some time after 9th January 1334, the date of his will.

Of the travels thus detailed in Marco Polo's book, and of their
importance and significance in the history of geographical discovery,
it is impossible to give any adequate account in this place. It
will, perhaps, suffice if we give the summary of his claims made
out by Colonel Sir Henry Yule, whose edition of his travels is
one of the great monuments of English learning:--

"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 deserts of Persia, the flowering plateaux and
wild gorges of Badakhshan, the jade-bearing rivers of Khotan, the
Mongolian Steppes, cradle of the power that had so lately threatened
to swallow up Christendom, the new and brilliant court that had been
established by Cambaluc; the first traveller 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 its 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,
and whose origin was so dark; of Java, the pearl of islands; of
Sumatra, with its many kings, its strange costly products, and
its cannibal races; of the naked savages of Nicobar and Andaman;
of Ceylon, the island of gems, with its sacred mountain, and its