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Updated: June 6, 2025
Without doubt they were proud of their Marco, who from an inquisitive lad had grown to so wise and observant a man, and had risen to so high a position. So for seventeen years the three Polos abode in the Khan's service in China.
The account of this second journey of the Polos may be read in the wonderful book which Marco afterwards wrote to describe the wonders of the world. They went from Lajazzo through Turcomania, past Mount Ararat, where Marco heard tell that Noah's ark rested, and where he first heard also of the oil wells of Baku and the great inland sea of Caspian.
She resembles in this respect the delightful voyagers of the Middle Ages the Polos, Batutas and Mandevilles who were too much occupied with the novelty of everything they saw to bore us with their opinions, and who were untrammelled by the slightest idea of publishing a résumé of political, religious or economic conclusions when they got home.
Itaque ordo quoque demonstrandi plane invertitur. Adhuc enim res ita geri consuevit, ut a sensu et particularibus primo loco ad maxime generalia advoletur, tanquam ad polos fixos, circa quos disputationes vertantur; ab illis caetera, per media, deriventur; via certe compendiaria, sed praecipiti, et ad naturam impervia, ad disputationes proclivi et accommodata.
The artist gives an admirable view of medieval Venice, with the Piazetta to the left, and the Polos embarking on a rowing boat to go on board their ship. PLATE III. Part of a landscape roll by Chao Mêng-fu
This was the wonderful home-coming of the three Polos, who for twenty-four years had been wandering in the East, and who, when they set out on their homeward journey, a journey beset with untold difficulties and dangers, took the precaution to conceal in their garments, as above told, the wealth which they had accumulated while they were at the court of the Great Khan of Tartary.
But it will appear from the travels themselves, that the three Polos had commenced their journey previously to the election of that sovereign pontiff, and that they were detained some time in Armenia, in consequence of an express sent after them for the purpose, that they might there wait for his final instructions. They may, therefore, have commenced this second journey in 1270.
They must have followed the line of the Oxus River, and if we reverse the marvellous description which Matthew Arnold wrote of that river's course in Sohrab and Rustum, we shall have a picture of the Polos' journey: But the majestic River floated on, Out of the mist and hum of that low land, Into the frosty starlight, and there moved, Rejoicing, through the hush'd Chorasmian waste Under the solitary moon; he flow'd Right for the Polar Star, past Orgunjè, Brimming and bright and large: then sands begin To hem his watery march, and dam his streams, And split his currents; that for many a league The shorn and parcell'd Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, A foil'd circuitous wanderer: till at last The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge and shine upon the Aral Sea.
On this the new pope sent messengers to the Polos to call them back, or to delay their departure from Armenia until he might prepare other letters for them, to present to the khan in his name, and to inform them, that he meant to join two friars predicants in commission with them, Nicolo of Vicenza and Guelmo of Tripoli, men of learning and discretion.
For three years the Polos remained at Bokhara, until one day it happened that an embassy came to the city, on its way back from the khan in Persia to the great Khan Kublai, who ruled in far-off China, and to whom all the Tartar rulers owed allegiance.
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