The return, in the company of the Mongolian princess Cocain from Cambaluc as far as Persia, brought the legs of Java, the island of Ceylon, Malle (near Oman) and Mada- gascar, then the provinces of Abyssinia, and finally back to Hormuz, Trabiz, Tresi- bonda, Constantinople, the Greek island of Negroponte, and lastly Venice.īy indicating specific places and describing their customs, Marco Polo gives us precious information regarding the drinks of the Oriental territories.
They travelled on, skirting the vast mountain range of Tibet until the kingdom of Tenduc, then Giandu, Canbalu and Sugni (Su-chou, a locality near Shanghai). Then they proceeded through the Straits of Hormuz, doubled back, on towards Afghanistan and they came to Karakorum, ancient capital of the Tartars, where they met Qubilai, whom the author called Coblai Kane. From Venice to Constantinople, the three men travelled through eastern Turkey, then from what is now Iraq they journeyed through Persia, visiting Baghdad. The adventure of Marco Polo, his father Niccolò and his uncle Matteo, began in Venice in April 1271 and lasted for 24 years. The stories that we find in Devisement du monde, which later became Il Milione, under the putative surname Marco, are those of a merchant who describes in dutiful detail the places, products, goods, spices, customs and habits of the peoples along the Silk Road. “Lords, emperors, and dukes and counts and knights, princes and barons, and all who delight in knowing diverse generations of people and conditions of the world, take this book, and you will find the wonderful and varied things of great Erminia, and of Persia and Tartaria and India and many other provinces, as this book will relate to you openly, as mister Marco Polo of Venice recounted according to that which he saw with his own eyes, and many others he saw not but heard from sages and men of faith.” Thus spake Marco Polo in prison in Genoa to the poet Rustichello of Pisa.
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