Marco Polo - The Book of Wonder

Marco Polo is perhaps the most well-known Western figure to travel into the mysterious and mystifying great East. Providing well-described tales of his journey, Polos stories are likely to awaken the inner traveller in anyone who reads or hears of his saga. True or exaggerated, Polos twenty-four-year voyage across land and sea exhibits his, at the time, unheard-of determination and influence. Even the Great Khan, conqueror and ruler of much of the Eastern land of the time, found a great confidant in Marco Polo and managed to keep him under his tutelage for seventeen years. Under the Great Khan, Polo was able to acquire power and prestige across the land, likely contributing to his immensely delayed return to Venice. Thus begins the tale of Marco Polos travels

Ye Emperors, Kings, Dukes, Marquises, Earls, and Knights, and all other people desirous of knowing the diversities 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 characteristics 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. Who, wishing in his secret thoughts that the things he had seen and heard should be 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 in Genoa; he divided it into three parts.

The elder Polos, when they left Constantinople in 1260, had not planned to go far beyond the northern borders of the Euxine. They first landed at Soldaia, in Crimea, then an important trading city. From Soldaia they journeyed in a northerly and east-north-easterly direction to Sara (or Sarra), a vast city on the Volga, where King Cambuscan lived, and to Bolgara (or Bolghar) where they stayed for a year. Going south a short distance to Ucaca, another city on the Volga, they journeyed directly to the south-east, across the northern head of the Caspian, on the sixty days march to Bokhara, where they stayed for three years.

From Bokhara they went with the Great Khans people northward to Otrar, and thence in a north-easterly direction to the Court of the Khan near Pekin. On their return journey, they arrived at the sea-coast at Layas, in Armenia. From Layas they went to Acre, and from Acre to Negropont in Romania, and from Negropont to Venice, where they stayed for about two years.

On the second journey to the East, with the young Marco Polo, they sailed directly from Venice to Acre towards the end of 1271. They made a short journey southward to Jerusalem, for the holy oil, and then returned to Acre for letters from the Papal Legate.

Leaving Acre, they got as far as Layas, in Armenia, before they were recalled by the newly elected Pope. On setting out again, they returned to Layas, at that time a great city, where spices and cloth of gold were sold, and from which merchants journeying to the East generally started. From Layas they pushed northward into Turcomania, past Casaria and Sivas, to Arzingan, where the people wove good buckrams.

Petrus Vesconte, Water Atlas of the Mediterranean, Genoa, 1313.

Fourth sheet: Eastern Mediterranean, coasts of Asia and Africa.

Coast of Morea, Rhodes, Crete, and the Nile Delta.

Six cards, illuminated manuscript on vellum, various scales,

x cm each. Bibliothque nationale de France, Paris.

Petrus Vesconte, Water Atlas of the Mediterranean,
Genoa, 1313. Sixth sheet: Western Mediterranean.

Six cards, illuminated manuscript on vellum, various scales,

x cm each. Bibliothque nationale de France, Paris.

Passing Mount Ararat, where Noahs Ark was supposed to rest, they heard stories of the Baku oilfields. From here they went to the south-east, following the course of the Tigris to Bandas. From Bandas they seem to have made an unnecessary journey to the Persian Gulf. The book leads one to suppose that they travelled by way of Tauriz (in Persian Iraq), Yezd, and Kerman, to the port of Ormuz, as though they intended to take to sea there. They could, however, have progressed more swiftly had they followed the Tigris to Busrah and sailed upon the Gulf from there, by way of Keis or Kisi to Ormuz.

After visiting Ormuz, they returned to Kerman by another route, and then pushed on, over the horrible salt desert of Kerman, through Khorassan to Balakshan. It is possible that their journey was broken at Balakshan, owing to the illness of Marco, who speaks of having at some time stayed nearly a year here to recover his health.

On leaving Balakshan they proceeded through the high Pamirs to Kash-gar, thence south-eastward by way of Khotan, not yet buried under the sands, to the Gobi desert. The Gobi desert, like all deserts, had a bad name as being the abode of many evil spirits, which amuse travellers to their destruction. The Polos crossed the Gobi in the usual thirty days, halting each night by the brackish ponds which make the passage possible.

After crossing the desert, they soon entered China. At Kan Chau, one of the first Chinese cities which they visited, they may have stayed for nearly a year, on account of the state of their concerns, but this stay probably took place later, when they were in Kublais service. They then crossed the province of Shen-si, into that of Shan-si, finally arriving at Kai-ping-fu, where Kublai had built his summer pleasure garden.