ve been a
copy of the old one that existed in the Sala dello Scudo of the Ducal
Palace.

The maps now to be seen painted on the walls of that Hall, and on
which Polo's route is marked, are not of any great interest. But in
the middle of the 15th century there was an old _Descriptio Orbis sive
Mappamundus_ in the Hall, and when the apartment was renewed in 1459 a
decree of the Senate ordered that such a map should be repainted on
the new walls. This also perished by a fire in 1483. On the motion of
Ramusio, in the next century, four new maps were painted. These had
become dingy and ragged, when, in 1762, the Doge Marco Foscarini
caused them to be renewed by the painter Francesco Grisellini. He
professed to have adhered closely to the old maps, but he certainly
did not, as Morelli testifies. Eastern Asia looks as if based on a
work of Ramusio's age, but Western Asia is of undoubtedly modern
character. (See _Operetti di Iacopo Morelli_, Ven. 1820, I. 299.)

[10] "Humboldt confirms the opinion I have more than once expressed that
too much must not be inferred from the silence of authors. He adduces
three important and perfectly undeniable matters of fact, as to which
no evidence is to be found where it would be most anticipated: In the
archives of Barcelona no trace of the triumphal entry of Columbus into
that city; _in Marco Polo no allusion to the Chinese Wall_; in the
archives of Portugal nothing about the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci in
the service of that crown." (_Varnhagen_ v. _Ense_, quoted by Hayward,
_Essays_, 2nd Ser. I. 36.) See regarding the Chinese Wall the remarks
referred to above, at p. 292 of this volume.

[11] [It is a strange fact that Polo never mentions the use of _Tea_ in
China, although he travelled through the Tea districts in Fu Kien, and
tea was then as generally drunk by the Chinese as it is now. It is
mentioned more than four centuries earlier by the Mohammedan merchant
Soleyman, who visited China about the middle of the 9th century. He
states (_Reinaud, Relation des Voyages faits par les Arabes et les
Persans dans l'Inde et a la Chine_, 1845, I. 40): "The people of China
are accustomed to use as a beverage an infusion of a plant, which they
call _sakh_, and the leaves of which are aromatic and of a bitter
taste. It is considered very wholesome. This plant (the leav