Another thing too must be mentioned, which does credit to those three
Ambassadors, and shows for what great personages they were held. The Great
Kaan regarded them with such trust and affection, that he had confided to
their charge the Queen Cocachin, as well as the daughter of the King of
Manzi,[NOTE 8] to conduct to Argon the Lord of all the Levant. And those
two great ladies who were thus entrusted to them they watched over and
guarded as if they had been daughters of their own, until they had
transferred them to the hands of their Lord; whilst the ladies, young and
fair as they were, looked on each of those three as a father, and obeyed
them accordingly. Indeed, both Casan, who is now the reigning prince, and
the Queen Cocachin his wife, have such a regard for the Envoys that there
is nothing they would not do for them. And when the three Ambassadors took
leave of that Lady to return to their own country, she wept for sorrow at
the parting.
What more shall I say? Having left Kiacatu they travelled day by day till
they came to Trebizond, and thence to Constantinople, from Constantinople
to Negropont, and from Negropont to Venice. And this was in the year 1295
of Christ's Incarnation.
And now that I have rehearsed all the Prologue as you have heard, we shall
begin the Book of the Description of the Divers Things that Messer Marco
met with in his Travels.
NOTE 1. - On these plates or tablets, which have already been spoken of, a
note will be found further on. (Bk. II. ch. vii.) Plano Carpini says of
the Mongol practice in reference to royal messengers: "Nuncios, quoscunque
et quotcunque, et ubicunque transmittit, oportet quod dent eis sine mora
equos subductitios et expensas" (669).
NOTE 2. - The mention of the King of England appears for the first time in
Pauthier's text. Probably we shall never know if the communication reached
him. But we have the record of several embassies in preceding and
subsequent years from the Mongol Khans of Persia to the Kings of England;
all with the view of obtaining co-operation in attack on the Egyptian
Sultan. Such messages came from Abaka in 1277; from Arghun in 1289 and
1291; from Ghazan in 1302; from Oljaitu in 1307. (See Remusat in Mem.
de l'Acad. VII.)
[Illustration: Ancient Chinese War Vessel.]
NOTE 3. - Ramusio has "nine sails." Marsden thinks even this lower number
an error of Ramusio's, as "it is well known that Chinese vessels do not
carry any kind of topsail." This is, however, a mistake, for they do
sometimes carry a small topsail of cotton cloth (and formerly, it would
seem from Lecomte, even a topgallant sail at times), though only in quiet
weather.
