624 



COSMOS. 



Two centuries before the sources of Greek literature were 

 opened to the nations of the west, and twenty-five years before 

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

 of the civilization of Southern Europc,~-events occurred in the 

 interior of Asia as well as in the east of Africa, which, by ex- 

 tending 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 Liegnitz, terrified Christ- 

 endom. A number of able monks were sent forth as mission- 

 aries and ambassadors : John de Piano Carpini and Nicholas 

 Ascelin to Batu Khan, and Ruisbrock (Rubruquis) to Mangu 

 Khan, at Karakorum. The last-named of these travelling mis- 

 sionaries has left us many clear and important observations on 

 the distribution of languages and races of men in the middle 

 of the thirteenth century. He \vas 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 re- 

 tained their language, in the strongholds of the Crimea.* 

 Rubruquis excited the eager cupidity of the great maritime 

 nations of Italy the Venetians and Genoese by his de- 

 scriptions of the inexhaustible treasures of Eastern Asia. He 

 is acquainted with the "silver walls and golden towers" of 

 Quinsay, the present llangtscheui'u, although he does not men- 

 tion the name of this great commercial mart, which twenty- 

 five years later acquired such celebrity from Marco Polo, the 

 greatest traveller of any age.f Truth and naive error are 



burnt clay. This is the invention of Pi-scliing, but it was not brought 

 into application. 



* See the proofs in my Examen crit., t. ii. pp. 316-320. Josafat 

 Barbaro (1436), and Ghislin von Busbech (1555), still found, between 

 Tana (Asof), Cafia, and the Erdil (the Volga), Alani and Gothic tribes 

 speaking German. (Ramusio, Delle navigationi et viaggi, vol. ii. pp. 

 92b and 98a.) Roger Bacon merely terms Rubruquis frater Williel- 

 mus, quern dominus Rex Francis misit ad Tartaros. 



*f The grea tand admirable work of Marco Polo (II Milione dl Messer 

 Marco Polo), as we possess it in the correct edition of Count Baldelli, 

 is inappropriately termed the narrative of " Travels." It is for the most 

 part a descriptive, one might say, a statistical, work, in which it is diffi- 

 cult to distinguish what the traveller had seen himself and what be had 

 learnt from others, and what ho derived from topographical descriptions, 



