Cathay And The Way Thither Being A Collection Of Medieval Notices Of China With A Preliminary Essay On The Intercourse Between China And The Western Nations Previous To The Discovery Of The Cape Route

Journey to medieval Cathay, unguarded and immediate. Voices from another age speak. Sir Henry Yule’s Cathay and the Way Thither, Volume II (Odoric of Pordenone) gathers medieval notices of China alongside a lucid preliminary essay on intercourse between China and Western nations before the discovery of the Cape Route. Presented as a primary source anthology, it reunites medieval travel narratives and materials crucial to historical China exploration, laying out merchant notes, missionary reports and travellers’ testimony that illuminate silk road history and the workings of pre-modern trade routes.Yule frames the Odoric of Pordenone journeys within a broader network of Marco Polo contemporaries, tracing how east-west encounters and medieval cultural exchange reshaped commerce, belief and knowledge across fourteenth century Asia. The material rewards comparative study of routes, local customs and the circulation of goods and ideas, offering granular evidence for silk road history, the mechanics of pre-modern trade routes and the spread of religious practice. For casual readers the accounts offer vivid, immediate portraiture of distant places; for academic research collections and world history students the volume supplies authentic sources and dependable context for study. Specialists in medieval cartography, ecclesiastical history and economic exchange will find passages of enduring interest, while translators and historians may use the notices as anchors for further scholarship. Its literary and historical significance lies in the book’s role as an early, systematic effort to collect scattered medieval notices of Cathay - a reference that continues to anchor scholarship on medieval exploration and intercultural contact.Out of print for decades and now republished by Alpha Editions. Restored for today’s and future generations. More than a reprint - a collector’s item and a cultural treasure. Equally at home on the bookshelf of general readers attracted to adventurous narrative and of classic-literature collectors assembling authoritative heritage editions, this work preserves the original’s scholarship while easing access for modern reading and research.