Footnote 437: I have given an account of this mission, above, p. [281].[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 438: Eugenius IV., pope from 1431 to 1447.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 439: This paragraph is evidently the conclusion of the letter to Columbus, and not a part of the letter to Martinez, which has just ended with the date. In Vita dell' Ammiraglio the two letters are mixed together.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 440: On modern maps Hang-chow. After 1127 that city was for some time the capital of China, and Marco Polo's name Quinsay represents the Chinese word King-sse or "capital," now generally applied to Peking. Marco Polo calls it the finest and noblest city in the world. It appears that he does not overstate the circumference of its walls at 100 Chinese miles or li, equivalent to about 30 English miles. It has greatly diminished since Polo's time, while other cities have grown. Toscanelli was perhaps afraid to repeat Polo's figure as to the number of stone bridges; Polo says there were 12,000 of them, high enough for ships to pass under! We thus see how his Venetian fellow-citizens came to nickname him "Messer Marco Milione." As Colonel Yule says, "I believe we must not bring Marco to book for the literal accuracy of his statements as to the bridges; but all travellers have noticed the number and elegance of the bridges of cut stone in this part of China." Marco Polo, vol. ii, p. 144.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 441: For Cipango, or Japan, see Yule's Marco Polo, vol. ii. pp. 195-207. The venerable astronomer's style of composition is amusing. He sets out to demonstrate to Columbus that the part of the voyage to be accomplished through new and unfamiliar stretches of the Atlantic is not great; but he is so full of the glories of Cathay and Cipango that he keeps reverting to that subject, to the manifest detriment of his exposition. His argument, however, is perfectly clear.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 442: The original of this letter is not forthcoming. I translate from Vita dell' Ammiraglio, cap. viii.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 443: Yet poor old Toscanelli did not live to see it accomplished; he died in 1482, before Columbus left Portugal.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 444: That is, of Europe, and especially of Italy. Toscanelli again refers to Kublai Khan's message to the pope which—more or less mixed up with the vague notions about Prester John—had evidently left a deep impression upon the European mind. In translating the above sentence I have somewhat retrenched its excessive verbiage without affecting the meaning.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 445: In including the "whole Portuguese nation" as feeling this desire, the good astronomer's enthusiasm again runs away with him.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 446: Luigi Pulci, in his famous romantic poem published in 1481, has a couple of striking stanzas in which Astarotte says to Rinaldo that the time is at hand when Hercules shall blush to see how far beyond his Pillars the ships shall soon go forth to find another hemisphere, for although the earth is as round as a wheel, yet the water at any given point is a plane, and inasmuch as all things tend to a common centre so that by a divine mystery the earth is suspended in equilibrium among the stars, just so there is an antipodal world with cities and castles unknown to men of olden time, and the sun in hastening westwards descends to shine upon those peoples who are awaiting him below the horizon:—