John Baptist
Ramusio. His essay abounds in what we now know to be errors of detail,
but, prepared as it was when traditions of the Traveller were still rife
in Venice, a genuine thread runs through it which could never have been
spun in later days, and its presentation seems to me an essential element
in any full discourse upon the subject.

Ramusio's preface to the Book of Marco Polo, which opens the second volume
of his famous Collection of Voyages and Travels, and is addressed to his
learned friend Jerome Fracastoro, after referring to some of the most
noted geographers of antiquity, proceeds:[1]--

"Of all that I have named, Ptolemy, as the latest, possessed the
greatest extent of knowledge. Thus, towards the North, his knowledge
carries him beyond the Caspian, and he is aware of its being shut in all
round like a lake,--a fact which was unknown in the days of Strabo and
Pliny, though the Romans were already lords of the world. But though his
knowledge extends so far, a tract of 15 degrees beyond that sea he can
describe only as Terra Incognita; and towards the South he is fain to
apply the same character to all beyond the Equinoxial. In these unknown
regions, as regards the South, the first to make discoveries have been
the Portuguese captains of our own age; but as regards the North and
North-East the discoverer was the Magnifico Messer Marco Polo, an
honoured nobleman of Venice, nearly 300 years since, as may be read more
fully in his own Book. And in truth it makes one marvel to consider the
immense extent of the journeys made, first by the Father and Uncle of
the said Messer Marco, when they proceeded continually towards the East-
North-East, all the way to the Court of the Great Can and the Emperor of
the Tartars; and afterwards again by the three of them when, on their
return homeward, they traversed the Eastern and Indian Seas. Nor is that
all, for one marvels also how the aforesaid gentleman was able to give
such an orderly description of all that he had seen; seeing that such an
accomplishment was possessed by very few in his day, and he had had a
large part of his nurture among those uncultivated Tartars, without any
regular training in the art of composition. His Book indeed, owing to
the endless errors and inaccuracies that had crept into it, had come for
many years to be regarded as fabulous; and the opinion prevailed that
the names of cities and pro