MARCO POLO'S NARRATIVE. 



117 



fishery here attracted their attention ; and Marco, in his description 

 of the diamonds of a kingdom named Murphili, narrates, as a 

 fact, a story which was afterwards incorporated in the Adven- 

 tures of Sinbad the Sailor, — that of pieces of meat being thrown 

 by the jewel- hunters into inaccessible valleys, whence they were 

 brought back again by eagles and storks with quantities of 

 diamonds clinging to them. But the story occurs in the writings 

 of one of the Christian Fathers of the fourth century, and Marco 

 Polo only gives it as a legend which he heard. He also alludes 

 to the bird called the roc, which was so large that it lifted ele- 

 phants into the air ; its feathers measured ninety spans. The 

 locality frequented by these monstrous ornithological specimens) 

 was the island of Madagascar. 



The voyage appears to have ended at Ormuz, at the mouth olf 

 the Persian Gulf, after a navigation of a year and a half. Six 

 hundred men of the various crews had died upon the way. Ther 

 is no mention made in history of the return of the fleet tf> 

 China, though Kublai Khan is known to have died three years 

 after the departure of the Venetians. After various adventures,, 

 Marco Polo and his companions arrived in Venice, in 1295. 

 They had been absent twenty-one years, and their nearest rela- 

 tives did not know them. When they attempted to converse in 

 Italian, their use of foreign idioms and barbarous forms of expres- 

 sion rendered their language hardly intelligible. Possession had 

 been taken of their houses by some of their kindred, and they 

 found it difficult to expel them. Their statements were dis- 

 believed, till, by displaying their immense wealth and their price- 

 less collections of jewels and precious stones, they forced their 

 countrymen to give credit to adventures which must clearly have 

 been extraordinary, to have resulted in such acquisitions of trea- 

 sure. Marco's riches gave him the name of Milione ; and he is 

 designated, in the records of the Venetian Republic, and upon the 

 title-page of his work, — still extant, — as Messer Marco Milione. 



He was induced to write an account of his adventures in the 



