THE UNIVERSE. OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 255 



India and Southern China. The oldest printed edition of 

 Marco Polo's travels is a German translation made in 1477, 

 and this certainly would not have been intelligible to Co- 

 lumbus and Toscanelli. The possibility of Columbus having 

 seen a manuscript written by the Yenetian traveller between 

 the years 1471 and 1492, in which he was occupied with the 

 project of sailing "to the East by the West" (buscar el 

 levante por el poniente, pasar a donde nacen las especerias, 

 navegando al occidente), cannot certainly be denied ; ( 396 ) 

 but if so, why, in the letter which he wrote to the monarchs 

 from Jamaica, June 7, 1503, in which he describes the 

 coast of Veragua as a part of the Asiatic Ciguare, and hopes 

 to see horses with golden trappings, does not he refer to 

 the Zipangu of Marco Polo rather than to that of Papa Pio ? 

 At the period when the extension of the great Mogul 

 empire from the Pacific to the Yolga rendered the interior 

 of Asia accessible, the maritime nations of Europe acquired 

 a knowledge of Cathay and Zipangu (China and Japan), 

 through the diplomatic missions of the monks, and through 

 mercantile enterprises conducted by means of land jour- 

 nies. By an equally remarkable concatenation of cir- 

 cumstances and events, the mission of Pedro de Covilham 

 and Alonso de Payva, sent in 1487 by King John II. 

 to seek for " the African Prester John," prepared the way, 

 not indeed for Bartholomew Diaz, but for Vasco de Gama. 

 Confiding in reports brought by Indian and Arabian pilots 

 to Calicut, Goa, and Aden, as well as to Sofala on the east 

 coast of Africa, Covilham sent word to King John, by two 

 Jews from Cairo, that if the Portuguese prosecuted their 

 voyages of discovery on the western coast of Africa towards 

 the south, they would arrive at the extremity of that conti- 



