seems to have been established for a time at Constantinople,[8] and
also to have had a house (no doubt of business) at Soldaia, in the Crimea,
where his son and daughter, Nicolo and Maroca by name, were living in
1280. This year is the date of the Elder Marco's Will, executed at Venice,
and when he was "weighed down by bodily ailment." Whether he survived for
any length of time we do not know.

[Sidenote: Nicolo and Maffeo commence their travels.]

16. Nicolo Polo, the second of the Brothers, had two legitimate sons,
MARCO, the Author of our Book, born in 1254,[9] and MAFFEO, of whose place
in the family we shall have a few words to say presently. The story opens,
as we have said, in 1260, when we find the two brothers, Nicolo and Maffeo
the Elder, at Constantinople. How long they had been absent from Venice we
are not distinctly told. Nicolo had left his wife there behind him; Maffeo
apparently was a bachelor. In the year named they started on a trading
venture to the Crimea, whence a succession of openings and chances,
recounted in the Introductory chapters of Marco's work, carried them far
north along the Volga, and thence first to Bokhara, and then to the Court
of the Great Kaan Kublai in the Far East, on or within the borders of
CATHAY. That a great and civilized country so called existed in the
extremity of Asia had already been reported in Europe by the Friars Plano
Carpini (1246) and William Rubruquis (1253), who had not indeed reached
its frontiers, but had met with its people at the Court of the Great Kaan
in Mongolia; whilst the latter of the two with characteristic acumen had
seen that they were identical with the Seres of classic fame.

[Sidenote: Their intercourse with Kublai Kaan.]

17. Kublai had never before fallen in with European gentlemen. He was
delighted with these Venetians, listened with strong interest to all that
they had to tell him of the Latin world, and determined to send them back
as his ambassadors to the Pope, accompanied by an officer of his own
Court. His letters to the Pope, as the Polos represent them, were mainly
to desire the despatch of a large body of educated missionaries to convert
his people to Christianity. It is not likely that religious motives
influenced Kublai in this, but he probably desired religious aid in
softening and civilizing his rude kinsmen of the Steppes, and judged, from
what he saw in the Venetians and heard from them, that Europe could afford
such aid of