The merchants and missionaries who were the first travellers and ambassadors of Christian times little thought, absorbed as they were in the object of their quest, how large a share of interest in the eyes of posterity would centre in the quaint observations, descriptions, and drawings which they were able incidentally to gather or make. Marco Polo’s name, and even those of his father and uncle, Niccolo and Matteo Polo, are well known, and are associated with all that barbaric magnificence the memory of which had a great share in keeping alive the perseverance of subsequent explorers. It was fitting that traders in jewels should reach the more civilized and splendid Tartars, and no doubt their store of rich presents, and their garments of ample dimensions as well as fine texture, would prove a passport through tribes so passionately acquisitive as the Tartars seem to have been. Nomads are not always simple-minded or unambitious. The Franciscan whose travels come just between the expedition of the elder Polo and the more famous Marco--Friar William Rubruquis--did not have the good-luck to see the wonders his successor described; but he mentions repeatedly that his entertainers made reiterated and minute inquiries as to the abundance of flocks and herds in the country he came from, and that they wondered--rather contemptuously--at the presents of sweet wine, dried fruits, and delicate cakes which were all he had to offer their great princes. Rubruquis was traveller, missionary, and ambassador, but in the two pursuits denoted by the last-mentioned titles his success was but small. As a traveller, however, he was hardy, persevering, and observant. Though not bred a horseman, he often rode thirty leagues a day, and half the time at full gallop, he says. His companions, monks like himself, could not stand the fatigue, and both, at different intervals, parted company from him. But Rubruquis was young and strong, though, as he himself says, corpulent and heavy; and, above all, he was enterprising. He was not more than five-and-twenty when he started on his quest of the Christian monarch whom all the rulers of Europe firmly believed in, and whose name has come down to us as Prester John.