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Leaving this port, they arrived at Acre in 1269, where they heard of the death of Pope Clement IV., to whom they were sent, but the legate Theobald lived in Acre and received the Venetians; learning what was the object of their mission he begged them to wait for the election of the new Pope.
A knowledge of the variation of the needle came more slowly to be known to the mariners of the Mediterranean. It had been observed by Peregrini as early as 1269, but that knowledge of it which rendered it greatly serviceable in voyages does not seem to be plainly indicated in any of the charts of these transition centuries, till we find it laid down on the maps of Andrea Bianco in 1436.
The next place along the coast, after passing the Promontory of Salvore and turning south, is Umago. It is sheltered behind a shoal, upon which the Chronicles say that the ship laden with the relics of S. Mark struck during a storm on its way to Venice. It was given as a feud to the bishop of Trieste in 929, at Pavia, by Ugo of Provence, king of Italy, and to the bishop of Cittanova in 1029 or 1038 by the Emperor Conrad. It had been sacked by the Slavs of Croatia and Dalmatia in 876, at the same time with Cittanova, Rovigno, and Sipar (at which last place very early wall-paintings are said to exist). It swore fealty to Venice in 1269; but very little is known of its history, the English apparently having burnt the archives in the piazza early in the nineteenth century. At that period no one seems to have thought that such things could be of any value; indeed at Portole, about 1850, the podest
But even while he asked and wondered and kicked his heels on the quay, while the Doge Tiepolo was watching the procession of the gilds and the clerk Canale was adding up customs dues or writing the ancient history of the Venetians, at that very moment the two Polos were slowly and wearily making their way across the heights of central Asia with a caravan of mules and camels, drawing near to golden Samarcand with its teeming bazaars, coming nearer and nearer to the West; and in the following year, 1269, they reached Acre, and took ship there for Venice, and so at last came home.
The latter Ven-san-sui, or Von-sain-cin, by his name seems to have been a Chinese. Called Caicon, or Jaiton in the Trevigi edition. Caicon is not very far removed from the sound of Cangtong or Canton, which has already been considered to be the Zaitum of the text. A.D. 1269, according to the Trevigi edition.
To the east, seated upon her hills, stood the crowned and battlemented city, the massive White Tower rising above the fortifications. The autumn brilliance of October, 1269, never enlightened a more gorgeous scene than when it shone upon the ceremony still noted in our Calendar as the Translation of King Edward.
We only know, however, that they set out from Venice for a second journey into Tartary, soon after their return from the first, in 1269; and that they carried young Marco along with them.
The answer brings us to a mysterious lady, who is known to us through a charter of May 1269 preserved in the Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis or Chartulary of the Bishopric of Moray, and who is called therein nobilis mulier domina Johanna, the then deceased wife of Freskin de Moravia, Lord of Duffus, who had died before her.
By the above record, which is a regrant of the Strathnaver lands by Archebald Bishop of Moray in May 1269 to Reginald Chen II, not only is his marriage before that date to Mary daughter of Johanna by Freskin de Moravia proved, but the lands in Strathnaver are identifiable.
It early became one of the first centres of learning in Portugal, having begun to teach in 1269. It helped Dom Diniz to found the University of Lisbon, now finally settled at Coimbra, with presents of books and of money, and it only acknowledged the king in so far as to give him a pair of boots or shoes when he chanced to come to Alcobaça.
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