The age did not lack daring explorers by land as well as by sea.

Lewis di Varthema rivalled his countryman Marco Polo by an extensive journey in the first decade of the century.

Like Burckhardt and Burton in the nineteenth century he visited Mecca and Medina as a Mohammedan pilgrim, and also journeyed to Cairo, Beirut, Aleppo and Damascus and then to the distant lands of India and the Malay peninsula.
[Sidenote: Russia] It may seem strange to speak of Russia in connection with the age of discovery, and yet it was precisely in the light of a new and strange land that our English ancestors regarded it.

Cabot's voyage to the {447} White Sea in the middle of the century was every whit as new an adventure as was the voyage to India.

Richard Chancellor and others followed him and established a regular trade with Muscovy, [Sidenote: 1553] and through it and the Caspian with Asia.