The Discovery of America Part 21

Three years afterward, in 1298, Marco commanded a galley in the great naval battle with the Genoese near Curzola. The Venetians were totally defeated, and Marco was one of the 7,000 prisoners taken to Genoa, where he was kept in durance for about a year. One of his companions in captivity was a certain Rusticiano, of Pisa, who was glad to listen to his descriptions of Asia, and to act as his amanuensis. French was then, at the close of the Crusades, a language as generally understood throughout Europe as later, in the age of Louis XIV.; and Marco's narrative was duly taken down by the worthy Rusticiano in rather lame and shaky French. In the summer of 1299 Marco was set free and returned to Venice, where he seems to have led a quiet life until his death in 1324.

[Sidenote: Its great contributions to geographical knowledge.]

"The Book of Ser Marco Polo concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East" is one of the most famous and important books of the Middle Ages.

It contributed more new facts toward a knowledge of the earth's surface than any book that had ever been written before. Its author was "the first traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude of Asia;"

the first to describe China in its vastness, with its immense cities, its manufactures and wealth, and to tell, whether from personal experience or direct hearsay, of Thibet and Burmah, of Siam and Cochin China, of the Indian archipelago, with its islands of spices, of Java and Sumatra, and of the savages of Andaman. He knew of j.a.pan and the woful defeat of the Mongols there, when they tried to invade the island kingdom in 1281. He gave a description of Hindustan far more complete and characteristic than had ever before been published. From Arab sailors, accustomed to the Indian ocean, he learned something about Zanzibar and Madagascar and the semi-Christian kingdom of Abyssinia. To the northward from Persia he described the country of the Golden Horde, whose khans were then holding Russia in subjection; and he had gathered some accurate information concerning Siberia as far as the country of the Samoyeds, with their dog-sledges and polar bears.[332]

[Footnote 332: Yule's _Marco Polo_, vol. i. p. cx.x.xi.]

[Sidenote: Prester John.]

[Sidenote: The "Arimaspians."]

Here was altogether too much geographical knowledge for European ignorance in those days to digest. While Marco's book attracted much attention, its influence upon the progress of geography was slighter than it would have been if addressed to a more enlightened public. Many of its sober statements of fact were received with incredulity. Many of the places described were indistinguishable, in European imagination, from the general mult.i.tude of fict.i.tious countries mentioned in fairy-tales or in romances of chivalry. Perhaps no part of Marco's story was so likely to interest his readers as his references to Prester John.

In the course of the twelfth century the notion had somehow gained possession of the European mind that somewhere out in the dim vastness of the Orient there dwelt a mighty Christian potentate, known as John the Presbyter or "Prester."[333] At different times he was identified with various known Asiatic sovereigns. Marco Polo identified him with one Togrul w.a.n.g, who was overcome and slain by the mighty Jenghis; but he would not stay dead, any more than the grewsome warlock in Russian nursery lore. The notion of Prester John and his wealthy kingdom could no more be expelled from the European mind in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than the kindred notion of El Dorado in the sixteenth. The position of this kingdom was shifted about here and there, as far as from Chinese Tartary to Abyssinia and back again, but somewhere or other in people's vague mental picture of the East it was sure to occur. Other remote regions in Asia were peopled with elves and griffins and "one-eyed Arimaspians,"[334] and we may be sure that to Marco's readers these beings were quite as real as the polished citizens of Cambaluc (Peking) or the cannibals of the Andaman islands.

From such a chaos of ideas sound geographical knowledge must needs be a slow evolution, and Marco Polo's acquisitions were altogether too far in advance of his age to be readily a.s.similated.

[Footnote 333: "But for to speake of riches and of stones, And men and horse, I trow the large wones Of Prestir John, ne all his tresorie, Might not unneth have boght the tenth partie."

Chaucer, _The Flower and the Leaf_, 200.

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 s.p.a.ce-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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Two sheets of the Catalan Map, 1375.]

[Sidenote: Other visits to China.]

[Sidenote: Overthrow of the Mongol dynasty, and shutting up of China.]

Nevertheless, in the Catalan map, made in 1375, and now to be seen in the National Library at Paris, there is a thorough-going and not unsuccessful attempt to embody the results of Polo's travels. In the interval of three quarters of a century since the publication of Marco's narrative, several adventurous travellers had found their way to Cathay.

There was Friar Odoric, of Pordenone, who, during the years 1316-30 visited Hindustan, Sumatra, Java, Cochin China, the Chinese Empire, and Thibet.[335] It was from this worthy monk that the arrant old impostor, "Sir John Mandeville," stole his descriptions of India and Cathay, seasoning them with yarns from Pliny and Ktesias, and grotesque conceits of his own.[336] Several other missionary friars visited China between 1302 and 1330, and about ten years after the latter date the Florentine merchant, Francesco Pegolotti, wrote a very useful handbook for commercial travellers on the overland route to that country.[337]

Between 1338 and 1353 Giovanni Marignolli spent some years at Peking, as papal legate from Benedict XI. to the Great Khan, and also travelled in Ceylon and Hindustan.[338] That seems to have been the last of these journeys to the Far East. In 1368, the people of China rose against the Mongol dynasty and overthrew it. The first emperor of the native Ming dynasty was placed upon the throne, and the Chinese retorted upon their late conquerors by overrunning vast Mongolia and making it Chinese Tartary. The barriers thrown down by the liberal policy of the Mongol sovereigns were now put up again, and no more foreigners were allowed to set foot upon the sacred soil of the Flowery Kingdom.

[Footnote 335: Odoric mentions Juggernaut processions and the burning of widows; in Sumatra he observed cannibalism and community of wives; he found the kingdom of Prester John in Chinese Tartary; "but as regards him," says wise Odoric, "not one hundredth part is true of what is told of him as if it were undeniable." Yule's _Cathay_, vol. i. pp. 79, 85, 146.]

[Footnote 336: Colonel Yule gives a list of fourteen important pa.s.sages taken bodily from Odoric by Mandeville. _Op. cit._ i.

28. It is very doubtful if that famous book, "Sir John Mandeville's Travels," was written by a Mandeville, or by a knight, or even by an Englishman. It seems to have been originally written in French by Jean de Bourgogne, a physician who lived for some years at Liege, and died there somewhere about 1370. He may possibly have been an Englishman named John Burgoyne, who was obliged some years before that date to flee his country for homicide or for some political offence. He had travelled as far as Egypt and Palestine, but no farther. His book is almost entirely cribbed from others, among which may be mentioned the works of Jacques de Vitry, Plano Carpini, Hayton the Armenian, Boldensele's Itinerary, Albert of Aix's chronicle of the first crusade, Brunetto Latini's _Tresor_, Petrus Comestor's _Historia scholastica_, the _Speculum_ of Vincent de Beauvais, etc., etc. It is one of the most wholesale and successful instances of plagiarism and imposture on record. See _The Buke of John Mandevill, from the unique copy (Egerton MS.

1982) in the British Museum. Edited by G. F. Warner._ Westminster, 1889. (Roxburghe Club.)]

[Footnote 337: One piece of Pegolotti's advice is still useful for travellers in the nineteenth century who visit benighted heathen countries afflicted with robber tariffs: "And don't forget that if you treat the custom-house officers with respect, and make them something of a present in goods or money, they will behave with great civility and always be ready to appraise your wares below their real value." _Op. cit._ ii.

307.]

[Footnote 338: The works of all the writers mentioned in this paragraph, or copious extracts from them, may be found in Yule's _Cathay_, which comprises also the book of the celebrated Ibn Batuta, of Tangier, whose travels, between 1325 and 1355, covered pretty much the whole of Asia except Siberia, besides a journey across Sahara to the river Niger. His book does not seem to have attracted attention in Europe until early in the present century.]

[Sidenote: First rumours of the Molucca islands and j.a.pan.]

Thus, for just a century,--from Carpini and Rubruquis to Marignolli,--while China was open to strangers as never before or since, a few Europeans had availed themselves of the opportunity in such wise as to mark the beginning of a new era in the history of geographical knowledge. Though the discoveries of Marco Polo were as yet but imperfectly appreciated, one point, and that the most significant of all, was thoroughly established. It was shown that the continent of Asia did not extend indefinitely eastward, nor was it bounded and barricaded on that side, as Ptolemy had imagined, by vast impenetrable swamps. On the contrary, its eastern sh.o.r.es were perfectly accessible through an open sea, and half a dozen Europeans in Chinese ships had now actually made the voyage between the coast of China and the Persian gulf.

Moreover, some hearsay knowledge--enough to provoke curiosity and greed--had been gained of the existence of numerous islands in that far-off eastern ocean, rich in the spices which from time immemorial had formed such an important element in Mediterranean commerce. News, also, had been brought to Europe of the wonderful island kingdom of j.a.pan (c.i.p.ango or Zipangu) lying out in that ocean some hundreds of miles beyond the coast of Cathay. These were rich countries, abounding in objects of lucrative traffic. Under the liberal Mongol rule the Oriental trade had increased enough for Europe to feel in many ways its beneficial effects. Now this trade began to be suddenly and severely checked, and while access to the interior of Asia was cut off, European merchants might begin to reflect upon the value of what they were losing, and to consider if there were any feasible method of recovering it.

[Sidenote: The accustomed routes of Oriental trade cut off by the Ottoman Turks.]

[Sidenote: Necessity for finding an "outside route to the Indies."]

It was not merely the shutting up of China by the first Ming emperor, in 1368, that checked the intercourse between Europe and Asia. A still more baleful obstacle to all such intercourse had lately come upon the scene. In Asia Minor the beastly Turk, whose career had been for two centuries arrested by the Crusades, now reared his head again. The Seljukian had been only scotched, not killed; and now he sprang to life as the Ottoman, with sharper fangs than before. In 1365 the Turks established themselves in the Balkan peninsula, with Adrianople as their capital, and began tightening their coils about the doomed city of Constantine. Each point that they gained meant the strangling of just so much Oriental trade; for, as we have seen, the alliance of Constantinople with Genoa since 1261 had secured to the latter city, and to western Europe, the advantages of the overland routes from Asia, whether through the Volga country or across Armenia. When at length, in 1453, the Turks took Constantinople, the splendid commercial career of Genoa was cut with the shears of Atropos. At the same time, as their power was rapidly extending over Syria and down toward Egypt, threatening the overthrow of the liberal Mameluke dynasty there, the commercial prosperity of Venice also was seriously imperilled. Moreover, as Turkish corsairs began to swarm in the eastern waters of the Mediterranean, the voyage became more and more unsafe for Christian vessels. It was thus, while the volume of trade with Asia was, in the natural course of things, swelling year by year, that its accustomed routes were being ruthlessly cut off. It was fast becoming necessary to consider whether there might not be other practicable routes to "the Indies" than those which had from time immemorial been followed. Could there be such a thing as an "outside route" to that land of promise? A more startling question has seldom been propounded; for it involved a radical departure from the grooves in which the human mind had been running ever since the days of Solomon. Two generations of men lived and died while this question was taking shape, and all that time Cathay and India and the islands of Spices were objects of increasing desire, clothed by eager fancy with all manner of charms and riches. The more effectually the eastern Mediterranean was closed, the stronger grew the impulse to venture upon unknown paths in order to realize the vague but glorious hopes that began to cl.u.s.ter about these remote countries. Such an era of romantic enterprise as was thus ushered in, the world has never seen before or since. It was equally remarkable as an era of discipline in scientific thinking. In the maritime ventures of unparalleled boldness now to be described, the human mind was groping toward the era of enormous extensions of knowledge in s.p.a.ce and time represented by the names of Newton and Darwin. It was learning the right way of putting its trust in the Unseen.

CHAPTER IV.

THE SEARCH FOR THE INDIES.

_EASTWARD OR PORTUGUESE ROUTE._

[Sidenote: Question as to whether Asia could be reached by sailing around Africa.]

As it dawned upon men's minds that to find some oceanic route from Europe to the remote sh.o.r.es of Asia was eminently desirable, the first attempt would naturally be to see what could be done by sailing down the western coast of Africa, and ascertaining whether that continent could be circ.u.mnavigated. It was also quite in the natural order of things that this first attempt should be made by the Portuguese.

In the general history of the Middle Ages the Spanish peninsula had been to some extent cut off from the main currents of thought and feeling which actuated the rest of Europe. Its people had never joined the other Christian nations in the Crusades, for the good reason that they always had quite enough to occupy them in their own domestic struggle with the Moors. From the throes of this prolonged warfare Portugal emerged somewhat sooner than the Spanish kingdoms, and thus had somewhat earlier a surplus of energy released for work of another sort. It was not strange that the Portuguese should be the first people since the old Northmen to engage in distant maritime adventure upon a grand scale.

Nor was it strange that Portuguese seamanship should at first have thriven upon naval warfare with Mussulmans. It was in attempting to suppress the intolerable nuisance of Moorish piracy that Portuguese ships became accustomed to sail a little way down the west coast of Africa; and such voyages, begun for military purposes, were kept up in the interests of commerce, and presently served as a mighty stimulus to geographical curiosity. We have now to consider at some length how grave was the problem that came up for immediate solution.

[Sidenote: Views of Eratosthenes, B. C. 276-196.]

[Sidenote: Opposing theory of Ptolemy, cir. A. D. 150.]

With regard to the circ.u.mnavigability of Africa two opposite opinions were maintained by the ancient Greek and Latin writers whose authority the men of the Middle Ages were wont to quote as decisive of every vexed question. The old Homeric notion of an ocean encompa.s.sing the terrestrial world, although mentioned with doubt by Herodotus,[339]

continued to survive after the globular form of the earth had come to be generally maintained by ancient geographers. The greatest of these geographers, Eratosthenes, correctly a.s.sumed that the Indian ocean was continuous with the Atlantic,[340] and that Africa could be circ.u.mnavigated, just as he incorrectly a.s.sumed that the Caspian sea was a huge gulf communicating with a northern ocean, by which it would be possible to sail around the continent of Asia as he imagined it.[341]

A similar opinion as to Africa was held by Posidonius and by Strabo.[342] It was called in question, however, by Polybius,[343] and was flatly denied by the great astronomer Hipparchus, who thought that certain observations on the tides, reported by Seleucus of Babylon, proved that there could be no connection between the Atlantic and Indian oceans.[344] Claudius Ptolemy, writing in the second century after Christ, followed the opinion of Hipparchus, and carried to an extreme the reaction against Eratosthenes. By Ptolemy's time the Caspian had been proved to be an inland sea, and it was evident that Asia extended much farther to the north and east than had once been supposed. This seems to have discredited in his mind the whole conception of outside oceans, and he not only gave an indefinite northward and eastward extension to Asia and an indefinite southern extension to Africa, but brought these two continents together far to the southeast, thus making the Indian ocean a land-locked sea.[345]

[Footnote 339: [Greek: Ton de okeanon logo men legousi ap'

heliou anatoleon arxamenon gen peri pasan rheein, ergo de ouk apodeiknysi.] Herodotus, iv. 8.]

[Footnote 340: [Greek: Kai gar kat' auton Eratosthene ten ektos thalattan hapasan syrroun einai, hoste kai ten Hesperion kai ten Erythran thalattan mian einai.] Strabo, i. 3, - 13.]