had many years before made a trading journey to Tartary; and when afterwards in 1271, the two set out on a similar journey to the east, they took young Marco, then seventeen or eighteen years old, with them. The journey was again into Tartary, to the court of Kublai Khan, where Marco found opportunity to develope speedily his rare capacity, learnt several oriental languages, was frequently employed by the prince just named to undertake distant journeys and important business, and collected at the same time the materials of his work on the east, which, as Sprengel says, “was long the general manual of Asiatic geography throughout entire Europe, especially after the voyages of the Portuguese had confirmed many of his supposed rodomontades.”
He is said to have acquired great wealth from this journey, through trading and the generosity of Kublai Khan, on which account his countrymen gave him the surname of il Millione; and even down to the time of Ramusio, the house in which Marco Polo had lived at Venice was called la corte del Millioni.[1] He finally returned to Europe in 1295, but was soon after named commander of a division of the Venetian fleet against the Genoese, and as such, fell into the hands of the hostile admiral Lampa Doria. He was now carried prisoner of war to Genoa, where, although
- ↑ Ramusio, “Raccolta”, vol. ii, p. 6, says, Marco Polo may have obtained this name on account of the great wealth of the Asiatic court, which he mentions in his travels (e.g., the income of Kublai Khan from Kinsai, with its districts, alone amounted to 23,200,000 Venetian ducats), at first as a kind of nickname, but afterwards given by the Venetian government itself.
