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.  The first and crudest forms of such combinations attempted to realise the ideas of Columbus regarding the identity of his discoveries with the regions of the Great Kaan’s dominion;[15] but even after AMERICA had vindicated its independent position on the surface of the globe, and the new knowledge of the Portuguese had introduced CHINA where the Catalan Map of the 14th century had presented CATHAY, the latter country, with the whole of Polo’s nomenclature, was shoved away to the north, forming a separate system.[16] Henceforward the influence of Polo’s work on maps was simply injurious; and when to his nomenclature was added a sprinkling of Ptolemy’s, as was usual throughout the 16th century, the result was a most extraordinary hotch-potch, conveying no approximation to any consistent representation of facts.

Thus, in a map of 1522,[17] running the eye along the north of Europe and Asia from West to East, we find the following succession of names:  Groenlandia, or Greenland, as a great peninsula overlapping that of Norvegia and Suecia; Livonia, Plescovia and Moscovia, Tartaria bounded on the South by Scithia extra Imaum, and on the East, by the Rivers Ochardes and Bautisis (out of Ptolemy), which are made to flow into the Arctic Sea.  South of these are Aureacithis and Asmirea (Ptolemy’s Auxacitis and Asmiraea), and Serica Regio.  Then following the northern coast Balor Regio,[18] Judei Clausi, i.e. the Ten Tribes who are constantly associated or confounded with the Shut-up Nations of Gog and Magog.  These impinge upon the River Polisacus, flowing into the Northern Ocean in Lat. 75 deg., but which is in fact no other than Polo’s Pulisanghin![19] Immediately south of this is Tholomon Provincia (Polo’s again), and on the coast Tangut, Cathaya, the Rivers Caramoran and Oman (a misreading of Polo’s Quian), Quinsay and Mangi.

[Sidenote:  Gradual disappearance of Polo’s nomenclature.]

86.  The Maps of Mercator (1587) and Magini (1597) are similar in character, but more elaborate, introducing China as a separate system.  Such indeed also is Blaeu’s Map (1663) excepting that Ptolemy’s contributions are reduced to one or two.