recently been made in the art of navigation. The magnetic compass enabled
seamen to set their course when the sun and stars could not be seen. The
astrolabe (picture, p. 35) made it possible roughly to estimate distances
from the equator, or latitude. These instruments enabled mariners to go on
long voyages far from land. Read the account of the Portuguese voyages in
Fiske's _Discovery of America_, Vol. I, pp. 294-334.

[4] Christopher Columbus was a native of Genoa, Italy, where he was born
about 1436. He was the son of a wool comber. At fourteen he began a
seafaring life, and between voyages made charts and globes. About 1470 he
wandered to Portugal, went on one or two voyages down the African coast,
and on another (1477) went as far north as Iceland. Meantime (1473) he
married a Portuguese woman and made his home at the Madeira Islands; and
it was while living there that he formed the plan of finding a new route
to the far East.

[5] In 1271 Marco Polo, then a lad of seventeen, was taken by his father
and uncle from Venice to the coast of Persia, and thence overland to
northwestern China, to a city where Kublai Khan held his court. They were
well received, and Marco spent many years making journeys in the khan's
service. In 1292 they were sent to escort a royal bride for the khan from
Peking (in China) to Tabriz, a city in Persia. They sailed from China in
1292, reached the Persian coast in 1294, and arrived safely at Tabriz,
whence they returned to Venice in 1295. In 1298 Marco was captured in a
war with Genoa, and spent about a year in prison. While thus confined he
prepared an account of his travels, one of the most famous books of the
Middle Ages. He described China (or Cathay, as it was then called), with
its great cities teeming with people, its manufactures, and its wealth,
told of Tibet and Burma, the Indian Archipelago with its spice islands, of
Java and Sumatra, of Hindustan,--all from personal knowledge. From hearsay