Having always attached much importance to the matter of illustrations,[2]
I feel greatly indebted to the liberal action of Mr. Murray in enabling me
largely to increase their number in this edition. Though many are
original, we have also borrowed a good many;[3] a proceeding which seems
to me entirely unobjectionable when the engravings are truly illustrative
of the text, and not hackneyed.

I regret the augmented bulk of the volumes. There has been some excision,
but the additions visibly and palpably preponderate. The truth is that
since the completion of the first edition, just four years ago, large
additions have been made to the stock of our knowledge bearing on the
subjects of this Book; and how these additions have continued to come in
up to the last moment, may be seen in Appendix L,[4] which has had to
undergo repeated interpolation after being put in type. KARAKORUM, for a
brief space the seat of the widest empire the world has known, has been
visited; the ruins of SHANG-TU, the "Xanadu of Cublay Khan," have been
explored; PAMIR and TANGUT have been penetrated from side to side; the
famous mountain Road of SHEN-SI has been traversed and described; the
mysterious CAINDU has been unveiled; the publication of my lamented friend
Lieutenant Garnier's great work on the French Exploration of Indo-China
has provided a mass of illustration of that YUN-NAN for which but the
other day Marco Polo was well-nigh the most recent authority. Nay, the
last two years have thrown a promise of light even on what seemed the
wildest of Marco's stories, and the bones of a veritable RUC from New
Zealand lie on the table of Professor Owen's Cabinet!

M. VIVIEN de St. MARTIN, during the interval of which we have been
speaking, has published a History of Geography. In treating of Marco Polo,
he alludes to the first edition of this work, most evidently with no
intention of disparagement, but speaks of it as merely a revision of