CHAP. XIII.] 
PLINY THE ELDER. 
153 
furnished by the commander of a Greek fleet in that sea, states 
(Book II. chapters i. and iv.) that the Caspian is a gulf of the 
Northern Ocean, from which it is possible to sail to India. 
Pliny the Elder {Historia Naturalis, Book YI. chapters xiii. 
and xvii.) states that the north part of Asia is occupied by 
extensive deserts bounded on the north by the Scythian 
Se^, that these deserts run out to a headland, Promontoriuin 
ScytMcum, which is uninhabitable on account of snow. Then 
there is a land inhabited by man-eating Scythians, then deserts, 
then Scythians again, then deserts with wild animals to a 
mountain ridge rising out of the sea, which is called Tahin. The 
first people that are known beyond this are the Seri. Ptolemy 
and his successors again supposed, though perhaps not ignorant 
of the old statement that Africa had been circumnavigated 
under Pharaoh Necho, that the Indian Ocean was an inland 
sea, everywhere surrounded by land, which united southern 
Africa^with the eastern part of Asia, an idea which was first 
completely abandoned by the chartographers of the fifteenth 
century after the circumnavigation of Africa by Vasco DA 
Gama. 
The knowledge of the geography of north Asia remained at 
this point until Marco Polo,^ in the narrative of his remarkable 
^ Marco Polo, in 1271, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, accompanied 
his father Nicolo, and his uncle Maffeo Polo, to High Asia. He remained 
thereuntil 1295, and during that time came into great favour with Kubla 
Khan, who employed him, among other things, in a great number of 
important public commissions, whereby he became well acquainted with 
the widely extended lands which lay under the sceptre of that ruler. After 
his return home he caused a great sensation by the riches he brought with 
him, which procured him the name il MilUone^ a name however which, 
according to others, was an expression of the doubts that were long enter¬ 
tained regarding the truthfulness of his, as we now know, mainly true 
accounts of the number of the people and the abundance of wealth in 
Kublai Khan’s lands. II Millione,” in the meantime, became a popular 
carnival character, whose cue was to relate as many and as wonderful 
5^arns ” as possible, and in his narratives to deal preferably with millions. 
It is possible that the predecessor of Columbus might have descended to 
