THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



The Fountain 

 of Youth. 



Marco Polo. 



of the thirteenth century, was sent by St. Louis on a 

 mission to the Tartar chiefs, brought back the report 

 that ' there is a certain province on the other side of 

 Cathay, and whatever a man's age be when he enters 

 that province he never gets any older/ The friar is 

 careful to add that he does not believe a word of this 

 report, but it found credence from others, and so late 

 as 1 5 12 Juan Ponce de Leon, an old Spanish cavalier, 

 Governor of Puerto Rico, landed in Florida while he 

 was cruising in search of a country alleged to contain 

 a miraculous Fountain of Youth. Besides Rubruquis 

 there were other friars whose accounts of the East 

 were well known to later explorers. John of Piano 

 Carpini in the Thirteenth Century was followed later 

 by John of Monte Corvino, who passed many years 

 of his life at the Court of the Grand Khan of Cathay, 

 founded a flourishing Christian community, built a 

 church, and was made Archbishop of Cambalu, or Pekin. 

 Odoric of Pordenone was, like these, a Franciscan ; his 

 residence at Pekin belongs to the early part of the 

 Fourteenth Century. The reports brought by these 

 travellers of the survival of some remnants of Nestorian 

 Christianity in the East lent colour to the legend of 

 Prester John, the mythical Christian potentate, who 

 continued to be an object of research down to the time 

 of the Portuguese voyages. The greatest of all mediaeval 

 travellers, Marco Polo, who spent a quarter of a century, 

 from 1 27 1 to 1295, in the East, was a Venetian of a 

 noble merchant family, and did more perhaps than any 

 other writer to excite interest in the glories of Cathay. 

 The accounts given by Marco Polo and Odoric, long 

 believed to be adorned and heightened by fables, have 



