This first European account of China is all so delightful that it is difficult to know where to stop. The mention of coal is interesting. "Throughout the whole province of Cathay," says Marco, "are a kind of black stones cut from the mountains in veins, which burn like logs. They maintain the fire better than wood. If you put them on in the evening they will preserve it the whole night, and it will be found burning in the morning. Throughout the whole of Cathay this fuel is used. They have also wood, but the stones are much less expensive." Neither can we pass over Marco's account of the wonderful stone bridge with its twenty-four arches of pure marble across the broad river, "the most magnificent object in the whole world," across which ten horsemen could ride abreast, or the Yellow River (Hoang-ho), "so large and broad that it cannot be crossed by a bridge, and flows on even to the ocean," or the wealth of mulberry trees throughout the land, on which lived the silkworms that have made China so famous for her silk. Then there are the people famous for their manufacture of fine porcelain ware. "Great quantities of porcelain earth were here collected into heaps and in this way exposed to the action of the atmosphere for some forty years, during which time it was never disturbed. By this process it became refined and fitted for manufacture." Such is Marco's only allusion to china ware. With regard to tea he is entirely silent. But he is the first European to tell us about the islands of Japan, fifteen hundred miles from the coast of China, now first discovered to the geographers of the West. "Zipangu," says Marco, "is an island situated at a distance from the mainland. The people are fair and civilised in their manners--they possess precious metals in extraordinary abundance. The people are white, of gentle manners, idolaters in religion under a king of their own. These folk were attacked by the fleet of Kublai Khan in 1264 for their gold, for the King's house, windows, and floors were covered with it, but the King allowed no exportation of it." [Illustration: MARCO POLO. From a woodcut in the first printed edition of Marco Polo's _Travels_, Nuremburg, 1477.] Thus Marco Polo records in dim outline the existence of land beyond that ever dreamed of by Europeans--indeed, denied by Ptolemy and other geographers of the West. In the course of his service under Kublai Khan he opened up the eight provinces of Tibet, the whole of south-east Asia from Canton to Bengal, and the archipelago of farther India. He tells us, too, of Tibet, that wide country "vanquished and wasted by the Khan for the space of twenty days' journey"--a great wilderness wanting people, but overrun by wild beasts. Here were great Tibetan dogs as large as asses. Still on duty for Kublai Khan, Marco reached Bengal, "which borders upon India." But he was glad enough to return to his adopted Chinese home, "the richest and most famous country of all the East."