e placed Polo on the
same platform with Columbus. But where has our Venetian Traveller left
behind him any trace of the genius and lofty enthusiasm, the ardent and
justified previsions which mark the great Admiral as one of the lights of
the human race?[2] It is a juster praise that the spur which his Book
eventually gave to geographical studies, and the beacons which it hung out
at the Eastern extremities of the Earth helped to guide the aims, though
scarcely to kindle the fire, of the greater son of the rival Republic. His
work was at least a link in the Providential chain which at last dragged
the New World to light.[3]

[Sidenote: His true claims to glory.]

67. Surely Marco's real, indisputable, and, in their kind, unique claims
to glory may suffice! _He was the first Traveller to trace a route across
the whole longitude of_ ASIA, _naming and describing kingdom after kingdom
which he had seen with his own eyes; the Deserts of_ PERSIA, _the
flowering plateaux and wild gorges of_ BADAKHSHAN, _the jade-bearing
rivers of_ KHOTAN, _the_ MONGOLIAN _Steppes, cradle of the power that had
so lately threatened to swallow up Christendom, the new and brilliant
Court that had been established at_ 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 Isle of Gems with its Sacred Mountain and its Tomb of
Adam; of_ INDIA THE GREAT, _not as a dream-land of Alexandrian fables, but
as a country seen and partially 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;