Policy, commerce, and religion, —those three great incentives to all bold enterprises, —continued during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to direct the eyes of Europeans towards the centre of Asia. The victories of Tamerlane, who checked for a moment the formidable progress of the Ottoman Turks, fixed the attention and the hopes of the Christian world. The caravan routes over Asia appear to have been much more frequented in those ages than is commonly supposed. The new channels of commerce through Egypt, and afterwards by the Cape of Good Hope, caused those routes to be gradually abandoned, and at last to be almost forgotten. A brief account of the course usually pursued by the merchants is preserved to us in the Itinerary of Francisco Balducci Pegoletti, an Italian merchant who travelled in Asia in 1335. The only portion of his work which has a direct connection with the history of geography is the chapter entitled “A Guide for the Route from Tana to Cathay with Merchandise, and back again.”