[1250-95.] Nicolo and Maffio Polo, Venetian brothers, left Venice in 1250 on a trading trip north-eastward. Passing north of the Caspian Sea, they spent three years at Bokhara, and afterward in 1265, proceeded to the court of Kublai Khan at Kemenfu in Chinese Tartary, whence they returned in 1269, intrusted with a mission to the Pope. In 1271 they again set out, taking with them Marco, son of Nicolo. They revisited the Tartar court, where they spent seventeen years, and returned by sea down the Chinese and Indian coasts to Ormuz in Persia and thence overland to Constantinople, reaching Venice in 1295. Marco seems to have been a great favorite at the eastern court, where he was intrusted with missions in all directions. By means of his own travels and by reports of the natives from all sections whom he met, he gained an extensive knowledge of China and adjoining countries, including the numerous islands of the coast, chief among which was Zipangu, or Japan. From his memoranda, he afterwards wrote in prison, a full account of his eastern travels, which was copied and widely circulated in manuscript. See _Hakluyt Society_, _Divers Voyages_, Introd., p. lii., London, 1850, for an account of printed editions of Polo's work. Its authenticity and general reliability are now admitted, though doubtless errors have been multiplied by copyists. This journey of Marco Polo was by far the most important, for revising geography, of any undertaken during the middle ages. From this time the coasts of Asia were laid down on maps and described with tolerable accuracy by cosmographers. _De i Viaggi di Messer Marco Polo, Gentil 'hvomo Venetiano_, in _Ramusio_, tom. ii. fol. 2-60; _Marco Polo de Veniesia de le meravegliose cose del mondo_, Venice, 1496; _Marci Pauli veneti de regionibus orientalibus libri tres_, Cologne, 1671. The Venetians were the most enterprising navigators of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They reached England at an early date,—_Estancelin_, _Recherches_, pp. 114-16, Paris, 1832—and not improbably extended their commercial operations still farther north, Iceland being at the time a flourishing republic with Catholic bishops. _Kohl's Hist. Discov._, pp. 92-4. No details however are preserved of any particular one of these voyages, nor of such as may have been directed toward Cape Non, the southern limit of oceanic navigation. Some time during this century a Moor, Ibn Fatimah, was driven by storms from Cape Non down past Cape Blanco, and his adventure was recorded in an Arabian geography.