Voyages and travels of Marco Polo

Chapter II

AN ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR.

Signior Nicolo Polo, the father of our author, and his brother Signior Maffio, began their travels from Constantinople in the year 1250, and having proceeded to the court of the Grand Khan of Tartary, resided there for many years, and returned, as the reader will see, to Venice about the year 1269, where they found the wife of Signior Nicolo deceased, and her son, of whom she was left big at the time of their departure, a well accomplished youth of nineteen years of age. Him they carried back with them to the court of the Khan, and after having spent twenty-six years more without any news being heard of them by their friends at Venice, returned safely thither in the year 1295. On their arrival at their own house in St. John Chrysistom's Street, they found themselves in a strange situation, being not only worn entirely out of the memory of their family and acquaintance, but having lost, in a manner, the very tokens of their country, being become Tartars in their speech as well as their habit, and, therefore, under a necessity of taking some extraordinary steps to recover the respect and reverence due to them, by convincing the world that they were really noble Venetians, and the individual persons who had been so long lost to their country and friends.