“Great Cathay,” the marvellous empire of the remote East, whence travellers had brought wonderful tales in the latter Middle Ages, had become the ultimate goal of adventurous voyages. The hazy region was the “extremity of the habitable world” of the ancients. Early Christian fancy had identified within it the Earthly Paradise, the seat of the old “Garden of Eden,” beyond the Ocean stream, “raised so high on a triple terrace of mountain that the deluge did not touch it.” Under the name of Cathay the strange empire had been opened to the speculation of mediæval Europe in the thirteenth century, with the vast conquest of the Mongol Genghis Khan, reckoned in history one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever seen. Two Franciscan friars—John de Plano Carpini and William of Rubruk (Rubruquis) in French Flanders, who reached the court in Mongolia, the former in 1245 or 1246, the latter in 1247 or 1253—appear to have been the first Europeans to approach its borders. They saw the Cathayans in the bazaars of their Great Khan’s camps, and brought back to Europe the first accounts of the people and of the wonderful things seen, presented in their journals of their adventures. Both of these “rare jewels,” as he appreciatively terms them, Hakluyt found at London in manuscripts while delving in Lord Lumley’s library, and he printed them in full in the second edition of the _Principal Navigations_. After the friars two Venetians penetrated the empire, the first European travellers to visit Cathay itself. These were the brothers Nicolo and Maffei Polo, members of a noble trading family of Venice. They were there for a short time in or about the year 1269. Soon afterward they made a second visit, when Marco, the son of Nicolo, then a youth of seventeen, quick-witted, open-eyed, and observant, accompanied them. This visit extended through more than twenty years, the three Venetians basking in the sunshine of the Great Khan’s favour. The elders helped the Khan with suggestions for the profitable application of the knowledge of the West which they opened to him, while Marco’s cleverness was variously employed in his service; sometimes as a commissioner attached to the Imperial council, at others on distant missions, and at one period a governor of a great city. Marco’s recollections, given to the world long after the final return of the Polos to Venice, first made the name of Cathay familiar to Europe. These recollections were taken down from his lips by one Rusticiano of Pisa, a clever literary hack, who was shut up in prison with him for a year (the two having been among the captives taken by the Genoese in a sea-fight with the Venetians in 1298), and formed the basis of the book of marvellous adventures, subsequently published in various languages and varying texts, which came to be famous as the _Voyages and Travels of Marco Polo_. From this Hakluyt also gives copious extracts.