85. In the following age we find more frequent indications that Polo's
book was diffused and read. And now that the spirit of discovery began to
stir, it was apparently regarded in a juster light as a Book of Facts, and
not as a mere _Romman du Grant Kaan_.[13] But in fact this age produced
new supplies of crude information in greater abundance than the knowledge
of geographers was prepared to digest or co-ordinate, and the consequence
is that the magnificent Work of Fra Mauro (1459), though the result of
immense labour in the collection of facts and the endeavour to combine
them, really gives a considerably less accurate idea of Asia than that
which the Catalan Map had afforded.[14]

And when at a still later date the great burst of discovery eastward and
westward took effect, the results of all attempts to combine the new
knowledge with the old was most unhappy. The first and crudest forms of
such combinations attempted to realise the ideas of Columbus regarding the
identity of his discoveries with the regions of the Great Kaan's
dominion;[15] but even after AMERICA had vindicated its independent
position on the surface of the globe, and the new knowledge of the
Portuguese had introduced CHINA where the Catalan Map of the 14th century
had presented CATHAY, the latter country, with the whole of Polo's
nomenclature, was shoved away to the north, forming a separate system.[16]
Henceforward the influence of Polo's work on maps was simply injurious;
and when to his nomenclature was added a sprinkling of Ptolemy's, as was
usual throughout the 16th century, the result was a most extraordinary
hotch-potch, conveying no approximation to any consistent representation
of facts.

Thus, in a map of 1522,[17] running the eye along the north of Europe and
Asia from West to East, we find the following succession of names:
Groenlandia, or Greenland, as a great peninsula overlapping that of
Norvegia and Suecia; Livonia, Plescovia and Moscovia, Tartaria bounded on
the South by _Scithia extra Imaum_, and on the East, by the Rivers
_Ochardes_ and _Bautisis_ (out of Ptolemy), which are made to flow into
the Arctic Sea. South of these are _Aureacithis_ and _Asmirea_ (Ptolemy's
_Auxacitis_ and _Asmiraea_), and _Serica Regio_. Then following the
northern coast _Balor Regio_,[18] _Judei Clausi_, i.e. the Ten Tribes who
are constantly associated or confounded with the Shut-up Nations of Gog
and Magog. These impinge upon the River _Polisacus_, f