"Take this Book and cause it to be read to you. For ye shall find therein all kind of wonderful things according to the description of this traveller, as he saw 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 may put full faith in the truth of all its contents." — Marco Polo (c. 1298).