The suggestion seems to me, as regards the story, interesting and probable; though I do not admit that the character of Prester John properly belonged to any real person.

I may best explain my view of the matter by a geographical analogy.  Pre-Columbian maps of the Atlantic showed an Island of Brazil, an Island of Antillia, founded—­who knows on what?—­whether on the real adventure of a vessel driven in sight of the Azores or Bermudas, or on mere fancy and fogbank.  But when discovery really came to be undertaken, men looked for such lands and found them accordingly.  And there they are in our geographies, Brazil and the Antilles!

The cut which we give is curious in connection with our traveller’s notice of the portrait-gallery of the Golden Kings.  For it is taken from the fragmentary MS. of Rashiduddin’s History in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society, a MS. believed to be one of those executed under the great Vazir’s own supervision, and is presented there as the portrait of the last sovereign of the Dynasty in question, being one of a whole series of similar figures.  There can be little doubt, I think, that these were taken from Chinese originals, though, it may be, not very exactly.

NOTE 2.—­The history of the Tartar conquerors of China, whether Khitan, Churche, Mongol, or Manchu, has always been the same.  For one or two generations the warlike character and manly habits were maintained; and then the intruders, having adopted Chinese manners, ceremonies, literature, and civilization, sank into more than Chinese effeminacy and degradation.  We see the custom of employing only female attendants ascribed in a later chapter (lxxvii.) to the Sung Emperors at Kinsay; and the same was the custom of the later Ming emperors, in whose time the imperial palace was said to contain 5000 women.  Indeed, the precise custom which this passage describes was in our own day habitually reported of the T’ai-P’ing sovereign during his reign at Nanking:  “None but women are allowed in the interior of the Palace, and he is drawn to the audience-chamber in a gilded sacred dragon-car by the ladies” (Blakiston, p. 42; see also Wilson’s Ever-Victorious Army, p. 41.)

[1] [There is no trace of it in Harlez’s French translation from the Manchu
    of the History of the Kin Empire, 1887.—­H.C.]

[2] See also Oppert (p. 157), who cites this story from Visdelou, but does
    not notice its analogy to Polo’s.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

HOW PRESTER JOHN TREATED THE GOLDEN KING HIS PRISONER.

And on this the Golden King was so sorely grieved that he was like to die.  And he said to them:  “Good, my sons, for God’s sake have pity and compassion upon me.  Ye wot well what honourable and kindly entertainment ye have had in my house; and now ye would deliver me into the hands of mine enemy!  In sooth, if ye do what ye say, ye will do a very naughty and disloyal deed, and a right villainous.”  But they answered only that so it must be, and away they had him to Prester John their Lord.