GATE of the "IMPERIAL CITY" at Peking. From an original sketch
belonging to the late _Dr. W. Lockhart_.

The BUGUT EAGLE. After _Atkinson's Oriental and Western Siberia_.

The TENTS of the EMPEROR K'ien-lung. From a drawing in the _Staunton
Collection_ in the British Museum.

Plain of CAMBALUC; the City in the distance; from the hills on the
north-west. From a photograph. Borrowed from _Dr. Rennie's Peking_.

The Great TEMPLE OF HEAVEN at Peking. From _Michie's Siberian Overland
Route_.

MARBLE ARCHWAY erected under the MONGOL DYNASTY at Kiu-Yong Kwan in the
Nan-k'au Pass, N.W. of Peking. From a photograph in the possession of the
present Editor.

MARCO POLO AND HIS BOOK.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICES.

I. OBSCURITIES IN THE HISTORY OF HIS LIFE AND BOOK. RAMUSIO'S STATEMENTS.

[Illustration: Doorway of the House of Marco Polo in the Corte Sabbionera,
at Venice]

[Sidenote: Obscurities of Polo's Book, and personal History.]

1. With all the intrinsic interest of Marco Polo's Book it may perhaps be
doubted if it would have continued to exercise such fascination on many
minds through succesive generations were it not for the difficult
questions which it suggests. It is a great book of puzzles, whilst our
confidence in the man's veracity is such that we feel certain every puzzle
has a solution.

And such difficulties have not attached merely to the identification of
places, the interpretation of outlandish terms, or the illustration of
obscure customs; for strange entanglements have perplexed also the chief
circumstances of the Traveller's life and authorship. The time of the
dictation of his Book and of the execution of his Last Will have been
almost the only undisputed epochs in his biography. The year of his birth
has been contested, and the date of his death has not been recorded; the
critical occasion of his capture by the Genoese, to which we seem to owe
the happy fact that he did not go down mute to the tomb of his fathers,
has been made the subject of chronological difficulties; there are in the
various texts of his story variations hard to account for; the very tongue
in which it was written down has furnished a question, solved only in our
own age, and in a most unexpected manner.

[Sidenote: Ramusio, his earliest biographer. His account of Polo.]

2. The first person who attempted to gather and string the facts of Marco
Polo's personal history was his countryman, the celebrated