Voyages And Travels Of Marco Polo

Excerpt from Voyages and Travels of Marco Polo Marco Polo, born in the year 1254, belonged to a noble trading family in Venice. His father, Nicolo Polo, was led, with a brother Maffei, by the enterprise of trade, to visit the Crimea. Thence they went forward to Bokhara, and from Bokhara they were drawn to the coast of the great Emperor of China, Kubla Khan. Kubla ruled over the wide regions extending to the coasts of China, which had been conquered by the Tartar Genghis Khan and his immediate followers. It was Kubla Khan who had removed the seat of Tartar government to Cambaluc - that is, Pekin - which he enlarged and glorified. He had also a summer palace at Shangtu, as Coleridge sang - In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree; Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills Enfolding-sunny spots of greenery. Here or at Pekin the Great Khan received, in the father and uncle of Marco Polo, the first men from whom he heard descriptions of the civilisation and religion of the West. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.