This country of Japan, "very great, the people white, of gentle manners,
idolaters in religion, under a King of their own," was attacked by
Kublai's fleet in 1264 for the gold they had, and had in such plenty
that "the King's house, windows, and floors were covered with it, as
churches here with lead, as was reported by merchants--but these were
few and the King allowed no exportation of the gold."

The expedition was as disastrous a failure as the old Athenian attack
upon Sicily, and was not repeated, although fleets were sent by the
Great Khan after this into the Southern Seas, which were supposed to
have made a discovery of Papua, if not of the Australian Continent. "In
this Sea of China, over against Mangi," Marco reported, from hearsay "of
mariners and expert pilots, are 7440 islands, most of them inhabited,
whereon grows no tree that yields not a pleasant smell--spices,
lignum-aloes, and pepper, black and white." The ships of Zaitum (the
great Chinese mart for Indian trade) knew this sea and its islands, "for
they go every winter and return every summer, taking a year on the
voyage, and all this though it is far from India and not subject to the
Great Khan."

But not only did Polo in these sections of his Guide Book or Memories of
Travel, record the main features of a coast and ocean scarcely guessed
at by Europeans, and flatly denied by Ptolemy and the main traditional
school of Western geography. In his service under Kublai, and in his
return by sea to Aden and Suez, he opened up the eight provinces of
Thibet, the whole of south-east Asia from Canton to Bengal, and the
great archipelago of further India.

Four days' journey beyond the Yang-Tse-Kiang, Marco entered "the wide
country of Thibet, vanquished and wasted by the Khan for the space of
twenty days' journey, and become a wilderness wanting inhabitants, where
wild beasts are excessively increased." Here he tells us of the Yak-oxen
and great Thibetan dogs as great as asses, of the musk deer, and spices,
"and salt lakes having beds of pearls," and of the cruel and bestial
idolatry and social customs of the people.

Still farther to the south-west, Commissioner Polo came to the Cinnamon
river, called Brius, on the borders of the province of Caindu, to the
porcelain-making districts of Carazan, governed by Kublai's son, and so
to Bengal, "which borders upon India," and where Marco laughs at the
tattoo customs of "flesh embroidery for the dyeing of fools' ski