Having been captured by the Genoese, Marco Polo while in prison dictated his wonderful story.  At first it was looked on as a romance and caused its author to receive the sobriquet of “Messer Millione”; but its general accuracy has been fully vindicated.

The chief effect of that narrative was to fire the imagination of another Italian and lead him by steering to the west to seek a short cut to the Eldorado. [Page 133] How strange the occult connection of sublunary things!  The Mongol Kublai must be invoked to account for the discovery of America!  The same story kindled the fancy of Coleridge, in the following exquisite fragment, which he says came to him in a vision of the night: 

 “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
    A stately pleasure-dome decree: 
  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
  Through caverns measureless to man,
    Down to a sunless sea.”
      —­Kubla Khan.

Still another Italian claims mention as having made some impression on the court of Kublai.  This was Corvino, a missionary sent by the Pope; but of his church, his schools, and his convents, there were left no more traces than of his predecessors, the Nestorians.

The glory of Kublai was not of long duration.  The hardy tribes of the north became enervated by the luxury and ease of their rich patrimony.  “Capua captured Hannibal.”  Nine of the founder’s descendants followed him, not one of whom displayed either vigour or statesmanship.

Their power ebbed more suddenly than it rose.  Shun-ti, the last of the house, took refuge behind the Great Wall from the rising tide of Chinese patriotism; and after a tenure of ninety years, or of two centuries of fluctuating dominion, reckoning from the rise of Genghis Khan, the Yuen dynasty came to an untimely end.

The magnificent waterway, the Grand Canal, remains an imperishable monument of the Mongol [Page 134] sway.  As an “alimentary canal” it was needed for the support of the armies that held the people in subjection; and the Mongols only completed a work which other dynasties had undertaken.  A description of it from personal observation is given in Part I of this work (page 31).  It remains to be said that the construction of the Canal, like that of the Great Wall, was a leading cause of the downfall of its builders.  Forced labour and aggravated taxation gave birth to discontent; rebellion became rife, and the Mongols were too effeminate to take active measures for its suppression.

[Page 135] CHAPTER XXV

THE MING DYNASTY, 1368-1644 A. D.
(16 Emperors)

Humble Origin of the Founder—­Nanking and Peking as Capital—­First Arrival of European Ships—­Portuguese, Spaniards, and Dutch Traders—­Arrival of Missionaries—­Tragic End of the Last of the Mings