brothers, taking with them the son
of Nicolo, the young Marco, then a stout lad, began to retrace their
steps to Cathay, despairing of being able to enlist the one hundred
priests which the Great Khan had asked them to borrow for missionary
purposes from the Pope.

At Acre, then held by European powers that had been engaged in the
crusades for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, they took counsel with
one Tebaldo Visconti, an eminent prelate, who was Archdeacon of Liege
and a person of great consequence in the Eastern church. At their
request, he wrote letters to the Great Khan, authenticating the causes
of their failure to fulfil the wishes of the Khan in the matter of
obtaining the missionaries whom he desired. Then they pushed on toward
the farther East, and while waiting for a vessel to sail from the port
of Ayas, on the Gulf of Scanderoon, then the starting-point for the
Asiatic trade, they were overtaken by the news that their friend the
Archdeacon Tebaldo had been chosen Pope, under the title of Gregory X.
They at once returned to Acre, and were able to present to the newly
elected pontiff the request of the Great Khan and get a reply. But
instead of one hundred teachers and preachers, they were furnished with
only two Dominican friars; and these lost heart and drew back before the
journey was fairly begun. It may be said here that the Great Khan, being
disappointed by the Roman Church, subsequently applied to the Grand
Llama of Thibet, and from that source secured the teachers whom he so
greatly desired. The Great Khan appears to have been an enlightened and
liberal sovereign, and, according to his lights, was willing to furnish
to his people the best form of religion that was to be had. He preferred
the religion of the elegant and polished Italians, but, failing to get
this, he naturally turned his eyes in the direction of Thibet, then an
unknown land to all Europeans, but regarded in Mongolia as a region of
some considerable civilization.

The three members of the Polo family finally set out on their return to
Cathay, leaving Acre in November, 1271. They proceeded by the way of
Ayas and Sivas to Mardin, Mosul, and Bagdad to Hormuz, at the mouth of
the Persian Gulf. Here they met with some obstacle and turned from
Hormuz, and traversed successively Kerman and Khorassan, Balkh, and
Badakhshan, by the way of the upper Oxus, to the plateau of Pamir;
thence crossing the steppes of Pamir, the three travellers desce