SUMMARY OF RESULTS. 
41 
than the re-discovery of the New World by Columbus. The influence of Ptolemy’s 
Geography commenced from the time of its translation into Latin, for at that time the 
knowledge of Greek was slight even among the learned men of the West. The invention 
of the printing-press enabled seven large folio editions to be published before the end of 
the fifteenth century. Nearly all the geographical maps published from 1492 down 
even to 1570 1 * * * were Ptolemy’s, with additions from the compass charts of Mediterranean 
sailors, and sketches showing the more recent discoveries in the Great Ocean. Ptolemy’s 
geographical conceptions prevailed throughout the whole period of great geographical 
discoveries, and were even imported into the early charts of America. It is interesting to 
note that Cattigarci , which was an emporium in the extreme east of Asia in the time of 
Ptolemy, appears on the western coast of South America in the maps of the sixteenth 
century, for instance, in the map of Sebastian Munster, published in the Ptolemy of 1540 
During the thirteenth century the great Mongol conquests in Asia and eastern 
Europe opened up a way from Europe to China, and for nearly a century European 
missionaries and traders visited these little-known and fabulous countries in the far East. 
Among others, the three Polos — father, uncle, and son — returned to Venice, after an 
absence of twenty years, with their coats lined with diamonds, rubies, and other jewels, 
and spread them before their astonished and envious countrymen. Marco Polo’s account 
of his travels was written down in 1299, but does not appear to have been generally 
known till about the middle of the fifteenth century. Roger Bacon and Dante, as 
well as the author of Mandeville’s travels who copied from all sources, do not seem 
to have known about Marco Polo’s adventures. The Chinese seas had, as we have 
pointed out, been visited by Soleiman and other Arab sailors during the ninth 
century, but these voyages appear to have been wholly unknown in western 
Europe, Marco Polo gave the first definite information as to the limits of the 
Asiatic continent towards the east. Ptolemy, it will be remembered, had united the 
east coast of Africa by unknown lands to the remote portions of Asia, which he 
regarded as indefinitely extended towards the east in “ reedy and impenetrable 
swamps.” The results of Marco Polo’s travels are for the first time shown on the 
Catalan Chart of 1375, as noted above. 
The necessities of commerce had, however, a most powerful influence in turning 
attention towards the Great Western Ocean ; in transferring the centre of civilisation 
and commercial activity 7 from the Mediterranean to the coasts of the Atlantic. The 
capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 closed the overland trade routes to the 
east, which, for over a hundred years, had brought trade and wealth to Venice, Genoa, 
and Western Europe. Turkish pirates so overran the Eastern Mediterranean that 
1 When the first edition of the Theatrmn Orlis Terrarum by Ortelius was published at Antwerp containing 5.3 
maps in double folio. A second edition appeared the same year, and edition followed edition till 1612, the last con- 
taining 228 modern and 38 ancient or historical maps (Nordenskiold, op. cit.., p. 124). (See Plate I.). 
(summary of results chall. exf. — 1894.) 
