overwhelming victory.

Taken as a prisoner to Genoa, he was cast into prison, where he
remained immured for a year. That was the year in which his wonderful
travels were woven into a story, for the entertainment of the young
Genoese nobility, who, when they learned that the famous Marco Polo
was a prisoner, flocked to his cell to see and converse with him.
Yielding to their solicitations, he sent to Venice for his notes of
travel, and during the days of his captivity dictated an account of
his experiences to a fellow-captive, one Rusticiano, of Pisa.

The delighted young nobles devoured his wonderful story with avidity,
and they could scarcely wait its unfolding from day to day, for it was
to them a veritable tale of the _Arabian Nights_. From the Italian, in
which the traveller dictated his story, it was translated into Latin
and French, and scattered over Europe for others to enjoy. Thus Marco
Polo acquired fame through the misfortune which befell him when
fighting for Venice, and long before printing was invented his name
became almost a household word in Europe. As one who, though
indirectly, stimulated by his Oriental researches the first great
ventures into the Occident, Marco Polo deserves a monument, or, at
least, should not be omitted from a memorial group that contains such
famous Italians as Columbus, Vespucci, Toscanelli, and Verrazano.
Admittedly, he deserves a chapter in this biography, and we cannot do
better, perhaps, than glance at his history.

If Marco had been consulted in the choice of his immediate ancestry,
he could not have done better than fortune served him in the person of
his father, Nicolo Polo, who was a nobleman and a merchant of Venice.
He was a traveller prior to the birth of his son, for just previous to
that event, which occurred nearly two hundred years before Amerigo
Vespucci was born, he and his brother set out for Constantinople.
Thence they went into Armenia, and around the south coast of the
Caspian Sea to Bokhara, where they met some Persian envoys who were
bound for Cathay, or China, and who persuaded them to go along.

At Peking, it is supposed, they met the great and powerful Kublai
Khan, Emperor of the Mongols, and Tartars, who received them kindly
and at whose court they remained a year. They were the first Europeans
he had ever seen, and such was his interest in their stories of
strange peoples and governments that he commissioned them as envoys to
the pope, giving th