the most beautiful in the world.’—­Marco Polo, op. cit., p. 73.  Of the women of Kinsai he reports thus:  ’The courtesans are accomplished and are perfect in the arts of blandishment and dalliance, which they accompany with expressions adapted to every description of person, insomuch that strangers who have once tasted of their charms, remain in a state of fascination, and become so enchanted by their meretricious arts, that they can never divest themselves of the impression.  Thus intoxicated with sensual pleasures, when they return to their homes they report that they have been in Kinsai, or the celestial city, and pant for the time when they may be enabled to revisit paradise.’  Of the respectable ladies, wives of the master craftsmen he likewise says:  ’They have much beauty and are brought up with languid and delicate habits.  The costliness of their dresses, in silks and jewellery, can scarcely be imagined.’—­op. cit., pp. 296, 297-8.

13.  Yule, op. cit., II, p. 184.

14.  For Prester John see Sir Henry Yule’s article ‘Prester John’ in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (1923), II, pp. 236-45.  There is a pleasant popular account in S. Baring Gould, Popular Myths of the Middle Ages (1866-8).

15.  For their accounts see The Journal of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts, 1253-5, by himself, with two accounts of the Earlier Journey of John of Pian da Carpine, trans. and ed. with notes by W.W.  Rockhill (Hakluyt Soc., 1900).  Rubruck especially is a most delightful person.

16.  This, together with the whole account of the first journey of the elder Polos, the circumstances of the second journey, and of their subsequent return occurs in the first chapter of Marco Polo’s book, which is a general introduction, after which he proceeds to describe in order the lands through which he passed.  This autobiographical section is unfortunately all too short.

17.  As a matter of fact, William of Rubruck had seen and described it before him.

18.  For Marco Polo’s account of this custom in the province which he calls ‘Kardandan’, see op. cit., p. 250.  An illustration of it from an album belonging to the close of the Ming dynasty is reproduced in S.W.  Bushell, Chinese Art (1910), fig. 134.

19.  Marco Polo, op. cit., pp. 21-2.

20.  A certain Poh-lo was, according to the Chinese annals of the Mongol dynasty, appointed superintendent of salt mines at Yangchow shortly after 1282.  Professor Parker thinks that he may be identified with our Polo, but M. Cordier disagrees.  See E.H.  Parker Some New Facts about Marco Polos Book in Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review (1904), p. 128; and H. Cordier, Ser Marco Polo, p. 8.  See also Yule, Marco Polo, I, Introd., p. 21.

21.  P. Parrenin in Lett.  Edis., xxiv, 58, quoted in Yule, op. cit., I, Introd., p.  II.