which he had been sent, and spoke with such assurance of the ease with
which it had been accomplished, that the three ambassadors conceived a
strong desire to take with them all three of these ingenious Venetians,
who seemed to know so much about ships. Thus it was that the great Khan
was prevailed upon, very reluctantly, to let them go.

Early in 1292 they set sail from the busy port of Zaiton in fourteen
big Chinese junks (of which Marco, writing of the shipping of the
Indian and China seas, has left an excellent description),[28] with the
three envoys, the princess, a beautiful girl of seventeen, 'moult bèle
dame at avenant,' says Marco, who had an eye for pretty ladies, and a
large suite of attendants. One version of Marco's book says that they
took with them also the daughter of the king of Mansi, one of those Sung
princesses who in happier days had wandered beside the lake in Hangchow,
and who had no doubt been brought up at Cambaluc by the care of Kublai
Khan's favourite queen, the Lady Jamui. The voyage was a long and
difficult one; they suffered lengthy delays in Sumatra, Ceylon, and
Southern India, occupied by Marco in studying the sea charts of the
coast of India which the Arab pilots showed him, and adding to his
knowledge of these parts, which he had already visited. Thus it was over
two years before the junks reached Persia, and two of the three envoys
and a large number of their suite had died by the way. When at last they
landed, it was found that Arghun, the prospective bridegroom, had
meanwhile died too, leaving his throne in the charge of a regent for his
young son. But on the regent's advice a convenient solution of the
difficulty was found by handing the princess over to this prince, and
Marco and his uncles duly conducted her to him in the province of
Timochain, where Marco Polo noticed that the women were 'in my opinion
the most beautiful in the world', where stood the famed and solitary
_arbor secco_, and where men still told tales of great Alexander and