that I should not regard as a fair or full representation of Polo’s
Work, a version on which the Geographic Text did not exercise a
material influence. But to adopt that Text, with all its awkwardnesses
and tautologies, as the absolute subject of translation, would have
been a mistake. What I have done has been, in the first instance, to
translate from Pauthier’s Text. The process of abridgment in this text,
however it came about, has been on the whole judiciously executed,
getting rid of the intolerable prolixities of manner which belong
to many parts of the Original Dictation, but _as a general rule_
preserving the matter. Having translated this,—not always from the
Text adopted by Pauthier himself, but with the exercise of my own
judgment on the various readings which that Editor lays before us,—I
then compared the translation with the Geographic Text, and transferred
from the latter not only all items of real substance that had been
omitted, but also all expressions of special interest and character,
and occasionally a greater fulness of phraseology where condensation
in Pauthier’s text seemed to have been carried too far. And finally I
introduced _between brackets_ everything peculiar to Ramusio’s version
that seemed to me to have a just claim to be reckoned authentic, and
that could be so introduced without harshness or mutilation. Many
passages from the same source which were of interest in themselves, but
failed to meet one or other of these conditions, have been given in the
notes.[1]
[Sidenote: Mode of rendering proper names.]