MARCO, the Author of our Book, born in 1254,[9] and MAFFEO, of whose
place in the family we shall have a few words to say presently. The
story opens, as we have said, in 1260, when we find the two brothers,
Nicolo and Maffeo the Elder, at Constantinople. How long they had been
absent from Venice we are not distinctly told. Nicolo had left his wife
there behind him; Maffeo apparently was a bachelor. In the year named
they started on a trading venture to the Crimea, whence a succession
of openings and chances, recounted in the Introductory chapters of
Marco’s work, carried them far north along the Volga, and thence first
to Bokhara, and then to the Court of the Great Kaan Kúblái in the Far
East, on or within the borders of CATHAY. That a great and civilized
country so called existed in the extremity of Asia had already been
reported in Europe by the Friars Plano Carpini (1246) and William
Rubruquis (1253), who had not indeed reached its frontiers, but had
met with its people at the Court of the Great Kaan in Mongolia; whilst
the latter of the two with characteristic acumen had seen that they
were identical with the Seres of classic fame.
[Sidenote: Their intercourse with Kúblái Kaan.]