APPENDIX.
398
These are the principal places described by Marco Polo, which occur in the letters and journals of Columbus.
T h e island of Cipango was the
first land he expected to make, and he intended to visit afterwards the province of Mangi, and to seek the Great Khan in his city of Cambalu, in the province of Cathay.
Unless the reader can bear in mind these sump足
tuous descriptions of Marco Polo, of countries teeming with wealth, and cities where the very domes and palaces flamed with gold, he will have but a faint idea of the splendid anticipations which filled the imagination of Columbus when he discovered, as he supposed, the extremity of Asia.
It
was his confident expectation of soon arriving at these countries, and rea足 lizing the accounts of the Venetian, that induced him to hold forth those promises of immediate wealth to the sovereigns, which caused so much disappointment, and brought upon him the frequent reproach of exciting false hopes and indulging in wilful exaggeration.
No. SIR
JOHN
XXII. MANDE VILLE.
N E X T to Marco Polo the travels of Sir John Mandeville, and his account of the territories of the Great Khan along the coast of Asia, seem to have been treasured up in the mind of Columbus. Mandeville was born in the city of St. Albans.
H e was devoted to
study from his earliest childhood, and after finishing his general education, applied himself to medicine.
Having a great desire to see the remotest
parts of the earth, then known, that is to say, Asia and Africa, and above all, to visit the Holy Land, he left England in 1 3 3 2 , and passing through France embarked at Marseilles.
According to his own account, he visited
Turkey, Armenia, Egypt, Upper and Lower Lybia, Syria, Persia, Chaldea, Ethiopia, Tartary, Amazonia and the Indies, residing in their principal cities.
But most he says he delighted in the Holy Land, where he remained
for a long time, examining it with the greatest minuteness and endeavoring to follow all the traces of our Saviour.
After an absence of thirty-four
years he returned to England, but found himself forgotten and unknown by the greater part of his countrymen, and a stranger in his native place. H e wrote a history of his travels in three languages, English, French and