254 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPLATION OP 



commercial city, (the present Hangtcheufu), which twenty- 

 five years later acquired such celebrity through the accounts 

 of the greatest of land travellers, Marco Polo ( 393 ). Truth 

 and naive error are curiously intermingled in the accounts 

 given by Rubruquis of his travels, and preserved to us by 

 Roger Bacon. "Near Cathay, which is bounded b^ the 

 Eastern Ocean/' he describes a happy land "where men 

 and women arriving from other countries cease to grow 

 old" ( 394 ). Still more credulous than the monk of Brabant, 

 and for that reason much more extensively read, was the 

 English knight, Sir John Mandeville. He describes India 

 and China, Ceylon and Sumatra. The variety and personal 

 interest of his narrative have, (like the itineraries of Balducci 

 Pegoletti, and the narrative of Buy Gonzalez de Clavijo), 

 contributed not a little to increase the disposition towards 

 intercourse with distant countries. 



It has been often and with singular decision asserted, that 

 the excellent work of the truth-loving Marco Polo, and par- 

 ticularly the knowledge which he gave of the Chinese ports 

 and of the Indian archipelago, had great influence on Co- 

 lumbus, and that he even had a copy of Marco Polo's travels 

 with him on his first voyage of discovery. ( 395 ) I have 

 shown that both Columbus himself, and his son Fernando, 

 speak of ./Eneas Sylvius's (Pope Pius II.) geography of 

 Asia, but never name Marco Polo or Mandeville. What 

 they knew of Quinsay, Zaitun, Mango and Zipangu, may 

 have been gained, without any immediate acquaintance with 

 chapters 68 and 77 of the second book of Marco Polo, from 

 the celebrated letter of Toscanelli, in 1474, on the facility 

 of reaching Eastern Asia from Spain, and from the accounts 

 <pf Nicolo de Conti, who travelled for 25 years through 



