-488) and of events in Kipchak (ii. 496 seqq.)? If 1296 was
the date of return, moreover, the six-and-twenty years assigned in the
preamble as the period of Marco's absence (p. 2) would be nearer
accuracy. For he left Venice in the spring or summer of 1271.
[23] Marco Barbaro, in his account of the Polo family, tells what seems to
be the same tradition in a different and more mythical version:
