into insignificance before the extensive and accurate knowledge of
almost the whole of Eastern Asia brought back to Europe by Marco
Polo, a Venetian, who spent eighteen years of his life in the East.
His travels form an epoch in the history of geographical discovery
only second to the voyages of Columbus.

In 1260, two of his uncles, named Nicolo and Maffeo Polo, started
from Constaninople on a trading venture to the Crimea, after which
they were led to visit Bokhara, and thence on to the court of the
Great Khan, Kublai, who received them very graciously, and being
impressed with the desirability of introducing Western civilisation
into the new Mongolian empire, he entrusted them with a message to
the Pope, demanding one hundred wise men of the West to teach the
Mongolians the Christian religion and Western arts. The two brothers
returned to their native place, Venice, in 1269, but found no Pope
to comply with the Great Khan's request; for Clement IV. had died
the year before, and his successor had not yet been appointed. They
waited about for a couple of years till Gregory X. was elected, but he
only meagrely responded to the Great Khan's demands, and instructed
two Dominicans to accompany the Polos, who on this occasion took
with them their young nephew Marco, a lad of seventeen. They started
in November 1271, but soon lost the company of the Dominicans,
who lost heart and went back.

They went first to Ormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, then
struck northward through Khorasan Balkh to the Oxus, and thence
on to the Plateau of Pomir. Thence they passed the Great Desert
of Gobi, and at last reached Kublai in May 1275, at his summer
residence in Kaipingfu. Notwithstanding that they had not carried
out his request, the Khan received them in a friendly manner, and