The Voyages of Marco Polo. Марко Поло

worthy of all doubt), the name of Marco Polo was introduced merely because it was so prominent a name in Eastern Travel. The fact has been generally overlooked and forgotten[24] that, for many years in the course of the 14th century, not only were missionaries of the Roman Church and Houses of the Franciscan Order established in the chief cities of China, but a regular trade was carried on overland between Italy and China, by way of Tana (or Azov), Astracan, Otrar and Kamul, insomuch that instructions for the Italian merchant following that route form the two first chapters in the Mercantile Handbook of Balducci Pegolotti (circa 1340).[25] Many a traveller besides Marco Polo might therefore have brought home the block-books. And this is the less to be ascribed to him because he so curiously omits to speak of the art of printing, when his subject seems absolutely to challenge its description.

      [1] "They draw nowadays the map of the world in a laughable manner, for they draw the inhabited earth as a circle; but this is impossible, both from what we see and from reason." (Meteorolog. Lib. II. cap. 5.) Cf. Herodotus, iv. 36.

      [2] In Dante's Cosmography, Jerusalem is the centre of our [Greek: oikouménae], whilst the Mount of Purgatory occupies the middle of the Antipodal hemisphere:—

      "Come ciò sia, se'l vuoi poter pensare,

       Dentro raccolto immagina Sion

       Con questo monte in su la terra stare,

       Sì, ch' ambodue hann' un solo orrizon

       E diversi emisperi". …

       —Purg. IV. 67.

      [3] The belief, with this latter ground of it, is alluded to in curious verses by Jacopo Alighieri, Dante's son:—

      "E molti gran Profeti Filosofi e Poeti Fanno il colco dell' Emme Dov' è Gerusalemme; _Se le loro scritture Hanno vere figure:

      E per la Santa fede

       Cristiana ancor si vede

       Che' l' suo principio Cristo_

       Nel suo mezzo conquisto Per cui prese morte E vi pose la sorte." —(Rime Antiche Toscane, III. 9.)

      Though the general meaning of the second couplet is obvious, the expression il colco dell' Emme, "the couch of the M," is puzzling. The best solution that occurs to me is this: In looking at the world map of Marino Sanudo, noticed on p. 133, as engraved by Bongars in the Gesta Dei per Francos, you find geometrical lines laid down, connecting the N.E., N.W., S.E., and S.W. points, and thus forming a square inscribed in the circular disk of the Earth, with its diagonals passing through the Central Zion. The eye easily discerns in these a great M inscribed in the circle, with its middle angular point at Jerusalem. Gervasius of Tilbury (with some confusion in his mind between tropic and equinoxial, like that which Pliny makes in speaking of the Indian Mons Malleus) says that "some are of opinion that the Centre is in the place where the Lord spoke to the woman of Samaria at the well, for there, at the summer solstice, the noonday sun descends perpendicularly into the water of the well, casting no shadow; a thing which the philosophers say occurs at Syene"! (Otia Imperialia, by Liebrecht, p. 1.)

      [4] This circumstance does not, however, show in the Vulgate.

      [5] "Veggiamo in prima in general la terra Come risiede e come il mar la serra.

      Un T dentro ad un O mostra il disegno

       Come in tre parti fu diviso il Mondo,

       E la superiore è il maggior regno

       Che quasi piglia la metà del tondo.

      ASIA chiamata: il gambo ritto è segno

       Che parte il terzo nome dal secondo

       AFFRICA dico da EUROPA: il mare

       Mediterran tra esse in mezzo appare."

       —La Sfera, di F. Leonardo di Stagio Dati, Lib. iii. st. 11.

      [6] De Civ. Dei, xvi. 17, quoted by Peschel, 92.

      [7] Opus Majus, Venice ed. pp. 142, seqq.

      [8] Peschel, p. 195. This had escaped me.

      [9] By the Rev. W. L. Bevan, M.A., and the Rev. H. W. Phillott, M.A. In Asia, they point out, the only name showing any recognition of modern knowledge is Samarcand.

      [10] His work, Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis, intended to stimulate a new Crusade, has three capital maps, besides that of the World, one of which, translated, but otherwise in facsimile, is given at p. 18 of this volume. But besides these maps, he gives, in a tabular form of parallel columns, the reigning sovereigns in Europe and Asia connected with his historical retrospect, just on the plan presented in Sir Harris Nicolas's Chronology of History.

      [11] I do not see that al-Birúni deserves the credit in this respect assigned to him by Professor Peschel, so far as one can judge from the data given by Sprenger (Peschel, p. 128; Post und Reise-Routen, 81–82.)

      [12] For example, Delli, which Polo does not name; Diogil (Deogír); on the Coromandel coast Setemelti, which I take to be a clerical error for Sette-Templi, the Seven Pagodas; round the Gulf of Cambay we have Cambetum (Kambayat), Cocintaya (Kokan-Tana, see vol. ii. p. 396), Goga, Baroche, Neruala (Anharwala), and to the north Moltan. Below Multan are Hocibelch and Bargelidoa, two puzzles. The former is, I think, Uch-baligh, showing that part of the information was from Perso-Mongol sources.

      [13] I see it stated by competent authority that Romman is often applied to any prose composition in a Romance language.

      In or about 1426, Prince Pedro of Portugal, the elder brother of the illustrious Prince Henry, being on a visit to Venice, was presented by the Signory with a copy of Marco Polo's book, together with a map already alluded to. (Major's P. Henry, pp. 61, 62.)

      [14] This is partly due also to Fra Mauro's reversion to the fancy of the circular disk limiting the inhabited portion of the earth.

      [15] An early graphic instance of this is Ruysch's famous map (1508). The following extract of a work printed as late as 1533 is an example of the like confusion in verbal description: "The Territories which are beyond the limits of Ptolemy's Tables have not yet been described on certain authority. Behind the Sinae and the Seres, and beyond 180° of East Longitude, many countries were discovered by one [quendam] Marco Polo a Venetian and others, and the sea-coasts of those countries have now recently again been explored by Columbus the Genoese and Amerigo Vespucci in navigating the Western Ocean. … To this part (of Asia) belong the territory called that of the Bachalaos [or Codfish, Newfoundland], Florida, the Desert of Lop, Tangut, Cathay, the realm of Mexico (wherein is the vast city of Temistitan, built in the middle of a great lake, but which the older travellers styled QUINSAY), besides Paria, Uraba, and the countries of the Canibals." (Joannis Schoneri Carolostadtii Opusculum Geogr., quoted by Humboldt, Examen, V. 171, 172.)

      [16] In Robert Parke's Dedication of his Translation of Mendoza's, London, 1st of January, 1589, he identifies China and Japan with the regions of which Paulus Venetus and Sir John Mandeuill "wrote long agoe."—MS. Note by Yule.

      [17] "Totius Europae et Asiae Tabula Geographica, Auctore Thoma D. Aucupario. Edita Argentorati, MDXXII." Copied in Witsen.

      [18] This strange association of Balor (i.e., Bolor, that name of so many odd vicissitudes, see pp. 178–179 infra) with the shut-up Israelites must be traced to a passage which Athanasius Kircher quotes from R. Abraham Pizol (qu. Peritsol?): "Regnum, inquit, Belor magnum et excelsum nimis, juxta omnes illos qui scripserunt Historicos. Sunt in eo Judaei plurimi inclusi, et illud in latere Orientali et Boreali," etc. (China Illustrata, p. 49.)

      [19] Vol. ii. p. 1.

      [20] A short Account of Libraries of Italy, by the Hon. R. Curzon (the late Lord de la Zouche); in Bibliog. and Hist. Miscellanies; Philobiblon Society, vol. i, 1854, pp. 6. seqq.

      [21] P. del Natali was Bishop of Equilio, a city of the Venetian Lagoons,