Marco was sent off on another mission, this time by sea, and, discovering that there was direct communication between Cathay and the Indies, he entreated the khan to allow the Polos to go on a voyage, promising faithfully that they would return after a short stay with their friends in Venice. The old khan gave his consent reluctantly, overwhelming them with gifts at their departure, among other things giving them a tablet of gold, on which were engraved his orders to all the subjects in his vast dominions to provide guides, escorts, pilots--every convenience for their voyage and journey--without cost.
He also authorized them to serve as his amba.s.sadors to the pope and other European potentates, presented them with many precious stones, including rubies of great value, and money enough to defray their expenses for at least two years. From all this it will be seen that the grand khan was a very munificent prince, whose deeds must have made a lasting impression upon the minds of the generation in which he lived.
Fourteen large vessels were contained in the fleet he furnished the Polos, for with them was embarked, with a train of amba.s.sadors, a n.o.ble maiden of Cathay who was to become the bride of a "king of the Indies" known as Argon. The voyage was so protracted that the king had died before she reached her destination, and whose bride she became was never known to the Polos, though they faithfully acquitted themselves of their charge, and then continued on towards the frontiers of Persia. Two years had been consumed in voyaging to Java, Sumatra, and along the coast of southern India. Three more elapsed before they finally reached their native city, in 1295, after an absence of nearly twenty-five years. n.o.body in Venice knew them then, except by name, for Niccolo and his brother were advanced in age, and Marco had grown from a boy to manhood, while in their dress and manners they were more like Tartars than Venetians, and had almost completely lost their native speech.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MARCO POLO]
Many of their former friends and relations were dead, and the survivors were at first inclined to denounce them as impostors, until the fertile imagination of Marco hit upon an expedient. They were invited to a magnificent banquet, at which the three Polos appeared arrayed in robes of crimson velvet, which, after their guests had arrived, they threw off and gave to their attendants. Then, after the last course was served, they produced from their queer Tartarian garments, which they ripped open for the purpose, precious gems by the handful, and displayed them to the astonished guests as their credentials.
They were promptly received into the best Venetian society, Maffei, the uncle, being appointed a magistrate, and Niccolo, the father, espousing a beautiful young lady. Such Polos as still bear the name--if there are any--must have descended from the children born of this second marriage, for though Marco himself took a wife, several years later, he left no male children to inherit the vast wealth that gave him the t.i.tle, in Venice, of "Marco Millioni."
It was about three years after his return to Venice that Marco fell into the hands of the Genoese, and a little later that, as narrated, he wrote the story of his travels. His books abound in romantic adventures, and many, probably, that are fabulous; but that it stamped itself upon the times in which he lived and those of succeeding generations, has been shown already. Nearly two hundred years after the story was written, we find the Spaniards seeking the great island of c.i.p.ango, of which the following is Marco Polo"s description:
"This is a very large island, fifteen hundred miles from the continent [of Asia]. The people are fair, handsome, and of agreeable manners. They are idolaters, and live quite separate from all other nations. Gold is very abundant, and no man being allowed to export it, while no merchant goes thence to the main-land, the people acc.u.mulate a vast amount. But I, Marco Polo, will give you a wonderful account of a very large palace all covered with that metal, as our churches are with lead. The pavements of its court, the halls, windows, and every other part, have it laid on two inches thick, so that the riches of this palace are incalculable. Here are also pearls, large and of equal value with the white, with many other precious stones.
"Kublai, on hearing of this amazing wealth, desired to conquer the island, and sent two of his barons with a very large fleet containing warriors, both hors.e.m.e.n and on foot.
They sailed from Zaitun and Quinsai, reached the isle, landed, and took possession of the plain and of a number of houses; but they were unable to take any city or castle, when a sad misadventure occurred. A storm threatened and some of the troops were embarked; but about thirty thousand were left upon a small and barren island by the sailing of the ships. The sovereign and the people of the larger island rejoiced greatly when they saw the host thus scattered and many of them cast upon the islet. As soon as the sea calmed they a.s.sembled a great number of ships, sailed thither and landed, hoping to capture all those refugees. But when the latter saw that their enemies had disembarked, leaving the vessels unguarded, they skilfully retreated to another quarter and continued moving about till they reached the ships, when they went aboard without any opposition. They then sailed direct for the princ.i.p.al island, where they hoisted its own standards and ensigns.
"On seeing these, the people believed their own countrymen had returned, and allowed them to enter the city. Finding it defended only by old men, the Tartars soon drove them out, retaining the women as slaves. When the king and his warriors saw themselves thus deceived and their city captured, they were like to die of grief; but they a.s.sembled other ships, and invested it so closely as to prevent all communication. The Tartars maintained themselves thus seven months, and planned day and night how they might convey tidings to their master of their condition; but finding this impossible, they agreed with the besiegers to surrender, securing only their lives. This took place in the year 1269.
"The grand khan ordered one of the commanders of the host that had returned to lose his head, and the other to be sent to the isle where he had caused the loss of so many men, and there put to death. I have to relate, also, a very wonderful thing: that these two barons took a number of persons in a castle of c.i.p.ango, and because they had refused to surrender ordered all their heads to be cut off. But there were eight on whom they could not execute this sentence, because these wore consecrated stones in their arms, between the skin and the flesh, which so enchanted them that they could not die by steel. They were therefore beaten to death with clubs, and the stones, being extracted, were held very precious.
But I must leave this matter and go on with the narrative."
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The first printing-press in America was set up in Mexico in 1535, the first book printed on it was probably _La Escala de San Juan Climaco_, date 1536, and the first printer was Juan Pablos. The oldest existing example of this first Mexican printing is said to be the _Manual de Adultos_, bearing date 1540.
IV
IN THE SERVICE OF SPAIN
1490
Before we revert to the real hero of this biography, let us seek to identify the various names we find in Marco Polo"s book, and in Toscanelli"s letter to Columbus, with the objects to which they were applied. We will imagine ourselves with the first-named in far Cathay, with the second in his library at Florence, and with the third as he gropes his way along the sh.o.r.es of islands for the first time then revealed to European eyes.
If Columbus had known--what we now know--that thousands of miles intervened between the places he was seeking and those to which he misapplied their names, he would not have died in the belief that he had discovered a new way to the Old World. To antic.i.p.ate a little what will be revealed later in the unfolding of this story: it was Amerigo Vespucci, and not Columbus, who first applied to this newly discovered hemisphere the t.i.tle _Mundus Novus_, or New World. However, we will not discuss that question now, but merely remark that _Cathay_ was identical with northern China, while _Mangi_ was the southern territory of that vast empire which, in Marco Polo"s time, was in possession of Kublai Khan. _Chambalu_, or Peking, was its capital, while the "most n.o.ble and vast city of _Quinsay_," or Cansay, is the ancient _King-sze_ connected with Peking by the grand ca.n.a.l.
The large island of _c.i.p.ango_, or _Zipangu_, outlying upon the coast of Cathay, was probably j.a.pan, or Formosa; though its golden-tiled temples may never have been seen by the Polos, nor its red pearls have come into their hands. Forty years after Columbus began his vain search, Pizarro found and plundered the gold-plated temples of Cuzco, which were as rich as any described by Marco Polo in his account of c.i.p.ango; and in the Bahamas archipelago, through which the Spaniards pa.s.sed in the voyage of 1492, precious pink pearls have been discovered in great numbers and of surpa.s.sing beauty.
Vasco da Gama, in 1497, was to open the way by water to the vast Oriental seas--to Calicut and Cathay--but until the last quarter of the fifteenth century the commerce of the eastern hemisphere depended mainly upon transportation by land. "Voyages of much extent were almost unknown, and the mariner confined himself to inland waters, or hovered along the sh.o.r.es of the great Western Ocean, without venturing out of sight of land.... The thriving republics of Italy were the carriers of the world. For many centuries their citizens were almost the only agents for commercial communication with the countries of the East. Venice and Genoa maintained establishments on the farthest sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean and Black seas.
"Immense caravans crossed the deserts of Arabia and Egypt, their camels laden with the costly fabrics of the Indies, which were received by the Italian traders from the hands of the Mahometans and distributed over Europe. Here and there upon the deserts a green oasis, with its bubbling spring or rippling rivulet, served these mighty trains for a resting-place, where man and beast halted to recover from the fatigues of their weary journeys. Occasionally, on these spots where the soil was of sufficient fertility to sustain a population, villages grew up. In rarer instances and in earlier ages, large cities had been built upon these stopping-places and were for the time the centres of the traffic.... Travellers of the present day occasionally visit their sites, and tell wonderful tales of the gigantic ruins of some Baalbec or Palmyra of the wilderness.
"It was not to be supposed that the shrewd spirit of mercantile enterprise and speculation would remain dormant in this state of affairs. Traders in every part of Europe were alive to the advantages to be derived from the discovery of a new route of transportation.
Several efforts were made, and in some cases attended with immense profit and success, to communicate with India by the long and arduous journey round the Black Sea, and through the almost unexplored regions of Circa.s.sia and Georgia. The far-off sh.o.r.es of the Caspian were reached by some travelling traders, and the geographical knowledge they circulated on their return gave a new impulse to the growing spirit of adventure. Apocryphal as the narratives of Marco Polo and Mandeville appeared, there was a sufficient mixture of truth with exaggeration to stimulate the minds of men, ever greedy of gain, and the endless wealth of the grand khan and his people were the subjects of many eager and longing antic.i.p.ations."[7]
The Polos were merely the forerunners, the pioneers, to the far Cathay, and in the fourteenth century missionaries and merchants followed on their trail with varying success. The death of Kublai Khan had relieved them from their obligation to return; but soon after they had reached Venice, in 1295, a Franciscan monk, John of Monte Corvino, penetrated to Chambalu and established missions there. In the year 1338 an amba.s.sador arrived at Avignon from the then reigning Khan of Cathay, and in return John de Marignoli, a Florentine, was sent to the court at Chambalu, where he remained four years as legate of the holy see. Commercial travellers followed after them, and about 1340 a guide-book was written by another Florentine, Francesco Pelotti, who was a clerk in the great trading-house of Bardi, or Berardi, with which, at a later date, Amerigo Vespucci was connected in Spain.
"When the throne of the degenerate descendants of Ghengis Khan began to totter to its fall, missions and merchants alike disappeared from the field. Islam, with all its jealousies and exclusiveness, had recovered its grasp over Central Asia. Night again descended upon the farther East, covering Cathay, with those cities of which the old travellers had told such marvels, Chambalu and Cansay, Zaitun and c.h.i.n.kalan. And when the veil rose before the Portuguese and Spanish explorers of the sixteenth century those names were heard of no more....
"But for a long time all but a sagacious few continued to regard Cathay as a region distinct from any of the new-found Indies; while map-makers, well on into the seventeenth century, continued to represent it as a great country lying entirely to the north of China and stretching to the Arctic Sea. It was Cathay, with its outlying island of Zipangu, that Columbus sought to reach by sailing westward, penetrated as he was by his intense conviction of the smallness of the earth and of the vast extension of Asia to the eastward. To the day of his death he was full of the imagination of the proximity of the domain of the grand khan to the islands and coasts which he had discovered. And such imaginations are curiously embodied in some maps of the early sixteenth century, which intermingle on the same coast-line the new discoveries, from Labrador to Brazil, with the provinces and rivers of Marco Polo"s Cathay."[8]
Having shown the state of European geographical knowledge in the fifteenth century, in the hope thereby of throwing light upon the conditions which surrounded Vespucci at the time, we will now follow as closely as possible the career which was then opening before him.
He was, as we have stated, keenly alive to what was taking place in the world around him, and especially interested in geographical discoveries. Although it is not likely that he had an abundance of ready money, having been so many years engaged in preparation for his great pursuit, without immediate recompense of any sort, yet we learn from the records of his life that he was already making a collection of all the charts, maps, and globes that he could find. He had a.s.sembled the best works of the most distinguished projectors, and for one of the finest then available, "a map of sea and land," made in 1439 by one Gabriel de Valesca, he paid the large sum of one hundred and thirty ducats, equivalent to more than five hundred dollars at the present day. There was danger then, his parents and friends thought, of the abstruse and unprofitable science of cosmography absorbing him entirely; but, though he may have indulged in the hope of devoting his life to the studies which had so enriched the mind of his friend Toscanelli, he was rudely awakened from his day-dream by a family catastrophe.
Mention has been made of one of his brothers, Girolamo, who, about the year 1480, left home and went to Asia Minor, including in his travels a trip to Palestine. He finally established himself in one of the Grecian cities, and, being of a hopeful turn, sent for and obtained the greater portion of his father"s money, with which he engaged in trade. All went well for a time, and the Vespuccis congratulated themselves upon having a son of the family finally embarked on the full tide of commercial prosperity.
Nine years went by, and nothing but good news came from the absent Girolamo; but one day, in 1489, disastrous tidings arrived. A Florentine pilgrim, returning from a pious visit to the holy sepulchre in Jerusalem, brought Amerigo a letter from his brother. It was dated July 24th, and contained information to the effect that while Girolamo was attending religious services at a convent in his neighborhood his house was broken open and robbed. "At one fell swoop," he wrote, he had been deprived of all his earnings during those nine years of toil, besides the money his father had sent him, which represented the acc.u.mulations of a lifetime.
He did not explain how his entire capital was in cash at the time, when he was supposed to be in trade; but even if derelict, he was too far away to be sought out and his story investigated, so the loss was accepted by the family as an indication that Providence was not inclined to smile upon the subst.i.tution of the eldest for the youngest son as a retriever of the Vespucci fortunes. All looked now towards Amerigo to take up the distasteful business of money-making, for which he had been so long in training, but which hitherto he had so successfully evaded. In sorrow, it is said, but without a murmur, he turned his back upon his maps, globes, books, and astrolabes and faced the situation manfully.
A position had long been open to him with the great trading-house of Lorenzo de Medici, who was own cousin to the world-famous Lorenzo the Magnificent, and he had only to apply in order to receive it. For the Medici well knew the value of men--good and faithful men--trained, as Amerigo was, in the diplomacy as well as the routine of commercial life in that age. They needed just such a man as he in their foreign agency, and bidding farewell to his family he set sail from Leghorn for the Spanish city of Barcelona.
The Iberian peninsula afforded at that time a most attractive field for commercial as well as military adventure. The protracted wars with the Moors, which had been carried on for generations, were drawing to a close, but they had taken thither many a man athirst for glory, and the demand for supplies gave the merchants great opportunities for profits. The commerce of that day was, as we have seen, mainly in the hands of Italian merchants, and as early as 1486 the Florentine trader, Juan Berardi, obtained a safe conduct from Barcelona to Seville, where, a few years later, we find Amerigo busily engaged in outfitting vessels for the Spanish voyages of discovery.
It was in the year 1490, or 1491, that Amerigo Vespucci went to Spain, accompanied by his nephew Giovanni, and several other young Florentines, who were placed in his charge by their parents that they might receive the benefit of his experience and the advantages of foreign travel. Giovanni, or Juan, was greatly attached to his uncle, and subsequently went with him on his voyages to America. Many years later the historian, Peter Martyr, wrote of him: "Young Vespucius is one to whom Americus, his uncle, left the exact knowledge of the mariner"s faculties, as it were by inheritance, after his death, for he is a very expert master in the knowledge of the compa.s.s and the elevation of the pole star by the quadrant. He is my particular friend, a witty young man in whose company I take great pleasure, and therefore have him often for my guest."
Whether Giovanni was a.s.sociated with Amerigo in business is not exactly known, nor can we tell just when the latter removed from Barcelona into southern Spain; but there is a letter extant, written at Cadiz in 1492, signed jointly by himself and a young Florentine, Donato Nicollini, as agents either of the Medici or the house of Berardi. The following extract was copied by his biographer, Bandidi, from this ma.n.u.script in Amerigo"s handwriting:
"As it is necessary for one of us, either Amerigo or Donato, to proceed in a short time to Florence, we shall be able to give you better information on all points by word of mouth than can possibly be done by letter. As yet, it has been impossible to do anything respecting the freight of salt, for want of a vessel, as for some time past, we are sorry to say, no ship has arrived here which was not chartered. Be a.s.sured that if one arrives we shall be active for your interests.
"You will have learned from the elder Donato the good-fortune which has happened to his highness the king.
a.s.suredly the most high G.o.d has given him His aid; but I cannot relate it in full. G.o.d preserve him many years--and us with him.
"There is nothing new to communicate. Christ preserve you.
"DONATO NICOLLINI.
"AMERIGO VESPUCCI.
"We date this January 30, 1492."
The last decade of the fifteenth century, which Amerigo was to pa.s.s chiefly in Spain, has been termed by historians the most important epoch in modern history. It was, admittedly, the most important for Spain, also for that country (then unknown) which her sailors were to discover and explore, and which was to receive the name of the Florentine merchant then living obscurely in Cadiz or Seville.
"The foreign intercourse of the country," says the renowned author of _Ferdinand and Isabella_, "was every day more widely extended. Her agents and consuls were to be found in all the ports of the Mediterranean and the Baltic. The Spanish mariner, instead of creeping along the beaten track of inland navigation, now struck boldly across the great Western Ocean. The new discoveries had converted the land trade with India into a sea trade, and the nations of the peninsula, which had hitherto lain remote from the great highways of commerce, now became the factors and carriers of Europe.
"The flourishing condition of the nation was seen in the wealth and population of its cities, the revenue of which, augmented in all to a surprising extent, had increased in some forty and even fifty fold beyond what they were at the commencement of Ferdinand and Isabella"s reign: the ancient and lordly Toledo; Burgos, with its bustling industrious traders; Valladolid, sending forth thirty thousand warriors from its gates; Cordova, in the south, and the magnificent Granada, naturalizing in Europe the arts and luxuries of the East; Saragossa, "the abundant," as she was called from her fruitful territory; Valencia, "the beautiful"; Barcelona, rivalling in independence and maritime enterprise the proudest of the Italian republics; Medina del Campo, whose fairs were already the great mart for the commercial exchanges of the peninsula; and Seville, the golden gate of the Indies, whose quays began to be thronged with merchants from the most distant countries of Europe."
FOOTNOTES:
[7] _The Life and Voyages of Americus Vespucius_, by C. Edwards Lester, 1845.
[8] Article, "China," in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.