kindly to young Mark, who must have been by this time one-and-twenty.
The _Joenne Bacheler_, as the story calls him, applied himself to
the acquisition of the languages and written characters in chief use
among the multifarious nationalities included in the Kaan’s Court
and administration; and Kúblái after a time, seeing his discretion
and ability, began to employ him in the public service. M. Pauthier
has found a record in the Chinese Annals of the Mongol Dynasty,
which states that in the year 1277, a certain POLO was nominated a
second-class commissioner or agent attached to the Privy Council,
a passage which we are happy to believe to refer to our young
traveller.[16]
His first mission apparently was that which carried him through the
provinces of Shan-si, Shen-si, and Sze-ch’wan, and the wild country on
the East of Tibet, to the remote province of Yun-nan, called by the
Mongols Karájàng, and which had been partially conquered by an army
under Kúblái himself in 1253, before his accession to the throne.[17]
Mark, during his stay at court, had observed the Kaan’s delight in
hearing of strange countries, their marvels, manners, and oddities,
and had heard his Majesty’s frank expressions of disgust at the
stupidity of his commissioners when they could speak of nothing but
the official business on which they had been sent. Profiting by these
observations, he took care to store his memory or his note-books with
all curious facts that were likely to interest Kúblái, and related them
with vivacity on his return to Court. This first journey, which led
him through a region which is still very nearly a _terra incognita_,
and in which there existed and still exists, among the deep valleys of
the Great Rivers flowing down from Eastern Tibet, and in the rugged
mountain ranges bordering Yun-nan and Kwei-chau, a vast Ethnological
Garden, as it were, of tribes of various race and in every stage of
uncivilisation, afforded him an acquaintance with many strange products
and eccentric traits of manners, wherewith to delight the Emperor.
Mark rose rapidly in favour, and often served Kúblái again on distant
missions, as well as in domestic administration, but we gather few
details as to his employments. At one time we know that he held for
three years the government of the great city of Yang-chau, though we
need not try to magnify this office, as some commentators have done,
into the viceroyalty of one of the great provinces of the Empire; on
another occasion we find him with his uncle Maffeo, passing a year at
Kan-chau in Tangut; again, it would appear, visiting Kara Korum, the
old capital of the Kaans in Mongolia; on another occasion in Champa
or Southern Cochin China; and again, or perhaps as a part of the last
expedition, on a mission to the Indian Seas, when he appears to have
visited several of the southern states of India. We are not informed
whether his father and uncle shared in such employments;[18] and the
story of their services rendered to the Kaan in promoting the capture
of the city of Siang-yang, by the construction of powerful engines of
attack, is too much perplexed by difficulties of chronology to be cited
with confidence. Anyhow they were gathering wealth, and after years of
exile they began to dread what might follow old Kúblái’s death, and
longed to carry their gear and their own grey heads safe home to the
Lagoons. The aged Emperor growled refusal to all their hints, and but
for a happy chance we should have lost our mediæval Herodotus.
[Sidenote: Circumstances of the Departure of the Polos from the Kaan’s
Court.]