Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/77

 RUBBUQUIS AND MAECO POLO 37 of the forces at work in Western Asia. Rubruquis visited various Tartar chiefs from the Black Sea to the edge of the great Mongolian desert, and returned by the Volga and the Caucasus, much impressed by the Tartar power. The Turkish kingdom in Asia Minor struok him as of no treasure, few warriors, and many enemies. Two ambassadors from Castile had seen the Turks shattered by Timur in the carnage at Angora in 1402, and were honourably entertained by the Mon- gol conqueror. The Black Sea route obtained a delusive prominence, and the menacing strength of the Turks continued for a time obscure to Catholic Europe." It was by this Black Sea route that the Venetian family of merchant travellers, the Polos, originally started toward India and China in 1260. The imper- ishable record of the greatest of that name, Marco, is the masterpiece of travel in the Middle Ages, and has been illustrated by the patience and learning of a foremost geographer of our day. Marco Polo reached China by land and returned by the long sea passage, via the Straits of Malacca, Malabar, and Persia, after an absence of twenty-four years (1271-1295). His work gives the first account of India by a Christian writer since that of Indicopleustes in the sixth cen- tury A. D. But the mercantile enterprise of Venetian and Genoese traders, like the missionary zeal of the friars who preceded and followed them, proved power- less to keep open the Black Sea route when the Turks threw themselves across the path. A similar fate befell the attempts of Christian land-explorers by way of