Some Things Indeed There Be Therein Which He Beheld Not; But
These He Heard From Men Of Credit And Veracity.
And we shall set down
things seen as seen, and things heard as heard only, so that no jot of
falsehood may mar the truth of our Book, and that all who shall read it or
hear it read may put full faith in the truth of all its contents.
For let me tell you that since our Lord God did mould with his hands our
first Father Adam, even until this day, never hath there been Christian,
or Pagan, or Tartar, or Indian, or any man of any nation, who in his own
person hath had so much knowledge and experience of the divers parts of
the World and its Wonders as hath had this Messer Marco! And for that
reason he bethought himself that it would be a very great pity did he not
cause to be put in writing all the great marvels that he had seen, or on
sure information heard of, so that other people who had not these
advantages might, by his Book, get such knowledge. And I may tell you that
in acquiring this knowledge he spent in those various parts of the World
good six-and-twenty years. Now, being thereafter an inmate of the Prison
at Genoa, he caused Messer Rusticiano of Pisa, who was in the said Prison
likewise, to reduce the whole to writing; and this befell in the year 1298
from the birth of Jesus.
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