THE SUCCESSORS OF MARCO POLO 



59 



and surmise as to the contents of the Australasian regions 

 at the coming of the Portuguese and Spaniards ? 



FRA MACRO'S MAP, 1459. 

 (From an engraving in Dr. Sophus Ruge's Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen.) 



We have noticed that the cosmographical science of the 

 ancient world lived through the Dark Ages, and was under- 

 stood by the scholars of the thirteenth century. Men like 

 Albert the Great and Roger Bacon knew perfectly well that 

 the world was a sphere, that, as an orderly cosmos, it had 



