Note 24 — EXPLANATORY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOLUME I. (continued 2)

“Under the angiporta (of S. Lorenzo) [see plate] is buried that Marco Polo surnamed Milione, who wrote the Travels in the New World, and who was the first before Christopher Columbus to discover new countries. No faith was put in him because of the extravagant things that he recounted; but in the days of our Fathers Columbus augmented belief in him, by discovering that part of the world which eminent men had heretofore judged to be uninhabited.” (Venezia ... Descritta, etc., f. 23 v.) Marco Barbaro attests the same inscription in his Genealogies (copy in Museo Civico at Venice).