reached the noble city of Bokhara. They must have followed
the line of the Oxus River, and if we reverse the marvellous
description which Matthew Arnold wrote of that river's course
in _Sohrab and Rustum_, we shall have a picture of the
Polos' journey:

But the majestic River floated on,
Out of the mist and hum of that low land,
Into the frosty starlight, and there moved,
Rejoicing, through the hush'd Chorasmian waste
Under the solitary moon; he flow'd
Right for the Polar Star, past Orgunjè,
Brimming and bright and large: then sands begin
To hem his watery march, and dam his streams,
And split his currents; that for many a league
The shorn and parcell'd Oxus strains along
Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles--
Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had
In his high mountain cradle in Pamere,
A foil'd circuitous wanderer:--till at last
The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide
His luminous home of waters opens, bright
And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars
Emerge and shine upon the Aral Sea.

For three years the Polos remained at Bokhara, until one day
it happened that an embassy came to the city, on its way back
from the khan in Persia to the great Khan Kublai, who ruled
in far-off China, and to whom all the Tartar rulers owed
allegiance. The chief ambassador was struck with the talents