[Sidenote: 1880.]
All this talk about Asia interested the children in the old geography
of Asia. They could see, by the map in Col. Yule’s book, how very vague
the notion of the eastern shore of Asia was. Marco Polo had sailed down
that shore; in fact, he came home that way.
“But,” said Tom Rising, “he knew no more about it than I knew of Cape
Ann and the Isle of Shoals, after I went from Boston to Mount Desert in
a steamer.”
“Exactly,” said Horace Feltham, “but you knew that there was no land
where you sailed over water, and Marco Polo knew the same.”
Then Uncle Fritz showed them a droll old map of the world made by Fra
Mauro, from the results of Marco Polo’s discoveries. The southeast
shore of Asia had a very suspicious curve, and Africa and Hindostan
and the other peninsulas were all squeezed into the same curve. He
explained to the children that this was done so that the whole of
the three Continents, which we call the Eastern Hemisphere, might be
brought up on one round plate, with Jerusalem for the centre.
[Illustration: HERNANDO CORTES]
“And this was the Asia that Columbus was looking for,” said Tom Rising.
“Yes, and this was the Asia Columbus thought he had found.
“He thought so, probably, till he died, and for a generation other
men thought so. It seems certain now that the coast of our own United
States was put down on the maps before it was really discovered. It is
doubtful how far the Cabots traced it. It is wellnigh certain that the
supposed discovery by the Verrazzani was all a lie. They found people
living stark naked early in March in the latitude of our New Jersey;
they found odorous palms and laurels in the same place at the same
time; wild roses and lilies in bloom. This is indeed ‘a lie with a
circumstance.’
“But all the same the coast of the United States was on the maps,
without any Cape Cod, without any Hudson River, without any Chesapeake
Bay. It is now supposed that, after Florida was discovered on
the south, and the regions around Newfoundland on the north, the
geographers were so certain that this was the Asiatic coast of Marco
Polo, that they drew it boldly in.”
When Uncle Fritz had explained this to the children, he made Sybil
trace the true eastern line of Asia, and compare it with the true
eastern line of America, and they were surprised and amused to see how
much they resembled each other.
[Sidenote: 1534.]
“When Cortes discovered California,” said Uncle Fritz, “he gave it that
name because in a romance of that time, called Esplandian, there was an
island called California, inhabited by Amazons, in the east of Asia.
Cortes thought he had struck the east of Asia. He thought California
was an island, and so he put California down on the map. And it has
stayed there long after everybody forgot the romance,--except Don
Quixote, and me.”
Some of the children said they liked Cortes better than they did
Pizarro.
“And well you may,” said Uncle Fritz. “Neither of them were Christian
gentlemen of the type of the nineteenth century. But Cortes was, in
every regard, much more of a man than Pizarro. And, of all the numerous
accounts of his marvellous adventures, none are better written than
those by himself.”
“If only,” cried Clem Waters, “he had written in English! I am always
groaning about that.”
This was a constant complaint of Clem’s. But Uncle Fritz told him
that in this case his difficulty was solved. Cortes’s letters to
the sovereign have now all been translated. They were found in one
receptacle or another, in different depositories in Europe, for Charles
V. was here or there or everywhere. But now six of them have been
found, and have been translated.
He sent Bob for the different editions of Cortes’s letters to the
sovereign, and, partly guided by Uncle Fritz’s marks and suggestions,
the children read the following passages:--