Scanderoon, news was brought them of the election of Tebaldo di Piacenza
as Pope Gregory X, and as Tebaldo had already interested himself in
their mission, they returned with all speed to Acre, and obtained from
him letters to the Khan (they had already visited Jerusalem and provided
themselves with some of the holy oil), and two Dominican friars, 'men of
letters and science as well as profound theologians,' though not the
hundred men of learning for whom the Khan had asked; and so they set out
again from Acre in November 1271. The Dominicans may have been profound
theologians, but they were somewhat chicken-hearted adventurers, and
when rumours reached them of wars in the district of Armenia, through
which they had to pass, they hastily handed over their letters to the
Venetians, put themselves under the protection of the Knights Templars,
and scuttled back to the coast and safety as fast as they could go,
leaving the Polos, 'undismayed by perils and difficulties, to which they
had long been inured,' to proceed alone. Assuredly, St Francis crows
over St Dominic somewhere in the courts of Heaven; his friars never
feared for their skins, as they travelled blithely into the heat of
India and the cold of central Asia; and it is easy to imagine the
comments of fat William of Rubruck upon the flight of the profound
theologians.

The account of this second journey of the Polos may be read in the
wonderful book which Marco afterwards wrote to describe the wonders of
the world. They went from Lajazzo through Turcomania, past Mount Ararat,
where Marco heard tell that Noah's ark rested, and where he first heard
also of the oil wells of Baku and the great inland sea of Caspian. Past
Mosul and Bagdad they went, through Persia, where brocades are woven and
merchants bring caravan after caravan of treasures, to Hormuz, on the
Persian Gulf, into which port put the ships from India, laden with
spices, drugs, scented woods, and jewels, gold tissues and elephants'