eeded to Kerman and Hormuz, where, probably fearing the sea
voyage, owing to the manifest unseaworthiness of the ships, which he
describes as 'wretched affairs,' the Khorasan route was finally
adopted. Hormuz, in this case, was not visited again until the return
from China, when it seems probable that the same route was retraced to
Tabriz, where their charge, the Lady Kokachin, 'moult bele dame et
avenant,' was married to Ghazan Khan, the son of her fiance Arghun. It
remains to add that Sir Henry Yule may have finally accepted this view
in part, as in the plate showing _Probable View of Marco Polo's own
Geography_,[D] the itinerary is not shown as running to Baghdad."

I may be allowed to answer that when Marco Polo _started_ for the
East, Baghdad was not rather off the main caravan route. The fall of
Baghdad was not immediately followed by its decay, and we have proof
of its prosperity at the beginning of the 14th century. Tauris had not
yet the importance it had reached when the Polos visited it on their
_return_ journey. We have the will of the Venetian Pietro Viglioni,
dated from Tauris, 10th December, 1264 (_Archiv. Veneto_, xxvi. 161-
165), which shows that he was but a pioneer. It was only under Arghun
Khan (1284-1291) that Tauris became the great market for foreign,
especially Genoese, merchants, as Marco Polo remarks on his return
journey; with Ghazan and the new city built by that prince, Tauris
reached a very high degree of prosperity, and was then really the
chief emporium on the route from Europe to Persia and the far East.
Sir Henry Yule had not changed his views, and if in the plate showing
_Probable View of Marco Polo's own Geography_, the itinerary is not
shown as running to Baghdad, it is mere neglect on the part of the
draughtsman.--H. C.]

[A] Page 19.

[B] _Vide Yule_, vol. i. p. 5. It is noticeable that John of Pian
de Carpine, who travelled 1245 to 1247, names it correctly.

[C] The modern name is Keis, an island lying off Linga.

[D] Vol. i. p. 110 (Introduction).

[14] It is stated by Neumann that this most estimable traveller once
intended to have devoted a special work to the elucidation of Marco's
chapters on the Oxus Provinces, and it is much to be regretted that
this intention was never fulfilled. Pamir has been explored more
extensiv