Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/164

 100 WORKMEN AND HEROES and is preserved in the great Paris Library ; from it was printed, in 1824, one of the most valued of the texts now in existence. But the most useful and satisfac- tory of all the printed editions is that edited and annotated by Colonel Henry Yule, and printed in London in 1871. The first printed edition of Marco Polo's book was in the German text, and was published in 1477. Many writers have dwelt long on the question, Did Columbus gather any in- formation from the book of Marco Polo that aided him in forming his theory, that one could reach India and Cathay by sailing westward from Spain out into the Sea of Darkness ? We cannot satisfactorily answer that question. But we do know that all Europe, at the time of Marco Polo's adventurous journey east- ward, resolutely turned its back upon the Atlantic, and looked toward Cathay and the Far Orient for a road to the fabulous diamond mines and spice islands that were believed to exist somewhere in the vague and mysterious East. Many philosophers, among whom was Columbus himself, thought the globe much smaller than it really is ; but it was Columbus who was apparently charged with a divine mission to teach the world that sailing due westward from the Pillars of Hercules would bring the voyager to the dominions of Prester John, the Indies, and Cipangu. When Columbus set sail for his hazardous venture into the Sea of Darkness, he was armed with letters to Prester John, the traditional Christian prince of the Far East ; and his first landfall, as we know now, was by him supposed to be an outlying portion of that vast region vaguely known to the explorers who followed Marco Polo, as Farther India. But centuries rolled away before the world saw the facts of geography as we know them, or learned to accept as true the marvel- lous stories of Marco Polo, whose priceless legacy was first dimly known to the few, and was dubbed the Romance of the Great Khan. SIR WILLIAM WALLACE (1270-1305) HE life and exploits of this most popular national hero of the Scots have been principally preserved in a legendary form by poetry and tradition, and are only to a very small extent matter of contempo- rary record, or illustrated by authentic documents. There is no ex- tant Scottish chronicler of the age of Wallace. Fordun, the earliest of his countrymen from whom we have any account of him, is his junior by nearly a century. Wyntoun, the next authority, is still half a century later. His