An Account of the Author.

Signior Nicolo Polo, the father of our author, and his brother Signior Maffio, began their travels from Constantinople in the year 1250, and having proceeded to the court of the Grand Khan of Tartary, resided there for many years, and returned, as the reader will see, to Venice about the year 1269, where they found the wife of Signior Nicolo deceased, and her son, of whom she was left big at the time of their departure, a well accomplished youth of nineteen years of age. Him they carried back with them to the court of the Khan, and after having spent twenty-six years more without any news being heard of them by their friends at Venice, returned safely thither in the year 1295. On their arrival at their own house in St. John Chrysistom’s Street, they found themselves in a strange situation, being not only worn entirely out of the memory of their family and acquaintance, but having lost, in a manner, the very tokens of their country, being become Tartars in their speech as well as their habit, and, therefore, under a necessity of taking some extraordinary steps to recover the respect and reverence due to them, by convincing the world that they were really noble Venetians, and the individual persons who had been so long lost to their country and friends.

It was with this view that they gave a magnificent entertainment to their relations, at which they all three came forth in rich suits of crimson satin; of which, when the guests were seated, they stripped themselves, and gave them to the servants; appearing next in crimson damask, these also they put off at the last service, and bestowed likewise on the servants, being then dressed in crimson velvet. When dinner was over, and all who waited withdrawn, Marco Polo brought out their coats of Tartarian cloth or felt, and out of their foldings produced an incredible quantity of rich jewels, among which there were some well known to those present, and which indisputably proved these strangers of the Polo family. Signior Maffio Polo became a worthy magistrate of Venice, and lived and died in peace.

As for our author Signior Marco, a few months after his return, the Genoese Admiral Lampa Doria coming with a fleet of seventy galleys to the island of Curzola, they fitted out from Venice, under the command of Andrea Dandolo, a great naval force, in which he had the command of a galley, and was so unlucky as to be taken prisoner and carried to Genoa, where he remained in spite of all the offers that were made for his ransom several years; so that his father, despairing of his return, and desirous that his own offspring might inherit his riches, married a second time, and had three children. In the time of this imprisonment all the young nobility of Genoa resorted to our Marco to hear the recital of his voyages and adventures, which gave them so great satisfaction, that one of them prevailed upon him to send for his notes from Venice; and when thus assisted, wrote from his own mouth the following history in Latin; from whence it was translated into Italian; and this Italian was again translated into Latin, and abridged; whence grew that prodigious corruption so justly complained of in the first printed copies. This work of Marco’s was supported by the testimony of his father, and by that of his uncle on his death-bed. At last Marco himself obtained his liberty, returned to Venice, married, and had two daughters, Moreta and Fantina,* but had no male issue. He died as he lived, beloved and admired by all who knew or conversed with him; for with the advantages of birth and fortune he was humble, and made no other use of his great interest in the state than to do good.

* There was another daughter named Bellela.