This is perhaps attributable to Rusticiano's
Tuscan ear. A true Pisan will absolutely contort his features in the
intensity of his efforts to aspirate sufficiently the letter C.
Filippo Villani, speaking of the famous Aguto (Sir J. Hawkwood), says
his name in English was Kauchouvole. (Murat. Script. xiv. 746.)
[3] In the Venetian dialect ch and j are often sounded as in English,
not as in Italian. Some traces of such pronunciation I think there
are, as in Coja, Carajan, and in the Chinese name Vanchu
(occurring only in Ramusio, supra, p. 99). But the scribe of the
original work being a Tuscan, the spelling is in the main Tuscan. The
sound of the Qu is, however, French, as in Quescican, Quinsai,
except perhaps in the case of Quenianfu, for a reason given in vol.
ii. p. 29.
[4] For example, that enthusiastic student of mediaeval Geography, Joachim
Lelewel, speaks of Polo's "gibberish" (le baragouinage du Venitien)
with special reference to such names as Zayton and Kinsay, whilst
we now know that these names were in universal use by all foreigners
in China, and no more deserve to be called gibberish than
Bocca-Tigris, Leghorn, Ratisbon, or Buda.
[5] I am quite sensible of the diffidence with which any outsider should
touch any question of Chinese language or orthography. A Chinese
scholar and missionary (Mr. Moule) objects to my spelling chau,
whilst he, I see, uses chow. I imagine we mean the same sound,
according to the spelling which I try to use throughout the book. Dr.
C. Douglas, another missionary scholar, writes chau.
[Illustration: MARCO POLO'S ITINERARIES,
No. I.
(Prologue; Book I. Chapters 1-36; and Book IV.)]
[Illustration: SKETCH SHOWING CHIEF MONARCHIES OF ASIA IN LATTER PART OF
13th CENTURY]
THE BOOK OF MARCO POLO.
PROLOGUE.
Great Princes, Emperors, and Kings, Dukes and Marquises, Counts, Knights,
and Burgesses! and People of all degrees who desire to get knowledge of
the various races of mankind and of the diversities of the sundry regions
of the World, take this Book and cause it to be read to you. For ye shall
find therein all kinds of wonderful things, and the divers histories of
the Great Hermenia, and of Persia, and of the Land of the Tartars, and of
India, and of many another country of which our Book doth speak,
particularly and in regular succession, according to the description of
Messer Marco Polo, a wise and noble citizen of Venice, as he saw them with
his own eyes. Some things indeed there be therein which he beheld not; but
these he heard from men of credit and veracity. And we shall set down
things seen as seen, and things heard as heard only, so that no jot of
falsehood may mar the truth of our Book, and that all who shall read it or
hear it read may put full faith in the truth of all its contents.
