Marco Polo,
It is a question to be resolved only by critical study as to what was the language in which Marco Polo first dictated, in a Genoese prison in 1298, the original narrative of his experiences in Cathay. The inquiry has engaged the attention of all his editors, and has invited the critical sagacity of D'Avezac. There seems little doubt that it was written down in French.
EASTERN ASIA, CATALAN MAP, 1375.
[From Yule's Cathay, vol. i.]
MARCO POLO.
[From an original at Rome.]
There are no references by Columbus himself to the Asiatic travels of Marco Polo, but his acquaintance with the marvelous book of the Venetian observer may safely be assumed. The multiplication of texts of the Milione following upon his first dictation, and upon the subsequent revision in 1307, may not, indeed, have caused it to be widely known in various manuscript forms, be it in Latin or Italian. Nor is it likely that Columbus could have read the earliest edition which was put in type, for it was in German in 1477; but there is the interesting possibility that this work of the Nuremberg press may have been known to Martin Behaim, a Nuremberger then in Lisbon, and likely enough to have been a familiar of Columbus. The fact that there is in the Biblioteca Colombina at Seville a copy of the first Latin printed edition (1485) with notes, which seem to be in Columbus's handwriting, may be taken as evidence, that at least in the later years of his study the inspiration which Marco Polo could well have been to him was not wanting; and the story may even be true as told in Navarrete, that Columbus had a copy of this famous book at his side during his first voyage, in 1492.
At the time when Humboldt doubted the knowledge of Columbus in respect to Marco Polo, this treasure of the Colombina was not known, and these later developments have shown how such a question was not to be settled as Humboldt supposed, by the fact that Columbus quoted Æneas Sylvius upon Cipango, and did not quote Marco Polo.