[b. b. dawson] 



THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS 



237 



mour, and Col. Yule (who edited his travels for the Kakluyt society) 

 points out, in a note, that Grand Tartary extended from the Volga to the 

 ocean, and from the Gihon to Siberia. " There was," says Kretschmer, 

 " in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries still the ground idea of the 

 " Tanais and the Nile, and the end of the Mediterranean being the western 

 " boundary of Asia," and the region as shown on the preceding maps was 

 a verj- indefinite one. The notion that Canada M'as the extreme east of 

 Tartar}' survived for many years, and Allefonsce, in his "Cosmographie," 

 says of Canada : "Les terres tiennent à la Tartarie, et pense que se soit 

 " le tout de l'Asie selon la rondeur du monde." In like manner Jacques 



pûtusfeptftn^^ 



FiG. 23.— Imago Mundi, D'Ailly, A.D. 1410. (See ante p. 235.) 



Cartier's commission read : " Des terres de Canada et Ochelaga passant 

 " un bout de l'Asie du cost de l'Occident." In like manner it is recorded 

 that Columbus was encouraged by the tale of a sailor, who, when going 

 to Ireland, was driven westward to a land which he thought to be Tar- 

 tary. As a matter of fact, Tartary did then extend from the Tanais to 

 the eastern coast of Asia, for the successors of Jenghis Khan ruled from 

 Moscow to Pekin. In his well-known book, " Cathay and the AVay 

 " Thither," Col. Yule illustrates this point as follows : " Thus Mela says 

 " that the remotest east of Asia is occupied b}' the three races — the 

 " Indians, the Seres, and the Scythians, of whom the Indians and the 

 " Scythians occup}' the southern and northern extremities, and the Seres 

 " the middle. Just as in a general way, we might say still, that the ex- 



