was of an island containing six hundred thousand families, so rich that the palaces of its nobles were covered with plates of gold. In such fashion ran the marvelous stories of Marco Polo, and these tales, in an age of credulity, created a profound impression; so strong, indeed, that it came to be believed that Polo had rediscovered the Tharshish of the Scriptures, that land of gold and spices that had enriched the Tyrian merchants, and of which it was said in Kings, chapter ten, “And all King Solomon’s drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the House of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold; none were of silver; it was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon. For the King had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram; once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold and silver, ivory, and apes and peacocks. So King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches and wisdom.”
A desire to reach this land, and to share in its mighty stores of easily acquired wealth became general. But getting there presented a problem that baffled the industrial enterprise of that day. A ship could not sail eastward from the Mediterranean, for there was then no Suez Canal to connect with the Red Sea. Caravans were commercially impracticable by reason of the long and perilous journey through intervening deserts, across mountain ranges, and among hostile peoples. To sail south was, in the then popular belief, to court certain death under torrid suns among death-dealing vapors.
