OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 249 



him a precious collection of Greek manuscripts, now buried in 

 the rarely-used library of the Escurial.* The first Greek book 

 was printed only fourteen years before the discovery of Ameri- 

 ca, although the invention of printing was probably made 

 simultaneously and wholly independently by Guttenberg in 

 Strasburg and Mayence, and by Lorenz Yansson Koster at 

 Haarlem, between 1436 and 1439, and, therefore, in the for- 

 tunate period of the first immigration of the learned Greeks 

 into Italy.f 



Two centuries before the sources of Greek literature were 

 opened to the nations of the West, and twenty-five years be- 

 fore the birth of Dante one of the greatest epochs in the 

 history of the civilization of Southern Europe events occur- 

 red in the interior of Asia, as well as in the east of Africa, 

 which, by extending commercial intercourse, accelerated the 

 period of the circumnavigation of Africa and the expedition 

 of Columbus. The advance of the Moguls in twenty-six years 

 from Pekin and the Chinese Wall to Cracow and Lieguitz, 

 terrified Christendom. A number of able monks were sent 

 forth as missionaries and embassadors : John de Piano Carpini 

 and Nicholas Ascelin to Batu Khan, and Ruisbrock (Rubru- 

 quis) to Mangu Khan at Karakorum. The last-named of 

 these traveling missionaries has left us many clear and import- 

 ant observations on the distribution of languages and races of 

 men in the middle of the thirteenth century. He was the 

 first who recognized that the Huns, the Baschkirs (inhabitants 

 of Paskatir, the Baschgird of Ibn-Fozlan), and the Hungarians 

 were of Finnish (Uralian) race ; and he even found Gothic 

 tribes who still retained their language in the strong-holds of 

 the Crimea.^ Rubruquis excited the eager cupidity of the 



* Villemain, Melanges Hisloriques et Littiraires, t. ii., p. 135. 



t The result of the investigations of the librarian Ludwig Wachler, 

 at Breslau (see his Geschichte der Litteratur, 1833, th. i., s. 12-23). 

 Printing without movable types does not go back, even in China, beyond 

 the beginning of the tenth century of our era. The first four books of 

 Confucius were printed, according to Klaproth,in the province of Sziit- 

 schun, between 890 and 925 ; and the description of the technical manip- 

 ulation of the Chinese printing-press might have been read in Western 

 countries even as early as 1310, in Raschid-eddin's Persian history of 

 the rulers of Khatai. According to the most recent results of the im- 

 portant researches of Stanislas J ulien, however, an iron-smith in China 

 itself, between the years 1041 and 1048 A.D., or almost 400 years before 

 Guttenberg, would seem to have used movable types, made of burned 

 clay. This is the invention of Pi-sching, but it was not brought into 

 application. 



X See the proofs in my Examen Crit., t. ii. p. 316-320. Josafat 

 Barbara (1436), and Ghislin von Busbech (155' ), still found, between 



L2 



