wonderful account of his travels in China, including descriptions of
Peking and Hangchow, and ends his stories with the words, 'As for me,
from day to day I prepare myself to return to those countries, in which
I am content to die, if it pleaseth Him from whom all good things do
come'--no doubt where he had left his heart, but he died at Udine in
Italy. Later there went out another friar, John Marignolli, who was
Papal Legate to Peking from 1342 to 1346.

Nor was it only missionaries who went to Cathay. Odoric, speaking of the
wonders of Hangchow, refers for confirmation to Venetian traders who
have visited it: ''Tis the greatest city in the whole world, so great
indeed that I should scarcely venture to tell of it, but that I have met
at Venice people in plenty who have been there'; John of Monte Corvino
was accompanied by Master Peter of Lucolongo, 'a great merchant,' and
John Marignolli mentions a _fondaco_ for the use of Christian merchants,
which was attached to one of the Franciscan convents at Zaiton. Above
all, there is Francis Balducci Pegolotti, that intrepid factor who
served the great commercial house of the Bardi of Florence, and who
wrote a priceless handbook for the use of merchants about 1340. In this
he gives detailed instructions for the guidance of a merchant, who
wishes to proceed from Tana on the Black Sea by the overland route
across Asia to Cathay and back again with £12,000 worth of silk in his
caravan, and remarks casually, in passing, 'The road you travel from
Tana to Cathay is perfectly safe, whether by day or night, according to
what merchants say who have used it'--'il chanmino dandare dana Tana al
Ghattajo _è sichurissimo_![39] Think only of what it all means. Marco
Polo travelling where no man set foot again till the twentieth century.
The bells of the Christian church ringing sweetly in the ears of the
Great Khan in Peking. The long road across central Asia perfectly safe
for merchants. The 'many persons at Venice' who have walked in the