At length, the three Polos returned to Venice, in 1295, after an absence of twenty-five or twenty-six years, during which long period they had never been heard of by their friends and countrymen, seventeen years of which Marco had been employed in the service of the great khan.  On their return to their own house in Venice, they were entirely forgotten by their relations and former acquaintances, and had considerable difficulty to establish their identity, and to get themselves recognized by their family, and were obliged to use extraordinary means to recover the respect which was their due, and an acknowledgement of their name, family, and rank, the particulars of which will be found in the travels themselves.

About three years after the return of these adventurous travellers, hostilities arose between the republics of Genoa and Venice.  The Genoese admiral, Lampa Doria, came to the island of Curzola with a fleet of seventy gallies, to oppose whom, the Venetians fitted out a great naval force under Andrea Dandolo, under whom Marco Polo had the command of a galley.  The Venetians were totally defeated in a great naval engagement, with the loss of their admiral and eighty-five ships, and Marco Polo had the misfortune to be among the number of the prisoners.

Harris alleges that he remained a prisoner during several years, in spite of every offer of ransom that was made for his liberation.  But in this he must have mistaken, or been misled by the authorities which he trusted to, as peace was concluded in 1299, the year immediately subsequent to the naval engagement in which he was made prisoner.  While in prison at Genoa, many of the young nobility are said to have resorted to Marco, to listen to the recital of his wonderful travels and surprizing adventures; and they are said to have prevailed upon him to send to Venice for the notes which he had drawn up during his peregrinations, by means of which the following relation is said to have been written in Latin from has dictation.  From the original Latin, the account of his travels was afterwards translated into Italian; and from this again, abridgements were afterwards made in Latin and diffused over Europe.

According to Baretti[2], the travels of Marco Polo were dictated by him in 1299, while in the prison of Genoa, to one Rustigielo, an inhabitant of Pisa, who was his fellow prisoner.  They were afterwards published in Italian, and subsequently translated into Latin by Pessuri, a Dominican monk of Bologna.  Copies of the original manuscript, though written in the Venetian dialect, which is extremely different from the Tuscan or pure Italian, were multiplied with great rapidity in all parts of Italy, and even made their way into France and Germany.  From one or more of these, corrupted by the carelessness or ignorance of transcribers, some of whom may have abridged the work, or may even have interpolated it from other sources, a thing quite common before the invention