first arrived, and taking
sharp knives, began to rip up the seams, from which they took vast
quantities of rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, diamonds, and emeralds,
into which form they had converted most of their property. This
exhibition naturally changed the character of the welcome they
received from their relatives, who were then eager to learn how
they had come by such riches.

In describing the wealth of the Great Khan, Marco Polo, who was
the chief spokesman of the party, was obliged to use the numeral
"million" to express the amount of his wealth and the number of
the population over whom he ruled. This was regarded as part of
the usual travellers' tales, and Marco Polo was generally known
by his friends as "Messer Marco Millione."

Such a reception of his stories was no great encouragement to Marco
to tell the tale of his remarkable travels, but in the year of
his arrival at Venice a war broke out between Genoa and the Queen
of the Adriatic, in which Marco Polo was captured and cast into
prison at Genoa. There he found as a fellow-prisoner one Rusticano
of Pisa, a man of some learning and a sort of predecessor of Sir
Thomas Malory, since he had devoted much time to re-writing, in
prose, abstracts of the many romances relating to the Round Table.
These he wrote, not in Italian (which can scarcely be said to have
existed for literary purposes in those days), but in French, the
common language of chivalry throughout Western Europe. While in
prison with Marco Polo, he took down in French the narrative of
the great traveller, and thus preserved it for all time. Marco
Polo was released in 1299, and returned to Venice, where he died
some time after 9th January 1334, the date of his will.

Of the travels thus detailed in Marco Polo's book, and of their
importance and significance in the history of geographical discovery,
it is impossible to give any adequate account in this place. It
will, perhaps, suffice if we give the summary of his claims made
out by Colonel Sir Henry Yule, whose edition of his travels is
one of the great monuments of English learning:--

"He was the first traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude
of Asia, naming and describing kingdom after kingdom which he had seen
with his own eyes: the deserts of Persia, the flowering plateaux and
wild gorges of Badakhshan, the jade-bearing rivers of Khotan, the
Mongolian Steppes, cradle of the power that had so lately threatened
to swallow up