n was a city on an island off the
coast of China, which was represented to contain six hundred thousand
families, so rich that the palaces of its nobles were covered with
plates of gold, so inviting that odoriferous plants and flowers diffused
the most grateful perfumes, so strong that even the Tartar conquerors of
China could not subdue it. This island, known now as Japan, was called
Cipango, and was supposed to be inexhaustible in riches, especially when
the reports of Polo were confirmed by Sir John Mandeville, an English
traveller in the time of Edward III.,--and with even greater
exaggerations, since he represented the royal palace to be more than
six miles in circumference, occupied by three hundred thousand men.

In an awakening age of enterprise, when chivalry had not passed away,
nor the credulity of the Middle Ages, the reports of this Cipango
inflamed the imagination of Europe, and to reach it became at once the
desire and the problem of adventurers and merchants. But how could this
El Dorado be reached? Not by sailing round Africa; for to sail South, in
popular estimation, was to encounter torrid suns with ever increasing
heat, and suffocating vapors, and unknown dangers. The scientific world
had lost the knowledge of what even the ancients knew. Nobody surmised
that there was a Cape of Good Hope which could be doubled, and would
open the way to the Indian Ocean and its islands of spices and gold. Nor
could this Cipango be reached by crossing the Eastern Continent, for the
journey was full of perils, dangers, and insurmountable obstacles.

Among those who meditated on this geographical mystery was a young sea
captain of Genoa, who had studied in the University of Pavia, but spent
his early life upon the waves,--intelligent, enterprising, visionary,
yet practical, with boundless ambition, not to conquer kingdoms, but to
discover new realms. Born probably in 1446, in the year 1470 he married
the daughter of an Italian navigator living in Lisbon; and, inheriting
with her some valuable Portuguese charts and maritime journals, he
settled in Lisbon and took up chart-making as a means of livelihood.
Being thus trained in both the art and the science of navigation, his
active mind seized upon the most interesting theme of the day. His
studies and experience convinced him that the Cipango of Marco Polo
could be reached by sailing directly west. He knew that the earth was
round, and he inferred from the plants and car