by Carolyn Henry

Created on: October 20, 2009

Of all the adventurers who traveled into unknown lands, there is perhaps none so colorful as Marco Polo, and there is probably no book of travel stories as fantastical as Marco Polo's book, Il Milione.

Marco Polo was born in Venice around 1254. Marco's father Niccolo was a merchant, and along with his brother Matteo, Niccolo Polo was traveling and trading abroad when Marco was born, and did not return to Venice until 1269. Thus Marco was fourteen years old when he met his father and uncle for the first time, and the older men filled the young boy's eager ears with story after story of their adventures abroad.

In 1271, Niccolo and Matteo left for yet another mercantile voyage into Asia, and this time, they brought the seventeen-year-old Marco with them. Years later, Marco's own adventure stories would be documented in his now famous book.

According to his own account, Marco' father and uncle were then acting as envoys to the Pope from the Chinese emperor, Kublai Khan, to whom they had promised to return with letters from the Pope and oil from the sacred lamp in Jerusalem. Unable to secure passage to China by sea, Marco, Niccolo and Matteo traveled over land by routes that made up the Silk Road, and several years, they finally reached summer palace of Kublai Khan.

The Polos earned the respect of Kublai Khan, and Marco tells how he became an ambassador to distant provinces, an officer of the empire, and finally the governor of a Chinese city.

In 1292, Kublai Khan granted permission to the Polos to leave China. The Polos were to travel west by sea, with a fleet of fourteen ships, and accompanied by six hundred people, all on their way to escort a young Chinese princess, Kokachin, to her husband-to-be, the King of Persia. However, during the voyage there was most likely an outbreak of scurvy aboard the ships. Marco would later tell how, of the original six hundred people who set out from China, only eighteen were still alive by the time they reached Persia. These eighteen survivors included Marco, Niccolo, Matteo and the princess.

The Polos then continued on, and arrived home in Venice in 1295. By that time, they three had been away for twenty-four years, and they encountered many skeptics in Venice who doubted their identities. During a banquet held with family and friends present, Marco, Niccolo and Matteo changed out of the fabulous robes that were gifts from Kublai Khan and appeared before their guests dressed in the rough traveling clothes of their voyage.

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