March, 1324, is sufficient to raise the gravest doubts as to this
    signature being that of our Marco.  And further examination, as I learn
    from a friend at Venice, has shown that the same name occurs in
    connection with analogous entries on several subsequent occasions up
    to the middle of the century.  I presume that this Marco Polo is the
    same that is noticed in our Appendix B, II. as a voter in the
    elections of the Doges Marino Faliero and Giovanni Gradenigo.  I have
    not been able to ascertain his relation to either branch of the Polo
    family; but I suspect that he belonged to that of S. Geremia, of which
    there was certainly a Marco about the middle of the century.

[24] “Under the angiporta (of S. Lorenzo) [see plate] is buried that
    Marco Polo surnamed Milione, who wrote the Travels in the New World,
    and who was the first before Christopher Columbus to discover new
    countries.  No faith was put in him because of the extravagant things
    that he recounted; but in the days of our Fathers Columbus augmented
    belief in him, by discovering that part of the world which eminent men
    had heretofore judged to be uninhabited.” (Venezia ...  Descritta,
    etc., f. 23 v.) Marco Barbaro attests the same inscription in his
    Genealogies (copy in Museo Civico at Venice).

[25] Cicogna, II. 385.

[26] Lazari, xxxi.

[27] In the first edition I noticed briefly a statement that had reached
    me from China that, in the Temple at Canton vulgarly called “of the
    500 gods,” there is a foreign figure which from the name attached had
    been supposed to represent Marco Polo!  From what I have heard from Mr.
    Wylie, a very competent authority, this is nonsense.  The temple
    contains 500 figures of Arhans or Buddhist saints, and one of these
    attracts attention from having a hat like a sailor’s straw hat.  Mr.
    Wylie had not remarked the name. [A model of this figure was exhibited
    at Venice at the international Geographical Congress, in 1881.  I give
    a reproduction of this figure and of the Temple of 500 Genii (Fa Lum
    Sze) at Canton, from drawings by Felix Regamey made after photographs
    sent to me by my late friend, M. Camille Imbault Huart, French Consul
    at Canton.—­H.  C.]

[28] These documents are noted in Appendix C, Nos. 9-12, 14, 17, 18.

[29] I can find no Ranuzzo Dolfino among the Venetian genealogies, but
    several Reniers.  And I suspect Ranuzzo may be a form of the latter
    name.

[30] Cappellari (see p. 77, footnote) under Bragadino.

[31] Ibid. and Gallicciolli, II. 146.

[32] The lire of the fine are not specified; but probably ai grossi,
    which would be = 37_l._ 10_s._; not, we hope, dei grossi!