In this he gives detailed instructions for the guidance of a merchant, who wishes to proceed from Tana on the Black Sea by the overland route across Asia to Cathay and back again with L12,000 worth of silk in his caravan, and remarks casually, in passing, 'The road you travel from Tana to Cathay is perfectly safe, whether by day or night, according to what merchants say who have used it'-- 'il chanmino dandare dana Tana al Ghattajo _e sichurissimo_![39] Think only of what it all means.

Marco Polo travelling where no man set foot again till the twentieth century.
The bells of the Christian church ringing sweetly in the ears of the Great Khan in Peking.

The long road across central Asia perfectly safe for merchants.

The 'many persons at Venice' who have walked in the streets of Hangchow.

This is in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, in the despised and hidebound Middle Ages.