hes with a knife, costly
jewels, in sparkling showers, leaped forth before the eyes of the
company, who for a time were motionless with wonder. Then at last, says
the Italian chronicler, every doubt was banished, and all were satisfied
that these were the valiant and honorable gentlemen of the house of
Polo. I do not relate this history in order to suggest any such
operation on the dress of our returned fellow-citizen. No such evidence
is needed to assure us of his identity.

The success of Marco Polo is amply attested. From his habit of speaking
of millions of people and millions of money, he was known as _millioni_,
or the millionnaire, being the earliest instance in history of a
designation so common in our prosperous age. But better than "millions"
was the knowledge he imparted, and the impulse that he gave to that
science, which teaches the configuration of the globe, and the place of
nations on its surface. His travels, as dictated by him, were reproduced
in various languages, and, after the invention of printing, the book was
multiplied in more than fifty editions. Unquestionably it prepared the
way for the two greatest geographical discoveries of modern times, that
of the Cape of Good Hope, by Vasco de Gama, and the New World, by
Christopher Columbus. One of his admirers, a learned German, does not
hesitate to say that, when, in the long series of ages, we seek the
three men, who, by the influence of their discoveries, have most
contributed to the progress of geography and the knowledge of the globe,
the modest name of the Venetian finds a place in the same line with
Alexander the Great and Christopher Columbus. It is well known that the
imagination of the Genoese navigator was fired by the revelations of the
Venetian, and that, in his mind, all the countries embraced by his
transcendent discovery were none other than the famed Cathay, with its
various dependencies. In his report to the Spanish Sovereigns, Cuba was
nothing else than Xipangu, or Japan, as described by the Venetian, and
he thought himself near a grand Khan, meaning, as he says, a king of
kings. Columbus was mistaken. He had not reached Cathay or the Grand
Khan; but he had discovered a new world, destined in the history of
civilization to be more than Cathay, and, in the lapse of time, to
welcome the ambassador of the grand Khan.

The Venetian on his return home, journeyed out of the East, westward.
Our Marco Polo on his return home, journeyed out