SOURCE: "Marco Polo's Explorations and Their Influence upon Columbus," in The New England Magazine, Vol. VI, No. 6, August 1892, pp. 803-15.

In the following excerpt, Margesson briefly comments on the influence Polo's narrative had on Christopher Columbus.

While Columbus never directly mentions Polo, his hopes and fancies and the deeds of his late years are wholly incomprehensible if he had no acquaintance with the writings of the great Venetian. In a Latin version of Marco Polo, printed at Antwerp about 1485, preserved in the Columbina at Seville, there are marginal notes in the handwriting of Columbus, and he may have become familiar with the work while living in Lisbon, through the cosmographer, Martin Behaim, a native of Nuremburg, where it was published extensively. The recent invention of printing had begun not only to diffuse literature more widely, but to reduce the price of manuscripts; and in a country actively engaged...