So off started Maffio and Niccolo Polo on a trading enterprise, and, having crossed the Mediterranean, came "with a fair wind and the blessing of God" to Constantinople, where they disposed of a large quantity of their merchandise. Having made some money, they directed their way to Bokhara, where they fell in with a Tartar nobleman, who persuaded them to accompany him to the Court of the Great Khan himself. Ready for adventure, they agreed, and he led them in a north-easterly direction; now they were delayed by heavy snows, now by the swelling of unbridged rivers, so that it was a year before they reached Pekin, which they considered was the extremity of the East. They were courteously received by the Great Khan, who questioned them closely about their own land, to which they replied in the Tartar language which they had learnt on the way. Now since the days of Friar John there was a new Khan named Kublai, who wished to send messengers to the Pope to beg him to send a hundred wise men to teach the Chinese Christianity. He chose the Polo brothers as his envoys to the Pope, and accordingly they started off to fulfil his behests. After an absence of fifteen years they again reached Venice. The very year they had left home Niccolo's wife had died, and his boy, afterwards to become the famous traveller, Marco Polo, had been born. The boy was now fifteen. [Illustration: HOW THE BROTHERS POLO SET OUT FROM CONSTANTINOPLE WITH THEIR NEPHEW MARCO FOR CHINA. From a miniature painting in the fourteenth century _Livre des Merveilles_.] The stories told by his father and uncle of the Far East and the Court of the greatest Emperor on earth filled the boy with enthusiasm, and when in 1271 the brothers Polo set out for their second journey to China, not only were they accompanied by the young Marco, but also by two preaching friars to teach the Christian faith to Kublai Khan. [Illustration: MARCO POLO LANDS AT ORMUZ. From a miniature in the _Livre des Merveilles_.]