d a
fortune stitched up in the seams of their clothes.

The fortune, in "rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, diamonds, and emeralds,"
was straightway turned out before the admiring gaze of friends; while
the story was told, to friends and enemies alike, many times over, and
presently, in a Genoese prison, set down in French--_The Book of Ser
Marco Polo the Venetian concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the
East._ It was only one of many books of that age describing the
countries of the Orient, for Marco Polo was only the most famous of the
travelers of his time. Diplomatic agents, such as Carpini, the legate of
Innocent IV, or William de Rubruquis, the ambassador of St. Louis;
missionaries, such as John de Corvino, Jordanus de Severac, or Friar
Beatus Oderic, laboring to establish the faith in India and China;
merchants, such as Pegalotti and Schiltberger, seeking advantage in the
way of trade:--these, and many more besides, penetrated into every part
of Asia and recorded in letters, in dry and precise merchant hand-books,
in naive and fascinating narrative accounts, a wealth of information
about this old world now first discovered to Europeans.

For the revelations of the travelers amounted to a discovery of Asia. In
the age before printing news spread from mouth to mouth. Reading had not
yet replaced conversation, and a narrative of events was alike the duty
and the privilege of every chance visitor from far or near. What a
celebrity, then, was the Asiatic voyager, returning home after many
years! It is said of Marco Polo that even in Genoa, where he was held a
prisoner, "when his rare qualities and marvelous travels became known
there, the whole city gathered to see him. At all hours of the day he
was visited by the noblest gentlemen of the city, and was continually
receiving presents of every useful kind. Messer Marco, finding himself
in this position, and witnessing the general eagerness to hear all
about Cathay and the Grand Chan, which indeed compelled him daily to
repeat his story till he was weary, was advised to put the matter in
writing." And certainly those voluble Italians were not men to remain
silent. Thousands, who never read the book of Ser Marco or the charming
narratives of Rubruquis or Friar Oderic, must have heard many of their
wonderful stories as they were carried by the merchants and priests,
students, minstrels, and high diplomatic agents who went up and down the
highways of Europe in the fourteent