But the latter borrowed his collected arguments from Roger
Bacon, who has stated them, erroneous as they are, very forcibly in
his Opus Majus (p. 137), as Humboldt has noticed in his Examen
(vol. i. p. 64). The Spanish historian Mariana makes a strange jumble
of the alleged guides of Columbus, saying that some ascribed his
convictions to "the information given by one Marco Polo, a Florentine
Physician!" ("como otros dizen, por aviso que le dio un cierto Marco
Polo, Medico Florentin;" Hist. de Espana, lib. xxvi. cap 3).
Toscanelli is called by Columbus Maestro Paulo, which seems to have
led to this mistake; see Sign. G. Uzielli, in Boll. della Soc.
Geog. Ital. IX. p. 119, [Also by the same: Paolo dal Pozzo
Toscanelli iniziatore della scoperta d' America, Florence, 1892;
Toscanelli, No. 1; Toscanelli, Vol. V. of the Raccolta
Colombiana, 1894. - H. C.]
[4] "C'est diminuer l'expression d'un eloge que de l'exagerer."
(Humboldt, Examen, III. 13.)
[5] See vol. ii. p. 318, and vol. i. p. 404.
[6] Vol. i. p. 423.
[7] Vol. ii. p. 85, and Apollonius Rhodius, Argonaut. II. 1012.
[8] Chinese Observers record the length of Comets' tails by cubits!
[9] The map, perhaps, gives too favourable an idea of Marco's geographical
conceptions. For in such a construction much has to be supplied for
which there are no data, and that is apt to take mould from modern
knowledge. Just as in the book illustrations of ninety years ago we
find that Princesses of Abyssinia, damsels of Otaheite, and Beauties
of Mary Stuart's Court have all somehow a savour of the high waists,
low foreheads, and tight garments of 1810.
We are told that Prince Pedro of Portugal in 1426 received from the
Signory of Venice a map which was supposed to be either an original or
a copy of one by Marco Polo's own hand. (Majors P. Henry, p. 62.)
There is no evidence to justify any absolute expression of disbelief;
and if any map-maker with the spirit of the author of the Carta
Catalana then dwelt in Venice, Polo certainly could not have gone to
his grave uncatechised. But I should suspect the map to have been a
copy of the old one that existed in the Sala dello Scudo of the Ducal
Palace.
The maps now to be seen painted on the walls of that Hall, and on
which Polo's route is marked, are not of any great interest. But in
the middle of the 15th century there was an old Descriptio Orbis sive
Mappamundus in the Hall, and when the apartment was renewed in 1459 a
decree of the Senate ordered that such a map should be repainted on
the new walls.
