TWO thousand years ago the Greek geographers were fighting among themselves about the original meaning of the word Asia. So there is no use in trying to solve the problem today.The theory that the word Ereb or“darkness”was the name which the sailors from Asia Minor had bestowed upon the land in the west where the sun went down and Acu or“glorious”upon the land in the east where the sun arose seems to be as good or as bad as any other.

Then we come to the next point, which is of greater importance. How and when did the people of Europe begin to suspect that they were not the center of the world?That their own home was but the small peninsula of an infinitely larger piece of land inhabited by ever so many more people, many of whom enjoyed a much higher degree of civilization, so that the Trojan heroes were fighting each other with weapons of such prehistoric shape that the intelligent Chinese had long since placed them in their museums of obsolete historical curiosities?

Usually Marco Polo is mentioned as the first European to visit Asia, but there had been others before him, although we know very little definite about them. As has happened so often in the realm of geography, it was war rather than peace which widened our knowledge of the Asiatic map.The chance to do business with the people over seas made the Greeks familiar with Asia Minor.The Trojan war was not without its educational side.The three great Persian expeditions against the west helped matters along very nicely.I doubt whether the Persians knew where they were going.Did the Greeks mean much more to them than the Indians of the west meant to General Braddock when he moved into the wilderness to attack Fort Duquesne?I doubt it.The return visit of Alexander the Great, a couple of centuries later, was already something more than a mere military campaign, and Europe got its first scientific ideas about the territory lying between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

The Romans were by far too much pleased with themselves to take a really serious interest in“foreign”lands. As a source of revenue, to allow them to live a more luxurious existence at home, all foreign countries were grist to their mill.But the people whom they administered meant nothing to them whatsoever.Provided they paid their taxes and worked on the roads, they could live and die and quarrel among themselves as they pleased.They never even tried to understand what happened around them.In a crisis they called for the guards, did enough shooting to reestablish order, and washed their hands of the whole affair.

Pontius Pilate was neither a weakling nor a scoundrel. He was merely a typical Roman colonial administrator with a good record for“regularity”and highly commended by those at home for his beautiful ignorance about the natives entrusted to his care.Once in a while some queer person like Marcus Aurelius would come to the throne, who derived a positive pleasure from sending a diplomatic mission to the mysterious, slant-eyed people of the Far East.When they returned and told of the strange things they had seen, they were a seven days'wonder.Then the Roman mob tired of them and went back to the exciting daily shows of the Colosseum.

The Crusades taught Europe a few things about Asia Minor, Palestine and Egypt, but the world continued to end on the eastern shores of the Dead Sea.

The story which finally made Europe“Asia-conscious”was not the result of a serious“scientific”expedition, but was due to the labors of a hack-writer who had never set eyes upon the countries of which he wrote, a poor penny-a-liner looking for a subject that might prove popular.

The father and uncle of Marco Polo were Venetian merchants whose business dealings had brought them into contact with Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan. Kublai Khan happened to be a man of great intelligence who thought that his people would be benefited by the introduction of a certain amount of western efficiency.He had heard that two Venetians occasionally visited Bokhara, a country in Turkestan between the Amu-Darya and the Syr-Darya at the foot of the Altai Mountains.He invited them to come to Peking.They went and were received with great honors.After several years they decided that their families needed them.The Khan bade them go home for a while and return and bring their bright young son and nephew Marco, about whom they had been talking so much.

In the year 1275,after a trip of three and a half years, the Polo family returned to Peking. Young Marco was all he had been said to be.He became a favorite at the court of Peking, was made governor of a province, received titles and honors, but after two dozen years he got homesick and so returned to Venice by way of India(he did that part of the voyage on ship-board)and Persia and Syria.

His neighbors, not in the least interested in tall stories, nicknamed him Marco Millions, for he was forever telling them how rich the Khan was and how many golden statues there were in this temple or that, and how many silken gowns the concubines of such and such a prime-minister owned. Why should they believe such yarns, when it was well-known that even the wife of the Emperor of Constantinople had only a single pair of silk stockings?

And Marco Millions might have died and his story might have died with him if Venice and Genoa had not engaged in one of their little quarrels just then, and if Marco, as commander of a Venetian galley, had not been taken prisoner by the victorious Genoese. He remained in prison for a year, sharing his cell with a citizen from Pisa by the name of Rusticiano.This Rusticiano had had some experience as a writer.He had popularized a number of Arthurian tales and cheap French novels, the Nick Carter stuff of the Middle Ages.He quickly recognized the publicity value of the great Polo story, and during their time in jail he pumped Marco dry for information.Taking down everything Marco told him, he gave the world a book which is read quite as much today as when it was first published in the fourteenth century.

What probably gave the book its success was its constant references to gold and to riches of all sorts. The Romans and the Greeks had vaguely spoken of the opulence of eastern potentates but Polo had been on the spot, had seen all these things with his own eyes.The efforts to find a shortcut to the Indies really date from that time.But the task was difficult.

Finally in 1498 the Portuguese got as far as the Cape of Good Hope. Ten years later they were in India.Forty years later they were in Japan.Meanwhile Magellan, coming from the east, had reached the Philippine Islands, and by that time the exploitation of southern Asia was in full swing.

So much for the general outline. How Siberia was discovered, I have already told.The first visitors to the other countries will be given honorable mention when we get to them.