on confidential missions to every part of the empire and its dependencies; and sometimes also he travelled on his own private account, but always with the consent and sanctioned by the authority of the Grand Khan.  In such circumstances it was that Marco Polo had the opportunity of acquiring a knowledge, either by his own observation or by what he collected from others, of so many things until his time unknown, respecting the Eastern parts of the world, and these he diligently and regularly committed to writing....  And by this means he obtained so much honour that he provoked the jealousy of other officers of the court.[19]

It is small wonder that when first the lad came back with his reports the Great Khan and his courtiers marvelled and exclaimed, ’If this young man live he will assuredly be a person of great worth and ability.’

It was while on these various public missions that Marco Polo journeyed through the provinces of Shansi, Shensi, and Szechuen, and skirted the edge of Tibet to Yunnan, and entered Northern Burma, lands unknown again to the West until after 1860.  For three years he was himself governor of the great city of Yangchow, which had twenty-four towns under its jurisdiction, and was full of traders and makers of arms and military accoutrements.[20] He visited Karakorum in Mongolia, the old Tartar capital, and with his Uncle Maffeo spent three years in Tangut.  On another occasion he went on a mission to Cochin China, and by sea to the southern states of India, and he has left a vivid picture of the great trading cities of Malabar.  He might indeed have pondered with Ulysses,

I am become a name
For always roaming with a hungry heart,
Much have I seen and known, cities of men,
And manners, climates, countries, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all.

He describes the great capital Cambaluc (Peking) in the north, and the beautiful Kinsai (Hangchow) in the south.  He describes the Khan’s summer palace at Shandu, with its woods and gardens, its marble palace, its bamboo pavilion swung like a tent from two hundred silken cords, its stud of white mares, and its wonder-working magicians.  Indeed his description of the summer palace is better known to Englishmen than any other part of his work, for Shandu is Xanadu, which Coleridge saw in a dream after he had been reading Marco’s book and wove into wonderful verse: 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
  A stately pleasure dome decree,
Where Alph the sacred river ran,
Past caverns measureless to man,
  Down to a sunless sea.

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
  Where blossomed many an incense bearing tree,
And here were forests, ancient as the hills
  Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.