It was, in fact, a desire to extend both commerce and Christian religion into the far eastern lands which led to the rescue of geographical study from the evil state into which it had fallen. The Crusades form a group of incidents of no less geographical than of historical importance. Apart from their religious significance, they were undertaken with the object of discovering new routes by which the wealth of the east could be brought into commercial exchange with that of the west; and in connection with their religious significance they gave rise to a period of Christian missionary endeavour in the east. Both movements worked together to bring about the result of a discovery of Asia, so far as Europe was concerned, only less novel and important than the discovery of the New World by Columbus and his successors. Of the many travellers whose records assisted in this discovery a few may be mentioned as examples. The first whose journeys resulted in a noteworthy addition to knowledge of the Mongol Empire was Joannes de Plano Carpini, an Italian of Umbria, who led a catholic mission sent in 1245 by Pope Innocent IV to the Mongols shortly after their great invasion of eastern Europe. He was followed in 1253–55 by William of Rubruquis, a Franciscan, who was sent to Tartary by King Louis IX, and whose account is in many respects more valuable than that of Carpini. We may turn aside here to remark that the great philosopher, Roger Bacon (c. 1214–94), freely quoted Rubruquis in the geographical section of his Opus Majus. This work, and that of Albertus Magnus of Swabia (c. 1206–80), the student of Aristotle, exemplify the revival of interest in geographical theory along lines not dictated by Christian in opposition to pagan doctrines. Bacon revived Aristotle’s opinions as to the spherical form of the earth. He held that the sea did not cover three quarters of the globe, and that there must needs be lands unknown, to the south, east, and west of the known world, from which they must be separated only by narrow waters.

A traveller who followed new lines on the return of his expedition to the east was Hayton, King of Lesser Armenia, in 1224–69, whose journey was described by a member of his retinue. It led him (returning) through the Urumtsi region and the Ili valley, the neighbourhood of the modern Kulja and Aulie-ata, the Syr-darya valley, Samarkand, Bokhara, Merv, and northern Persia. Next follows the greatest name among the eastern travellers of this period, and one of the greatest among all; that of the Venetian Marco Polo (c. 1254–1324). His father Nicolo and his uncle Maffeo had travelled, before his birth, to China and established friendly relations with Kublai Khan. That ruler sent them back to Europe to ask the Pope to despatch a large embassy to his court, for he was anxious to extend his relations with the western world and his knowledge of western life. There was a long delay owing to an interregnum in the papacy, nor were the brothers able to obtain the large following the Khan had desired; but they started back to China themselves in 1271, and Marco accompanied them. They proceeded by way of Badakshan, the Pamirs, Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, Lop-nor (where they covered ground not again travelled by a European for five centuries), and the desert of Gobi. Marco Polo rose in favour at the court of the Khan. Among many activities he was employed on a mission to the Indies, and no opportunity arose for him to return home until 1292. He was then sent to accompany a Persian embassy on its return journey by sea, by way of Sumatra and India. The journey entailed long delays, and Marco only reached Venice in 1295. He subsequently dictated his experiences while a captive in Genoa, having been taken prisoner in a naval encounter between Genoa and Venice at Curzola in 1298. They were taken down by a fellow-captive of literary ability, Rusticiano of Pisa. His geographical achievements have been thus summarized4:—

Polo was the first traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude of Asia, naming and describing kingdom after kingdom which he had seen; the first to speak of the new and brilliant court which had been established at Peking; the first to reveal China in all its wealth and vastness, and to tell of the nations on its borders; the first to tell more of Tibet than its name, to speak of Burma, of Laos, of Siam, of Cochin-China, of Japan, of Java, of Sumatra and other islands of the archipelago, of the Nicobar and Andaman Islands, of Ceylon and its sacred peak, of India but as a country seen and partially explored; the first in mediÆval times to give any distinct account of the secluded Christian empire of Abyssinia, and of the semi-Christian island of Sokotra, and to speak, however dimly, of Zanzibar, and of the vast and distant Madagascar; while he carries us also to the remotely opposite region of Siberia and the Arctic shores, to speak of dog-sledges, white bears, and reindeer-riding Tunguses.

Among Polo’s successors were John of Montecorvino (c. 1247–1328), a Franciscan, who became Archbishop of Peking, and wrote the first valuable account of the Coromandel coast of India about 1291; and Jordanus, a French Dominican, who, having carried Catholicism into India about 1320, improved even upon Polo’s account of the general geography, climate, and products of the peninsula. Another Franciscan who was also a skilled observer both in China and India was Odoric of Pordenone (c. 1236–81).

It may be worth recalling the difficulties which stood in the way of immediately making use of the work of travellers and students at this period. Printing was not to come into use in Europe for a century yet. Scribes, no doubt, tended to pay most attention to works of the most popular sort, and it is, therefore, no matter for wonder if the works of conscientious travellers, such as we have been describing, did not obtain anything like a wide circulation within a short period of their production. On the other hand, a work which did obtain very wide favour, judged by the standard of the time, was that much-discussed account of wholly, or very largely, imaginary experiences and wonders which appeared first in French about 1357–71 under the name of Jean de Mandeville, or, in the more familiar English form, Sir John Mandeville. This is an account in the nature of a parody of the work of Odoric and other eastern travellers, in the sense that the writer took their facts and substituted or superimposed his own fictions. It is a matter for discussion how far his work was based, if it were based at all, on independent travel and research; yet it contains something of interest to students of the history of geography, if only as an opportunity for the exercise of their imagination—as, for example, when the writer tells a story of a man who started forth from his home and travelled always eastward, until at last he reached it again, thus encircling the globe. The difficulties in the way of disseminating knowledge will similarly account for the fact that, although the great Arab traveller Ibn Batuta has his place in this period, he in no way affected European geographical study. He was a native of Tangier (1304–78), who occupied thirty years of his life in travel, covering extraordinary distances in west, south, and east Asia, and in Africa, and wrote valuable accounts. Egypt, Arabia, and Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Persia, the territories north of the Black Sea and the Caspian, were all well known to this wanderer, who also sailed through the Red Sea and along the East African coast, visited many parts of India, the Maldive Islands, Ceylon, Sumatra, and China, and closed his career as a traveller with journeys through Spain and across the Sahara to Timbuktu. His journeys are estimated to have amounted to more than 75,000 miles. Modern criticism has proved the remarkable accuracy of his descriptions of many lands and places; but they were unknown to contemporary Europe, and, indeed, until the last century.

It may be said that if a traveller’s results did immediately come to be quoted as authoritative, it was in a measure accidental. We have already mentioned the use of the results of Rubruquis by his brother Franciscan, Roger Bacon; but Marco Polo’s results, for example, do not appear to have had any influence on cartography for about half-a-century. An excellent example of mediÆval cartography, before these results and others like them began to show their influence on maps, is provided by the celebrated map preserved in Hereford Cathedral, made about 1280 by Richard of Haldingham. Here is the world still shown as a round disk, with little conception of the form of the Mediterranean and its branch seas; while even the British Isles and north-west Europe are strangely distorted to fit the circle. Such is an illustration of the conception of the world still existing in western Europe. Few maps of special areas survive from this period, but that of Great Britain accompanying the work of the famous historical writer Matthew Paris (1259) is an example. It reveals, on the whole, a better idea of the internal features of the land than of its coasts and its shape, which somewhat resembles a fool’s-cap. There are also local maps of Palestine; and that country, it may be added here, is the subject of the earliest extant Christian map, in the form of a mosaic on the floor of a church in Madaba, in Syria: it dates from the sixth century. The Crusades would naturally give rise to a demand for maps of Palestine, and they also gave rise to a class of work which may be compared to the modern guide-book.

But among maps of special regions the most notable are those known as Portolano maps, which were sailing charts accompanying the Portolani, or sailing directions for the Mediterranean Sea. These, no doubt, existed long before the Crusades, in connection with which they first come to our knowledge. They are in most respects remarkably accurate. They are distinguished by groups of rhumb-lines radiating from a series of centres, and marked usually with the initials of the names of the principal winds. As the accuracy of these maps was probably improved largely as the mariners’ compass came into use, it may be mentioned that the first European notice of the use of that instrument is provided by the English scientist Alexander Neckam (1157–1217) of St. Albans, foster brother to King Richard I. From his mention it appears by this time to have been a familiar object. The chief centres for the production of Portolano maps were naturally those identified in an important degree with over-sea commerce; such were Genoa, Venice, Ancona, and Majorca, while the seamen of Catalonia were also prominent at this period. These maps were in some cases extended to cover lands and seas beyond the immediate Mediterranean area, and even the whole world. World maps were usually circular with Jerusalem as a centre, and, in contrast to their accuracy in respect of the Mediterranean, they were not distinguished as a rule for much regard to the best sources of information, though for that we have already adduced some measure of excuse. The map of the world by Petrus Vesconte of Genoa (c. 1320) shows the Mediterranean and the Black Seas well, the Nile fairly, the Caspian indifferently, Scandinavia badly. A mountain range extends west and east across almost the whole of northern Europe and central Asia; rivers drain southward to the Black Sea from this; the Indian Ocean appears as a gulf; the south-eastward extension of the African coast is retained, and the peninsular form of India is not realized. Subsequent cartographers disagreed on such points as this last. Thus in a Florentine map of about 1350, called the Laurentian or Medicean Portolano, the west coast of India is well shown, and the influence of Marco Polo’s travels is to some degree apparent. This map, moreover, has other details of interest, such as the first appearance in any known map of the Azores and the islands of Madeira with their modern names. The Catalan map of 1375 recognizes the peninsular form of India for the first time, and Marco Polo’s results are shown to be thoroughly appreciated; and yet a century later the old errors as to the form of India and Ceylon persist even in a map so excellent in many directions as that of Fra Mauro (1457).