China's geographical situation was the principal cause of her separation for many generations from the rest of the world, and the result was that comparatively few contacts were established in former times between the civilizations of the East and West. Europe did not learn much about her until the Venetian traveller Marco Polo stirred into activity: Catholic missions and European merchants. And before the sea route to China via the Cape of Good Hope was discovered by the Portuquese navigator Vasco da Gama in the year 1497, the vast and formidable mountain ranges of Central Asia remained effective barriers to regular intercourse. Only occasionally were these barriers overcome, either by the initiative of China's most reowned rulers or by the tenacity of Western merchants. Tt was not until about the beginning of the sixteenth century that Portuguese merchants appeared by sea and subsequently settled in Macao near Hongkong: Wwhile a little later, Russia establish
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.