The fact seems to be that Columbus knew of Polo’s revelations only at second hand, from the letters of the Florentine Paolo Toscanelli and the like; and I cannot find that he _ever_ refers to Polo by name. [How deep was the interest taken by Colombus in Marco Polo’s travels is shown by the numerous marginal notes of the Admiral in the printed copy of the latin version of Pipino kept at the Bib. Colombina at Seville. See _Appendix H_. p. 558.—H. C.] Though to the day of his death he was full of imaginations about Zipangu and the land of the Great Kaan as being in immediate proximity to his discoveries, these were but accidents of his great theory. It was the intense conviction he had acquired of the absolute smallness of the Earth, of the vast extension of Asia eastward, and of the consequent narrowness of the Western Ocean, on which his life’s project was based. This conviction he seems to have derived chiefly from the works of Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly. 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 España_, 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 éloge que de l’exagérer.” (_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.