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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
POLO'S INFLUENCE ON GEOGRAPHY
135
in this Map something like the idea of Asia that the Tra-
veller himself would have presented, had he bequeathed a
Map to us.
[Some years ago, I made a special study of the Far East in
the Catalan Map. (L'E%trbze-Oyîe,it dans l'Atlas catalan de
Charles V., Paris, 1895), and I have come to the conclusion that
the cartographer's knowledge of Eastern Asia is drawn almost
entirely from Marco Polo. We give a reproduction of part of the
Catalan Map. H. C.]
85. In the following age we find more frequent indications
that Polo's book was diffused and read. And now that the
spirit of discovery began to stir, it was apparently
Confusions
regarded in a juster light as a Book of Facts, and not inCarto-
graphy of
as a mere Romman du Grant Kaan.* But in fact the 6t
century,this age produced new supplies of crude information from the
endeavour
in greater abundance than the knowledge of geogra- to combine
new and old
phers was prepared to digest or co-ordinate, and the information.
consequence is that the magnificent Work of Fra Mauro (1459),
though the result of immense labour in the collection of facts
and the endeavour to combine them, really gives a consider-
ably less accurate idea of Asia than that which the Catalan
Map had afforded.t
And when at a still later date the great burst of discovery
eastward and westward took effect, the results of all attempts
to combine the new knowledge with the old was most un-
happy. The first and crudest forms of such combinations
attempted to realise the ideas of Columbus regarding the
identity of his discoveries with the regions of the Great Kaan's
dominion ;1: but even after AMERICA had vindicated its inde-
pendent position on the surface of the globe, and the new
* 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.)
t This is partly due also to Fra Mauro's reversion to the fancy of the circular
disk limiting the inhabited portion of the earth.
+ 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
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