should embrace all branches of learning, thus
Martyr's observation extended over the broadest field of human
knowledge. Diligent, discriminating, and conscientious, he was keen,
clever, and tactful, not without touches of dry humour, but rarely
brilliant. Scientific questions, the variations of the magnetic pole,
calculations of latitude and longitude, the newly discovered Gulf
Stream and the _mare sargassum_, and the whereabouts of a possible
strait uniting the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean, occupied his
speculations. Likewise are the flora and the fauna of the New World
described to his readers, as they were described to him by the
home-coming explorers. Pages of his writings are devoted to the
inhabitants of the islands and of the mainland, their customs and
superstitions, their religions and forms of government. He has tales
of giants, harpies, mermaids, and sea-serpents. Wild men living in
trees, Amazons dwelling on lonely islands, cannibals scouring seas and
forests in search of human prey, figure in his narrative. Erroneous
facts, mistaken judgments due to a credulity that may seem to us
ingenuous, are frequent, but it must be borne in mind that he worked
without a pre-established plan, his chronicle developing as fresh
material reached him; also that he wrote at a time when the world
seemed each day to expand before the astonished eyes of men, revealing
magic isles floating on unknown seas, vaster horizons in whose heavens
novel constellations gleamed; mysterious ocean currents, flowing
whence no man knew, to break upon the shores of immense continents
inhabited by strange races, living amidst conditions of fabulous
wealth and incredible barbarism. The limits of the possible receded,
discrimination between truth and fiction became purely speculative,
since new data, uninterruptedly supplied, contradicted former
experience and invalidated accepted theories. The Decades were
compiled from verbal and written reports from sources the writer was
warranted in trusting.

Since geographical surprises are now exhausted, and the division of
land and water on the earth's surface has passed from the sphere of
navigation into that of politics, no writer will ever again have such
material at his disposition. The arrival of his letters in Italy
was eagerly awaited and constituted a literary event of the first
magnitude. Popes sent him messages urging him to continue, the King of
Naples borrowed copies from Cardinal Sforza,