Columbus was an avid reader, and he had studied works by historic travelers ranging from the ancient Greek polymath Ptolemy to the thirteenth-century Venetian adventurer Marco Polo (see chapter 10). He had also pored over a colorful fourteenth-century travelogue—partly derivative of other sources and partly imaginary—supposedly by an English knight called Sir John Mandeville. The author claimed to have written this “because it has been a long time since there was a crusading expedition overseas, and because many men long to hear about that land [i.e., the former kingdom of Jerusalem] and
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