The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1

Chapter 8: TO HENRY YULE.

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About This Book

This work presents an extended travel narrative describing journeys across Asia and the Mongol realms, detailing routes, cities, courts, administrative systems, trade goods, and customs. It mixes firsthand reportage and compiled reports to catalog geography, commodities, religious practices, and local technologies, interspersed with anecdotes about diplomacy and commercial exchange. Chapters examine major urban centers, caravan routes, and natural products, offering measurements, observations on governance and ethnography, and practical notes for commerce and travel, blending vivid description with an encyclopedic accumulation of regional information.

TO
HENRY YULE.

Until you raised dead monarchs from the mould

And built again the domes of Xanadu,

I lay in evil case, and never knew

The glamour of that ancient story told

By good Ser Marco in his prison-hold.

But now I sit upon a throne and view

The Orient at my feet, and take of you

And Marco tribute from the realms of old.

If I am joyous, deem me not o’er bold;

If I am grateful, deem me not untrue;

For you have given me beauties to behold,

Delight to win, and fancies to pursue,

Fairer than all the jewelry and gold

Of Kublaï on his throne in Cambalu.

E. C. Baber.

20th July, 1884.