250 COSMOS. 



iireat maritime nations of Italy — the Venet.'ans and Genoese — • 

 by his descriptions of the inexhaustible treasures of Eastern 

 Asia. He is acquainted with the " silver walls and gdlden 

 towers" of Quinsay, the present Hangtscheufu, although he 

 Joes not mention the name of this great commercial mart, 

 which twenty-five years later acquired such celebrity from 

 Marco Polo, the greatest traveler of any age.* Truth and 

 naive error are singularly intermixed in the Journal of Rabru 

 quis, which has been preserved to us by R-oger Bacon. Near 

 Khatai, which is bounded by the Eastern Sea, he describes a 

 happy land, "where, on their arrival from other countries, all 

 men and women cease to grow old."t 



More credulous than the monk of Brabant, and therefore, 

 perhaps, far more generally read, was the English knight Sir 



Tana (Asof), CafTa, and the Erdil (the Volga), Alani and Gothic tiibes 

 speakmg German. (Ramusio, Delle Navigationi et Viaggi, vol. u., p. 

 92 b. and 98 a.) Roger Bacon merely terms Rubruquis Irater Williel- 

 inus, quem dominus Rex Franciae misit ad Tartaros. 



* The great and admirable work of Marco Polo {II Milione di Messei 



Marco Polo), as we possess it in the correct edition of Count Baklelli, 



is inappropriately termed the narrative of " Travels.''^ It is, for the 



most part, a descriptive, one might say, a statistical work, in which it is 



difficult to distinguish what the traveler had seen himself, and what he 



had learned from others, and what he derived from topographical de- 



Bcriptions, in which the Chinese literature is so rich, and which might 



be accessible to him through his Persian interpreter. The striking 



similarity presented by the narratives of the travels of Hiuan-thsung, 



the Buddhistic pilgrim of the seventh century, to that which Marco 



Polo found in 1277 (respecting the Pamir-Highland), early attracted my 



whole attention. Jacquet, who was unhappily too early removed by 



a premature death from the investigation of Asiatic languages, and who, 



like Klaproth and myself, was long occupied with the work of tlie great 



Venetian traveler, wrote to me as follows shortly before his decease 



" I am as much struck as yourself by the composition of the Milione 



It is undoubtedly founded on the direct and personal observation of the 



traveler, but he probably also made use of documents either officially 



or privately communicated to him. Many things appear to have been 



borrowed from Chinese and Mongolian works, although it is difficult 



to determine their precise influence on the composition of the Milione, 



owing to the successive translations from which Polo took his extracts. 



While our modern travelers are only too well pleased to occupy their 



readers with their personal adventures, Marco Polo takes pains to blend 



liis own observations with the official data communicated to him, of 



which, as governor of the city of Yangui, he was able to have a large 



number." (See my Asie Centrale, t. ii., p. 395.) The compiling 



method of the celebrated traveler likewise explains the possibility of 



his being able to dictate his book at Genoa in 1295 to his fellow-prison* 



er and friend, Messer Rustigielo of Pisa, as if the documents had been 



lying before him. {Comjiare Marsden, Travels of Marco Polo, p 



Kxxiii.) 



t Purchas, PU^nm%, Part iii., ch. 28 and 5G (p. 23 and 34). 



