CHAP. XIII.] MARCO POLO. 516 



and xvii.) states that tlie north part of Asia is occupied by 

 extensive deserts bounded on the north by the Scythian 

 Sea, that these deserts run out to a headland, Promontorium 

 Scythicum, which is uninhabitable on account of snow. Then 

 there is a land inhabited by man-eating Scythians, then deserts, 

 then Scythians again, then deserts with wild animals to a 

 mountain ridge rising out of the sea, which is called Tahin. The 

 first people that are known beyond this are the Seri. Ptolemy 

 and his successors again supposed, though perhaps not ignorant 

 of the old statement that Africa had been circumnavigated 

 under Pharaoh Necho, that the Indian Ocean was an inland 

 sea, everywhere surrounded by land, which united southern 

 Africa with the eastern part of Asia, an idea which was first 

 completely abandoned by the chartographers of the fifteenth 

 century after the circumnavigation of Africa by Vasco DA 

 Gama. 



The knowledge of the geography of north Asia remained at 

 this point until Marco Polo,^ in the narrative of his remarkable 

 journeys among the peoples of Middle Asia, gave some in- 

 formation regarding the most northerly lands of this quarter 

 of the world also. The chapters which treat of this subject 

 bear the distinctive titles : " On the land of the Tartars living 

 in the north," " On another region to which merchants only 

 travel in waggons drawn by dogs," and " On the region where 

 darkness prevails" (Dc regione tenebrarum). From the state- 

 ments in these chaptei"s it follows that hunters and traders 



^ Marco Polo, in 1271, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, accompanied 

 his father Nicolo, and his uncle MafEeo Polo, to High Asia. He remained 

 there until 1295, and during that time came into great favour with Kubia, 

 Khan, who employed him, among other things, in a great number of 

 important public commissions, whereby he became well acquainted with 

 the widely extended lands which lay under the sceptre of that ruler. After 

 his return home he caused a great sensation by the riches he brought with 

 him, which procured him the name il Millione, a name however which, 

 according to others, was an expression of the doubts that were long enter- 

 tained regarding the truthfulness of his, as we now know, mainly true 

 accounts of the number of tlie people and the abundance of wealth in 

 Kublai Khan's lands. "II Millione," in the meantime, became a popular 

 carnival character, whose cue was to relate as many and as wonderful 

 *■ yarns " as possible, and in his narratives to deal preferably with millions. 

 It is possible that the predecessor of Columbus might have descended to 

 posterity merely as the original of this character if he had not, soon after 

 his return home, taken part in a war against Genoa, in the course of which 

 he was taken prisoner, and, during his imprisonment, related his recol- 

 lections of his travels to a fellow-prisoner, who committed them to writing, 

 in what language is still uncertain. The work attracted great attention and 

 was soon spread, first in written copies, tlien by the press in a large number 

 of different languages. It has not been translated into Swedish, but in the 

 Royal Library in Stockholm there is a very important and hitherto little 

 known manuscript of it from the middle of the fourteenth century, of 

 which an edition is in course of publication in photo-lithographic facsimile. 



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