be perfectly superimposed upon present reality,'[36] and Huntington and
Aurel Stein took with them to the inaccessible districts of central Asia
as guide-books the book of the Chinese pilgrim Hiwen Thsang (seventh
century) and the book of Marco Polo, and over and over again found how
accurate were their descriptions.

It is indeed almost impossible to exaggerate the extent of Marco Polo's
accomplishment. It is best estimated in the often-quoted words of Sir
Henry Yule, whose edition of his book is one of the great works of
English scholarship:

He was the first traveller to trace a route across the whole
longitude of Asia, naming and describing kingdom after
kingdom, which he had seen with his own eyes, the desert of
Persia, the flowering plateaux and wild gorges of Badakhshan,
the jade-bearing rivers of Khotan, the Mongol steppes, cradle
of the power that had so lately threatened to swallow up
Christendom, the new and brilliant court that had been
established at Cambaluc: the first Travellers to reveal China
in all its wealth and vastness, its mighty rivers, its huge
cities, its rich manufactures, its swarming population, the
inconceivably vast fleets that quickened its seas and inland
waters; to tell us of the nations on its borders with all
their eccentricities of manners and worship; of Tibet with
its sordid devotees; of Burma with its golden pagodas and
their tinkling crowns; of Laos, of Siam, of Cochin China, of
Japan, the Eastern Thule, with its rosy pearls and
golden-roofed palaces; the first to speak of that Museum of
Beauty and Wonder, still so imperfectly ransacked, the Indian
Archipelago, source of those aromatics then so highly prized