From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People

by Sven Anders Hedin

Thus we go on and on, it would seem interminably, over the boundless steppe—each day the same bumping and jolting, each day the same monotonous landscape. In northern Mongolia, however, snow lay deep on the ground, and here the cart was drawn by men on camels. By this time I was so bruised and worn out with the continual jolting that it was a pleasure to drive on the soft snow.

Marco Polo

In 1162 was born in Mongolia a chief of the savage mounted hordes who bore the name of Jenghiz Khan. He subdued all the surrounding tribes, and the whole Mongol race was collected under his banner. The more his power increased, the more extensive regions he desired to conquer, and he did not rest till practically all Asia was reduced under his rule. His motto was "One God in heaven and one Great Khan on earth." He was not content with a kingdom as large as that of Alexander or Cæsar, but wished to reign over all the known world, 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, aged fifteen years.

Our three travellers betook themselves from Syria to Mosul, quite close to the ruins of Nineveh on the Tigris, and thence to Baghdad and Hormuz, a town situated on the small strait between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Then they proceeded northwards through the whole of Persia and northern Afghanistan, and along the Amu-darya to the Pamir, following routes which had to wait 600 years for new travellers from Europe. Past Yarkand, Khotan, and Lop-nor, and through the whole of the Gobi desert, they finally made their way to China.

It was in the year 1275 that, after several years' wanderings, they came to the court of the Great Khan in eastern Mongolia. The potentate was so delighted with Marco Polo, who learned to read and write several Eastern languages, that he took him into his service. The first commission he entrusted to the young Venetian was an official journey to northern and western China. Polo had noticed that Kublai Khan liked to hear curious and extraordinary accounts from foreign countries, and he therefore treasured up in his memory all he saw and experienced in order to relate it to the Emperor on his return. Accordingly he steadily rose higher in the estimation of Kublai Khan, and was sent out on other official journeys, even as far as India and the borders of Tibet, was for three years governor of a large town, and was also employed at the capital, Peking.

Marco Polo relates how the Emperor goes hunting. He sits in a palanquin like a small room, with a roof, and carried by four elephants. The outside of the palanquin is overlaid with plates of beaten gold and the inside is draped with tiger skins. A dozen of his best gerfalcons are beside him, and near at hand ride several of his attendant lords. Presently one of them will exclaim, "Look, Sire, there are some cranes." Then the Emperor has the roof opened and throws out one of the falcons to strike down the game; this sport gives him great satisfaction. Then he comes to his camp, which is composed of 10,000 tents. His own audience tent is so large that it can easily hold 1000 persons, and he has another for private interviews, and a third for sleeping. They are supported by three tent-poles, are covered outside with tiger skins, and inside with ermine and sable. Marco Polo says that the tents are so fine and costly that it is not every king who could pay for them.