Note 732 — Chapter XVI

The celebrated travels of Marco Polo have been recently edited by Colonel Yule, C.B., an accomplished Oriental scholar, who has shown much ability in arranging the mass of new material for their illustration which has been discovered during the fifty years since Marsden’s edition. Colonel Yule completely confirms the general truthfulness of Polo’s narrative, and shows that the occasional credulity of the traveller (like that of Herodotus) is mainly due to the period in which he journeyed. The date of Marco Polo’s absence from Venice is from 1271 to 1295 (Yule, Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, 2 vols. 8vo. 1871).