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rld, and with this aim before his eyes he rode with his horsemen from country to country over the great continent. Everywhere he left sorrow and mourning, burnt and pillaged towns in his track. He was the greatest and most savage conqueror known in history. When he was at the height of his power he collected treasure from innumerable different peoples, from the peninsula of Further India to Novgorod, from Japan to Silesia. To his court came ambassadors from the French kings and the Turkish sultans, from the Russian Grand Dukes and the Khalifs and Popes of the time. No man before or since has caused such a stir among the sons of men, and brought such different peoples into involuntary communication with one another. Jenghiz Khan ruled over more than half the human race, and even in many of the countries which he pillaged and destroyed his memory is feared even to this day. At his death Jenghiz Khan was sixty-five years old, and he bequeathed his immense kingdom to his four sons. One of these was the father of Kublai Khan, who conquered China in 1280 and established the Mongolian dynasty in the Middle Kingdom. His court was even more brilliant than that of his grandfather, and an exact description both of the great Khan and his empire was given by the great traveller Marco Polo. In the year 1260 two merchants from Venice were dwelling in Constantinople. They were named Nicolo and Maffeo Polo. Their desire to open trade relations with Asia induced them to travel to the Crimea, and thence across the Volga and through Bukhara to the court of the Great Khan, Kublai. Up to that time only vague rumours of the great civilized empire far in the East had been spread by Catholic missionaries. The Great Khan, who had never seen Europeans, was pleased at the arrival of the Venetians, received them kindly, and made them tell of all the wonderful things in their own country. Finally he decided to send them back with a letter to the Pope, in which he begged him to send a hundred wise and learned missionaries out to the East. He wished to employ them in training and enlightening the rude tribes of the steppe. After nine years' absence the travellers returned to Venice. The Pope was dead, and they waited two years fruitlessly for a successor to be elected. As, then, they did not wish the Great Khan to believe them untrustworthy, they decided to return to the Far East, and on this journey they took with them Nicolo's son, Marco Polo,
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