EAKLY TRAVELLERS. 453 



This progress of the Arabs, and the vast treasures accruing to 

 Venice from the overland Indian trade, could not fail to excite 

 the envy of the other seafaring powers, and to call forth. an in- 

 creasing desire of discovering a new maritime route to the wealth- 

 teeming regions of Southern Asia, 



The wonderful narratives of the first travellers who wandered 

 by land to the distant East likewise contributed in no small 

 degree to foment the ardour of discovery. The most celebrated 

 of these geographical pioneers was Marco Polo, a noble Venetian 

 who had resided many years at the court of the Mongol ruler, 

 Kublai Khan, and visited the most remote regions of Asia. He 

 was the first European that ever sailed along the western shores 

 •of the Pacific, the first that told his astonished countrymen of 

 the magnificence of Cambalu or Peking, the capital of the great 

 kingdom of Cathay, and of the splendour of Zipanga or Japan 

 situated on the confines of a vast ocean extending to the east. 

 He also made more than one sea-voyage in the Indian Ocean, 

 and to him Europe owed her first knowledge of the Moluccas, 

 the east coast of Africa, and the island of Madagascar. 



This greatest of all the mediaeval travellers, who without ex- 

 aggeration may be said to have enlarged the boundaries of the 

 known earth as much as Alexander the Great, was followed by 

 Oderich of Portenau, who travelled as far as India and China 

 (1320 — 1330); by Sir John Mandeville, who visited almost all 

 the lands described by Marco Polo ; by Schildberger of Munich, 

 who accompanied the barbarous Tamerlane on his locust expedi- 

 tions; and finally by Clavigo, sent in the year 1403 by the Spanish 

 court on an embassy to Samarcand. The truths which these bold 

 travellers communicated to their countrymen about the riches 

 and the commerce of the nations they had visited, as well as the 

 fables in which their credulity or their extravagant fancy in. 

 dulged, made an enormous impression on the European mind, 

 and raised to a feverish heat the longing after those sunny lands 

 ;and isles which imagination adorned with all the charms of an 

 •earthly paradise. 



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