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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
140
INTRODUCTION
l, :
M
of the patriotic romance, so far as I have heard, brought none of
them into the lists in its defence.
But since Castaldi has got his statue from the printers of
Lombardy, would it not be mere equity that the mariners of
Spain should set up a statue at Huelva to the Pilot Alonzo
Sanchez of that port, who, according to Spanish historians,
after discovering the New World, died in the house of Columbus
at Terceira, and left the crafty Genoese to appropriate his
journals, and rob him of his fame ?
Seriously ; if anybody in Feltre cares for the real repu-
tation of his native city, let him do his best to have that
preposterous and discreditable fiction removed from the base
of the statue. If Castaldi has deserved a statue on other and
truer grounds let him stand ; if not, let him be burnt into honest
lime ! I imagine that the original story that attracted Mr. Curzon
was more jeu d' esprit than anything else ; but that the author,
finding what a stone he had set rolling, did not venture to
retract.
88. Mr. Curzon's own observations, which I have italicised
about the resemblance of the two systems are, however, very
Frequent striking, and seem clearly to indicate the derivation
opportu- of the art from China. But I should suppose that in
nitres for
such intro-
duction in the tradition, if there ever was any genuine tradition
the age
following of the kind at Feltre (a circumstance worthy of all
Polo's. 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 * 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 134o).1- 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
* Ramusio himself appears to have been entirely unconscious of it, vide supra,
P. 3.
t This subject has been fully treated in Cathay and the Way Thither.
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