Little did I think, some thirty years ago, when I received a copy of the
first edition of this grand work, that I should be one day entrusted with
the difficult but glorious task of supervising the third edition. When the
first edition of the Book of Ser Marco Polo reached "Far Cathay," it
created quite a stir in the small circle of the learned foreigners, who
then resided there, and became a starting-point for many researches, of
which the results have been made use of partly in the second edition, and
partly in the present. The Archimandrite PALLADIUS and Dr. E.
BRETSCHNEIDER, at Peking, ALEX. WYLIE, at Shang-hai - friends of mine who
have, alas! passed away, with the exception of the Right Rev. Bishop G. E.
MOULE, of Hang-chau, the only survivor of this little group of
hard-working scholars, - were the first to explore the Chinese sources of
information which were to yield a rich harvest into their hands.
When I returned home from China in 1876, I was introduced to Colonel HENRY
YULE, at the India Office, by our common friend, Dr. REINHOLD ROST, and
from that time we met frequently and kept up a correspondence which
terminated only with the life of the great geographer, whose friend I had
become. A new edition of the travels of Friar Odoric of Pordenone, our
"mutual friend," in which Yule had taken the greatest interest, was
dedicated by me to his memory.
