The fabulous kingdom of Prester John is ably treated in Yule's _Cathay_, vol. i. pp. 174-182; _Marco Polo_, vol. i. p. 204-216. Colonel Yule suspects that its prototype may have been the semi-Christian kingdom of Abyssinia. This is very likely. As for its range, shifted hither and thither as it was, all the way from the upper Nile to the Thian-Shan mountains, we can easily understand this if we remember how an ignorant mind conceives all points distant from its own position as near to one another; i. e. if you are about to start from New York for Arizona, your housemaid will perhaps ask you to deliver a message to her brother in Manitoba. Nowhere more than in the history of geography do we need to keep before us, at every step, the limitations of the untutored mind and its feebleness in grasping the space-relations of remote regions.] [Footnote 334: These Arimaspians afford an interesting example of the uncritical statements of travellers at an early time, as well as of their tenacious vitality. The first mention of these mythical people seems to have been made by Greek travellers in Scythia as early as the seventh century before Christ; and they furnished Aristeas of Proconnesus, somewhat later, with the theme of his poem "Arimaspeia," which has perished, all except six verses quoted by Longinus. See Mure's _Literature of Antient Greece_, vol. iv. p. 68. Thence the notion of the Arimaspians seems to have passed to Herodotus (iii. 116; iv. 27) and to AEschylus:-- [Greek: oxystomous gar Zenos akrageis kynas grypas phylaxai, ton te mounopa straton Arimaspon hippobamon', hoi chrysorrhyton oikousin amphi nama Ploutonos porou; toutois sy me pelaze.] _Prometheus_, 802. Thence it passed on to Pausanias, i. 24; Pomponius Mela, ii. 1; Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, vii. 2; Lucan, _Pharsalia_, iii. 280; and so on to Milton:-- "As when a gryphon through the wilderness, With winged course o'er hill or moory dale, Pursues the Arimaspian who by stealth Had from his wakeful custody purloined The guarded gold." _Paradise Lost_, ii. 944.] [Illustration: Two sheets of the Catalan Map, 1375.] [Sidenote: Other visits to China.] [Sidenote: Overthrow of the Mongol dynasty, and shutting up of China.]