s and exports at
each, the duties and exactions, the local customs of business,
weights, measures and money. The first two chapters of this work
contain instructions for the merchant proceeding to Cathay; and it is
evident, from the terms used, that the road thither was not
unfrequently travelled by European merchants, from whom Pegolotti had
derived his information. The route which he describes lay by Azov,
Astrakhan, Khiva, Otrar (on the Jaxartes), Almalik (Gulja in Ili),
Kan-chow (in Kan-suh), and so to Hang-chow and Peking. Particulars are
given as to the silver ingots which formed the currency of Tatary, and
the paper-money of Cathay. That the ventures on this trade were not
insignificant is plain from the example taken by the author to
illustrate the question of expenses on the journey, which is that of a
merchant investing in goods there to the amount of some L12,000 (i.e.
in actual gold value, not as calculated by any fanciful and fallacious
equation of values).

Of the same remarkable phase of history that we are here considering
we have also a number of notices by Mahommedan writers. The
establishment of the Mongol dynasty in Persia, by which the great khan
was acknowledged as lord paramount, led (as we have already noticed in
part) to a good deal of intercourse. And some of the Persian
historians, writing at Tabriz, under the patronage of the Mongol
princes, have told us much about Cathay, especially Rashiduddin, the
great minister and historian of the dynasty (died 1318). We have also
in the book of the Moorish traveller Ibn Batuta, who visited China
about 1347-1348, very many curious and in great part true notices,
though it is not possible to give credence to the whole of this
episode in his extensive travels.

About the time of the traveller first named the throne of the
degenerate descendants of Jenghiz began to totter to its fall, and we
have no knowledge of any Frank visitor to Cathay in that age later
than Marignolli; missions and merchants alike disappear from the
field. We hear, indeed, once and again of ecclesiastics despatched
from Avignon, but they go forth into the darkness, and are heard of no
more. Islam, with all its jealousy and exclusiveness, had recovered
its grasp over Central Asia; the Nestorian Christianity which once had
prevailed so widely was vanishing, and the new rulers of China
reverted to the old national