Maundevile, we have no trace in truthful Marco. The former, “lying with
a circumstance,” tells us boldly that he was in 33° of South Latitude;
the latter is full of wonder that some of the Indian Islands where he
had been lay so far to the south that you lost sight of the Pole-star.
When it rises again on his horizon he estimates the Latitude by the
Pole-star’s being so many _cubits_ high. So the gallant Baber speaks
of the sun having mounted _spear-high_ when the onset of battle began
at Paniput. Such expressions convey no notion at all to such as have
had their ideas sophisticated by angular perceptions of altitude, but
similar expressions are common among Orientals,[8] and indeed I have
heard them from educated Englishmen. In another place Marco states
regarding certain islands in the Northern Ocean that they lie so
very far to the north that in going thither one actually leaves the
Pole-star a trifle behind towards the south; a statement to which we
know only one parallel, to wit, in the voyage of that adventurous Dutch
skipper who told Master Moxon, King Charles II.’s Hydrographer, that he
had sailed two degrees beyond the Pole!
[Sidenote: Map constructed on Polo’s data.]