The Travels of Marco Polo: The Venetian

Marco Polo, the subject of this memoir, was born at Venice in the year 1254. He was the son of Nicolo Polo, a Venetian of noble family, who was one of the partners in a trading house, engaged in business with Constantinople. In the year 1260, this Nicolo Polo, in company with his junior partner, his brother Maffeo, set out across the Euxine on a trading venture to the Crimea. They prospered in their business, but were unable to return to their base, owing to the breaking out of a Tartar war on the road by which they had come. As they could not go back, they went forward, crossing the desert to Bokhara, where they stayed for three years. At the end of the third year (the fifth of their journey) they were advised to visit the Great Khan Kublai, the "Kubla Khan" of Coleridge’s poem. A party of the Great Khan’s envoys were about to return to Cathay, and the two brothers therefore joined the party, travelling forward, "northward and northeastward," for a whole year, before they reached the Khan’s Court in Cathay. The Khan received them kindly, and asked them many questions about life in Europe, especially about the emperors, the Pope, the Church, and "all that is done at Rome." He then sent them back to Europe on an embassy to the Pope, to ask his holiness to send a hundred missionaries to convert the Cathaians to the Christian faith. He also asked for some of the holy oil from the lamp of the Holy Sepulchre. The return journey of the brothers (from Cathay to Acre) took three years. On their arrival at Acre the travellers discovered that the Pope was dead. They therefore decided to return home to Venice to wait until the new Pope should be elected. They arrived at Venice in 1269, to find that Nicolo’s wife had died during her husband’s absence. His son Marco, our traveller, was then fifteen years old. He had probably passed his childhood in the house of one of his uncles at Venice.