ope by various names, the most classic
of which was Seres.

Here they made their way to the capital city of the Great Mongol Empire,
the seat of government where ruled the Great Khan, a very mighty
potentate, Kublai Khan, grandson of the famous conqueror, Ghenghis Khan.
Kublai Khan resided at the wonderful city of Cambuluc, which we now know
as Pekin. North of the Great Wall, and some one hundred and eighty miles
from Cambuluc, was the Great Khan's summer palace, one of the wonders of
the world, reading of which in Purchas' account of Marco Polo's
travels, it is said that Coleridge fell asleep and dreamed the famous
poem beginning:

"In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea."

These Polo brothers were the first Europeans that the Great Khan had
ever seen; but before this time, Friar Plano Carpini, in 1246, and Friar
William Rubruquis, in 1253, had penetrated into Mongolia on some errand
not now distinctly understood, but far enough to learn that a great and
civilized country existed somewhere in the eastern extremity of Asia.
They also learned that beyond this extremity of the continent there was
a sea; people had until then believed that the eastern end of Asia
disappeared in a vast and reedy bog, beyond which was deep and
impenetrable darkness. More exact knowledge of that far eastern sea was
subsequently acquired by the Venetian travellers. From these wandering
friars the Great Khan had heard, at second-hand, doubtless, of European
princes, potentates, and powers, and of the Pope of Rome.

He was mightily taken with the noble Venetians, and we are told that he
treated them with every courtesy and consideration. He was anxious to
secure through them the aid of the Sovereign Pontiff, of whose functions
he entertained high respect, in the civilizing of the hordes that had
lately been added to the Mongol Empire by wars of conquest. And he
entreated the good offices of the polished and cultivated Venetians in
securing for him the good offices of the Pope for that end. Accordingly,
the two brothers, after satisfying to some degree their curiosity, set
out for home, full of tales of their strange adventure, we doubt not;
and they reached Venice in 1269, only to find that the Pope Clement IV.
was dead, and that no successor had been chosen in his place.

There was a long interregnum, and the