[Illustration: The Piazzetta At Venice.

(From the Bodleian MS.

Of Polo.)]

[Sidenote: Second Journey of the Polo Brothers, accompanied by Marco.]

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 hankered 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 Liege, 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.

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.[13] 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 Goes, till the spirited expedition of Lieutenant John Wood of the Indian Navy in 1838.[14] 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 Kai-ping fu, 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.[15]

[Sidenote: Marco's employment by Kublai Kaan; and his journeys.]

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 Joenne Bacheler, as the story calls him, applied himself to the acquisition of 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, 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.[16]

His first mission apparently was that which carried him through the provinces of Shan-si, Shen-si, and Sze-ch'wan, and the wild country on the East of Tibet, to the remote province of Yun-nan, called by the Mongols Karajang, and which had been partially conquered by an army under Kublai himself in 1253, before his accession to the throne.[17] 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 Yun-nan and Kwei-chau, a vast Ethnological Garden, as it were, of tribes of various race and in every stage of uncivilisation, 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 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 Yang-chau, 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 Kan-chau 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.

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