it they were treated with
great respect, the khan cajoling them with hints that he proposed
publicly to profess Christianity.

These flattering hopes came to a sudden end when the great Mongol ruler
ordered the erection of a flag of defiance against the Roman empire, the
Christian Church, and all the Christian kingdoms of the West, unless
they would do homage to him; and with this abrupt termination to their
embassy they were dismissed. After "travailing all winter long,"
sleeping on snow without shelter, and suffering other hardships, they
reached Europe in June, 1247, where they were "rejoiced over as men that
had been risen from death to life."

Carpini was the first European to approach the borders of China, or
Cathay, as it was then called, and the story he told about that
mysterious empire of the East, gathered from the Tartars, was of much
interest, and, so far as it went, of considerable accuracy. He was also
the first to visit the court of those terrible warriors who had filled
the world with dismay, and to bring to Europe an account of their
barbaric manners and customs.

Shortly after (in 1253) a friar named Rubruquis, with two companions,
was sent to Tartary by Louis IX. of France to search for Prester John,
an imaginary Christian potentate supposed to reign in the centre of
Asia, to visit Sartach, a Tartar chief also reported a Christian, and to
teach the doctrines of Christianity to all the Tartars he should find.
Rubruquis did his work well, and, while failing to find Prester John or
to convert any of the Tartars, he penetrated to the very centre of the
Mongol empire, visited Karakorum, the capital of the Great Khans, and
brought back much valuable information, giving a clear, accurate, and
intelligent account of the lands he had seen and the people he had met,
with such news of distant China as he could obtain without actually
crossing the Great Wall.

After his visit information concerning these remote regions ceased until
the publication of the remarkably interesting book of Marco Polo, the
first to write of China from an actual visit to its court. The story of
his visit must be left for a later tale.

_THE SIEGE OF SIANYANG._

In the year 1268 the army of Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis the famous
conqueror, made its appearance before the stronghold of Sianyang, an
important city of China on the southern bank of the Han River. On the
opposite side of the stream stood the city of Fanchi