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204 brave merchants might come home soon. They were hardly looked for while Marco was a child; for, when people went exploring, they expected to be gone for a term of years; and merchants especially found it answer to sit down in a favourable place for months or years together,—besides its being usually difficult to get away in safety, except at rare intervals. But Marco grew into boyhood and youth; and still his father did not return. He was well taught and trained, so as to be fit for whatever destiny his father might be intending: but his poor mother could not wait for the end of her long suspense. When the father, Nicolo Polo, returned at last, Marco was nineteen, and had for some years felt himself an orphan.

It must have been one of the strangest first meetings between parent and child that ever took place. It does not appear that Nicolo had ever heard, with any certainty, of the boy’s existence; for people who ventured into “Scythia” in those days gave up all hope of news from home: and now he found a fine manly young fellow, eager to hear of everything, from the traffic on the Volga to the grandeur of Kubla Khan. When on the Volga, the Polos had been warned of troubles to the west of the Caspian; so they tried to pass down by the east side, and lived for a time at Bokhara. They knew better than our poor countrymen of this century how to hold intercourse with Tartar potentates; and they were safe and prosperous where Wyburd and Stoddart and Conolly underwent captivity and death.

At Bokhara they won the admiration of a minister of the great Emperor of Tartary, who persuaded them to go with him to the Emperor’s court. For the chance of opening all Asia to Venetian commerce, and seeing what could be made of “far Cathay” and its reputed wealth, they agreed to undertake this journey of a whole year from the court of Bokhara to that of Kubla Khan, in Chinese Tartary. It was in 1265 that they arrived there. The great Khan knew about as much of the West as Europe did of the far East. He wished the Pope, as the head of Christendom, would send him a hundred wise men, to instruct his people in all sorts of knowledge. The Polos carried this petition to the Pope. By some means or other, they got passed through to Syria, from the coast of which it was easy to reach Venice.

They had achieved such a commercial success, and saw so much more in prospect, that they were eager to return to Tartary; and young Marco was eager to go with them. Owing to a change of Popes, it was some time before they could get on with their errand: and they started at last, at the end of two years, without any answer, dreading lest the Emperor should suspect them of bad faith. They had again left the coast of Syria when they were called back to receive credentials, and two monks laden with presents from the new Pope—all destined for Kubla Khan. The monks, however, turned tail on finding that the Soldan of Egypt was in force on their route. The Polos persevered, and reached Balkh, where young Marco was so ill that they stayed for a whole year. When we read of these long pauses, we must remember that the adventurers were trading all the time, or learning the commercial methods of each country and district. We must remember how small were the facilities for exchanging and transmitting money; and that, even at this day, time seems to be of no value in eastern countries. The promptitude and rapid action of Europeans, and yet more of Americans, is a subject of contemptuous wonder to orientals, who are never comfortable unless they lose as much time as possible over every transaction.

At last, however, the Polos were again on the march, climbing the snowy passes of the mountains, and traversing the windy steppes of central Asia. They were thirty days in crossing the desert of Kobi, and, after crossing Chinese Tartary, they presented themselves to their old patron. He was well pleased to see them again, and received the Pope’s presents very graciously. When Nicolo presented his son, the Emperor looked benignly upon him, and gave him an office in his household. Marco was young enough to be flexible in such circumstances. He lived like the Tartars, learned four languages presently, and, by his general cultivation, obtained a strong and wide influence. It suited his purposes well that the Emperor sent him here, there, and everywhere on State business—one of these journeys being to a province which it took six months to reach. He was all the time making himself master, for future use, of the geography of these lands and seas, and of their commercial capacity and condition; for he was not satisfied with growing rich and powerful, like Joseph in Egypt, but yearned after his own country and his father’s house. While he was acting as governor of a great city in China, his father and uncle were instructing the Emperor in the arts of war, and enabling him to take towns by the battering-ram and some new projectiles—the use of which was high military science in those days.

Meantime Kubla Khan was growing old: the Polos had been seventeen years with him, and they dreaded detention by his successor if they did not get away by his indulgence. He was hurt at the request, and conceived that they ought to be satisfied with such wealth as he could bestow: and he was willing to give whatever they might ask. Marco’s opportune knowledge released them. In his rovings he had discovered that there was sea where our ships are now always passing to and fro: and he engaged to carry by sea to Persia a young princess whose bridegroom was awaiting her there, while the land journey was too full of risks, at the moment, for her to attempt it. The Persian envoys so desired his escort, that Kubla Khan yielded the point, and sent off the party in grand style. Fourteen four-masted vessels, provisioned for two years, carried many hundreds of navigators. The few details we have of this return from China—from Fokien to Venice—show us something of what it was that adventurous merchants undertook in spreading commerce in the middle ages. In 1271 and 1272 the Polos had ridden and marched through dry steppes and over ranges of snowy mountains: and now, in returning twenty years later they braved other perils. They coasted almost every country,