We are told that Prince Pedro of Portugal in 1426 received from the Signory of Venice a map which was supposed to be either an original or a copy of one by Marco Polo’s own hand. (_Major’s P. Henry_, p. 62.) There is no evidence to justify any absolute expression of disbelief; and if any map-maker with the spirit of the author of the Carta Catalana then dwelt in Venice, Polo certainly could not have gone to his grave uncatechised. But I should suspect the map to have been a copy of the old one that existed in the Sala dello Scudo of the Ducal Palace. The maps now to be seen painted on the walls of that Hall, and on which Polo’s route is marked, are not of any great interest. But in the middle of the 15th century there was an old _Descriptio Orbis sive Mappamundus_ in the Hall, and when the apartment was renewed in 1459 a decree of the Senate ordered that such a map should be repainted on the new walls. This also perished by a fire in 1483. On the motion of Ramusio, in the next century, four new maps were painted. These had become dingy and ragged, when, in 1762, the Doge Marco Foscarini caused them to be renewed by the painter Francesco Grisellini. He professed to have adhered closely to the old maps, but he certainly did not, as Morelli testifies. Eastern Asia looks as if based on a work of Ramusio’s age, but Western Asia is of undoubtedly modern character. (See _Operetti di Iacopo Morelli_, Ven. 1820, I. 299.) [10] “Humboldt confirms the opinion I have more than once expressed that too much must not be inferred from the silence of authors. He adduces three important and perfectly undeniable matters of fact, as to which no evidence is to be found where it would be most anticipated: In the archives of Barcelona no trace of the triumphal entry of Columbus into that city; _in Marco Polo no allusion to the Chinese Wall_; in the archives of Portugal nothing about the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci in the service of that crown.” (_Varnhagen_ v. _Ense_, quoted by Hayward, _Essays_, 2nd Ser. I. 36.) See regarding the Chinese Wall the remarks referred to above, at p. 292 of this volume.