to the Court of the Great Kaan Kublai in the Far East, on or within the borders of CATHAY.  That a great and civilized country so called existed in the extremity of Asia had already been reported in Europe by the Friars Plano Carpini (1246) and William Rubruquis (1253), who had not indeed reached its frontiers, but had met with its people at the Court of the Great Kaan in Mongolia; whilst the latter of the two with characteristic acumen had seen that they were identical with the Seres of classic fame.

[Sidenote:  Their intercourse with Kublai Kaan.]

17.  Kublai had never before fallen in with European gentlemen.  He was delighted with these Venetians, listened with strong interest to all that they had to tell him of the Latin world, and determined to send them back as his ambassadors to the Pope, accompanied by an officer of his own Court.  His letters to the Pope, as the Polos represent them, were mainly to desire the despatch of a large body of educated missionaries to convert his people to Christianity.  It is not likely that religious motives influenced Kublai in this, but he probably desired religious aid in softening and civilizing his rude kinsmen of the Steppes, and judged, from what he saw in the Venetians and heard from them, that Europe could afford such aid of a higher quality than the degenerate Oriental Christians with whom he was familiar, or the Tibetan Lamas on whom his patronage eventually devolved when Rome so deplorably failed to meet his advances.

[Sidenote:  Their return home, and Marco’s appearance on the scene.]

18.  The Brothers arrived at Acre in April,[10] 1269, and found that no Pope existed, for Clement IV. was dead the year before, and no new election had taken place.  So they went home to Venice to see how things stood there after their absence of so many years.

The wife of Nicolo was no longer among the living, but he found his son Marco a fine lad of fifteen.

The best and most authentic MSS. tell us no more than this.  But one class of copies, consisting of the Latin version made by our Traveller’s contemporary, Francesco Pipino, and of the numerous editions based indirectly upon it, represents that Nicolo had left Venice when Marco was as yet unborn, and consequently had never seen him till his return from the East in 1269.[11]

We have mentioned that Nicolo Polo had another legitimate son, by name Maffeo, and him we infer to have been younger than Marco, because he is named last (Marcus et Matheus) in the Testament of their uncle Marco the Elder.  We do not know if they were by the same mother.  They could not have been so if we are right in supposing Maffeo to have been the younger, and if Pipino’s version of the history be genuine.  If however we reject the latter, as I incline to do, no ground remains for supposing that Nicolo went to the East much before we find him there viz., in 1260, and Maffeo may have been born of the same mother during the interval between 1254 and 1260.  If on the other hand Pipino’s version be held to, we must suppose that Maffeo (who is named by his uncle in 1280, during his father’s second absence in the East) was born of a marriage contracted during Nicolo’s residence at home after his first journey, a residence which lasted from 1269 to 1271.[12]