PAGES FROM THE PAST - MARCO POLO

If Marco Polo had not been captured by the Genoese and imprisoned for a year, the tales of his historic twenty-two year adventure in the Far and Middle East (at the end of the thirteenth century) might never have been collected and written down.

When he returned to Venice after his odyssey, he became a "gentleman commander" of a war vessel striving to hold off Genoese traders. In a battle off Curzold Island, his galley was captured and Marco was hauled off to Genoa and jailed. There he met a writer named Rustichello, who--hearing Marco's yams--insisted they be written down.