32 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



much to launch Columbus on the voyage in which he 

 sought Cathay, and found America. 



But, for the present, the news was of greatest interest 

 to men of commerce, and especially to merchants of the 

 The enter- great Italian Republics, who for centuries had been agents 

 Venetian an< ^ middlemen for Europe in the trade which brought 

 merchants, to rich men in the West the indispensable luxuries produced 

 by the East and by the East alone. Jewels and pearls, 

 precious woven fabrics of silk and of cotton, spices of all 

 sorts, had been brought from the East by various routes, 

 by land and by sea, till they arrived at a string of 

 seaports on the Mediterranean, extending from Constan- 

 tinople to Alexandria, whence Italian merchants dis- 

 tributed them throughout Europe. While the Crusades 

 prospered, Christian merchants had actually possessed 

 these invaluable ports. But in the thirteenth century 

 the Crusades were coming to an end, and, with the fall 

 of Acre, this commanding position was completely lost, 

 though both Christians and Mohamedans were by this 

 time sufficiently commercial to be willing to continue 

 a trade very profitable to both. And now the marvellous 

 Liberalism of the Mongol heathen gave the merchant 

 a chance to outflank the Mohamedan powers altogether, 

 to penetrate into the very heart of the golden East, and 

 to survey for himself the treasure-houses of the world. 

 In about 1260, two prosperous Venetian merchants, 

 Nicolo and Matteo Polo, took a " rich and varied cargo 

 of merchandise " to Constantinople, and determined, in 

 order " to improve their capital," that they would pro- 

 secute their journeys into the Black Sea. They sailed 

 The Polos to the Crimea, thence took horse to the court of a Chief 

 f ^ e Western Tartars, and in the end, journeying through 

 Central Asia, came to the court of the Great Kaan l Kublai 

 in Cathay itself. The Great Kaan received them with 

 " condescension and affability," made " earnest enquiries " 

 about the condition of Europe, and "above all he questioned 



1 See note on the words Kaan and Khan in Yule's Marco Polo, vol. i. 

 p. 10. " Polo always writes Kaan as applied to the Great Khan, and 

 does not, I think, use Khan in any form." 



