[91] Mandeville had made his Asiatic journey and long sojourn (thirty-four years) thirty or forty years later than Marco Polo, and on his return had written his narrative in English, French, and Latin. It was first printed in French at Lyons, in 1480. The narrative is, however, unauthentic.

[92] A copy of this edition is in the Colombina Library, with marginal marks ascribed to Columbus, but of no significance except as aids to the memory. Cf. Harper’s Monthly, xlvi. p. 1.

[93] There were other editions between his first voyage and his death,—an Italian one in 1496, and a Portuguese in 1502. For later editions, cf. Harrisse, Bibl. Am. Vet., no. 89; Navarrete, Bibl. maritima, ii. 668; Brunet, iii. 1,406; Saint-Martin, Histoire de la Géographie, p. 278. The recent editions of distinctive merit are those, in English, of Colonel Yule; the various texts issued in the Recueil de voyages et de mémoires publiés par la Société de Géographie de Paris; and Le livre de Marco Polo, rédigé, en Français sous sa dictée en 1298 par Rusticien de Pise, publ. pour la 1e fois d’après 3 MSS. inéd., av. variantes, comment. géogr. et histor., etc., par G. Pauthier. 2 vols. Paris: Didot, 1865. Cf. Foscarini, Della lett. Ven. 239; Zurla, Di Marco Polo; Maltebrun, Histoire de la Géographie; Tiraboschi, Storia della lett. Ital., vol. iv.; Vivien de Saint-Martin, Histoire de la Géographie, p. 272; and the bibliography of the MSS. and printed editions of the Milione given in Pietro Amat di S. Filippo’s Studi biog. e bibliog., published by the Società Geografica Italiana in 1882 (2d ed.). A fac-simile of a manuscript of the fourteenth century of the Livre de Marco Polo was prepared under the care of Nordenskiöld, and printed at Stockholm in 1882. The original is in the Royal Library at Stockholm.

[94] The actual distance from Spain westerly to China is two hundred and thirty-one degrees.

[95] Cf. Zurla, Fra Mauro, p. 152; Lelewel, ii. 107.

[96] The Italian text of Toscanelli’s letter has been long known in Ferdinand Columbus’ Life of his father; but Harrisse calls it “très-inexact et interpolée;” and, in his Bibl. Am. Vet. Additions (1872), p. xvi, Harrisse gives the Latin text, which he had already printed, in 1871, in his Don Fernando Colon, published at Seville, from a copy made of it which had been discovered by the librarian of the Colombina, transcribed by Columbus himself in a copy of Æneas Sylvius’ (Pius II.’s) Historia rerum ubique gestarum, Venice, 1477, preserved in that library. Harrisse also gives a photographic fac-simile of this memorial of Columbus. Cf. D’Avezac, in the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris, October, 1873, p. 46; and Harrisse, Les Cortereal, p. 41. The form of the letter, as given in Navarrete, is translated into English in Kettell’s Journal of Columbus, p. 268, and in Becher’s Landfall of Columbus, p. 183. Cf. Lelewel, Géographie du moyen âge, ii. 130; Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, 1872, p. 49; Ruge, Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, p. 225. H. Grothe, in his Leonardo da Vinci, Berlin, 1874, says that Da Vinci in 1473 had written to Columbus respecting a western passage to the Indies.

[97] Navarrete, iii. 28.

[98] Note xvii.

[99] Appendix xi.

[100] Stevens, Bibl. Geog., no. 1147, and Sabin, Dictionary, vii. no. 26,342, give different dates.