Christendom, the new and brilliant court that had been
established by Cambaluc; the first traveller to reveal China in
all its wealth and vastness, its mighty rivers, its huge cities,
its rich manufactures, its swarming population, the inconceivably
vast fleets that quickened its seas and its inland waters; to tell
us of the nations on its borders, with all their eccentricities
of manners and worship; of Tibet, with its sordid devotees; of
Burma, with its golden pagodas and their tinkling crowns; of Laos,
of Siam, of Cochin China, of Japan, the Eastern Thule, with its
rosy pearls and golden-roofed palaces; the first to speak of that
museum of beauty and wonder, still so imperfectly ransacked, the
Indian Archipelago, source of those aromatics then so highly prized,
and whose origin was so dark; of Java, the pearl of islands; of
Sumatra, with its many kings, its strange costly products, and
its cannibal races; of the naked savages of Nicobar and Andaman;
of Ceylon, the island of gems, with its sacred mountain, and its
tomb of Adam; of India the Great, not as a dreamland of Alexandrian
fables, but as a country seen and personally explored, with its
virtuous Brahmans, its obscene ascetics, its diamonds, and the
strange tales of their acquisition, its sea-beds of pearl, and
its powerful sun: the first in mediaeval times to give any distinct
account of the secluded Christian empire of Abyssinia, and the
semi-Christian island of Socotra; to speak, though indeed dimly,
of Zanzibar, with its negroes and its ivory, and of the vast and
distant Madagascar, bordering on the dark ocean of the South, with
its Ruc and other monstrosities, and, in a remotely opposite region,
of Siberia and the Arctic Ocean, of dog-sledges, white bears, and
reindeer-riding Tunguses."

[Illustration: FRA MAURO'S MAP, 1457.]

Marco Polo's is thus one of the greatest names in the history of
geography; it may, indeed, be doubted whether any other traveller
has ever added so extensively to our detailed knowledge of the
earth's surface. Certainly up to the time of Mr. Stanley no man
had on land visited so many places previously unknown to civilised
Europe. But the lands he discovered, though already fully populated,
were soon to fall into disorder, and to be closed to any civilising
influences. Nothing for a long time followed from these discoveries,
and indeed almost up to the present day his accounts were received
with incredulity, and he himself was rega