maintained.

[14] _Li Romans de Bauduin de Sebourc III'e Roy de Jherusalem_; Poeme du
XIV'e Siecle; Valenciennes, 1841. 2 vols. 8vo. I was indebted to two
references of M. Pauthier's for knowledge of the existence of this
work. He cites the legends of the Mountain, and of the Stone of the
Saracens from an abstract, but does not seem to have consulted the
work itself, nor to have been aware of the extent of its borrowings
from Marco Polo. M. Genin, from whose account Pauthier quotes,
ascribes the poem to an early date after the death of Philip the Fair
(1314). See _Pauthier_, pp. 57, 58, and 140.

[15] See Polo, vol. i. p. 204, and vol. ii. p. 191.

[16] See Polo, vol. i. p. 246.

[17] See Polo, vol. ii. p. 339.

[18] See Polo, vol. i. p. 140. _Hashishi_ has got altered into
_Haus Assis_.

[19] See vol. i. p. 358, note.

[20] See vol. i. p. 189, note 2.

[21] Vol. i. pp. 183-186.

[22] Vol. i. pp. 68 seqq. The virtuous cobler is not left out, but is made
to play second fiddle to the hero Bauduin

[23] Vol. i. p. 144.

XIII. NATURE OF POLO'S INFLUENCE ON GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.

[Sidenote: Tardy operation, and causes thereof.]

79. Marco Polo contributed such a vast amount of new facts to the
knowledge of the Earth's surface, that one might have expected his book to
have had a sudden effect upon the Science of Geography: but no such result
occurred speedily, nor was its beneficial effect of any long duration.

No doubt several causes contributed to the slowness of its action upon the
notions of Cosmographers, of which the unreal character attributed to the
Book, as a collection of romantic marvels rather than of geographical and
historical facts, may have been one, as Santarem urges. But the essential
causes were no doubt the imperfect nature of publication before the
invention of the press; the traditional character which clogged geography
as well as all other branches of knowledge in the Middle Ages; and the
entire absence of scientific principle in what passed for geography, so
that there was no organ competent to the assimilation of a large mass of
new knowledge.

Of the action of the first cause no examples can be more striking than we
find in the false conception of the Caspian as a gulf of the Ocean,
entertained by Strabo, and the opposite error in regard to the Indian Sea
held by Ptolemy, who regards it as an enclosed basin, when we contrast
these