the Doge the proud title of Lord of Three-Eighths of the Empire of Romania. But Genoa was biding her time for an early revenge, and year by year her naval strength and skill were increasing. Both these republics held possessions and establishments in the ports of Syria, which were often the scene of sanguinary conflicts between their citizens. Alexandria was still largely frequented in the intervals of war as the great emporium of Indian wares, but the facilities afforded by the Mongol conquerors who now held the whole tract from the Persian Gulf to the shores of the Caspian and of the Black Sea, or nearly so, were beginning to give a great advantage to the caravan routes which debouched at the ports of Cilician Armenia in the Mediterranean and at Trebizond on the Euxine. Tana (or Azov) had not as yet become the outlet of a similar traffic; the Venetians had apparently frequented to some extent the coast of the Crimea for local trade, but their rivals appear to have been in great measure excluded from this commerce, and the Genoese establishments which so long flourished on that coast are first heard of some years after a Greek dynasty was again in possession of Constantinople.*

The various

Sovereign

and Eastern

10. In Asia and Eastern Europe scarcely a dog might bark without Mongol leave, from the borders of Poland and the coast of Cilicia to the Amur and the Yellow Sea. The vast empire which Chinghiz had con- Mongol quered still owned a nominally supreme head in the ties in Asia Great Kaan, but practically it was splitting up into Europe. several great monarchies under the descendants of the four sons of Chinghiz, Juji, Chagatai, Okkodai, and Tuli; and wars on a vast scale were already brewing between them. Hulaku, third son of Tuli, and brother of two Great Kaans, Mangu and Kublai, had become practically independent as ruler of Persia, Babylonia, Mesopotamia and Armenia, though he and his sons, and his sons' sons, continued to stamp the name of the Great Kaan upon their coins, and to use the Chinese seals of state which he bestowed upon them.

Barka, son of Juji, the first ruling prince of the House of Chinghiz to turn Mahomedan, reigned on the steppes of the Wolga, where a standing camp, which eventually became a

*See Heyd, Le Colonie Commerciali degli Italiani, &c., passim.

great city under the name of Sarai, had been established by his brother and predecessor Batu.

The House of Chagatai had settled upon the pastures of the Ili and the valley of the Jaxartes, and ruled the wealthy cities of Sogdiana.

Kaidu, the grandson of Okkodai who had been the successor of Chinghiz in the Kaanship, refused to acknowledge the transfer of the supreme authority to the House of Tuli, and was through the long life of Kublai a thorn in his side, perpetually keeping his north-western frontier in alarm. His immediate authority was exercised over some part of what we should now call Eastern Turkestan and Southern Central Siberia; whilst his hordes of horsemen, force of character, and close neighbourhood brought the Kaans of Chagatai under his influence, and they generally acted in concert with him.

The chief throne of the Mongol Empire had just been ascended by Kublai, the most able of its occupants after the Founder. Before the death of his brother and predecessor Mangu, who died in 1259 before an obscure fortress of Western China, it had been intended to remove the seat of government from Kara Korum on the northern verge of the Mongolian Desert to the more populous regions, that had been conquered in the further East, and this step, which in the end converted the Mongol Kaan into a Chinese Emperor, was carried out by Kublai.

China.

II. For about three centuries the Northern provinces of China had been detached from native rule, and subject to foreign dynasties; first to the Khitan, a people supposed to have been akin to the Tunguses, whose rule subsisted for 200 years, and originated the name of Khitai, Khata, or Cathay, by which for nearly 1000 years China has been known to the nations of Inner Asia, and to those whose acquaintance with it was got by that channel. The Khitan, whose dynasty is known in Chinese history as the Liao or "Iron," had been displaced in 1123 by the Churchés or Nyuché, another race of Eastern Tartary, of the same blood as the modern Manchus, whose Emperors in their brief period of prosperity were known by the Chinese name of Tai-Kin, by the Mongol name of the Altun Kaans, both signifying "Golden." Already in the life-time of Chinghiz himself the northern Provinces of China Proper, including their capital,

known as Chung-tu or Yen-King, now Peking, had been wrenched from them, and the conquest of the dynasty was completed by Chinghiz's successor Okkodai in 1234

Southern China still remained in the hands of the native dynasty of the Sung, who had their capital at the great city now well known as Hangchau-fu. Their dominion was still substantially untouched, but its subjugation was a task to which Kublai before many years turned his attention, and which became the most prominent event of his reign.

12. In India the most powerful sovereign was the Sultan of Delhi, Nassir-uddin Mahmud of the Turki house of Alt

Indo-China.

mish; but, though both Sind and Bengal acknow- India, ledged his supremacy, no part of Peninsular India and had yet been invaded, and throughout the long period of our Traveller's residence in the East the Kings of Delhi had their hands too full, owing to the incursions of the Mongols across the Indus, to venture on extensive campaigning in the south. Hence the Dravidian Kingdoms of Southern India were as yet untouched by foreign conquest, and the accumulated gold of ages lay in their temples and treasuries, an easy prey for the coming invader.

In the Indo-Chinese Peninsula and the Eastern Islands a variety of kingdoms and dynasties were expanding and contracting, of which we have at best but dim and shifting glimpses. That they were advanced in wealth and art, far beyond what the present state of those regions would suggest, is attested by vast and magnificent remains of Architecture, nearly all dating, so far as dates can be ascertained, from the 12th to the 14th centuries, (that epoch during which an architectural afflatus seems to have descended on the human race), and which are found at intervals over both the IndoChinese continent and the Islands, as at Pagán in Burma, at Yuthia in Siam, at Ongkor in Kamboja, at Borobodor and Brambanan in Java. All these remains are deeply marked by Hindu influence, and, at the same time, by strong peculiarities, both generic and individual.

III. THE POLO FAMILY. PERSONAL HISTORY OF THE TRAVELLERS DOWN TO THEIR FINAL RETURN FROM THE EAST.

Alleged origin of the Polos.

13. In days when History and Genealogy were allowed to draw largely on the imagination for the origines of states and families, it was set down by one Venetian Antiquary that among the companions of King Venetus, or of Prince Antenor of Troy, when they settled on the northern shores of the Adriatic, there was one LUCIUS POLUS, who became the progenitor of our Traveller's Family ;* whilst another deduces it from PAOLO the first Doge,† (Paulus Lucas Anafestus of Heraclea, A.D. 696).

More trustworthy traditions, recorded among the Family Histories of Venice, but still no more it is believed than traditions, represent the Family of Polo as having come from Sebenico in Dalmatia, in the 11th century. ‡ Before the middle of the following century they had taken seats in the Great Council of the Republic; for the name of Pietro Polo is said to be subscribed to an act of the time of the Doge Domenico Michiele in 1122, and that of Domenico Polo to an acquittance granted by the Doge Domenico Morosini and his Council in 1153. §

The ascertained genealogy of the Traveller, however, begins only with his grandfather, who lived in the early part of the 13th century.

Two branches of the Polo Family were then recognized, distinguished by the confini or Parishes in which they lived, as

* Zurla, I. 42, quoting a MS. entitled Petrus Ciera S. R. E. Card. de Origine Venetorum et de Civitate Venetiarum. Cicogna says he could not find this MS. as it had been carried to England; and then breaks into a diatribe against foreigners who purchase and carry away such treasures, not to make a serious study of them, but for mere vainglory. . . . or in order to write books contradicting the very MSS. that they have bought, and with that dishonesty and untruth which are so notorious!" (IV. 227).

Campidoglio Veneto of Capellari (MS. in St. Mark's Lib.) quoting "the Venetian Annals of Giulio Faroldi."

The Genealogies of Marco Barbaro specify 1033 as the year of the migration to Venice; on what authority does not appear (MS. copy in Museo Civico at Venice). § Capellari u. s. and Barbaro. In the same century we find (1125, 1195) indications of Polos at Torcello, and of others (1160) at Equileo, and (1179, 1206) Lido Maggiore; in 1154 a Marco Polo of Rialto. Contemporary with these is a family of Polos (1139, 1183, 1193, 1201) at Chioggia (Documents and Lists of Documents from various Archives at Venice).

Polo of S. Geremia, and Polo of S. Felice. ANDREA POLO of S. Felice was the father of three sons, MARCO, NICOLO, and MAFFEO. And Nicolo was the Father of our Marco.

Claims to

noble.

14. Till quite recently it had never been precisely ascertained whether the immediate family of our Traveller belonged to the Nobles of Venice properly so called, who had seats in the Great Council and were en- be styled rolled in the Libro d'Oro. Ramusio indeed styles. our Marco Nobile and Magnifico, and Rusticiano the actual scribe of the Traveller's recollections calls him "sajes et noble citaiens de Venece," but Ramusio's accuracy and Rustician's precision were scarcely to be depended on. Very recently, however, since the subject has been discussed with accomplished students of the Venice Archives, proofs have been found. establishing Marco's personal claim to nobility, inasmuch as both in judicial decisions and in official resolutions of the Great Council, he is designated Nobilis Vir, a formula which would never have been used in such documents (I am assured) had he not been technically noble.*

Elder.

15. Of the three sons of Andrea Polo of S. Felice, Marco seems to have been the eldest, and Maffeo the youngest. They were all engaged in commerce, and apparently in a partnership, which to some extent held Marco the good even when the two younger had been many years absent in the Far East.‡ Marco seems to have been established for a time at Constantinople, § and also to have had a house (no doubt of business) at Soldaia, in the Crimea, where his son and daughter, Nicolo and Maroca by name,

* See Appendix C, Nos. 4, 5, and 10. It was supposed that an autograph of Marco as member of the Great Council had been discovered, but this proves to be a mistake, as will be explained further on. In those days the demarcation between Patrician and non-Patrician at Venice, where all classes shared in commerce, all were (generally speaking) of one race, and where there were neither castles, domains, nor trains of horsemen, formed no wide gulf. Still it is interesting to establish the verity of the old tradition of Marco's technical nobility.

+ Marco's seniority rests only on the assertion of Ramusio, who also calls Maffeo older than Nicolo. But in Marco the Elder's will these two are always (3 times) specified as Nicolaus et Matheus."

This seems implied in the Elder Marco's Will (1280): “ Item de bonis quæ me habere contingunt de fraternâ Compagniâ a suprascriptis Nicolao et Matheo Paulo," &c.

§ In his Will he terms himself "Ego Marcus Paulo quondam de Constantinopoli."