At Acre, then held by European powers that had been engaged in the crusades for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, they took counsel with one Tebaldo Visconti, an eminent prelate, who was Archdeacon of Liege and a person of great consequence in the Eastern church. At their request, he wrote letters to the Great Khan, authenticating the causes of their failure to fulfil the wishes of the Khan in the matter of obtaining the missionaries whom he desired. Then they pushed on toward the farther East, and while waiting for a vessel to sail from the port of Ayas, on the Gulf of Scanderoon, then the starting-point for the Asiatic trade, they were overtaken by the news that their friend the Archdeacon Tebaldo had been chosen Pope, under the title of Gregory X. They at once returned to Acre, and were able to present to the newly elected pontiff the request of the Great Khan and get a reply. But instead of one hundred teachers and preachers, they were furnished with only two Dominican friars; and these lost heart and drew back before the journey was fairly begun. It may be said here that the Great Khan, being disappointed by the Roman Church, subsequently applied to the Grand Llama of Thibet, and from that source secured the teachers whom he so greatly desired. The Great Khan appears to have been an enlightened and liberal sovereign, and, according to his lights, was willing to furnish to his people the best form of religion that was to be had. He preferred the religion of the elegant and polished Italians, but, failing to get this, he naturally turned his eyes in the direction of Thibet, then an unknown land to all Europeans, but regarded in Mongolia as a region of some considerable civilization. The three members of the Polo family finally set out on their return to Cathay, leaving Acre in November, 1271. They proceeded by the way of Ayas and Sivas to Mardin, Mosul, and Bagdad to Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Here they met with some obstacle and turned from Hormuz, and traversed successively Kerman and Khorassan, Balkh, and Badakhshan, by the way of the upper Oxus, to the plateau of Pamir; thence crossing the steppes of Pamir, the three travellers descended upon Kashgar, whence they proceeded by Yarkand and Khotan to the vicinity of Lake Lob; and, crossing the desert of Gobi, they reached the province of Tangut in the extreme northwestern corner of China, or Cathay. Skirting the northern frontier, they finally reached the actual presence of the Great Khan, who was then at his summer palace of Kaipingfu, before spoken of, situated at the base of the Khingan Mountains, fifty miles north of the Great Wall. One may form some idea of the difficulties of Asiatic travel in those days, as well as the leisurely habits of the time, by considering that this journey occupied the three Venetians three years and a half. They arrived at the palace of the Khan about May, 1275.