Note Back to Main Text — Chapter III · EUROPE AND CATHAY.

"The Book of Ser Marco Polo concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East" is one of the most famous and important books of the Middle Ages. Its great contributions to geographical knowledge. It contributed more new facts toward a knowledge of the earth's surface than any book that had ever been written before. Its author was "the first traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude of Asia;" the first to describe China in its vastness, with its immense cities, its manufactures and wealth, and to tell, whether from personal experience or direct hearsay, of Thibet and Burmah, of Siam and Cochin China, of the Indian archipelago, with its islands of spices, of Java and Sumatra, and of the savages of Andaman. He knew of Japan and the woful defeat of the Mongols there, when they tried to invade the island kingdom in 1281. He gave a description of Hindustan far more complete and characteristic than had ever before been published. From Arab sailors, accustomed to the Indian ocean, he learned something about Zanzibar and Madagascar and the semi-Christian kingdom of Abyssinia. To the northward from Persia he described the country of the Golden Horde, whose khans were then holding Russia in subjection; and he had gathered some accurate information concerning Siberia as far as the country of the Samoyeds, with their dog-sledges and polar bears.[332]