Columbus, Jealous
Of Polo's Laurels, Spent His Life In Preparing Means To Get To That
Zipangu Of Which The Venetian Traveller Had Told Such Great Things;
His Desire Was To Reach China By Sailing Westward, And In His Way He
Fell In With America." (H. Des Sciences Mathem.
Etc.
II. 150.)
The fact seems to be that Columbus knew of Polo's revelations only at
second hand, from the letters of the Florentine Paolo Toscanelli and
the like; and I cannot find that he ever refers to Polo by name.
[How deep was the interest taken by Colombus in Marco Polo's travels
is shown by the numerous marginal notes of the Admiral in the printed
copy of the latin version of Pipino kept at the Bib. Colombina at
Seville. See Appendix H. p. 558. - H. C.] Though to the day of his
death he was full of imaginations about Zipangu and the land of the
Great Kaan as being in immediate proximity to his discoveries, these
were but accidents of his great theory. It was the intense conviction
he had acquired of the absolute smallness of the Earth, of the vast
extension of Asia eastward, and of the consequent narrowness of the
Western Ocean, on which his life's project was based. This conviction
he seems to have derived chiefly from the works of Cardinal Pierre
d'Ailly. But the latter borrowed his collected arguments from Roger
Bacon, who has stated them, erroneous as they are, very forcibly in
his Opus Majus (p. 137), as Humboldt has noticed in his Examen
(vol.
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