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Updated: June 29, 2025
As Columbus was at the court of Lisbon, when he had resolved to undertake his great enterprise, and, in fact, regarded himself as in some degree a Portuguese subject, he naturally applied in the first instance to John II., requesting that monarch to let him have some ships to carry him to Marco Polo's island of Zepango or Japan.
'Maybe I shall find the lost island of Antilha in the western ocean, but maybe on its far rim I shall indeed come to Cipangu, for the world is round, and somewhere in those great seas beyond the coast of Europe must lie Marco Polo's rich Cathay. I will beseech the kings of England and of Spain for a ship and a ship's company, and the silk and the spices and the wealth shall be theirs.
North of the Great Wall, and some one hundred and eighty miles from Cambuluc, was the Great Khan's summer palace, one of the wonders of the world, reading of which in Purchas' account of Marco Polo's travels, it is said that Coleridge fell asleep and dreamed the famous poem beginning: "In Xanadu did Kublai Khan A stately pleasure dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran, Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea."
In these indeed they display considerable ability, and if they were as enterprising, manly, and warlike as they are ingenious, so prodigious is their number that they might not only subdue the whole of the province, but carry their rule further still. Nearly five hundred years later we find the same judgement expressed in different words: 'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. The answer is a question: Would you rather be the pusillanimous Chinese, who painted the landscape roll of which a portion is reproduced opposite page 52, or the enterprising, manly, and warlike European of the same period, whose highest achievement in pictorial art is the picture of Marco Polo's embarkation, reproduced opposite page 21?
And her father will hurry her along, for fear that you should look too long at her and refuse to marry such a thing, even for Marco Polo's millions!" Contarini laughed carelessly at the description. "Give me some wine," he said. "We will drink her health." Arisa rose with the grace of a young goddess, her hair tumbling over her bare shoulders in a splendid golden confusion.
But as the Mongol lived in Marco Polo's time, and Huc's, so he does still, and so he will continue to live until Chinese colonization or Russian rule forces him to give up his nomadic ways and settle down and cultivate the soil. Around the yurt gathered women and children, dogs and calves. They were friendly, almost too much so, and the women interested me as much as I did them.
Find out if many Portuguese are living in the United States. Steps Towards the Discovery of America Greek colonies in Italy, Gaul, and Spain. Roman conquest of Gaul, Spain, and Britain. Viking voyages to Greenland and Vinland. Venetian trade in spices with the East, and Venetian voyages to London and Bruges. Marco Polo's travels in China and the East.
A Peking cart may have other and better uses, but as an instrument of torture it is unrivalled. Just as the thing was in Marco Polo's time, so it is to-day.
Extract from Jacopo of Acqui's Imago Mondi, quoted ibid., Introd., p. 54. M. Ch.-V. Langlois in Hist. Litt. de la France, XXXV , p. 259. For tributes to Marco Polo's accuracy see Aurel Stein, Ancient Khotan and Ruins of Desert Cathay ; Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia ; and Sven Hedin, Overland to India . Yule, op. cit., I, Introd., pp. 106-7.
Misled by the accounts he had read in Marco Polo's works, he was from the first persuaded that he had arrived at the islands lying opposite Cathay in the Chinese seas, and that the country to the south, which he understood from the natives abounded in gold, must be the famous island of Cipango.
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