route was retraced to Tabriz, where their charge, the Lady Kokachin, ’moult bele dame et avenant,’ was married to Ghazan Khan, the son of her fiance Arghun.  It remains to add that Sir Henry Yule may have finally accepted this view in part, as in the plate showing Probable View of Marco Polo’s own Geography,[D] the itinerary is not shown as running to Baghdad.”

I may be allowed to answer that when Marco Polo started for the East, Baghdad was not rather off the main caravan route.  The fall of Baghdad was not immediately followed by its decay, and we have proof of its prosperity at the beginning of the 14th century.  Tauris had not yet the importance it had reached when the Polos visited it on their return journey.  We have the will of the Venetian Pietro Viglioni, dated from Tauris, 10th December, 1264 (Archiv.  Veneto, xxvi. 161- 165), which shows that he was but a pioneer.  It was only under Arghun Khan (1284-1291) that Tauris became the great market for foreign, especially Genoese, merchants, as Marco Polo remarks on his return journey; with Ghazan and the new city built by that prince, Tauris reached a very high degree of prosperity, and was then really the chief emporium on the route from Europe to Persia and the far East.  Sir Henry Yule had not changed his views, and if in the plate showing Probable View of Marco Polo’s own Geography, the itinerary is not shown as running to Baghdad, it is mere neglect on the part of the draughtsman.—­H.  C.]

      [A] Page 19.

      [B] Vide Yule, vol. i. p. 5.  It is noticeable that John of Pian
          de Carpine, who travelled 1245 to 1247, names it correctly.

      [C] The modern name is Keis, an island lying off Linga.

      [D] Vol. i. p. 110 (Introduction).

[14] It is stated by Neumann that this most estimable traveller once
    intended to have devoted a special work to the elucidation of Marco’s
    chapters on the Oxus Provinces, and it is much to be regretted that
    this intention was never fulfilled.  Pamir has been explored more
    extensively and deliberately, whilst this book was going through the
    press, by Colonel Gordon, and other officers, detached from Sir
    Douglas Forsyth’s Mission. [We have made use of the information given
    by these officers and by more recent travellers.—­H.  C.]

[15] Half a year earlier, if we suppose the three years and a half to
    count from Venice rather than Acre.  But at that season (November)
    Kublai would not have been at Kai-ping fu (otherwise Shang-tu).

[16] Pauthier, p. ix., and p. 361.