d, until, by an artifice, they made themselves
truly known to their fellow-townsmen, who had long since given them up
for dead.

Marco Polo's book, dictated by him in prison, is remarkable for its
reserve and its scantiness of all semblance of ornament in its literary
style. Messer Marco evidently did not greatly affect the arts and graces
of fine writing. Like most of the Italian gentlefolk of his day and
generation, he held the business of writing in low esteem. Some of his
chapters are very brief indeed, the text being no greater in bulk than
the headings which his amanuensis put over them of his own motion. Of
the original manuscript, written in French, copies were made for the use
of the learned, the art of printing being as yet not invented. There are
now in existence no less than eighty of these manuscripts, in various
languages, more or less differing from each other in unimportant
details; but all substantially verifying the facts of the wonderful
history of Messer Marco Polo as here set forth. The most precious of
these is known as the Geographical text, and is preserved in the great
Paris Library; from it was printed, in 1824, one of the most valued of
the texts now in existence. But the most useful and satisfactory of all
the printed editions is that edited and annotated by Colonel Henry Yule,
and printed in London in 1871. The first printed edition of Marco Polo's
book was in the German text, and was published in 1477.

Many writers have dwelt long on the question, Did Columbus gather any
information from the book of Marco Polo that aided him in forming his
theory, that one could reach India and Cathay by sailing westward from
Spain out into the Sea of Darkness? We cannot satisfactorily answer that
question. But we do know that all Europe, at the time of Marco Polo's
adventurous journey eastward, resolutely turned its back upon the
Atlantic, and looked toward Cathay and the Far Orient for a road to the
fabulous diamond mines and spice islands that were believed to exist
somewhere in the vague and mysterious East. Many philosophers, among
whom was Columbus himself, thought the globe much smaller than it really
is; but it was Columbus who was apparently charged with a divine mission
to teach the world that sailing due westward from the Pillars of
Hercules would bring the voyager to the dominions of Prester John, the
Indies, and Cipangu.

When Columbus set sail for his hazardous venture into the Sea of
Dark