in the East) was born of a marriage contracted during Nicolo's residence at home after his first journey, a residence which lasted from 1269 to 1271.*

Second Journey of the Polo Brothers,

accompanied

19. The Papal interregnum was the longest known, at least since the dark ages. Those two years passed, and yet the Cardinals at Viterbo had come to no agreement. The brothers were unwilling to let the Great Kaan think them faithless, and perhaps they hanby Marco. kered after the virgin field of speculation that they had discovered; so they started again for the East, taking young Mark with them. At Acre they took counsel with an eminent churchman, TEDALDO (or Tebaldo) VISCONTI, Archdeacon of Liége, whom the Book represents to have been Legate in Syria, and who in any case was a personage of much gravity and influence. From him they got letters to authenticate the causes of the miscarriage of their mission, and started for the further East. But they were still at the port of Ayas on the Gulf of Scanderoon, which was then becoming one of the chief points of arrival and departure for the inland trade of Asia, when they were overtaken by the news that a Pope was at last elected, and that the choice had fallen upon their friend Archdeacon Tedaldo. They immediately returned to Acre, and at last were able to execute the Kaan's commission, and to obtain a reply. But instead of the hundred able teachers of science and religion whom Kublai is said to have asked for, the new Pope, Gregory X., could supply but two Dominicans; and these lost heart and drew back when they had barely taken the first step of the journey.

*The last view is in substance, I find, suggested by Cicogna (ii. 389).

The matter is of some interest, because in the Will of the younger Maffeo, which is extant, he makes a bequest to his uncle (Avunculus) Jordan Trevisan. This seems an indication that his mother's name may have been Trevisan. The same Maffeo had a daughter Fiordelisa. And Marco the Elder, in his Will (1280), appoints as his executors, during the absence of his brothers, the same Jordan Trevisan and his own sister-in-law Fiordelisa ("Jordanum Trevisanum de confinio S. Antonini et Flordelisam cognatam meam"). Hence I conjecture that this cognata Fiordelisa (Trevisan?) was the wife of the absent Nicolo, and the mother of Maffeo. In that case of course Maffeo and Marco were the sons of different mothers. With reference to the above suggestion of Nicolo's second marriage in 1269 there is a curious variation in a fragmentary Venetian Polo in the Barberini Library at Rome. It runs, in the passage corresponding to the latter part of chapter ix. of Prologue: "i qual do fratelli steteno do anni in Veniezia aspettando la elletion de nuovo Papa, nel qual tempo Mess. Nicolo si tolse moier et si la lasd graveda." I believe, however, that it is only a careless misrendering of Pipino's statement about Marco's birth.

Judging from certain indications we conceive it probable that the three Venetians, whose second start from Acre took place about November 1271, proceeded by Ayas and Sivas, and then by Mardin, Mosul, and Baghdad, to Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, with the view of going on by sea, but that some obstacle arose which compelled them to abandon this project and turn north again from Hormuz. They then traversed successively Kerman and Khorasan, Balkh and Badakhshan, whence they ascended the Panja or upper Oxus to the Plateau of Pamir, a route not known to have been since followed by any European traveller except Benedict Goës, till the spirited expedition of Lieutenant John Wood of the Indian Navy in 1838.* Crossing the Pamir highlands the travellers descended upon Kashgar, whence they proceeded by Yarkand and Khotan, and the vicinity of Lake Lob, and eventually across the Great Gobi Desert to Tangut, the name then applied by Mongols and Persians to territory at the extreme North-west of China, both within and without the Wall. Skirting the northern frontier of China they at last reached the presence of the Kaan, who was at his usual summer retreat at Kaipingfu, near the base of the Khingan Mountains, and nearly 100 miles north of the Great Wall at Kalgan. If there be no mistake in the time (three years and a half) ascribed to this journey in all the existing texts, the travellers did not reach the Court till about May of 1275.†

20. Kublai received the Venetians with great cordiality, and took kindly to young Mark, who must have been by this time one-and-twenty. The Foenne Bacheler, as the Marco's story calls him, applied himself to the acquisition of employment the languages and written characters in chief use among the multifarious nationalities included in the Kaan's Court and administration; and Kublai after a time,

by Kublai

Kaan: and

his journeys.

It is stated by Neumann that this most estimable traveller once intended to have devoted a special work to the elucidation of Marco's chapters on the Oxus Provinces, and it is much to be regretted that this intention was never fulfilled. Pamir has been explored more extensively and deliberately, whilst this book was going through the press, by Col. Gordon, and other officers, detached from Sir Douglas Forsyth's Mission.

Half a year earlier, if we suppose the three years and a half to count from Venice rather than Acre. But at that season (November) Kublai would not have been at Kaipingfu (otherwise Shangtu).

seeing his discretion and ability, began to employ him in the public service. M. Pauthier has found a record in the Chinese Annals of the Mongol Dynasty, which states that in the year 1277, a certain POLO was nominated a second-class commissioner or agent attached to the Privy Council, a passage which we are happy to believe to refer to our young traveller.*

His first mission apparently was that which carried him through the provinces of Shansi, Shensi, and Szechwan, and the wild country on the East of Tibet, to the remote province of Yunnan, called by the Mongols Karájáng, and which had been partially conquered by an army under Kublai himself in 1253, before his accession to the throne.† Mark, during his stay at court, had observed the Kaan's delight in hearing of strange countries, their marvels, manners, and oddities, and had heard his Majesty's frank expressions of disgust at the stupidity of his commissioners when they could speak of nothing but the official business on which they had been sent. Profiting by these observations, he took care to store his memory or his note books with all curious facts that were likely to interest Kublai, and related them with vivacity on his return to Court. This first journey, which led him through a region which is still very nearly a terra incognita, and in which there existed and still exists, among the deep valleys of the Great Rivers flowing down from Eastern Tibet, and in the rugged mountain ranges bordering Yunnan and Kweichau, a vast Ethnological Garden, as it were, of tribes of various race and in every stage of uncivilization, afforded him an acquaintance with many strange products and eccentric traits of manners, wherewith to delight the Emperor.

Mark rose rapidly in favour, and often served Kublai again

* Pauthier, p. ix., and p. 361.

That this was Marco's first mission is positively stated in the Ramusian edition; and though this may be only an editor's gloss it seems well-founded. The French texts say only that the Great Kaan, "l'envoia en un message en une terre ou bien avoit vj. mois de chemin." The traveller's actual Itinerary affords to Vochan (Yungchang), on the frontier of Burma, 147 days' journey, which with halts might well be reckoned six months in round estimate. And we are enabled by various circumstances to fix the date of the Yunnan journey between 1277 and 1280. The former limit is determined by Polo's account of the battle with the Burmese, near Vochan, which took place according to the Chinese Annals in 1277. The latter is fixed by his mention of Kublai's son, Mangalai, as governing at Kenjanfu (Singan-fu), a prince who died in 1280. (See vol. ii. pp. 18, 24, also 52, 65.)

on distant missions, as well as in domestic administration, but we gather few details as to his employments. At one time we know that he held for three years the government of the great city of Yangchau, though we need not try to magnify this office, as some commentators have done, into the viceroyalty of one of the great provinces of the Empire; on another occasion we find him with his uncle Maffeo, passing a year at Kanchau in Tangut; again, it would appear, visiting Kara Korum, the old capital of the Kaans in Mongolia; on another occasion in Champa or Southern Cochin China; and again, or perhaps as a part of the last expedition, on a mission to the Indian Seas, when he appears to have visited several of the southern states of India. We are not informed whether his father and uncle shared in such employments; and the story of their services rendered to the Kaan in promoting the capture of the city of Siangyang, by the construction of powerful engines of attack, is too much perplexed by difficulties of chronology to be cited with confidence. Anyhow they were gathering wealth, and after years of exile they began to dread what might follow old Kublai's death, and longed to carry their gear and their own grey heads safe home to the Lagoons. The aged Emperor growled refusal to all their hints, and but for a happy chance we should have lost our medieval Herodotus.

stances of

the Depar Polos from

ture of the

the Kaan's

21. Arghun Khan of Persia, Kublai's great-nephew, had in 1286 lost his favourite wife the Khatun Bulughán; and, mourning her sorely, took steps to fulfil her dying Circuminjunction that her place should be filled only by a lady of her own kin, the Mongol Tribe of Bayaut. Ambassadors were despatched to the Court of Kaan- Court. baligh to seek such a bride. The message was courteously received, and the choice fell on the Lady Kokáchin, a maiden of 17, "moult bele dame et avenant." The overland road from Peking to Tabriz was not only of portentous length for such a tender charge, but was imperilled by war, so the envoys desired to return by sea. Tartars in general were strangers to all navigation; and the envoys, much taken with the Venetians, and eager to profit by their experience, especially as Marco had just then returned from his Indian mission, begged

* Excepting in the doubtful case of Kanchau, where one reading says that the three Polos were there on business of their own not necessary to mention, and another, that only Maffeo and Marco were there "en legation."

the Kaan as a favour to send the three Firinghis in their company. He consented with reluctance, but, having done so, fitted the party out nobly for the voyage, charging the Polos with friendly messages for the potentates of Europe, including the King of England. They appear to have sailed from the port of Zayton (as the Westerns called T'swanchau or Chincheu in Fokien) in the beginning of 1292. It was an ill-starred voyage, involving long detentions on the coast of Sumatra, and in the South of India, to which, however, we are indebted for some of the best chapters in the book; and two years or upwards passed before they arrived at their destination in Persia. The three hardy Venetians survived all perils, and so did the lady, who had come to look on them with filial regard; but two of the three envoys, and a vast proportion of the suite, had perished by the way.† Arghun Khan too had been dead even before they quitted China; his brother Kaikhátu reigned in his stead; and his son Gházán succeeded to the lady's hand. We are told by one who knew both the princes well that Arghun was one of the handsomest men of his time, whilst Gházán was, among all his host, one of the most insignificant in appearance. But in other respects

* Persian history seems to fix the arrival of the Lady Kokáchin in the North of Persia to the winter of 1293-4. The voyage to Sumatra occupied three months (vol. i. p. 33); they were five months detained there (ii. 235); and the remainder of the voyage extended to eighteen more (i. 33),-twenty-six months in all.

The data are too slight for unexceptionable precision, but the following adjustment will fairly meet the facts. Say that they sailed from Fokien in January 1292. In April they would be in Sumatra, and find the S. W. Monsoon too near to admit of their crossing the Bay of Bengal. They remain in port till September (five months), and then proceed, touching (perhaps) at Ceylon, at Kayal, and at several ports of Western India. In one of these, e. g. Kayal or Tana, they pass the S. W. Monsoon of 1293, and then proceed to the Gulf. They reach Hormuz in the winter, and the camp of the Persian Prince Gházán, the son of Arghun, in March, twenty-six months from their departure.

I have been unable to trace Hammer's authority (not Wassáf I find), which perhaps gives the precise date of the Lady's arrival in Persia (see infra, p. 38). From his narrative, however (Gesch. der Ilchane, ii. 20), March 1294 is perhaps too late a date. But the five months' stoppage in Sumatra must have been in the S. W. Monsoon; and if the arrival in Persia is put earlier, Polo's numbers can scarcely be held to. Or, the eighteen months mentioned at vol. i. p. 33, must include the five months' stoppage. We may then suppose that they reached Hormuz about November 1293, and Gházán's camp a month or two later.

The French text which forms the basis of my translation says that, excluding mariners, there were 600 souls, out of whom only eight survived. The older MS. which I quote as G. T. makes the number 18, a fact that I had overlooked till the sheets were printed off.

Died 12th March, 1291.