The great Magellan cloud is mentioned by an old Arab writer as a white blotch at the foot of Canopus, visible in the Tehama along the Red Sea, but not in Nejd or ’Irak.  Humboldt, in quoting this, calculates that in A.D. 1000 the Great Magellan would have been visible at Aden some degrees above the horizon. (Examen, V. 235.)

[12] This passage contains points that are omitted in Polo’s book, besides
    the drawing implied to be from Marco’s own hand!  The island is of
    course Sumatra.  The animal is perhaps the peculiar Sumatran wild-goat,
    figured by Marsden, the hair of which on the back is “coarse and
    strong, almost like bristles.” (Sumatra, p. 115.)

[13] A splendid example of Abbot John’s Collection is the Livre des
    Merveilles of the Great French Library (No. 18 in our App.  F.). 
    This contains Polo, Odoric, William of Boldensel, the Book of the
    Estate of the Great Kaan by the Archbishop of Soltania, Maundevile,
    Hayton, and Ricold of Montecroce, of which all but Polo and Maundevile
    are French versions by this excellent Long John.  A list of the Polo
    miniatures is given in App.  F. of this Edition, p. 527.

It is a question for which there is sufficient ground, whether the Persian Historians Rashiduddin and Wassaf, one or other or both, did not derive certain information that appears in their histories, from Marco Polo personally, he having spent many months in Persia, and at the Court of Tabriz, when either or both may have been there.  Such passages as that about the Cotton-trees of Guzerat (vol. ii. p. 393, and note), those about the horse trade with Maabar (id. p. 340, and note), about the brother-kings of that country (id. p. 331), about the naked savages of Necuveram (id. p. 306), about the wild people of Sumatra calling themselves subjects of the Great Kaan (id. pp. 285, 292, 293, 299), have so strong a resemblance to parallel passages in one or both of the above historians, as given in the first and third volumes of Elliot, that the probability, at least, of the Persian writers having derived their information from Polo might be fairly maintained.

[14] Li Romans de Bauduin de Sebourc III’e Roy de Jherusalem; Poeme du
    XIV’e Siecle; Valenciennes, 1841. 2 vols. 8vo.  I was indebted to two
    references of M. Pauthier’s for knowledge of the existence of this
    work.  He cites the legends of the Mountain, and of the Stone of the
    Saracens from an abstract, but does not seem to have consulted the
    work itself, nor to have been aware of the extent of its borrowings
    from Marco Polo.  M. Genin, from whose account Pauthier quotes,
    ascribes the poem to an early date after the death of Philip the Fair
    (1314).  See Pauthier, pp. 57, 58, and 140.

[15] See Polo, vol. i. p. 204, and vol. ii. p. 191.