Marco Polo’s personal history was his countryman, the celebrated John
Baptist Ramusio. His essay abounds in what we now know to be errors of
detail, but, prepared as it was when traditions of the Traveller were
still rife in Venice, a genuine thread runs through it which could
never have been spun in later days, and its presentation seems to me an
essential element in any full discourse upon the subject.
Ramusio’s preface to the Book of Marco Polo, which opens the second
volume of his famous Collection of Voyages and Travels, and is
addressed to his learned friend Jerome Fracastoro, after referring to
some of the most noted geographers of antiquity, proceeds:[1]—
“Of all that I have named, Ptolemy, as the latest, possessed
the greatest extent of knowledge. Thus, towards the North, his
knowledge carries him beyond the Caspian, and he is aware of its
being shut in all round like a lake,—a fact which was unknown
in the days of Strabo and Pliny, though the Romans were already
lords of the world. But though his knowledge extends so far, a
tract of 15 degrees beyond that sea he can describe only as Terra
Incognita; and towards the South he is fain to apply the same
character to all beyond the Equinoxial. In these unknown regions,
as regards the South, the first to make discoveries have been the
Portuguese captains of our own age; but as regards the North and
North-East the discoverer was the Magnifico Messer Marco Polo, an
honoured nobleman of Venice, nearly 300 years since, as may be
read more fully in his own Book. And in truth it makes one marvel
to consider the immense extent of the journeys made, first by the
Father and Uncle of the said Messer Marco, when they proceeded
continually towards the East-North-East, all the way to the Court
of the Great Can and the Emperor of the Tartars; and afterwards
again by the three of them when, on their return homeward, they
traversed the Eastern and Indian Seas. Nor is that all, for one
marvels also how the aforesaid gentleman was able to give such an
orderly description of all that he had seen; seeing that such an
accomplishment was possessed by very few in his day, and he had
had a large part of his nurture among those uncultivated Tartars,
without any regular training in the art of composition. His Book
indeed, owing to the endless errors and inaccuracies that had
crept into it, had come for many years to be regarded as fabulous;
and the opinion prevailed that the names of cities and provinces
contained therein were all fictitious and imaginary, without any
ground in fact, or were (I might rather say) mere dreams.
[Sidenote: Ramusio vindicates Polo’s Geography.]