to the Kaan _Quobley_, as he is termed. They never seem to have
reached their destination. And in 1289 Nicolas IV. entrusted a similar
mission to Friar John of Monte Corvino, which eventually led to very
tangible results. Neither of the Papal letters, however, mentions
_Cathay_. (See _Mosheim_, App. pp. 76 and 94.)

[5] See _Muratori_, IX. 583, seqq.; _Bianconi_, Mem. I. p. 37.

[6] This Friar makes a strange hotch-potch of what he had read, e.g.:
"The Tartars, when they came out of the mountains, made them a king,
viz., the son of Prester John, who is thus vulgarly termed _Vetulus de
la Montagna!_" (_Mon. Hist. Patr._ Script. III. 1557.)

[7] G. Villani died in the great plague of 1348. But his book was begun
soon after Marco's was written, for he states that it was the sight of
the memorials of greatness which he witnessed at Rome, during the
Jubilee of 1300, that put it into his head to write the history of the
rising glories of Florence, and that he began the work after his
return home. (Bk. VIII. ch. 36.)

[8] Book V. ch. 29.

[9] _Petri Aponensis Medici ac Philosophi Celeberrimi, Conciliator_,
Venice, 1521, fol. 97. Peter was born in 1250 at Abano, near Padua,
and was Professor of Medicine at the University in the latter city.
He twice fell into the claws of the Unholy Office, and only escaped
them by death in 1316.

[10] [It is curious that this figure is almost exactly that which among
oriental carpets is called a "cloud." I have heard the term so applied
by Vincent Robinson. It often appears in old Persian carpets, and also
in Chinese designs. Mr. Purdon Clarke tells me it is called _nebula_
in heraldry; it is also called in Chinese by a term signifying cloud;
in Persian, by a term which he called _silen-i-khitai_, but of this I
can make nothing.--_MS. Note by Yule_.]

[11] The great Magellanic cloud? In the account of Vincent Yanez Pinzon's
Voyage to the S.W. in 1499 as given in Ramusio (III. 15) after Pietro
Martire d'Anghieria, it is said:--"Taking the astrolabe in hand, and
ascertaining the Antarctic Pole, they did not see any star like our
Pole Star; but they related that they saw another manner of stars very
different from ours, and which they could not clearly discern because
of a certain dimness which diffused itself about those stars, and
obstructed the view of them." Also the Kachh