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that Marco intended to include some routes of use to merchants in his account, but they have been lost, or Rustichello, a romance writer rather than a geographer, failed to include them. Some contenders, or pretenders, to the status of Marco Polo maps have surfaced over time, but their authenticity is doubtful. For a review of these intriguing items, see Leo Bagrow’s “The Maps from the Home Archives of the Descendents of a Friend of Marco Polo.” It should be noted that maps discussed by Bagrow are modern copies of older maps, or purported older maps. It is possible that the maps that have been attributed to Marco Polo are nothing more than an elaborate scholarly hoax. Johann Ruysch is quoted by Hart in Marco Polo, pages 260–261. Also refer to J. H. Parry, The Discovery of the Sea, first California edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), page 51.

The best discussion in English of the Great Wall, as it relates to Marco Polo’s account, is Arthur N. Waldron’s “The Problem of the Great Wall of China.”

For a succinct discussion of the donnybrook kicked up by Frances Wood, see Luce Boulnois, The Silk Road, pages 353–355. Igor de Rachewiltz offers a persuasive and detailed critique of Frances Wood’s book in his “F. Wood’s Did Marco Polo Go to China?” For an even more detailed critique of Wood’s book, see de Rachewiltz, “Marco Polo Went to China.” My thanks to Professor de Rachewiltz for an appendix of additions and corrections to his work, which includes his observation about Chinese cartographers.

For a fine technical discussion about how Marco’s account of escorting the Mongolian princess Kokachin to Persia amounts to proof that Marco Polo went to China and served Kublai Khan, see Francis Woodman Cleaves, “A Chinese Source Bearing on Marco Polo’s Departure from China and a Persian Source on His Arrival in Persia.”

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