But That Publication Being At Present Inaccessible, We Are Under
The Necessity Of Being Contented With The Edition Of Harris, In Which He
Professes To Have Carefully Collated The Edition Of Ramusio With Most Of
The Other Translations, And With An Original MS.
In the royal library of
Prussia.
This latter labour, however, he seems to have taken entirely upon
trust from Muller, a German editor and translator, probably through the
intermediation of Bergeron, an early French editor of voyages and travels.
The only freedom which has been assumed in the present edition is, by
dividing it into sections for more ready consultation and reference, and by
the addition of explanatory notes from various sources.
Marco Polo is the chief of all the early modern discoverers; having been
the first who communicated to Europe any distinct ideas of the immense
regions of Asia, from the Euxine eastwards, through the vast extent of
Tartary to China and Japan; and the very first author who has made any
mention of that distant insular sovereignty. Even Columbus is supposed,
with some considerable probability, to have been prompted to his
enterprize, which ended in the discovery of America, by the study of these
travels; believing, that by a western course through the unexplored
Atlantic, he should find a comparatively short passage to those eastern
regions of the Indies, which Polo had visited, described, or indicated. In
this view he was, however, so far misled in his estimation of the distance,
by the erroneously spread-out longitudes of Ptolomy, bringing these regions
much farther towards the east, and consequently nearer by the west, than
their actual situation; and was stopped in his western course, by the
important and unexpected discovery of many islands, and a vast interposed
continent; which, from preconceived theory, he named the West Indies.
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