Whilst some of the changes or interpolations seem to carry us further from the truth, others contain facts of Asiatic nature or history, as well as of Polo’s own experiences, which it is extremely difficult to ascribe to any hand but the Traveller’s own.  This was the view taken by Baldelli, Klaproth, and Neumann;[14] but Hugh Murray, Lazari, and Bartoli regard the changes as interpolations by another hand; and Lazari is rash enough to ascribe the whole to a rifacimento of Ramusio’s own age, asserting it to contain interpolations not merely from Polo’s own contemporary Hayton, but also from travellers of later centuries, such as Conti, Barbosa, and Pigafetta.  The grounds for these last assertions have not been cited, nor can I trace them.  But I admit to a certain extent indications of modern tampering with the text, especially in cases where proper names seem to have been identified and more modern forms substituted.  In days, however, where an Editor’s duties were ill understood, this was natural.

[Sidenote:  Injudicious tamperings in Ramusio.]

61.  Thus we find substituted for the Bastra (or Bascra) of the older texts the more modern and incorrect Balsora, dear to memories of the Arabian Nights; among the provinces of Persia we have Spaan (Ispahan) where older texts read Istanit; for Cormos we have Ormus; for Herminia and Laias, Armenia and Giazza; Coulam for the older Coilum; Socotera for Scotra.  With these changes may be classed the chapter-headings, which are undisguisedly modern, and probably Ramusio’s own.  In some other cases this editorial spirit has been over-meddlesome and has gone astray.  Thus Malabar is substituted wrongly for Maabar in one place, and by a grosser error for Dalivar in another.  The age of young Marco, at the time of his father’s first return to Venice, has been arbitrarily altered from 15 to 19, in order to correspond with a date which is itself erroneous.  Thus also Polo is made to describe Ormus as on an Island, contrary to the old texts and to the fact; for the city of Hormuz was not transferred to the island, afterwards so famous, till some years after Polo’s return from the East.  It is probably also the editor who in the notice of the oil-springs of Caucasus (i. p. 46) has substituted camel-loads for ship-loads, in ignorance that the site of those alluded to was probably Baku on the Caspian.

Other erroneous statements, such as the introduction of window-glass as one of the embellishments of the palace at Cambaluc, are probably due only to accidental misunderstanding.

[Sidenote:  Genuine statements peculiar to Ramusio.]