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INTERCOURSE WITH INDIA AXD EUROPE. 7
the steppe, the Chinese emperors had already raised, rebuilt, and doubled with parallel
lines that prodigious rampart of the " Great Wall " which stretches for thousands
of miles between the steppe and the cultivated lands of the south. Curbed by this
barrier erected between two physically different regions and two hostile societies,
the nomads had passed westwards, where the land lay open before them, and the
onward movement was gradually propagated across the continent. In the fourth
and fifth centuries a general convulsion had hurled on the West those conquering
hordes collectively known as Huns ; in the twelfth century an analogous movement
urged the Mongols forward under a new Attila. Holding the Zungarian passes,
which gave easy access from the eastern to the western regions of Asia, Jenghiz
Khan might have at once advanced westward. But being reluctant to leave any
obstacle in his rear, he first crossed the Great Wall and seized Pekin, and then
turned his arms against the Western states. At the period of its greatest extent
the Mongolian Empire, probably the largest that ever existed, stretched from the
Pacific seaboard to the Russian steppes.
The existence of the Chinese world was revealed to Europe by these fresh
arrivals from the East, with whom the Western powers, after the first conflicts,
entered into friendly relations by means of embassies, treaties, and alliances against
the common enemy, Islam. The Eastern Asiatic Empire was even long known to
them by the Tatar name of Cathay, which under the form of Kitai is still current
amongst the Russians. Envoys from the Pope and the King of France set out to
visit the Great Khan in his court at Karakorum, in Mongolia ; and Plan de Carpin,
Rubruk, and others brought back marvellous accounts of what they had seen in
those distant regions. European traders and artisans followed in the steps of these
envoys, and Marco Polo, one of these merchants, was the first who really revealed
China to Europe. Henceforth this country enters definitely into the known world,
and begins to participate in the general onward movement of mankind.
Marco Polo had penetrated 'into China from the west by first following the
beaten tracks which start from the Mediterranean seaboard. Columbus,
still more
daring, hoped to reach the shores of Cathay and the gold mines of Zipango by sailing
round the globe in the opposite direction from that taken by the great Venetian.
But arrested on his route by the New World, he reached neither China nor Japan,
although he long believed in the success of his voyage to Eastern Asia. But others
continued the work of circumnavigation begun by him. Del Cano, companion
of Magellan, returned to Portugal, whence he had set out, thus completing the
circumnavigation of the globe. All the seas had now been explored, and it was
possible to reach China by Cape Horn as well as by the Cape of Good Hope.
X< it withstanding the determined opposition of the Pekin Government to the entrance
of foreigners, the empire was virtually open, and within two hundred and fifty
years of this event China and Japan, which had never ceased to be regularly visited
by European traders, were obliged to open their seaports, and even to grant certain
strips of land on their coast, where the Western nations have already raised cities
in the European taste. The conquest may be said to have already begun.