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 brothers, taking with them the son of Nicolo, the young Marco, then a stout lad, began to retrace their steps to Cathay, despairing of being able to enlist the one hundred priests which the Great Khan had asked them to borrow for missionary purposes from the Pope.
At Acre, then held by European powers that had been engaged in the crusades for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, they took counsel with one Tebaldo Visconti, an eminent prelate, who was Archdeacon of Liége and a person of great consequence in the Eastern church. At their request, he wrote letters to the Great Khan, authenticating the causes of their failure to fulfil the wishes of the Khan in the matter of obtaining the missionaries whom he desired. Then they pushed on toward the farther East, and while waiting for a vessel to sail from the port of Ayas, on the Gulf of Scanderoon, then the starting-point for the Asiatic trade, they were overtaken by the news that their friend the Archdeacon Tebaldo had been chosen Pope, under the title of Gregory X. They at once returned to Acre, and were able to present to the newly elected pontiff the request of the Great Khan and get a reply. But instead of one hundred teachers and preachers, they were furnished with only two Dominican friars; and these lost heart and drew back before the journey was fairly begun. It may be said here that the Great Khan, being disappointed by the Roman Church, subsequently applied to the Grand Llama of Thibet, and from that source secured the teachers whom he so greatly desired. The Great Khan appears to have been an enlightened and liberal sovereign, and, according to his lights, was willing to furnish to his people the best form of religion that was to be had. He preferred the religion of the elegant and polished Italians, but, failing to get this, he naturally turned his eyes in the direction of Thibet, then an unknown land to all Europeans, but regarded in Mongolia as a region of some considerable civilization.
The three members of the Polo family finally set out on their return to Cathay, leaving Acre in November, 1271. They proceeded by the way of Ayas and Sivas to Mardin, Mosul, and Bagdad to Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Here they met with some obstacle and turned from Hormuz, and traversed successively Kerman and Khorassan, Balkh, and Badakhshan, by the way of the upper Oxus, to the plateau of Pamir; thence crossing the steppes of Pamir, the three travellers descended upon Kashgar, whence they proceeded by Yarkand and Khotan to the vicinity of Lake Lob; and, crossing the desert of Gobi, they reached the province of Tangut in the extreme northwestern corner of China, or Cathay. Skirting the northern frontier, they finally reached the actual presence of the Great Khan, who was then at his summer palace of Kaipingfu, before spoken of, situated at the base of the Khingan Mountains, fifty miles north of the Great Wall. One may form some idea of the difficulties of Asiatic travel in those days, as well as the leisurely habits of the time, by considering that this journey occupied the three Venetians three years and a half. They arrived at the palace of the Khan about May, 1275.
The Polos were very cordially and gladly received by the potentate, then ruling over a territory so vast that it has been well said that, "In Asia and Eastern Europe scarcely a dog might bark without Mongol leave, from the borders of Poland and the coast of Cilicia to the Amoor and the Yellow Sea." Kublai Khan regarded the young Marco with especial favor, and soon began to employ him in errands and commissions of importance. "The Young Bachelor," as he is called in his book, took pains to acquire at once an acquaintance with the Chinese alphabet, and to learn the languages and dialects of the countries in which he found profitable and interesting employment.
It appears that the Khan had been greatly annoyed by the stupidity of his own officials and agents. They attended only to the errands on which they were sent, and brought back absolutely no knowledge of the distant countries that they visited, except that which they were specially directed to fetch. Very different was the conduct of the young Venetian. He was shrewdly observant, of a lively disposition, and given to inquiring into the strange and wonderful things which he beheld in those remote parts of the world, hitherto secluded from the observation of Europeans. He made copious and minute notes of all that he saw and heard, for the benefit of his imperial master. These notes afterward served him a good purpose, as we shall see; for they were the basis of the book that has made the name of Marco Polo famous throughout the world. When he returned to the imperial court, we can imagine the satisfaction with which the picturesque and intelligent narrations of what he had seen and heard were received by the Great Khan.
In the records of the Mongol dynasty has been found a minute setting forth the fact that a certain Polo, undoubtedly young Marco, was nominated a second-class commissioner attached to the privy council of the Empire, in the year 1277. His first mission appears to have taken him on public business to the provinces of Shansi, Shensi, Sechuen and Yunnan, in the southern and southwestern part of China, and east of Thibet. Even now, those regions are comparatively unknown to the rest of the world; and one must needs admire the intrepidity of the young Venetian who penetrated their wild mountain fastnesses, traced their mighty rivers, and carried away for the delight of the Great Khan, much novel information concerning the peoples that so numerously flourished in that cradle of the human race.