Skirting The
Northern Frontier Of China They At Last Reached The Presence Of The Kaan,
Who Was At His Usual
Summer retreat at Kai-ping fu, near the base of the
Khingan Mountains, and nearly 100 miles north of the
Great Wall at Kalgan.
If there be no mistake in the time (three years and a half) ascribed to
this journey in all the existing texts, the travellers did not reach the
Court till about May of 1275.[15]
[Sidenote: Marco's employment by Kublai Kaan; and his journeys.]
20. Kublai received the Venetians with great cordiality, and took kindly
to young Mark, who must have been by this time one-and-twenty. The Joenne
Bacheler, as the story calls him, applied himself to the acquisition of
the languages and written characters in chief use among the multifarious
nationalities included in the Kaan's Court and administration; and Kublai
after a time, seeing his discretion and ability, began to employ him in
the public service. M. Pauthier has found a record in the Chinese Annals
of the Mongol Dynasty, which states that in the year 1277, a certain POLO
was nominated a second-class commissioner or agent attached to the Privy
Council, a passage which we are happy to believe to refer to our young
traveller.[16]
His first mission apparently was that which carried him through the
provinces of Shan-si, Shen-si, and Sze-ch'wan, and the wild country on the
East of Tibet, to the remote province of Yun-nan, called by the Mongols
Karajang, and which had been partially conquered by an army under Kublai
himself in 1253, before his accession to the throne.[17] Mark, during his
stay at court, had observed the Kaan's delight in hearing of strange
countries, their marvels, manners, and oddities, and had heard his
Majesty's frank expressions of disgust at the stupidity of his
commissioners when they could speak of nothing but the official business
on which they had been sent. Profiting by these observations, he took care
to store his memory or his note-books with all curious facts that were
likely to interest Kublai, and related them with vivacity on his return to
Court. This first journey, which led him through a region which is still
very nearly a terra incognita, and in which there existed and still
exists, among the deep valleys of the Great Rivers flowing down from
Eastern Tibet, and in the rugged mountain ranges bordering Yun-nan and
Kwei-chau, a vast Ethnological Garden, as it were, of tribes of various
race and in every stage of uncivilisation, afforded him an acquaintance
with many strange products and eccentric traits of manners, wherewith to
delight the Emperor.
Mark rose rapidly in favour, and often served Kublai again on distant
missions, as well as in domestic administration, but we gather few details
as to his employments. At one time we know that he held for three years
the government of the great city of Yang-chau, though we need not try to
magnify this office, as some commentators have done, into the viceroyalty
of one of the great provinces of the Empire; on another occasion we find
him with his uncle Maffeo, passing a year at Kan-chau in Tangut; again, it
would appear, visiting Kara Korum, the old capital of the Kaans in
Mongolia; on another occasion in Champa or Southern Cochin China; and
again, or perhaps as a part of the last expedition, on a mission to the
Indian Seas, when he appears to have visited several of the southern
states of India.
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