Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/421

Rh POLO 405 Indo-Chinese continental countries and the islands, as at Pagdn in Burmah, at Ayuthia in Siam, at Ongkor and many other places in Camboja, at Borobodor and Bram- banan in Java. All these remains are deeply marked by Hindu influence. Venetian genealogies and traditions of uncertain value trace the Polo family to Sebennico in Dalmatia, and before the end of the llth century names of its members are found in the Great Council of the republic. But the ascertained line of the traveller begins only with his grandfather. Andrea Polo of S. Felice was the father of three sons, Marco, Nicolo, and Maffeo, of whom the second was the father of the subject of this article. They were presumably &quot;noble,&quot; i.e., belonging to the families who had seats in the Great Council, and were enrolled in the Libro d Oro ; for we know that Marco the traveller is officially so styled (nolilis vir}. The three brothers were engaged in commerce: the elder Marco, resident apparently in Constantinople and in the Crimea, does not enter into the history. In 1260 we find Nicolo and Maffeo at Constantinople. How long they had been absent from Venice we do not know. Xicolo was a married man, and had left his wife there. In the year named the two brothers went on a speculation to the Crimea, whence a succession of chances and openings carried them to the court of Barka Khan at Sarai, and further north, and eventually across the steppes to Bokhara. Here they fell in with certain envoys who had been on a mission from the Great Khan Kublai to his brother Hulagu in Persia, and by them were persuaded to make the journey to Cathay in their company. And thus the first European travellers of whom we have any knowledge reached China. Kublai, when they reached his court, was either at CAMBALUC (q.v.), i.e., Peking, which he had just rebuilt on a vast scale, or at his beautiful summer seat at Shangtu in the country north of the great wall (&quot; In Xanadu did Cubla Khan,&quot; &c.). It was the first time that the khan, a man full of energy and intelligence, had fallen in with European gentlemen. He was delighted with the Venetian brothers, listened eagerly to all that they had to tell of the Latin world, and decided to send them back as his envoys to the pope, with letters request ing the despatch of a large body of educated men to instruct his people in Christianity and in the liberal arts. The motive of the khan s request was doubtless much the same that some years back influenced the black king of Uganda on Lake Nyanza to make a similar request through the traveller Stanley. With Kublai, as with his predecessors, religion was chiefly a political engine. The khan must be obeyed ; how man should worship God was no matter to him. But Kublai was the first of his house to rise above the essential barbarism of the Mongols, and he had been able enough to discern that the Christian church could afford the aid he desired in taming his countrymen. It was only when Home had failed lament ably to meet his advances that he fell back upon the lamas and their trumpery as, after a fashion, civilizing instruments. The brothers arrived at Acre in April 1269. They learned that Clement IV. had died the year before, and no new pope had yet been chosen. So they went home to Venice, where they found that Nicolo s wife was dead, but had left a son Marco, now a fine lad of fifteen. The papal interregnum was the longest that had been known, at least since the dark ages. After the Polos had spent two years at home there was still no pope ; and the brothers resolved on starting again for the East, taking young Mark with them. At Acre they took counsel with an eminent churchman, Tedaldo, archdeacon of Liege, and took from him letters to authenticate the causes that had hindered their mission. They had not yet left Ayas on the Cilician coast (then one of the chief points for the arrival and departure of the land-trade of Asia), when news overtook them that a pope had been elected in the person of their friend Archdeacon Tedaldo. They hastened back to Acre, and at last were able to execute Kublai s commission and to obtain a papal reply. But, instead of the hundred teachers asked for by the Great Khan, the new pope (styled Gregory X.) could supply but two Domini cans ; and these lost heart and turned back, when they had barely taken the first step of their journey. The second start from Acre must have taken place about November 1271 ; and from a careful consideration of the indications and succession of chapters in Marco Polo s book, it would seem that the party proceeded from Ayas to Sivas, and then by Mardin, Mosul, and Baghdad to Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf (see ORMUS), with the purpose of going on to China by sea ; but that, some obstacle having interfered which compelled them to abandon this plan, they returned northward through Persia. Traversing Kerman and Khorasan they went on to Balkh and Badakhshan, in which last country an Oriental Switzerland, as it has been called they were long detained by the illness of young Marco. In a passage touching on the charming climate of the hills of Badakh shan, Marco breaks into an enthusiasm which he rarely betrays, but which is easily understood by those who have known what it is, with fever in the blood, to escape to the exhilarating air and fragrant pine-groves of the Himalaya. They then ascended the upper Oxus through Wakhan to the plateau of Pamir (a name first heard in. Marco s book). Those regions, so attractive to geo graphers, were never described again by any European traveller till the spirited expedition in 1838 of that excellent officer the late Lieutenant John Wood of the Indian navy, whose narrative abounds in the happiest incidental illustration of Marco Polo s chapters. Crossing the Pamir highlands, the travellers descended upon Kash- gar, whence they proceeded by Yarkand to Khotan. These are regions which remained almost absolutely closed to our knowledge till within the last twenty years, when the temporary overthrow of the Chinese power, and the enterprise of travellers like the late Mr Johnson and Mi- Robert Shaw, followed by the missions of Sir Douglas Forsyth and his companions, and of Mr Ney Elias, again made them known. From Khotan they passed on to the vicinity of Lake Lop (or Lob), reached still more recently, for the first time since Marco Polo s journey, by the indefatigable Russian officer Prejevalsky, in 1871. Thence the great desert of Gobi was crossed to Tangut, as the region at the extreme north-west of China, both within and without the Wall, was then called. In his account of the passage of the Gobi, or desert of Lop, as he calls it, Polo gives some description of the terrors with which the suggestions of solitude and desolation have peopled such tracts in most parts of the world, a descrip tion which reproduces with singular identity that of the Chinese pilgrim HWEN T SANG (q.v.}, in passing the same desert in the contrary direction six hundred years before. The Venetians, in their further journey, were met and welcomed by the Great Khan s people, and at last reached his presence at Shangtu, in the spring of 1275. Kublai received them with great cordiality, and took kindly to young Mark, by this time about one and twenty years of age. The &quot;young bachelor,&quot; as the book calls him, applied himself diligently to the acquisition of the divers languages and written characters chiefly in use among ths multifarious nationalities included in the khan s court and administration; and Kublai, seeing that he was both