Mark rose rapidly in favour, and often served Kúblái 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. We are not informed whether his father and uncle shared in such employments;[18] and the story of their services rendered to the Kaan in promoting the capture of the city of Siang-yang, by the construction of powerful engines of attack, is too much perplexed by difficulties of chronology to be cited with confidence. Anyhow they were gathering wealth, and after years of exile they began to dread what might follow old Kúblái's death, and longed to carry their gear and their own grey heads safe home to the Lagoons. The aged Emperor growled refusal to all their hints, and but for a happy chance we should have lost our mediaeval Herodotus.
[Sidenote: Circumstances of the Departure of the Polos from the Kaan's Court.]
21. Arghún Khan of Persia, Kúblái's great-nephew, had in 1286 lost his favourite wife the Khatun Bulughán; and, mourning her sorely, took steps to fulfil her dying injunction that her place should be filled only by a lady of her own kin, the Mongol Tribe of Bayaut. Ambassadors were despatched to the Court of Kaan-baligh to seek such a bride. The message was courteously received, and the choice fell on the lady Kokáchin, a maiden of 17, "moult bele dame et avenant." The overland road from Peking to Tabriz was not only of portentous length for such a tender charge, but was imperilled by war, so the envoys desired to return by sea. Tartars in general were strangers to all navigation; and the envoys, much taken with the Venetians, and eager to profit by their experience, especially as Marco had just then returned from his Indian mission, begged the Kaan as a favour to send the three Firinghis in their company. He consented with reluctance, but, having done so, fitted the party out nobly for the voyage, charging the Polos with friendly messages for the potentates of Europe, including the King of England. They appear to have sailed from the port of Zayton (as the Westerns called T'swan-chau or Chin-cheu in Fo-kien) in the beginning of 1292. It was an ill-starred voyage, involving long detentions on the coast of Sumatra, and in the South of India, to which, however, we are indebted for some of the best chapters in the book; and two years or upwards passed before they arrived at their destination in Persia.[19] The three hardy Venetians survived all perils, and so did the lady, who had come to look on them with filial regard; but two of the three envoys, and a vast proportion of the suite, had perished by the way.[20] Arghún Khan too had been dead even before they quitted China;[21] his brother Kaikhátú reigned in his stead; and his son Gházán succeeded to the lady's hand. We are told by one who knew both the princes well that Arghún was one of the handsomest men of his time, whilst Gházán was, among all his host, one of the most insignificant in appearance. But in other respects the lady's change was for the better. Gházán had some of the highest qualities of a soldier, a legislator and a king, adorned by many and varied accomplishments; though his reign was too short for the full development of his fame.
[Sidenote: They pass by Persia to Venice. Their relations there.]
22. The princess, whose enjoyment of her royalty was brief, wept as she took leave of the kindly and noble Venetians. They went on to Tabriz, and after a long halt there proceeded homewards, reaching Venice, according to all the texts some time in 1295.[22]
We have related Ramusio's interesting tradition, like a bit out of the Arabian Nights, of the reception that the Travellers met with from their relations, and of the means that they took to establish their position with those relations, and with Venetian society.[23] Of the relations, Marco the Elder had probably been long dead;[24] Maffeo the brother of our Marco was alive, and we hear also of a cousin (consanguineus) Felice Polo, and his wife Fiordelisa, without being able to fix their precise position in the family. We know also that Nicolo, who died before the end of the century, left behind him two illegitimate sons, Stefano and Zannino. It is not unlikely that these were born from some connection entered into during the long residence of the Polos in Cathay, though naturally their presence in the travelling company is not commemorated in Marco's Prologue.[25]
[1] Zurla, I. 42, quoting a MS. entitled Petrus Ciera S. R. E. Card, de Origine Venetorum et de Civitate Venetiarum. Cicogna says he could not find this MS. as it had been carried to England; and then breaks into a diatribe against foreigners who purchase and carry away such treasures, "not to make a serious study of them, but for mere vain-glory … or in order to write books contradicting the very MSS. that they have bought, and with that dishonesty and untruth which are so notorious!" (IV. 227.)
[2] Campidoglio Veneto of Cappellari (MS. in St. Mark's Lib.), quoting "the Venetian Annals of Giulio Faroldi."
[3] The Genealogies of Marco Barbaro specify 1033 as the year of the migration to Venice; on what authority does not appear (MS. copy in Museo Civico at Venice).
[4] Cappellari, u.s., and Barbaro. In the same century we find (1125, 1195) indications of Polos at Torcello, and of others (1160) at Equileo, and (1179, 1206) Lido Maggiore; in 1154 a Marco Polo of Rialto. Contemporary with these is a family of Polos (1139, 1183, 1193, 1201) at Chioggia (Documents and Lists of Documents from various Archives at Venice).
[5] See Appendix C, Nos. 4, 5, and 16. It was supposed that an autograph of Marco as member of the Great Council had been discovered, but this proves to be a mistake, as will be explained further on (see p. 74, note). In those days the demarcation between Patrician and non-Patrician at Venice, where all classes shared in commerce, all were (generally speaking) of one race, and where there were neither castles, domains, nor trains of horsemen, formed no wide gulf. Still it is interesting to establish the verity of the old tradition of Marco's technical nobility.
[6] Marco's seniority rests only on the assertion of Ramusio, who also calls Maffeo older than Nicolo. But in Marco the Elder's Will these two are always (3 times) specified as "Nicolaus et Matheus."
[7] This seems implied in the Elder Marco's Will (1280): "Item de bonis quae me habere contingunt de fraternâ Compagniâ a suprascriptis Nicolao et Matheo Paulo," etc.
[8] In his Will he terms himself "Ego Marcus Polo quondam de Constantinopoli."
[9] There is no real ground for doubt as to this. All the extant MSS. agree in making Marco fifteen years old when his father returned to Venice in 1269.
[10] Baldelli and Lazari say that the Bern MS. specifies 30th April; but this is a mistake.
[11] Pipino's version runs: "Invenit Dominus Nicolaus Paulus uxorem suam esse de functam, quae in recessu suo fuit praegnans. Invenitque filium, Marcum nomine, qui jam annos xv. habebat aetatis, qui post discessum ipsius de Venetiis natus fuerat de uxore sua praefatâ." To this Ramusio adds the further particular that the mother died in giving birth to Mark.
The interpolation is older even than Pipino's version, for we find in the rude Latin published by the Société de Géographie "quam cum Venetiis primo recessit praegnantem dimiserat." But the statement is certainly an interpolation, for it does not exist in any of the older texts; nor have we any good reason for believing that it was an authorised interpolation. I suspect it to have been introduced to harmonise with an erroneous date for the commencement of the travels of the two brothers.
Lazari prints: "Messer Nicolò trovò che la sua donna era morta, e n'era rimasto un fanciullo di dodici anni per nome Marco, che il padre non avea veduto mai, perchè non era ancor nato quando egli partì." These words have no equivalent in the French Texts, but are taken from one of the Italian MSS. in the Magliabecchian Library, and are I suspect also interpolated. The dodici is pure error (see p. 21 infra).
[12] The last view is in substance, I find, suggested by Cicogna (ii. 389).
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