e and
there, as far as from Chinese Tartary to Abyssinia and back again, but
somewhere or other in people's vague mental picture of the East it was
sure to occur. Other remote regions in Asia were peopled with elves and
griffins and "one-eyed Arimaspians,"[334] and we may be sure that to
Marco's readers these beings were quite as real as the polished
citizens of Cambaluc (Peking) or the cannibals of the Andaman islands.
From such a chaos of ideas sound geographical knowledge must needs be a
slow evolution, and Marco Polo's acquisitions were altogether too far in
advance of his age to be readily assimilated.

[Footnote 333:
"But for to speake of riches and of stones,
And men and horse, I trow the large wones
Of Prestir John, ne all his tresorie,
Might not unneth have boght the tenth partie."
Chaucer, _The Flower and the Leaf_, 200.

The fabulous kingdom of Prester John is ably treated in Yule's
_Cathay_, vol. i. pp. 174-182; _Marco Polo_, vol. i. p.
204-216. Colonel Yule suspects that its prototype may have been
the semi-Christian kingdom of Abyssinia. This is very likely.
As for its range, shifted hither and thither as it was, all the
way from the upper Nile to the Thian-Shan mountains, we can
easily understand this if we remember how an ignorant mind
conceives all points distant from its own position as near to
one another; i. e. if you are about to start from New York for
Arizona, your housemaid will perhaps ask you to deliver a
message to her brother in Manitoba. Nowhere more than in the
history of geography do we need to keep before us, at every
step, the limitations of the untutored mind and its feebleness
in grasping the space-relations of remote regions.]

[Footnote 334: These Arimaspians afford an interesting example
of the uncritical statements of travellers at an early time, as
well as of their tenacious vitality. The first mention of these
mythical people seems to have been made by Greek travellers in
Scythia as early as the seventh century before Christ; and they
furnished Aristeas of Proconnesus, somewhat later, with the
theme of his poem "Arimaspeia," which has perished, all except
six verses quoted by Longinus. See Mure's