d have heard of
the travels of Marco Polo, whom some of the later chroniclers have
likened to Columbus, the discoverer of America.

To beguile the tedium of their imprisonment, Marco was wont to tell his
traveller's tales to his companion, Rusticiano, and this worthy
gentleman conceived the notion of writing out the marvellous adventures
and observations of his fellow-prisoner. We must bear in mind that the
Italian gentry of that time did not hold in high esteem the art of
writing, and although Marco was not inferior to any man in daring or
adventurousness, he was willing to leave to the scriveners the task of
writing about such matters. But, in the end, the advice of Rusticiano
prevailed, and the Pisan gentleman set down from the dictation of Marco
"The Book of Ser Marco Polo Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the
East." This was, up to that time, the most important book of travels and
voyages ever written. Indeed, it was the most important book of any kind
written during the Middle Ages.

The book contributed more new facts toward a knowledge of the earth's
surface, says one skilled authority, than any book that had been written
before. The writer was the first to describe China, or Cathay, in its
vastness of territory, its wonderfully rich and populous cities, and the
first to tell of Tartary, Thibet, Burmah, Siam, Cochin-China, the Indian
Archipelago, the Andaman Islands, of Java and Sumatra, of the fabled
island of Cipangu, or Japan, of Hindustan, and that marvellous region
which the world learned to know as Farther India. From far-voyaging
sailors he brought home accounts of Zanzibar and Madagascar, and the
semi-Christian country of Abyssinia, where some accounts located that
mysterious potentate called Prester John. He had traversed Persia and
had picked up a vast amount of information concerning the country of
Siberia, with its polar snows and bears, its dog-sledges, and its almost
everlasting winter. He traversed the entire length of Asia.

Surely, Europe might well be dazed when this account of regions, until
then unknown, was unrolled before the scholars and explorers who could
read the few precious books then in circulation. For it should be
remembered that the art of printing was then unknown, and only in
manuscript did any book make its appearance. Rusticiano wrote in a very
poor sort of French; for then, as now, that language was commonest in
all the cities of Europe. How much of the language of the