length and
breadth, upon which certain lines are printed, resembling the seal
of Mangou Khan. They do their writing with a pencil such as painters
paint with, and a single character of theirs comprehends several
letters, so as to form a whole word." He also identifies these
Cathayans with the Seres of the ancients. Ptolemy knew of these as
possessing the land where the silk comes from, but he had also heard
of the Sinae, and failed to identify the two. It has been conjectured
that the name of China came to the West by the sea voyage, and is
a Malay modification, while the names Seres and Cathayans came
overland, and thus caused confusion.

Other Franciscans followed these, and one of them, John of Montecorvino,
settled at Khanbalig (imperial city), or Pekin, as Archbishop (ob.
1358); while Friar Odoric of Pordenone, near Friuli, travelled in
India and China between 1316 and 1330, and brought back an account
of his voyage, filled with most marvellous mendacities, most of
which were taken over bodily into the work attributed to Sir John
Maundeville.

The information brought back by these wandering friars fades, however,
into insignificance before the extensive and accurate knowledge of
almost the whole of Eastern Asia brought back to Europe by Marco
Polo, a Venetian, who spent eighteen years of his life in the East.
His travels form an epoch in the history of geographical discovery
only second to the voyages of Columbus.

In 1260, two of his uncles, named Nicolo and Maffeo Polo, started
from Constaninople on a trading venture to the Crimea, after which
they were led to visit Bokhara, and thence on to the court of the
Great Khan, Kublai, who received them very graciously, and being
impressed with the desirability of introducing Western civilisation
into the new Mongolian empire, he entrusted them with a message to
the Pope, demanding one hundred wise men of the West to teach the
Mongolians the Christian religion and Western arts. The two brothers
returned to their native place, Venice, in 1269, but found no Pope
to comply with the Great Khan's request; for Clement IV. had died
the year before, and his successor had not yet been appointed. They
waited about for a couple of years till Gregory X. was elected, but he
only meagrely responded to the Great Khan's demands, and instructed
two Dominicans to accompany the Polos, who on this occasion took
with them their young nephew Marco, a lad of seventeen. They started
in No