rld, and with this aim before his
eyes he rode with his horsemen from country to country over the great
continent. Everywhere he left sorrow and mourning, burnt and pillaged
towns in his track. He was the greatest and most savage conqueror known
in history. When he was at the height of his power he collected treasure
from innumerable different peoples, from the peninsula of Further India
to Novgorod, from Japan to Silesia. To his court came ambassadors from
the French kings and the Turkish sultans, from the Russian Grand Dukes
and the Khalifs and Popes of the time. No man before or since has caused
such a stir among the sons of men, and brought such different peoples
into involuntary communication with one another. Jenghiz Khan ruled over
more than half the human race, and even in many of the countries which
he pillaged and destroyed his memory is feared even to this day.

At his death Jenghiz Khan was sixty-five years old, and he bequeathed
his immense kingdom to his four sons. One of these was the father of
Kublai Khan, who conquered China in 1280 and established the Mongolian
dynasty in the Middle Kingdom. His court was even more brilliant than
that of his grandfather, and an exact description both of the great Khan
and his empire was given by the great traveller Marco Polo.

In the year 1260 two merchants from Venice were dwelling in
Constantinople. They were named Nicolo and Maffeo Polo. Their desire to
open trade relations with Asia induced them to travel to the Crimea, and
thence across the Volga and through Bukhara to the court of the Great
Khan, Kublai. Up to that time only vague rumours of the great civilized
empire far in the East had been spread by Catholic missionaries.

The Great Khan, who had never seen Europeans, was pleased at the arrival
of the Venetians, received them kindly, and made them tell of all the
wonderful things in their own country. Finally he decided to send them
back with a letter to the Pope, in which he begged him to send a hundred
wise and learned missionaries out to the East. He wished to employ them
in training and enlightening the rude tribes of the steppe.

After nine years' absence the travellers returned to Venice. The Pope
was dead, and they waited two years fruitlessly for a successor to be
elected. As, then, they did not wish the Great Khan to believe them
untrustworthy, they decided to return to the Far East, and on this
journey they took with them Nicolo's son, Marco Polo,