[Illustration:  The Piazzetta at Venice. (From the Bodleian MS. of Polo.)]

[Sidenote:  Second Journey of the Polo Brothers, accompanied by Marco.]

19.  The Papal interregnum was the longest known, at least since the dark ages.  Those two years passed, and yet the Cardinals at Viterbo had come to no agreement.  The brothers were unwilling to let the Great Kaan think them faithless, and perhaps they hankered after the virgin field of speculation that they had discovered; so they started again for the East, taking young Mark with them.  At Acre they took counsel with an eminent churchman, TEDALDO (or Tebaldo) VISCONTI, Archdeacon of Liege, whom the Book represents to have been Legate in Syria, and who in any case was a personage of much gravity and influence.  From him they got letters to authenticate the causes of the miscarriage of their mission, and started for the further East.  But they were still at the port of Ayas on the Gulf of Scanderoon, which was then becoming one of the chief points of arrival and departure for the inland trade of Asia, when they were overtaken by the news that a Pope was at last elected, and that the choice had fallen upon their friend Archdeacon Tedaldo.  They immediately returned to Acre, and at last were able to execute the Kaan’s commission, and to obtain a reply.  But instead of the hundred able teachers of science and religion whom Kublai is said to have asked for, the new Pope, Gregory X., could supply but two Dominicans; and these lost heart and drew back when they had barely taken the first step of the journey.

Judging from certain indications we conceive it probable that the three Venetians, whose second start from Acre took place about November 1271, proceeded by Ayas and Sivas, and then by Mardin, Mosul, and Baghdad, to Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, with the view of going on by sea, but that some obstacle arose which compelled them to abandon this project and turn north again from Hormuz.[13] They then traversed successively Kerman and Khorasan, Balkh and Badakhshan, whence they ascended the Panja or upper Oxus to the Plateau of Pamir, a route not known to have been since followed by any European traveller except Benedict Goes, till the spirited expedition of Lieutenant John Wood of the Indian Navy in 1838.[14] Crossing the Pamir highlands the travellers descended upon Kashgar, whence they proceeded by Yarkand and Khotan, and the vicinity of Lake Lob, and eventually across the Great Gobi Desert to Tangut, the name then applied by Mongols and Persians to territory at the extreme North-west of China, both within and without the Wall.  Skirting the northern frontier of China they at last reached the presence of the Kaan, who was at his usual summer retreat at Kai-ping fu, near the base of the Khingan Mountains, and nearly 100 miles north of the Great Wall at Kalgan.  If there be no mistake in the time (three years and a half) ascribed to this journey in all the existing texts, the travellers did not reach the Court till about May of 1275.[15]