Marco Was Afterwards
Employed By The Khan, For A Considerable Number Of Years, In Several
Important Affairs, As Will Appear In The Relation Of His Travels.
At length, the three Polos returned to Venice, in 1295, after an absence of
twenty-five or twenty-six years, during which long period they had never
been heard of by their friends and countrymen, seventeen years of which
Marco had been employed in the service of the great khan.
On their return
to their own house in Venice, they were entirely forgotten by their
relations and former acquaintances, and had considerable difficulty to
establish their identity, and to get themselves recognized by their family,
and were obliged to use extraordinary means to recover the respect which
was their due, and an acknowledgement of their name, family, and rank, the
particulars of which will be found in the travels themselves.
About three years after the return of these adventurous travellers,
hostilities arose between the republics of Genoa and Venice. The Genoese
admiral, Lampa Doria, came to the island of Curzola with a fleet of seventy
gallies, to oppose whom, the Venetians fitted out a great naval force under
Andrea Dandolo, under whom Marco Polo had the command of a galley. The
Venetians were totally defeated in a great naval engagement, with the loss
of their admiral and eighty-five ships, and Marco Polo had the misfortune
to be among the number of the prisoners.
Harris alleges that he remained a prisoner during several years, in spite
of every offer of ransom that was made for his liberation. But in this he
must have mistaken, or been misled by the authorities which he trusted to,
as peace was concluded in 1299, the year immediately subsequent to the
naval engagement in which he was made prisoner. While in prison at Genoa,
many of the young nobility are said to have resorted to Marco, to listen to
the recital of his wonderful travels and surprizing adventures; and they
are said to have prevailed upon him to send to Venice for the notes which
he had drawn up during his peregrinations, by means of which the following
relation is said to have been written in Latin from has dictation. From the
original Latin, the account of his travels was afterwards translated into
Italian; and from this again, abridgements were afterwards made in Latin
and diffused over Europe.
According to Baretti[2], the travels of Marco Polo were dictated by him in
1299, while in the prison of Genoa, to one Rustigielo, an inhabitant of
Pisa, who was his fellow prisoner. They were afterwards published in
Italian, and subsequently translated into Latin by Pessuri, a Dominican
monk of Bologna. Copies of the original manuscript, though written in the
Venetian dialect, which is extremely different from the Tuscan or pure
Italian, were multiplied with great rapidity in all parts of Italy, and
even made their way into France and Germany. From one or more of these,
corrupted by the carelessness or ignorance of transcribers, some of whom
may have abridged the work, or may even have interpolated it from other
sources, a thing quite common before the invention of printing, the Latin
translations may have been made and circulated over Europe. Ramusio, an
early editor of voyages and travels, published these travels in an Italian
translation from the Latin, which he erroneously supposed to have been the
original dictation of Marco to Rustigielo; and many other editions have
been published in the various languages of Europe, but all from one or
other of these corrupted transcripts or translations.
A manuscript of the travels of Marco polo, in the Venetian dialect, was
long preserved by the Soranza family at Venice, but whether this now
exists, or has ever been published, is unknown. Mr Pinkerton informs us
[3], that a genuine edition of these travels, probably from the original
MS. either of Marco himself, after his return from Genoa, or from that of
his amanuensis Rustigielo, was published at Trevigi in 1590, in the dialect
of Venice, which has hitherto escaped the attention of all editors and
commentators. This curious publication is often worded in the names of all
the three travellers, father, uncle, and son; but when the peculiar travels
of Marco are indicated, his name only is employed. In the former case, the
language runs thus, "We, Nicolo, Maffei, and Marco, have heard, seen, and
know, &c.:" In the latter, "I Marco was in that place, and saw, &c." In
this Venetian edition, the names of places and persons are often widely
different from those in the other editions, and probably more genuine and
correct. But that publication being at present inaccessible, we are under
the necessity of being contented with the edition of Harris, in which he
professes to have carefully collated the edition of Ramusio with most of
the other translations, and with an original MS. in the royal library of
Prussia. This latter labour, however, he seems to have taken entirely upon
trust from Muller, a German editor and translator, probably through the
intermediation of Bergeron, an early French editor of voyages and travels.
The only freedom which has been assumed in the present edition is, by
dividing it into sections for more ready consultation and reference, and by
the addition of explanatory notes from various sources.
Marco Polo is the chief of all the early modern discoverers; having been
the first who communicated to Europe any distinct ideas of the immense
regions of Asia, from the Euxine eastwards, through the vast extent of
Tartary to China and Japan; and the very first author who has made any
mention of that distant insular sovereignty. Even Columbus is supposed,
with some considerable probability, to have been prompted to his
enterprize, which ended in the discovery of America, by the study of these
travels; believing, that by a western course through the unexplored
Atlantic, he should find a comparatively short passage to those eastern
regions of the Indies, which Polo had visited, described, or indicated.
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