His Representation Of Europe, Northern Africa, Syria,
Asia Minor, Arabia And Its Two Gulfs, Is A Fair Approximation To General
Facts; his collected knowledge has enabled him to locate, with more or
less of general truth, Georgia, the Iron Gates,
Cathay, the Plain of
Moghan, Euphrates and Tigris, Persia, Bagdad, Kais, Aden (though on the
wrong side of the Red Sea), Abyssinia (Habesh), Zangibar (Zinz), Jidda
(Zede), etc. But after all the traditional forms are too strong for him.
Jerusalem is still the centre of the disk of the habitable earth, so that
the distance is as great from Syria to Gades in the extreme West, as from
Syria to the India Interior of Prester John which terminates the extreme
East. And Africa beyond the Arabian Gulf is carried, according to the
Arabian modification of Ptolemy's misconception, far to the eastward until
it almost meets the prominent shores of India.
[Sidenote: The Catalan Map of 1375, the most complete mediaeval embodiment
of Polo's Geography.]
84. The first genuine mediaeval attempt at a geographical construction
that I know of, absolutely free from the traditional idola, is the Map
of the known World from the Portulano Mediceo (in the Laurentian Library),
of which an extract is engraved in the atlas of Baldelli-Boni's Polo. I
need not describe it, however, because I cannot satisfy myself that it
makes much use of Polo's contributions, and its facts have been embodied
in a more ambitious work of the next generation, the celebrated Catalan
Map of 1375 in the great Library of Paris. This also, but on a larger
scale and in a more comprehensive manner, is an honest endeavour to
represent the known world on the basis of collected facts, casting aside
all theories pseudo-scientific or pseudo-theological; and a very
remarkable work it is. In this map it seems to me Marco Polo's influence,
I will not say on geography, but on map-making, is seen to the greatest
advantage. His Book is the basis of the Map as regards Central and Further
Asia, and partially as regards India. His names are often sadly perverted,
and it is not always easy to understand the view that the compiler took of
his itineraries. Still we have Cathay admirably placed in the true
position of China, as a great Empire filling the south-east of Asia. The
Eastern Peninsula of India is indeed absent altogether, but the Peninsula
of Hither India is for the first time in the History of Geography
represented with a fair approximation to its correct form and
position,[11] and Sumatra also (Java) is not badly placed. Carajan,
Vocian, Mien, and Bangala, are located with a happy conception of their
relation to Cathay and to India. Many details in India foreign to Polo's
book,[12] and some in Cathay (as well as in Turkestan and Siberia, which
have been entirely derived from other sources) have been embodied in the
Map. But the study of his Book has, I conceive, been essentially the basis
of those great portions which I have specified, and the additional matter
has not been in mass sufficient to perplex the compiler. Hence we really
see in this Map something like the idea of Asia that the Traveller himself
would have presented, had he bequeathed a Map to us.
[Some years ago, I made a special study of the Far East in the Catalan
Map. (L'Extreme-Orient dans l'Atlas catalan de Charles V., Paris, 1895),
and I have come to the conclusion that the cartographer's knowledge of
Eastern Asia is drawn almost entirely from Marco Polo. We give a
reproduction of part of the Catalan Map. - H. C.]
[Illustration: Part of the Catalan Map (1375).]
[Sidenote: Confusions in Cartography of the 16th century, from the
endeavour to combine new and old information.]
85. In the following age we find more frequent indications that Polo's
book was diffused and read. And now that the spirit of discovery began to
stir, it was apparently regarded in a juster light as a Book of Facts, and
not as a mere Romman du Grant Kaan.[13] But in fact this age produced
new supplies of crude information in greater abundance than the knowledge
of geographers was prepared to digest or co-ordinate, and the consequence
is that the magnificent Work of Fra Mauro (1459), though the result of
immense labour in the collection of facts and the endeavour to combine
them, really gives a considerably less accurate idea of Asia than that
which the Catalan Map had afforded.[14]
And when at a still later date the great burst of discovery eastward and
westward took effect, the results of all attempts to combine the new
knowledge with the old was most unhappy. The first and crudest forms of
such combinations attempted to realise the ideas of Columbus regarding the
identity of his discoveries with the regions of the Great Kaan's
dominion;[15] but even after AMERICA had vindicated its independent
position on the surface of the globe, and the new knowledge of the
Portuguese had introduced CHINA where the Catalan Map of the 14th century
had presented CATHAY, the latter country, with the whole of Polo's
nomenclature, was shoved away to the north, forming a separate system.[16]
Henceforward the influence of Polo's work on maps was simply injurious;
and when to his nomenclature was added a sprinkling of Ptolemy's, as was
usual throughout the 16th century, the result was a most extraordinary
hotch-potch, conveying no approximation to any consistent representation
of facts.
Thus, in a map of 1522,[17] running the eye along the north of Europe and
Asia from West to East, we find the following succession of names:
Groenlandia, or Greenland, as a great peninsula overlapping that of
Norvegia and Suecia; Livonia, Plescovia and Moscovia, Tartaria bounded on
the South by Scithia extra Imaum, and on the East, by the Rivers
Ochardes and Bautisis (out of Ptolemy), which are made to flow into
the Arctic Sea. South of these are Aureacithis and Asmirea (Ptolemy's
Auxacitis and Asmiraea), and Serica Regio.
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