Note p — Chapter IX · [a] (continued 2)

Capmany, Memorias Historicas, t. iii. preface, p. 11; and part 2, p. 131. His authority is Balducci Pegalotti, a Florentine writer upon commerce about 1340, whose work I have never seen. It appears from Balducci that the route to China was from Asoph to Astrakan, and thence, by a variety of places which cannot be found in modern maps, to Cambalu, probably Pekin, the capital city of China, which he describes as being one hundred miles in circumference. The journey was of rather more than eight months, going and returning; and he assures us it was perfectly secure, not only for caravans, but for a single traveller with a couple of interpreters and a servant. The Venetians had also a settlement in the Crimea, and appear, by a passage in Petrarch's letters, to have possessed some of the trade through Tartary. In a letter written from Venice, after extolling in too rhetorical a manner the commerce of that republic, he mentions a particular ship that had just sailed for the Black Sea. Et ipsa quidem Tanaim it visura, nostri enim maris navigatio non ultra tenditur; eorum vero aliqui, quos hæc fert, illic iter [instituent] eam egressuri, nec antea substituri, quàm Gange et Caucaso superato, ad Indos atque extremos Seres et Orientalem perveniatur Oceanum. En quo ardens et inexplebilis habendi sitis hominum mentes rapit! Petrarcæ Opera, Senil. 1. ii. ep. 3, p. 760 edit. 1581.