Having small knowledge of travelers' tales they made application to the Admiral who, nothing loth, answered them out of Marco Polo, Mandeville and Pedro de Aliaco.
But the ardor of his mind was such that he outwent his authors.

Where the Venetian said "gold" the Genoese said "Much gold." Where the one saw powerful peoples with their own customs, courts, armies, temples, ships and trade, the other gave to these an unearthly tinge of splendor.
Often as he sat in cabin or on deck, or rising paced to and fro, we who listened to his account, listened to poet and enthusiast speaking of earths to come.

Besides books like those of Marco Polo and John Mandeville and the Bishop of Cambrai he had studied philosophers and the ancients and Scripture and the Fathers.

He spoke unwaveringly of prophecies, explicit and many, of his voyage, and the rounding out of earth by him, Christopherus Columbus.

More than once or twice, in the great cabin, beneath the swinging lantern, he repeated to us such passages, his voice making great poetry of old words.