OCEANIC DISCOVEKIES. 625 



are singularly intermixed in the Journal of Rubruquis, which 

 has been preserved to us by Roger Bacon. Near Khatai, 

 which is bounded by the Eastern Sea, he describes a happy 

 land, where, on their arrival from other countries, all men and 

 women cease to grow old."* 



More credulous than the monk of Brabant, and, therefore, 

 perhaps far more generally read, was the English knight, Sir 

 John Mandeville. He describes India and China, Ceylon and 

 Sumatra. The comprehensive scope and the individuality of 

 his narratives (like the itineraries of Balducci Pegoletti and 

 the travels of Roy Gonzalez de Clavijo) have contributed con- 

 siderably to increase a disposition towards a great and general 

 intercourse among different nations. 



It has often and with singular pertinacity been maintained, 

 that the admirable work of the truthful Marco Polo, and more 

 particularly the knowledge which it diffused regarding the 

 Chinese ports and the Indian Archipelago, exercised great in- 

 fluence on Columbus, who is even asserted to have had a copy 



in which the Chinese literature is so rich, and which might be accessible 

 to him through his Persian interpreter. The striking similarity pre- 

 sented by the narratives of the travels of Hiuan-thsung, the Buddhistic 

 pilgrim of the seventh century, to that which Marco Polo found in 1277 

 (respecting the Pamir-Highland), early attracted my whole attention. 

 Jacquet, who was unhappily too early removed by a premature death, from 

 the investigation of Asiatic languages, and who, like Klaproth and my- 

 self, was long occupied with the work of the great Venetian traveller, 

 wrote to me, as follows, shortly before his decease : " I am as much struck 

 as yourself by the composition of the Milione. It is undoubtedly 

 founded on the direct and personal observation of the traveller, but he 

 probably also made use of documents either officially or privately com- 

 municated to him. Many things appear to have been borrowed from 

 Chinese and Mongolian works, although it is difficult to determine their 

 precise influence on the composition of the Milione; owing to the suc- 

 cessive translations from which Polo took his extracts. Whilst our 

 modern travellers are only too well pleased to occupy their readers with 

 their personal adventures, Marco Polo takes pains to blend his own. 

 observations with the official data communicated to him, of which, as 

 Governor of the city of Yangui, he was able to have a large number." (See 

 my Asie centrale, t. ii. p. 395.) The compiling method of the celebrated 

 traveller, likewise explains the possibility of his being able to dictate his 

 book at Genoa in 1295, to his fellow prisoner and friend, Messer Rustigielo 

 of Pisa, as if the documents had been lying before him. (Compare 

 Marsden, Travels of Marco Polo, p. xxxiii.) 



* Purchas, Pilgrims, part iii. ch. 28 and 56 (pp. 23 and 34). 

 2 s 



