Marco Polo was here in 1283, and has left on record a description of the city, which, in his time, was known by the name of Yachi.

Jesuit missionaries have been propagating the faith in the province since the seventeenth century.

But the distinction of being the first European traveller, not a missionary priest, to visit the city since the time of Marco Polo rests with Captain Doudart de la Gree of the French Navy, who was here in 1867.
Margary, the British Consul, who met a cruel death at Manwyne, passed through Yunnan in 1875 on his famous journey from Hankow; and two years later the tardy mission under Grosvenor, with the brilliant Baber as interpreter, and Li Han Chang, the brother of Li Hung Chang, as delegate for the Chinese, arrived here in the barren hope of bringing his murderers to justice.
Hosie, formerly H.B.M.Consul in Chungking, and well known as a traveller in Western China, was in Yunnan City in 1882.
In September, 1890, Bonvalot and Prince Henri d'Orleans stopped here at the French Mission on their way to Mungtze in Tonquin.

It was on the completion of their journey along the eastern edge of _Tibet Inconnu_--"Unknown Thibet!" as they term it, although the whole route had been traversed time and again by missionary priests, a journey whose success was due--though few have ever heard his name--to its true leader, interpreter, and guide, the brave Dutch priest from Kuldja, Pere Dedeken.
Another famous missionary traveller, Pere Vial, who led Colquhoun out of his difficulty in that journey "Across Chryse," which Colquhoun describes as a "Journey of Exploration" (though it was through a country that had been explored and accurately mapped a century and a half before by Jesuit missionaries), and conducted him in safety to Bhamo in Burma, has often been in Yunnan City, and is a possible successor to the Bishopric.
M.Boell, who left the Secretaryship of the French Legation in Peking to become the special correspondent of _Le Temps_, was here in 1892 on his way from Kweiyang, in Kweichow, to Tonquin, and a few months later Captain d'Amade, the Military Secretary of the French Legation, completed a similar journey from Chungking.

In May, 1892, the Commissioner from the French Government opium farm in Hanoi, M.Tomme, arrived in Yunnan City from Mungtze, sent by his Government in search of improved methods of poppy cultivation--the Yunnan opium, with the exception of the Shansi opium, being probably the finest in China.
Finally, in May, 1893, Lenz, the American bicyclist, to the profound amazement of the populace, rode on his "living wheel" to the _Yesu-tang_.