l period of
Amerigo Vespucci's life, for the art of printing by the use of movable
type was invented about the time he was born, and most of the great
discoverers, including himself and Columbus, were to pass away before
the printing-press was introduced into America.[6]

In the library of Paul the Physicist, however, the ardent scholar,
Vespucci, must have seen many manuscripts which he was permitted to
read, and among them, doubtless, the account of Marco Polo's
wonderful journeys. It is thought that Toscanelli may have possessed,
indeed, one of the first copies of _Marco Polo_ ever printed, as it
issued from a German press in 1477; or at least of the second edition,
which appeared in 1481, the year before he died. A copy of the first
Latin edition was once owned by Fernando Columbus, and has marginal
marks ascribed to his father. This edition was printed in 1485, the
year in which Hernando Cortes was born, and when Vespucci was
thirty-four years old. Another Latin edition was brought out in 1490,
an Italian in 1496, and a Portuguese in 1502, followed by many others.

Marco Polo, the Venetian, exercised a strong and lasting influence
upon the minds of Toscanelli, Columbus, Vespucci, and, through them,
upon others, although he died in the first quarter of the century in
which the first-named of this distinguished triad was born. All these
had this birthright in common: they were Italians; and, moreover, it
was in Genoa, the reputed birthplace of Columbus, that Marco Polo's
adventures were first shaped into coherent narrative and given to the
world.

These adventures have been stigmatized as romances; but surely
nothing could be more romantic than the manner in which they came to
be published, finally, after existing many years in the crude form of
notes and journals made by the traveller during his journeyings. In
the year 1298, three years after he had returned from his wanderings
and settled down in Venice, Polo was called upon to assist in the
defence of Curzola, during the hostilities which existed between his
own republic and that of Genoa. To oppose the Genoese admiral, Doria,
who had invaded their seas with seventy galleys, the Venetians fitted
out a fleet under Andrea Dandolo, and a great battle was fought off
the island of Curzola. Marco Polo commanded a galley of his own, and
fought with valor; but, in common with the commanders of more than
eighty Venetian vessels, he was defeated, the Genoese winning an