(L'Extreme-Orient dans l'Atlas catalan de Charles V., Paris, 1895),
and I have come to the conclusion that the cartographer's knowledge of
Eastern Asia is drawn almost entirely from Marco Polo. We give a
reproduction of part of the Catalan Map. - H. C.]
[Illustration: Part of the Catalan Map (1375).]
[Sidenote: Confusions in Cartography of the 16th century, from the
endeavour to combine new and old information.]
85. In the following age we find more frequent indications that Polo's
book was diffused and read. And now that the spirit of discovery began to
stir, it was apparently regarded in a juster light as a Book of Facts, and
not as a mere Romman du Grant Kaan.[13] But in fact this age produced
new supplies of crude information in greater abundance than the knowledge
of geographers was prepared to digest or co-ordinate, and the consequence
is that the magnificent Work of Fra Mauro (1459), though the result of
immense labour in the collection of facts and the endeavour to combine
them, really gives a considerably less accurate idea of Asia than that
which the Catalan Map had afforded.[14]
And when at a still later date the great burst of discovery eastward and
westward took effect, the results of all attempts to combine the new
knowledge with the old was most unhappy.
