CHAPTER IV 



THE SUCCESSORS OF MARCO POLO 



AUTHORITIES : 



YULE'S Cathay and the Way Thither. 



BEAZLEY'S Dawn of Modern Geography. 



The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema, ed. BADGER (Hakluyt 



Society) . 



NORDENSKIOLD'S Periplus and Facsimile Atlas. 

 COLLINGRIDGE'S Discovery of Australia. 



OTHER travellers, commercial and missionary, following Franciscan 

 the footsteps of Marco Polo, pushed through the door china and 

 opened by the liberalism of the Mongol Kaans. An India in the 

 interesting story it is, that Mr. Beazley has to tell, of mission cen tury. 

 labours of Franciscans and Dominicans in Mongolia, in 

 China, in Persia, and in India. The hero of the story is 

 John de Monte Corvino, who, after long years among 

 Saracens and heathens, travelled through India, leaving 

 us " the first good picture of India drawn by a Latin 

 Christian," and, passing the home-coming Polos on the 

 way, arrived in China in 1292 or 1293, a pioneer to regions 

 to which "never came apostle or disciple of apostles." For 

 thirty years he laboured in China a Christian Archbishop 

 of Pekin in the early fourteenth century building churches, 

 baptizing thousands of converts, and at last dying in 1328. 

 The Mongols still held open the door, and in those days 

 one could get from Europe to Pekin, travelling through 

 Southern Asia, in six or seven months ! There were 

 Franciscan missions among the Tartars of Persia. There 

 were glorious Franciscan martyrs in India. Here they 

 lived and laboured and died, defying the " calores 

 horribilissimi et importabiles hominibus extraneis," and 



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