[72] Estotiland seems to be an anomalous form of the name Scotland, from Anglo-Saxon, scot; Spanish and Portuguese, escote; Italian, scotto.
[73] Dello Scoprimento dell’ Isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engronelanda, Estotilanda, & Icaria, fatto per due fratelli Zeni, M. Nicolò il Caualiere, & M. Antonio. Libro Vno, col disegno di dette Isole.
The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, Nicolò and Antonio Zeno to the Northern Seas. By Richard Henry Major. London, 1873. Hakluyt Soc. pub. pp. 1-24.
[74] In 1260, the two brothers, Nicolò and Maffeo Polo, departed from Constantinople, on a trading expedition to the Euxine Sea; thence they travelled through the western dominions of the Grand Khan of the Tartars. In 1269 they returned home with letters from this sovereign to Pope Clement IV. On their arrival in Venice, Nicolò found that his wife had died in giving birth to his son, Marco, then a lad of fifteen years. In 1271 the brothers (Maffeo being a bachelor) again left home for the Orient, taking Marco with them. In 1295 the three returned to Venice after an absence of twenty-four years.
[75] Giovanni Battista Ramusio was born at Tevisa in 1485. For a decade of years he was secretary to the Venetian Council of Ten. His valuable collection of voyages and travels, entitled “Raccolta di Navigationi e Viaggi,” comprises three volumes. Volume I. was published in 1554, volume II. in 1559, and volume III. in 1556. Ramusio died in 1557.
[76] China. “For about three centuries,” says Yule, “the Northern provinces of China had been detached from native rule, and subject to foreign dynasties; first to the Khitau, a people from the basin of the Sungari River, and supposed (but doubtfully) to have been akin to the Tunguses, whose rule subsisted for 200 years, and originated the name Khitai, Khata, or Cathay, by which for nearly 1000 years China has been known to the nations of Inner Asia, and to those whose acquaintance with it was got by that channel.”—The book of Ser Marco Polo. By Henry Yule. London, 1875. Introd. p. 11.
[77] Ramusio: Raccolta di navigationi e viaggi. vol. ii. Prefatione.
[78] Concerning Marco Polo, Humboldt remarks: “Jacquet, who was unhappily too early removed by a premature death from the investigation of Asiatic languages, and who, like Klaproth and myself, was long occupied with the work of the great Venetian traveller, wrote to me, as follows, shortly before his decease: ‘I am as much struck as yourself by the composition of the Milione. It is undoubtedly founded on the direct and personal observation of the traveller, but he probably also made use of documents either officially or privately communicated to him. Many things appear to have been borrowed from Chinese and Mongolian works, although it is difficult to determine their precise influence on the composition of the Milione; owing to the successive translations from which Polo took his extracts. Whilst our modern travellers are only too well pleased to occupy their readers with their personal adventures, Marco Polo takes pains to blend his own observations with the official data communicated to him, of which, as Governor of the city of Yangui, he was able to have a large number.’ (See my Asie Centrale, t. ii. p. 395.) The compiling method of the celebrated traveller likewise explains the possibility of his being able to dictate his book at Genoa, in 1295, to his fellow-prisoner and friend, Messer Rustizielo of Pisa, as if the documents had been lying before him. (Compare Marsden, Travels of Marco Polo, p. xxxiii).” Humboldt: Cosmos. Otté’s trans. vol. ii. p. 625. Note.
[79] Ser Marco Polo. Yule. Second ed. vol. i. pp. 103, 104.
[80] “I John Maundevylle, knight, alle be it I be not worthi, that was born in England, in the Town of Seynt Albones, passed the See, in the zeer of our Lord Jesu Crist mcccxxii, in the Day of Seynt Michelle; and hidre to have ben long tyme over the See, and have seyn and gon thorghe manye dyverse Londes, and many Provynces and Kingdomes and Iles, and have passed thorghe Tartarye, Percye, Ermonye, the litylle and the grete; thorghe Lybye, Caldee, and a gret partie of Ethiope; thorghe Amazoyne, Inde the lasse and the more, a gret partie; and thorghe out many othere Iles, that ben abouten Inde.... And zee schulle undirstonde, that I have put this Boke out of Latyn into Frensche and translated it azen out of Frensche into Englyssche, that every Man of my Nacioun may undirstonde it.”—MS. in Cottonian library, marked Titus. c. xvi. The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundevile, Kt. By J. O. Halliwell. London, 1849. Prologue. pp. 4, 5.