There are no more absorbing chapters in the history of geography than those connected with the growth of European knowledge of Asia in antiquity and during the Middle Ages [1236] and with its converse, the growth of Oriental knowledge of the Occident.[1237] Of late years the historical and archeological investigations of Albert von Le Coq, Sir Aurel Stein, Edouard Chavannes, Paul Pelliot, and Albert Herrmann have thrown a flood of light on the connections that existed in the earlier medieval period between eastern and western Asia. While these early connections may have brought some vague information regarding the Far East to the Byzantine world, they probably exerted almost no influence upon the conceptions of Asia prevalent in Western Europe before the middle of the thirteenth century. THE OPENING OF ASIA IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY Relations between the Far East and Far West, however, were profoundly modified by certain events that took place during the first half of the thirteenth century. As a result of these events, Farther Asia for the first time in history was opened to Occidental travelers. Beginning with the year 1245 no inconsiderable number of European missionaries and traders made their way overland through the hitherto unknown heart of the continent and penetrated to the mysterious region of Cathay (China) at the ultimate point of the world. For somewhat more than a century the veil of the Extreme Orient was drawn aside, but drawn aside only again to be closed when the disruption of the Mongol empires and the rise of the Ottoman Turks barred the overland routes. It remained for Portuguese and Spanish seafarers of the great age of maritime exploration to rediscover the Far East. The history of the earlier relations of eastern and western Asia and of the opening of that continent in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, falls outside our province and cannot be discussed in detail in the present volume. A few words, nevertheless, must be said on this subject in order that the traditional geographical lore of Asia in our period may be seen in its proper perspective. THE MONGOL CONQUESTS