Foreseeing, probably, that their State would presently be involved in a war for the commercial supremacy of the East, the outcome of which was, to say the least of it, doubtful, Marco and his brother resolved to take time by the forelock and establish a new trading base before the old one was lost to them for ever; so, after a great deal of prolonged discussion, and one may imagine how much adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing of figures, the two men started, sailed for the Crimea, where a foothold at least had already been obtained, and a base of supplies partially established.
They left Constantinople while the struggle between Paleologus and the Latins was at its worst, and took with them a stock of goods, as being the most portable and convenient agent of exchange in the mysterious and practically unknown countries for which they were bound. They seem to have had some idea of the products of the East, however, and no doubt expected to make a most profitable journey among the barbarians.
A stranger journey has never, perhaps, been taken. The East, the huge, ponderous, top-heavy old East, was only known of at all through the emissaries of Innocent IV and, as an occasional assistance against the Saracens, by the Crusaders.
Their wanderings from Soldadina to Bokhara must have been eventful enough, for that part of the world was quite as much at war with itself as was Europe, but Bokhara itself must have been a weary memory to them afterwards, for they were kept there for the better part of three years, being unable either to advance or to retire—the unknown in front and the over-risky deserts behind.
Here they were picked up by some envoys journeying to the court of Kublai Khan—who offered to take them with them, assuring them that the great Prince would be overjoyed to receive them, since he had never seen a European in his life.
They spoke no more than the truth, for when, after months of hard travel over the steppes and through the hot, arid, pungent dust—the days as hot as fire itself, the nights, as often as not, bitterly chill—the two hardy brothers arrived at the Khan’s Capital, he received them with great honour and placed everything of his at their service, as though they were brother Princes. A gentle-mannered, polite, very imaginative person they found him, with an unlit fire of religious feeling, to which their devout Catholicism very soon put a match. A wise man—one may well say a great one—the empty idolatry of his own people could have no attraction for him, and when the two brothers, at his earnest request, expounded to him some of the leading tenets of Christianity, he was so struck with its ideals that he begged them to take a petition to the Pope, that His Holiness would send him a hundred men—wise men—versed in the uses of argument and capable of converting his Tartars by convincing their reason in the matter; a task for wise men, indeed, when the reason of the average Tartar is taken into consideration, unless the Khan intended to supplement their efforts by making an appeal of his own to other of their senses.