his journey to Tartary; others returned with him through Russia;
these were Genoese, Pisans, and two merchants of Venice whom chance
had brought to Bokhara. They were induced to go in the suite of a
Mongol ambassador, whom Houlagou had sent to Khoubilai. They
sojourned several years in China and Tartary, took letters from the
Grand Khan to the Pope, and returned to the Grand Khan, bringing with
them the son of one of their number, the celebrated Marco-Polo, and
quitted once more the Court of Khoubilai to return to Venice.
Travels of this kind were not less frequent in the succeeding age.
Of this number are those of John de Mandeville, an English physician;
of Oderic of Friuli; of Pegoletti; of Guillaume de Boutdeselle, and
several others. We may be certain that the journeys which have been
recorded are but a small portion of those which were performed, and
that there were at that period more people able to make a long
journey than to write an account of it. Many of these adventurers
must have established themselves and died in the countries they went
to visit. Others returned to their country as obscure as when they
left it; but with their imaginations full of what they had seen,
relating it all to their families and friends, and doubtless with
exaggerations; but leaving around them, amidst ridiculous fables, a
few useful recollections and traditions productive of advantage.
Thus were sown in Germany, in Italy, in France, in the monasteries,
among the nobility, and even in the lowest grades of society,
precious seeds destined to bud at a later period. All these obscure
travellers, carrying the arts of their native country to distant
lands, brought back other information about these no less precious,
and thus effected, unconsciously, exchanges more productive of good
than all those of commerce. By this means not merely the traffic in
silks, in porcelains, in commodities from Hindostan, was made more
extensive and more practicable, opening new routes to industry and
commerce; but, that which was far more valuable, foreign manners and
customs of before unknown nations, extraordinary productions, were
presented to the European mind, confined, since the fall of the Roman
empire, within too narrow a circle. Men began to have an idea that,
after all, there was something worthy of notice