Jews and of trade in different parts of the world, the collecting of which was the aim of rabbi Benjamin's labours." It may be observed, further, that the information he thus collected agrees in general with that furnished by the contemporary Arabian geographers. The travels of rabbi Benjamin had little, if any, influence on the state of geographical science amongst the Christians of the west; but a variety of causes—the thirst for novelty in science excited by the educational movement of the twelfth century, scattered information, gleaned from an increased intercourse with the Arabs, and the adventurous spirit raised by a hundred years of crusades—were now combining to render them every day more eager for information relating to distant lands, and this spirit received a new impulse from the astonishment and terror excited by the incursions of the Tartars in the earlier half of the thirteenth century. Shrewd and intelligent men were sent out by the monarchs of the west, nominally as ambassadors, but really as spies, to ascertain who these dreaded invaders were, and whence they came, and to report on their strength and character. These envoys met at the court of the khan men of distant, and, to them, unknown countries, from whom they collected information relating to the central and eastern parts of Asia. Among the first of these envoys was John du Plan de Carpin, an Italian friar of the order of St. Francis, sent out by Pope Innocent IV., in the spring of 1245. He was followed immediately by Simon de St. Quentin, a Dominican monk, also sent by the pope; and a year or two later, in 1253, by William de Rubruk, another Franciscan, sent on an embassy to the Tartars by St. Louis. These, as well as other missionaries of the same century, have left behind them interesting narratives, several of which are preserved, and some of them are well known. Merchants, led by the hope of gain, followed in the steps of, and even preceded, the political or religious missionaries, and their objects being less restricted, they often penetrated into the remotest regions of Asia, where they sometimes settled, and rose to rank and wealth. One of these, an Italian named Marco Polo, on his return, after a long residence in Asia, in the middle of the thirteenth century, published the well known narrative, which conduced, more than any other work, to the development of geographical science, and which first gave the grand impulse to geographical research, that led to the more extensive and substantial knowledge which began to dawn in the following century.