Note 14 — EXPLANATORY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOLUME I. (continued 3)

An example is seen in the voluminous Annali Musulmani of G. B. Rampoldi, Milan, 1825. This writer speaks of the Travels of Marco Polo with his brother and uncle; declares that he visited Tipango (sic), Java, Ceylon, and the Maldives, collected all the geographical notions of his age, traversed the two peninsulas of the Indies, examined the islands of Socotra, Madagascar, Sofala, and traversed with philosophic eye the regions of Zanguebar, Abyssinia, Nubia, and Egypt! and so forth (ix. 174). And whilst Malte-Brun bestows on Marco the sounding and ridiculous title of “the Humboldt of the 13th century,” he shows little real acquaintance with his Book. (See his Précis, ed. of 1836, I. 551 seqq.)