to show the road to the Mongol mission, provided it with two high officers as escort.  In 1267, however, Hart and his staff returned to Peking from their wanderings, re injecta, faithfully accompanied by their Corean guides, whose explanations as to why the goal had not been reached were by no means satisfactory to Kublai.  The whole party was despatched once more to Corea, carrying with them to the King positive instructions “to succeed better this time.”

The wily King of Corea now adopted another tack.  He pleaded that the sea-route was beset with dangers to which it would be unseemly to expose the person of an imperial envoy, but he accommodatingly sent the Emperor’s letter on to Japan by an envoy of his own.  This Corean envoy was detained half a year by the Japanese, but he had also to return empty-handed.  Meanwhile the King of Corea sent his own brother on a special mission to Kublai, to endeavor to mollify his Tartar majesty.

In the autumn of 1268 Hart and his former assistant colleague were sent a third time.  As a surveying party had meanwhile been examining the sea-route by way of Quelpaert Island, the mission was enabled to reach the Tsushima Islands this time; but the local authority would not suffer them to land, or at least to stay, nor were the letters accepted, as, in the opinion of the Japanese, “the phraseology was not considered sufficiently modest.”  Once more the unsuccessful mission returned to Peking, but on this occasion it was with two Japanese “captives”—­probably spies; for there is plenty of evidence that even then the art was well understood in Japan.  In the summer of 1269 it was resolved to utilize these captives as a peg whereon to hang the conciliatory and virtuous act of returning them.  Coreans were intrusted with this mission; but even this letter the Japanese declined to receive, and the envoys were detained a considerable time in the official prisons at Dazai Fu (in Chikuzen).

Early in the year 1270 a Manchu Tartar in Kublai’s employ, named Djuyaoka, who had already been employed as a kind of resident or adviser at the court of the King of Corea, was despatched on a solemn mission to Japan, having earnestly volunteered for his new service in spite of his gray hairs.  The King of Corea was again ordered to assist, and a Corean in Chinese employ, named Hung Ts’a-k’iu (Marco Polo’s Von-Sanichin), was told to demonstrate with a fleet around the Liao-Tung and Corean peninsulas.  The envoy is usually called by his adopted Chinese name of Chao Liang-Pih.  The mission landed in the spring of 1271 at an island called Golden Ford, which, according to the Chinese characters, ought, I suppose, to be pronounced Kananari in Japanese.  Here the strangers met with a very rough reception.  The Tartar, however, kept his head well during the various attempts which were made to frighten him; he pointed out the historical precedents to be found in the annals of previous Chinese dynasties, and firmly