The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-07-29

greater essence han Columbus the
sequeI 10 Marco Polo, who. except in
one lining Zone voyage), was a failure
Sldrco came home in a bigger feet than
SSoIuIhDus sailed with, carrying also the
daughter of Kublai Khan. to be mar
ried to the king of Persia. They went
py our Philippines and the MaIacca.
straits, Borneo and Ceylon, to the chief
port or Persia, ana then crossed to the
BACK sea and reappeared in Venice
100. In the Tartar dress and forgetting
their native language. Marco there
was made captive by the Genoese and
used IN jail as the Yoluminous liar. This
was IN the time of Italian popes and of
crusadeS to Jerusalem, but the race
which was losing its career as Mediter-
ranean sailors could not believe their
own traveller, though ready to swallow
any legend or bogy.
Beginning of the Modern World.
TIE modern world may be said to be-
GIN with Marco Polo, who taught
Europe that Somewhere beats No
where. At that time the king of Eng
land was cudgeling hostile knight at
tournament and expelling and out
raging the Jews. China backed in the
sliken sheen of an immemorial happi-
ness. ascending SAYS Gibbon, "by
probable tradition. above forty cen
turtles and able to verify a series of
1000 years by the perpetual testimony
OF accurate and cotemporary histori-
ans
-Scvthia" was alI the Christian earth
could name China. which expelled the
Huns 200 wears before Christ. At that
time annual tribute of the most Beauti-
full maids in China was made TO the
brutal and deformed forefathers of
Hungary The Chinese in the time of
Caesar were absorbing the Tartar ele-
ments into their Fiowery empire The
wave which rebounded from China
nearly overwhelmed Europe under
Attila. Europe became German, or
Gothic, instead of Roman, from the
showing of the Goths forward from the
Danube by the Huns, who had left
China.
China's Antiquity.
Three hundred years before Christ the
Chinese wall ran 1500 miles, as far as
from New York to the Missouri river
While the Greeks were ascribing the
invention of the loom and distaff to the
Gods. the Chinese were weaving from
their knowledge of worms. our prepar-
ers of the earth's mould, the silks
which Virgil mentions and which
clothed JuStinian's counseiors. Two
monks in that Greek emperor's time
a
staff to COns'antinOple. as the Chinese
silk was traded TO Persia by sea, the
fashion implanted there by their
Chinese royal bride.
Another of those revelators whose
conceit of authorship declares war
against inoffensive mankind was Ma
hOmet. whose desDotism was checked
by China while it still holds the best
corner of Europe. At the head of his
Ae.s. -, J &c.
of the Chinese in his van. as the Wor-
shipful ancestors of gentle people,
Gengis, the Mogul, captured Pekin,
which Kublai. his successor, rebuilt
and was ruined by Japan. China. how
ever, conquered by her policy the con-
querOr who knelt To her idol Fo, and in
$50 years his dynasty was expelled,
about the year 1900.
I was lately reviewing some of these
points with a Chinese scholar at thAle-
cation. and his conversation may be
put into an interview.
From a Scholars Standpoint.
How did the family of Marco Polo
first reach China?"
"About 1855 they went to the Volga
Tartars to sell ieweiry, and a war en-
suing between these Turkistan <Tar-
tars, the merchants turned the Capsian
sea TO the city of KOkhara, where a
Mogul noble, pleased with their con-
versing in his language, invited them
TO China. which they were twelve
months reaching. The. grand khan
sounded them. found them agreeable
and honest and made them his ambas-
sailors to the pope. They reached the
Mediterranean in three years. The
pope having died, and after waiting
two years without any successor being
elected by the factions, they returned,
taking along Marco, a child born after
they made their first journey. The pope