ise, over a route of such
desperate length and hardship, whereon it was sometimes necessary to
carry food for the supply of man and beast, not for days only but for
months together. Columbus, on the other hand, going by sea, readily
carried with him all necessary provision; and after a voyage of some 30
or 40 days was conveyed by the wind whither he desired to go, whilst the
Venetians again took a whole year's time to pass all those great deserts
and mighty rivers. Indeed that the difficulty of travelling to Cathay
was so much greater than that of reaching the New World, and the route
so much longer and more perilous, may be gathered from the fact that,
since those gentlemen twice made this journey, no one from Europe has
dared to repeat it,[3] whereas in the very year following the discovery
of the Western Indies many ships immediately retraced the voyage
thither, and up to the present day continue to do so, habitually and in
countless numbers. Indeed those regions are now so well known, and so
thronged by commerce, that the traffic between Italy, Spain, and England
is not greater.

[Sidenote: Recounts a tradition of the travellers' return to Venice.]

5. Ramusio goes on to explain the light regarding the first part or
prologue of Marco Polo's book that he had derived from a recent piece of
luck which had made him partially acquainted with the geography of
Abulfeda, and to make a running commentary on the whole of the preliminary
narrative until the final return of the travellers to Venice:--

"And when they got thither the same fate befel them as befel Ulysses,
who, when he returned, after his twenty years' wanderings, to his native
Ithaca, was recognized by nobody. Thus also those three gentlemen who
had been so many years absent from their native city were recognized by
none of their kinsfolk, who were under the firm belief that they had all
been dead for many a year past, as indeed had been reported. Through the
long duration and the hardships of their journeys, and through the many
worries and anxieties that they had undergone, they were quite changed
in aspect, and had got a certain indescribable smack of the Tartar both
in air and accent, having indeed all but forgotten their Venetian
tongue. Their clothes too were coarse and shabby, and of a Tartar cut.
They proceeded on their arrival to their house in this city in the
confine of St. John Chrysostom, wh