From Sumatra, Marco and his companions sailed into the Bay of Bengal, touched at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, arrived at Ceylon, and, doubling the southern point of Hindostan, continued to the northward along its western coast. The pearl-fishery here attracted their attention; and Marco, in his description of the diamonds of a kingdom named Murphili, narrates, as a fact, a story which was afterwards incorporated in the Adventures of Sinbad the Sailor,--that of pieces of meat being thrown by the jewel-hunters into inaccessible valleys, whence they were brought back again by eagles and storks with quantities of diamonds clinging to them. But the story occurs in the writings of one of the Christian Fathers of the fourth century, and Marco Polo only gives it as a legend which he heard. He also alludes to the bird called the roc, which was so large that it lifted elephants into the air; its feathers measured ninety spans. The locality frequented by these monstrous ornithological specimens was the island of Madagascar. The voyage appears to have ended at Ormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, after a navigation of a year and a half. Six hundred men of the various crews had died upon the way. There is no mention made in history of the return of the fleet to China, though Kublai Khan is known to have died three years after the departure of the Venetians. After various adventures, Marco Polo and his companions arrived in Venice, in 1295. They had been absent twenty-one years, and their nearest relatives did not know them. When they attempted to converse in Italian, their use of foreign idioms and barbarous forms of expression rendered their language hardly intelligible. Possession had been taken of their houses by some of their kindred, and they found it difficult to expel them. Their statements were disbelieved, till, by displaying their immense wealth and their priceless collections of jewels and precious stones, they forced their countrymen to give credit to adventures which must clearly have been extraordinary, to have resulted in such acquisitions of treasure. Marco's riches gave him the name of Milione; and he is designated, in the records of the Venetian Republic, and upon the title-page of his work,--still extant,--as Messer Marco Milione.