The Travels Of Marco Polo

The author reveals that the journey of the famous traveller Marco Polo of Venice started in the year 1271 when he accompanied his father and uncle on their voyage to the east. Setting out they went to Jerusalem to get holy water, as requested by the king of China from the elder Polos. Returning by the order of the Pope, the Polos’ set upon the voyage which took them Armenia from there, past mount Ararat (on which is supposed, the ark of Noha rests) to the famous Baku oil fields, following the course of the Tiber and then made their way of Hormus on the Persian gulf. After visiting Hormus they went to Kerman through Khorassan and Badakshan. One leaving Badakshan they went through the Pamirs and Kashgar and then to Turfan on the edge of the Gobi desert. Continuing they passed through Khorasan and journeyed though Persia and Armenia they reached Trebizond on the Black sea, from whence they went by sea back to Venice to where they returned in the year 1295. It is true that for the most interesting portion of his life, or that which passed abroad, in the service of the Tartar conqueror of China, reference might be made to the account which he himself has given of it, in the preliminary chapter of the work; but as some few facts have been recorded of him and his family, subsequent to his return to his own country, and as they travels ‘themselves, by separating them from the descriptions and narrative of public events, may be rendered more properly the subject of biography, the whole of what is known to us respecting the house of Polo shall here be succinctly stated in that form. This work is translated into English from the text of L.F. Benedetto.