Enthusiastic Biographers, Beginning With Ramusio, Have Placed Polo On The
Same Platform With Columbus.
But where has our Venetian Traveller left
behind him any trace of the genius and lofty enthusiasm, the ardent
And
justified previsions which mark the great Admiral as one of the lights of
the human race?[2] It is a juster praise that the spur which his Book
eventually gave to geographical studies, and the beacons which it hung out
at the Eastern extremities of the Earth helped to guide the aims, though
scarcely to kindle the fire, of the greater son of the rival Republic. His
work was at least a link in the Providential chain which at last dragged
the New World to light.[3]
[Sidenote: His true claims to glory.]
67. Surely Marco's real, indisputable, and, in their kind, unique claims
to glory may suffice! He was the first Traveller to trace a route across
the whole longitude of ASIA, naming and describing kingdom after kingdom
which he had seen with his own eyes; the Deserts of PERSIA, the
flowering plateaux and wild gorges of BADAKHSHAN, the jade-bearing
rivers of KHOTAN, the MONGOLIAN Steppes, cradle of the power that had
so lately threatened to swallow up Christendom, the new and brilliant
Court that had been established at CAMBALUC: The first Traveller to
reveal CHINA in all its wealth and vastness, its mighty rivers, its huge
cities, its rich manufactures, its swarming population, the inconceivably
vast fleets that quickened its seas and its inland waters; to tell us of
the nations on its borders with all their eccentricities of manners and
worship; of TIBET with its sordid devotees; of BURMA with its golden
pagodas and their tinkling crowns; of LAOS, of SIAM, of COCHIN CHINA,
of JAPAN, the Eastern Thule, with its rosy pearls and golden-roofed
palaces; the first to speak of that Museum of Beauty and Wonder, still so
imperfectly ransacked, the INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO, source of those aromatics
then so highly prized and whose origin was so dark; of JAVA the Pearl of
Islands; of SUMATRA with its many kings, its strange costly products,
and its cannibal races; of the naked savages of NICOBAR and ANDAMAN;
of CEYLON the Isle of Gems with its Sacred Mountain and its Tomb of
Adam; of INDIA THE GREAT, not as a dream-land of Alexandrian fables, but
as a country seen and partially explored, with its virtuous Brahmans, its
obscene ascetics, its diamonds and the strange tales of their acquisition,
its sea-beds of pearl, and its powerful sun; the first in mediaeval times
to give any distinct account of the secluded Christian Empire of
ABYSSINIA, and the semi-Christian Island of SOCOTRA; to speak, though
indeed dimly, of ZANGIBAR with its negroes and its ivory, and of the
vast and distant MADAGASCAR, bordering on the Dark Ocean of the South,
with its Ruc and other monstrosities; and, in a remotely opposite region,
of SIBERIA and the ARCTIC OCEAN, of dog-sledges, white bears,
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 320 of 1256
Words from 87213 to 87712
of 342071
