During the succeeding century little was added to the discoveries of Polo, though several narratives were published by persons who had traversed, or who pre tended to have traversed, this immense continent.
In 1317, °cleric°, a Venetian friar, commenced a course of travels into Asia. Embarking at Venice, he proceeded by the way of Trebizond through greater Ar menia, to the cities Tauris and Soldania. He afterwards visited India, and the islands of the Indian Sea. Thence he advanced to China, and, according to his own account, resided three years in the city of Chambalu, or Pekin, reverenced by the Chinese as a travelling brahmin. Leaving China, and returning through the countries of Prester John, Tangut, and Persia, he arrived in Italy, after an absence of thirteen years. From his narrative, in some instances, additional information is to be ob tained ; but, in general, the accounts of Polo arc follow ed, and frequently copied.
The travels of sir John Mandeville, a native of Eng land, have been more celebrated than read. He return ed to Europe in 1358, atter travelling, as he himself in forms us, over great part of Asia, and serving in the ar mies of the sultan of Egypt, and the great khan of Tar tary. The accounts which he published add not one particle of solid information to the discoveries of his predecessors ; and, if ever sir John passed the bounda ries of the Holy Land, he was so weak, ignorant, and credulous, that he has rather distorted the accounts of preceding travellers than opened any new source of knowledge. But the truth seems to be, that, having re sided many years in Palestine, he gathered the materials for his book from the confused talcs of Christian pil grims, who crowded to that country from the East as well as from the West, and, on his return, palmed them on the world as the result of actual observation. Upon the whole, his work is so completely visionary and use less, as to merit the oblivion into which it has fallen.
The fifteenth century opened with little promise, though it was to close with the grand discovery of the passage to Asia by the Cape of Good Hope. For fifty years previous to that great event, scarcely any travels of note, or of consequence, can be pointed out.
At length Vasco de Gama, with the command of a Portuguese squadron, doubled the southern promontory of the African continent, and opened a new channel of intercourse with the regions of the East. After a pros perous navigation along the south-east of Africa, he ar rived at the city of Melinda. Thence he sailed across the Indian Ocean, and landed at Calicut, on the coast of Malabar, on the 22d of May, 1498, ten months and two days after his departure from the port of Lisbon. This voyage to India, the first ever performed by the nations of Europe, and which produced such revolutions in the commercial world, greatly extended our acquaintance with the Asiatic continent. Hitherto its inland regions chiefly had been explored, and now its coasts and seas were examined. Within a few years aftet' the arrival of the Portuguese at Calicut, they had advanced to the kingdoms of Cambodia, Cochin China, Tonquin, the vast empire of China, and all the fertile islands in the great Indian Archipelago, from Sumatra to the Philippines. Their ships frequented every port in the East where va luable commodities were to be found, from the Cape of Good Hope to the river of Canton, and even to Japan: and along this immense stretch of coast, extending up wards of twelve thousand miles, they had established a chain of factories for the conveniency or protection of trade. Thus, and almost without interruption, did they continue their progress, until they had established in this quarter of the world a commercial empire, to which, whether we consider its extent, its opulence, the slender power by which it was formed, or the splendour by which its government was conducted, there had been hitherto nothing comparable in the history of nations. In the exclusive and undisturbed sovereignty of the East did they remain during the course of almost a century. At length the Dutch, and after them the English, ap peared as their rivals in the Indian seas, and with such success, that, in a short time, they drove them from their most valuable settlements, seized on the most lucrative branches of their commerce, and divided between them the commerce and the empire of the eastern world.