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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. MARCO POLO IN CENTRAL ASIA. THE only European traveller, from the most remote period down to the present age, who ever visited the high table-land of Thibet and the countries beyond, was Marco Polo of Venice. Although his narrative was dictated from memory, long after his return from a series of travels so extensive and adventurous that they have scarcely their parallel in the annals of exploration, the exactness of his statements has been wonderfully confirmed by all recent discoveries. The latest and by far the most complete and satisfactory edition of his work is that by Sir Henry Yule, from which we take those passages which refer to the subject of this volume. The Polos were a noble family of Venice, who, early in the thirteenth century, engaged in trade with the East. Nicolo, the father of Marco, wi.th his elder brother Mafieo, appear to have been settled in Constantinople in the year 1260: the boy Marco, then four years old, had been left behind in Venice. A branch of their house appears to have been already established in the Crimea, whitherNicolo and Mafleo went, in the year above named. The prospect of successful trade carried them far to the northward along the Volga, thence to Bak- hara in Tartary, and finally eastward through Central Asia to the court of Kublai Khan, at Cambalu ( Peking ), the capital of Cathay. " Kublai," says Sir Henry Yule, " had never before fallen in with European gentlemen. He was delighted with these Venetians, listened with strong interest to all they had to tell him of the Latin world, and determined to send them back as his ambassadors to the Pope, accompanied by an officer of his own court. His letters to the Pope, as the Polos represent them, were mainly to desire the dispatch of a large body of educated missionarie...ISBN: 8130701383
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Pages : 302
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