dark ages. Those two years passed, and yet the Cardinals at Viterbo
had come to no agreement. The brothers were unwilling to let the Great
Kaan think them faithless, and perhaps they hankered after the virgin
field of speculation that they had discovered; so they started again
for the East, taking young Mark with them. At Acre they took counsel
with an eminent churchman, TEDALDO (or Tebaldo) VISCONTI, Archdeacon
of Liège, whom the Book represents to have been Legate in Syria, and
who in any case was a personage of much gravity and influence. From him
they got letters to authenticate the causes of the miscarriage of their
mission, and started for the further East. But they were still at the
port of Ayas on the Gulf of Scanderoon, which was then becoming one of
the chief points of arrival and departure for the inland trade of Asia,
when they were overtaken by the news that a Pope was at last elected,
and that the choice had fallen upon their friend Archdeacon Tedaldo.
They immediately returned to Acre, and at last were able to execute the
Kaan’s commission, and to obtain a reply. But instead of the hundred
able teachers of science and religion whom Kúblái is said to have asked
for, the new Pope, Gregory X., could supply but two Dominicans; and
these lost heart and drew back when they had barely taken the first
step of the journey.
Judging from certain indications we conceive it probable that the three
Venetians, whose second start from Acre took place about November
1271, proceeded by Ayas and Sivas, and then by Mardin, Mosul, and
Baghdad, to Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, with the view of
going on by sea, but that some obstacle arose which compelled them to
abandon this project and turn north again from Hormuz.[13] They then
traversed successively Kerman and Khorasan, Balkh and Badakhshan,
whence they ascended the Panja or upper Oxus to the Plateau of Pamir, a
route not known to have been since followed by any European traveller
except Benedict Goës, till the spirited expedition of Lieutenant John
Wood of the Indian Navy in 1838.[14] Crossing the Pamir highlands the
travellers descended upon Kashgar, whence they proceeded by Yarkand and
Khotan, and the vicinity of Lake Lob, and eventually across the Great
Gobi Desert to Tangut, the name then applied by Mongols and Persians
to territory at the extreme North-west of China, both within and
without the Wall. Skirting the northern frontier of China they at last
reached the presence of the Kaan, who was at his usual summer retreat
at Kai-ping fu, near the base of the Khingan Mountains, and nearly 100
miles north of the Great Wall at Kalgan. If there be no mistake in
the time (three years and a half) ascribed to this journey in all the
existing texts, the travellers did not reach the Court till about May
of 1275.[15]
[Sidenote: Marco’s employment by Kúblái Kaan; and his journeys.]