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IRELAND AND ST. BRANDON'S ISLE. From the Catalan map, 1375. |
These pilgrims tramped to and fro clad in simple tunics over a monkish dress of undyed wool, bound round the waist by a strong cord, all their worldly goods on their backs and a staff in their hands. The hermit instinct was growing, and men were sailing away to lonely islands where God might be better served apart from the haunts of men. Perhaps it was this instinct that inspired St. Brandon to sail away across the trackless ocean in search of the Island of Saints reported in the western seas. His voyage suggests the old expedition of Ulysses. A good deal of it is mythical, some is added at a later date, but it is interesting as being an attempt to cross the wide Atlantic Ocean across which no man had yet sailed. For seven years St. Brandon sailed on the unknown sea, discovering unknown islands, until he reached the Island of Saints—the goal of his desires. And the fact remains that for ten centuries after this an island, known as Brandon's Isle, was marked on maps somewhere to the west of Ireland, though to the end it remained as mysterious as the island of Thule.
Here is the old story. Brandon, abbot of a large Irish monastery containing one thousand monks, sailed off in an "osier boat covered with tanned hides and carefully greased," provisioned for seven years. After forty days at sea they reached an island with steep sides, where they took in fresh supplies. Thence the winds carried the ship to another island, where they found sheep—"every sheep was as great as an ox."
"This is the island of sheep, and here it is ever summer," they were informed by an old islander.
This may have been Madeira. They found other islands in the neighbourhood, one of which was full of singing-birds, and the passing years found them still tossing to and fro on the unknown sea, until at last the end came. "And St. Brandon sailed forty days south in full great tempest," and another forty days brought the ship right into a bank of fog. But when the fog lifted "they saw the fairest country eastward that any man might see, it was so clear and bright that it was a heavenly sight to behold; and all the trees were charged with ripe fruit." And they walked about the island for forty days and could not find the end. And there was no night there, and the climate was neither hot nor cold.
"Be ye joyful now," said a voice, "for this is the land ye have sought, and our Lord wills that you laden your ship with the fruit of this land and hie you hence, for ye may no longer abide here, but thou shalt sail again into thine own country."
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THE MYSTERIOUS ISLE OF ST. BRANDON IN MARTIN BEHAIM'S MAP, 1492. As geographical knowledge increased, map-makers were compelled to put Brandon's Isle farther and farther away from Ireland, until here we find it off the coast of Africa and near the Equator. |
So the monks took all the fruit they could carry, and, weeping that they might stay no longer in this happy land, they sailed back to Ireland. Hazy, indeed, was the geography of the Atlantic in the sixth century. Nor can we leave St. Brandon's story without quoting a modern poet, who believed that the voyage was to the Arctic regions and not in the Atlantic.
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"Saint Brandon sails the Northern Main, The brotherhood of saints are glad. He greets them once, he sails again: So late! Such storms! The saint is mad. He heard across the howling seas Chime convent bells on wintry nights; He saw, on spray-swept Hebrides, Twinkle the monastery lights: But north, still north, Saint Brandon steered, And now no bells, no convents more, The hurtling Polar lights are reached, The sea without a human shore." |
Some three hundred years were to pass away before further discoveries in these quarters revealed new lands, three hundred years before the great energy of the Vikings brought to light Iceland, Greenland, and even the coast of America.
CHAPTER XIII
AFTER MOHAMMED
So once more we turn back to the East. Jerusalem is still the centre of the earth. But a change has passed over the world, which influenced not a little the progress of geography. Mohammed in the seventh century lived and died in Arabia. "There is but one God, and Mohammed is His prophet," proclaimed his followers, the Arabs or Saracens as they were called. And just as men had travelled abroad to preach Christianity to those who knew it not, so now the Mohammedans set forth to teach the faith of their Lord and Master. But whereas Christianity was taught by peaceful means, Mohammedanism was carried by the sword. The Roman provinces of Syria and Egypt had been conquered by the Arabs, and the famous cities of Jerusalem and Alexandria were filled with teachers of the new faith. The Mohammedans had conquered Spain and were pressing by Persia towards India.
What deep root their preaching took in these parts is still evident. Still the weary fight between the two religions continues.
The first traveller of note through this distracted Europe was a Frenchman named Arculf, a Christian bishop. When he had visited the Holy Land and Egypt his ship was caught in a violent storm and driven on to the west coast of Scotland. After many adventures Arculf found himself at the famous convent of Iona, made welcome by an Irish monk Adamnan, who was deeply interested in Arculf's account of his wanderings, and wrote them down at his dictation, first on waxed tablets, copied later on to parchment. How tenderly the two monks dwell on all the glories of Jerusalem. "But in that beautiful place where once the Temple had been, the Saracens now frequent a four-sided house of prayer, which they have built, rudely constructing it by raising boards and great beams on some remains of ruins, which house can hold three thousand men at once." And Arculf draws on the waxed tablet the picture of some church or tomb to make his narrative clearer to his friend Adamnan.
Perhaps the most interesting part of all the travels is the account of the lofty column that Arculf describes in the midst of Jerusalem.
"This column," he says, "as it stands in the centre of the heaven, shining straight down from above, proves that the city of Jerusalem is situated in the middle of the earth."
Arculf's journey aroused great interest among the newly converted Christians of the north, and Willibald, a high-born Englishman, started off in 721 to explore farther. But the road through Europe was now full of danger. The followers of Mohammed were strong, and it required true courage to face the perils of the long journey. Willibald was undaunted, and with his father and two brothers he sailed from Southampton, crossed to France, sailed up the Seine to Rouen, and reached Italy. Here the old father died. Willibald and his brothers travelled on through "the vast lands of Italy, through the depths of the valleys, over the steep brows of the mountains, over the levels of the plains, climbing on foot the difficult passes of the Alps, over the icebound and snow-capped summits," till they arrived at Rome. Thence they made their way to Syria, where they were at once thrown into prison by Mohammedan conquerors. They were brought before the ruler of the Mohammedan world, or Khalif, whose seat was at Damascus. He asked whence they came.
"These men come from the western shore, where the sun sets: and we know not of any land beyond them, but water only," was the answer.
Such was Britain to the Mohammedans. They never got a footing in that country: their Empire lay to the east, and their capital was even now shifting to Bagdad.
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THE WORLD-MAP OF COSMAS, SIXTH CENTURY. This is the oldest Christian map. It shows the flat world surrounded by the ocean, with the four winds and the four sacred rivers running out of the terrestrial Paradise; beyond all is the "terra ultra oceanum," "the world beyond the ocean, where men dwelt before the flood." |
But before turning to their geographical discoveries we must see how Cosmas, the Egyptian merchant-monk, set the clock back by his quaint theories of the world in the sixth century. Cosmas hailed from "Alexander's great city." His calling carried him into seas and countries remote from home. He knew the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea. He had narrowly escaped shipwreck in the Indian Ocean, which in those days was regarded with terror on account of its violent currents and dense fogs. As the ship carrying the merchant approached this dread region, a storm gathered overhead, and flocks of albatross, like birds of ill-omen, hovered about the masts.
"We were all in alarm," relates Cosmas, "for all the men of experience on board, whether passengers or sailors, began to say that we were near the ocean and called out to the pilot: 'Steer the ship to port and make for the gulf, or we shall be swept along by the currents and carried into the ocean and lost.' For the ocean rushing into the gulf was swelling with billows of portentous size, while the currents from the gulf were driving the ship into the ocean, and the outlook was altogether so dismal that we were kept in a state of great alarm."
That he eventually reached India is clear, for he relates strange things concerning Ceylon. "There is a large oceanic island lying in the Indian Sea," he tells us. "It has a length of nine hundred miles and it is of the like extent in breadth. There are two kings in the island, and they are at feud the one with the other. The island, being as it is in a central position, is much frequented by ships from all parts of India, and from Persia and Ethiopia, and from the remotest countries, it receives silk, aloes, cloves, and other products ... farther away is the clove country, then Tzinista (China), which produces silk. Beyond this there is no other country, for the ocean surrounds it on the east."
Cosmas was the first to realise that China was bounded on the east by the ocean. He tells us a good story about the "Lord of India," who always went to war with two thousand elephants. "Once upon a time this king would lay siege to an island city of the Indians, which was on every side protected by water. A long while he sat down before it, until, what with his elephants, his horses, and his soldiers, all the water had been drunk up. He then crossed over to the city dryshod and took it."
| THE MOUNTAIN OF COSMAS, CAUSING NIGHT AND DAY AND THE SEASONS. |
But, strange as are the travels and information of Cosmas, still stranger is his Christian Topography. His commercial travelling done he retired, became a devout Christian monk, and devoted his leisure time in trying to reconcile all the progress of geographical knowledge with old Biblical ideas.
He assures us that the world is flat and not round, and that it is surrounded by an immense wall supporting the firmament. Indeed, if we compare the maps of Cosmas in the sixth century with those of the Babylonians thousands of years before, there is mighty little difference. With amazing courage he refutes all the old theories and draws the most astounding maps, which, nevertheless, are the oldest Christian maps which survive.
CHAPTER XIV
THE VIKINGS SAIL THE NORTHERN SEAS
A more interesting force than the pilgrim travellers now claims our attention, and we turn to the frozen north, to the wild region at the back of the north wind, for new activity and discovery. Out of this land of fable and myth, legend and poetry, the fierce inhabitants of Scandinavia begin to take shape. Tacitus speaks of them as "mighty in fame," Ptolemy as "savage and clothed in the skins of wild beasts."
From time to time we have glimpses of these folk sailing about in the Baltic Sea. They were known to the Finns of the north as "sea-rovers." "The sea is their school of war and the storm their friend; they are sea-wolves that live on the pillage of the world," sang an old Roman long years ago. The daring spirit of their race had already attracted the attention of Britons across the seas. The careless glee with which they seized either sword or oar and waged war with the stormy seas for a scanty livelihood, raiding all the neighbouring coasts, had earned them the name of Vikings or creek men. Their black-sailed ships stood high out of the water, prow and stern ending in the head and tail of some strange animal, while their long beards, their loose shirts, and battleaxe made them conspicuous. "From the fury of the Northmen save us, Lord," prayed those who had come in contact with these Vikings.
In the ninth century they spring into fame as explorers by the discovery of Iceland. It was in this wise. The chief of a band of pirates, one Naddod, during a voyage to the Faroe Islands was driven by a storm upon the eastern coast of an unknown land. Not a soul was to be seen. He climbed a high mountain covered with snow and took a look round, but though he could see far and wide, not a human being could he detect. So he named it Snow-land and sailed home to relate his adventures.
A few years later another Viking, Gardar, bound for the west coast of Scotland, was likewise blown by a storm on to the coast of Snow-land. He sailed right round and found it to be an island. Considering that it was unsafe to navigate the icy northern seas in winter, he built himself a hut on the island, lived there till the spring, and returned home. His account of the island fired the enthusiasm of an old Viking called Floki, who sailed away, meaning to take possession of the newly discovered country. At the Faroe Islands he let fly three ravens. The first returned, the second came back to the ship, the third guided the navigator to the island which he sought. He met a quantity of drift ice about the northern part of the island and called it Ice-land, the name it has borne ever since. But amid the Arctic ice he spent a desolate winter; the island seemed full of lofty mountains covered with eternal snow. His companions, however, were delighted with the climate and the soil.
"Milk drops from every plant and butter from every twig," they said; "this was a land where men might live free from the tyranny of kings." Free, indeed, for the island was totally uninhabited.
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A VIKING SHIP. A reconstruction (from Prof. Montelius's book on Scandinavian archæology) of an actual Viking ship found, almost complete, at Gokstad, Norway. |
Iceland soon became a refuge for pirates and other lawless characters. Among these was a young Viking called Erik the Red. He was too lawless even for Iceland, and, being banished for three years, he sailed away in 985 in search of new lands. At the end of his three years he returned and reported that he had discovered land with rich meadows, fine woods, and good fishing, which he had named Green-land. So glowing was his description that soon a party of men and women, with household goods and cattle, started forth in twenty-five ships to colonise the new land. Still the passion for discovery continued, and Erik's son Lief fitted out a vessel to carry thirty-five men in quest of land already sighted to the west.
It was in the year 1000 that they reached the coast of North America. It was a barren and rocky shore to which Lief gave the name of Rock-land. Sailing farther, they found a low coast wooded to its edge, to which they gave the simple name of Woody-land. Two days later an island appeared, and on the mainland they discovered a river up which they sailed. On low bushes by the banks of the river they found sweet berries or wild grapes from which a sort of wine was made, so Lief called the land Vin-land. It is now supposed that Vinland and Woodyland are really Newfoundland and Labrador on the shores of North America. After this, shipload followed shipload from Iceland to colonise Vinland. But without success.
So the Viking discoveries in these cold and inhospitable regions were but transitory. The clouds lifted but for a moment to settle down again over America, till it was rediscovered some five hundred years later.
Before leaving these northern explorers let us remind ourselves of the old saga so graphic in its description of their ocean lives—
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"Down the fiord sweep wind and rain; Our sails and tackle sway and strain; Wet to the skin We're sound within. Our sea-steed through the foam goes prancing, While shields and spears and helms are glancing From fiord to sea, Our ships ride free, And down the wind with swelling sail We scud before the gathering gale." |
Now, while these fierce old Vikings were navigating unknown seas, Alfred the Great was reigning over England. Among his many and varied interests he was deeply thrilled in the geography of the world. He was always ready to listen to those who had been on voyages of discovery, and in his account of the geography of Europe he tells us of a famous old sea captain called Othere, who had navigated the unknown seas to the north of Europe.
"Othere told his lord, King Alfred, that he dwelt northmost of all Northmen, on the land by the western sea. He said that the land is very long thence to the north; but it is all waste save that in a few places here and there Finns reside. He said that he wished to find out how far the land lay right north, or whether any man dwelt to the north of the waste. Then he went right north near the land, and he left all the way the waste land on the right and the wide sea on the left for three days. There was he as far north as the whale-hunters ever go. He then went yet right north, as far as he could sail in the next three days. After sailing for another nine days he came to a great river; they turned up into the river, but they durst not sail beyond it on account of hostility, for the land was all inhabited on the other side. He had not before met with any inhabited land since he came from his own home, for the land was uninhabited all the way on his right save by fishermen, hunters, and fowlers, and they were all Finns, and there was always a wide sea on his left."
And as a trophy of distant lands and a proof of his having reached farthest north, Othere presented the King with a "snow-white walrus tooth."
But King Alfred wanted his subjects to know more of the world around them, and even in the midst of his busy life he managed to write a book in Anglo-Saxon, which sums up for us the world's knowledge some nine hundred years after Ptolemy—nine hundred barren years as far as much geographical progress was concerned. Alfred does not even allude to Iceland, Greenland, or Vinland. The news of these discoveries had evidently not reached him. He repeats the old legend of Thule to the north-west of Ireland, "which is known to few, on account of its very great distance."
So ends the brief but thrilling discoveries of the Northmen, who knew not fear, and we turn again to landsmen and the east.
CHAPTER XV
ARAB WAYFARERS
And now we leave the fierce energy of the Northmen westwards and turn to another energy, which was leading men toward the east, to the lands beyond the Euphrates, to India, across central Asia, even into far Cathay.
These early travellers to the east were for the most part Arabs. Mohammed had bidden his followers to spread his teaching far and wide; this teaching had always appealed more to the eastern than to the western mind. So farther and farther to the east travelled the Arabs, converting the uncivilised tribes that Christianity had not reached.
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A KHALIF ON HIS THRONE. From the Ancona map, 1497. |
What a contrast are these Arabs to the explorers of the vigorous north. They always travelled by land and not by that sea which was life to the Viking folk. To the Arabs the encircling ocean was a very "Sea of Darkness"; indeed, the unknown ocean beyond China was called the "Sea of Pitchy Darkness." Their creed taught that the ocean was boundless, so that ships dared not venture out of sight of land, for there was no inhabited country beyond, and mariners would assuredly be lost in mists and fogs. So, while the Vikings tossed fearlessly about the wild northern seas, the Arab wayfarers rode eastward by well-known caravan tracks, trading and teaching the ways of Mohammed. Arabic enterprise had pushed on far beyond Ptolemy's world. The Arab centre lay in the city of Bagdad, the headquarters of the ruler or Khalif of the Mohammedan world. They had already opened up a considerable trade with the rapidly rising Mongol Empire, which no European had yet reached.
But as this country was to play a large part in the travels of the near future, it will be interesting to hear the account given by two Mohammedan friends who journeyed thither in the year 831, just four hundred years before Marco Polo's famous account. The early part of their story is missing, and we raise the curtain when they have arrived in the land of China itself, then a very small empire compared with what it is now.
"The Emperor of China reckons himself next after the King of the Arabs, who they all allow to be the first and beyond all dispute the most powerful of kings, because he is the head of a great religion. In this great kingdom of China they tell us there are over two hundred cities; each city has four gates, at each of which are five trumpets, which the Chinese sound at certain hours of the day and of the night. There are also within each city ten drums, which they beat at the same time as a public token of their obedience to the Emperor, as also to signify the hour of the day and of the night, to which end they also have dials and clocks with weights.
"China is a pleasant and fruitful country; the air is much better than the Indian provinces: much rain falls in both these countries. In India are many desert tracts, but China is inhabited and peopled throughout its whole extent. The Chinese are handsomer than the Indians, and come nearer the Arabs, not only in countenance, but in dress, in their way of riding, in their manners, and in their ceremonies. They wear long garments and girdles in form of belts. The Chinese are dressed in silk both winter and summer, and this kind of dress is common to the prince and the peasant. Their food is rice, which they often eat with a broth which they pour upon the rice. They have several sorts of fruits, apples, lemons, quinces, figs, grapes, cucumbers, walnuts, almonds, plums, apricots, and cocoanuts."
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A CHINESE EMPEROR GIVING AUDIENCE, NINTH CENTURY. From an old Chinese MS. at Paris, showing an Emperor of the dynasty that was ruling when the two Mohammedans visited China in 831. |
Here, too, we get the first mention of tea, which was not introduced into Europe for another seven hundred years, but which formed a Chinese drink in the ninth century. This Chinese drink "is a herb or shrub, more bushy than the pomegranate tree an of a more pleasant scent, but somewhat bitter to the taste. The Chinese boil water and pour it in scalding hot upon this leaf, and this infusion keeps them from all distempers."
Here, too, we get the first mention of china ware. "They have an excellent kind of earth, wherewith they make a ware of equal fineness with glass and equally transparent."
There is no time here to tell of all the curious manners and customs related by these two Mohammedans. One thing struck them as indeed it must strike us to-day. "The Chinese, poor and rich, great and small, learn to read and write. There are schools in every town for teaching the poor children, and the masters are maintained at public charge.... The Chinese have a stone ten cubits high erected in the public squares of their cities, and on this stone are engraved the names of all the medicines, with the exact price of each; and when the poor stand in need of physic they go to the treasury where they receive the price each medicine is rated at."
It was out of such travels as these that the famous romance of "Sindbad the Sailor" took shape—a true story of Arab adventures of the ninth and tenth centuries in a romantic setting. As in the case of Ulysses, the adventures of many voyages are ascribed to one man and related in a collection of tales which bears the title of The Arabian Nights.
Of course, Sindbad was a native of Bagdad, the Arab centre of everything at this time, and of course he journeyed eastwards as did most Mohammedans.
"It occurred to my mind," says Sindbad, "to travel to the countries of other people; then I arose and collected what I had of effects and apparel and sold them, after which I sold my buildings and all that my hand possessed and amassed three thousand pieces of silver. So I embarked in a ship, and with a company of merchants we traversed the sea for many days and nights. We had passed by island after island and from sea to sea and land to land, and in every place we sold and bought and exchanged merchandise. We continued our voyage until we arrived at an island like one of the gardens of Paradise."
Here they anchored and lit fires, when suddenly the master of the ship cried aloud in great distress: "Oh, ye passengers, come up quickly into the ship, leave your merchandise and flee for your lives, for this apparent island, upon which ye are, is not really an island, but it is a great fish that hath become stationary in the midst of the sea, and the sand hath accumulated upon it and trees have grown upon it, and when ye lighted a fire it felt the heat, and now it will descend with you into the sea and ye will all be drowned." As he spoke the island moved and "descended to the bottom of the sea with all that were upon it, and the roaring sea, agitated with waves, closed over it."
Let Sindbad continue his own story: "I sank in the sea with the rest. But God delivered me and saved me from drowning and supplied me with a great wooden bowl, and I laid hold upon it and gat into it and beat the water with my feet as with oars, while the waves sported with me. I remained so a day and a night, until the bowl came to a stoppage under a high island whereupon were trees overhanging the sea. So I laid hold upon the branch of a lofty tree and clung to it until I landed on the island. Then I threw myself upon the island like one dead."
After wandering about he found servants of the King of Borneo, and all sailed together to an island beyond the Malay Peninsula. And the King of Borneo sent for Sindbad and heaped him with honours. He gave him costly dress and made him superintendent of the seaport and adviser of affairs of state. And Sindbad saw many wonders in this far-distant sea. At last "one day I stood upon the shore of the sea, with a staff in my hand, as was my custom, and lo! a great vessel approached wherein were many merchants." They unloaded their wares, telling Sindbad that the owner of their goods, a man from Bagdad, had been drowned and they were selling his things.
"What was the name of the owner of the goods?" asked Sindbad.
"His name was Sindbad of the Sea."
Then Sindbad cried: "Oh, master, know that I am the owner of the goods and I am Sindbad of the Sea."
Then there was great rejoicing and Sindbad took leave of this King of Borneo and set sail for Bagdad—the Abode of Peace.
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The romance of "Sindbad the Sailor" is really a true story
of Arab adventures at sea during the ninth and tenth centuries, put
into a romantic setting and ascribed to one man. In the above map,
which is a portion of the map of the world made by the famous Arab
geographer, Edrisi, in 1154 A.D., many of the places to which Sindbad's
story relates have been identified. Their modern names are as
follows:— |
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| Kotroba is (probably) Socotra. | Rami, the "Island of Apes," is Sumatra. |
| Koulam Meli is Coulan, near Cape Comorin. | Maid Dzaba, the "island with the volcano," is Banca. |
| HIND is INDIA. | Senf is Tsiampa, S. Cochin—China. |
| Serendib is Ceylon. | Mudza (or Mehrage) is Borneo. |
| Murphili (or Monsul), the "Valley of Diamonds," is Masulipatam. | Kamrun is Java. |
| Roibahat, the "Clove Islands," are the Maldive Islands. | Maid, the Camphor Island, is Formosa. |
Edrisi's names are those which are used in the Arabian Nights. |
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But the spirit of unrest was upon him and soon he was off again. Indeed, he made seven voyages in all, but there is only room here to note a few of the most important points in each. This time he sailed to the coast of Zanzibar, East Africa, and, anchoring on the beautiful island of Madagascar, amid sweet-smelling flowers, pure rivers, and warbling birds, Sindbad fell asleep. He awoke to find the ship had sailed away, leaving him without food or drink, and not a human being was to be seen on the island.
"Then I climbed up into a lofty tree and began to look from it to the right and left, but saw nothing save sky and water and trees and birds and islands and sands."
At last he found an enormous bird. Unwinding his turban, he twisted it into a rope and, tying one end round his wrist, tied the other to one of the bird's great feet. Up flew the giant bird high into the sky and Sindbad with it, descending somewhere in India in the Valley of Diamonds. This bird was afterwards identified as an enormous eagle.
"And I arose and walked in that valley," says Sindbad, "and I beheld its ground to be composed of diamonds, with which they perforate minerals and jewels, porcelain, and the onyx, and it is a stone so hard that neither iron nor rock have any effect upon it. All that valley was likewise occupied by serpents and venomous snakes."
Here Sindbad found the camphor trees, "under each of which trees a hundred men might shade themselves." From these trees flowed liquid camphor. "In this island, too, is a kind of wild beast, called rhinoceros—it is a huge beast with a single horn, thick, in the middle of its head, and it lifteth the great elephant upon its horn."
Thus, after collecting heaps of diamonds, Sindbad returned to Bagdad—a rich man.
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SINDBAD'S GIANT ROC. From an Oriental miniature painting. |
Again his soul yearns for travel. This time he starts for China, but his ship is driven out of its course and cast on the Island of Apes, probably Sumatra. These apes, "the most hideous of beasts, covered with hair like black felt," surrounded the ship. They climbed up the cables and severed them with their teeth to Sindbad's great alarm. He escaped to the neighbouring islands known as the Clove Islands, and again reached Bagdad safely. Again and yet again he starts forth on fresh adventures. Now he is sailing on the seas beyond Ceylon, now his ship is being pursued by a giant roc whose young have been killed and eaten by Sindbad. Sindbad as usual escapes upon a plank, and sails to an island, where he meets the "Old Man of the Sea," probably a huge ape from Borneo. On he passed to the "Island of Apes," where, every night, the people who reside in it go forth from the doors of the city that open upon the sea in their fear of the apes lest they should come down upon them in the night from the mountains. After this we find Sindbad trading in pepper on the Coromandel coast of modern India and discovering a wealth of pearls by the seashore of Ceylon. But at last he grew tired of seafaring, which was never congenial to Arabs.
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"Hateful was the dark blue sky, Vaulted o'er the dark blue sea; Sore task to heart, worn out by many wars; And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot stars." |
So he leaves private adventuring alone and is appointed by the Khalif of Bagdad to convey a letter and present to the Indian prince of Ceylon—an expedition that lasts him twenty-seven years. The presents were magnificent. They included a horse worth ten thousand pieces of gold, with its saddle adorned with gold set with jewels, a book, a splendid dress, and some beautiful white Egyptian cloth, Greek carpets, and a crystal cup. Having duly delivered these gifts, he took his leave, meaning to return to his own country. But the usual adventures befell him. This time his ship was surrounded by a number of boats on board of which were men like little devils with swords and daggers. These attacked the ship, captured Sindbad, and sold him to a rich man as a slave. He set him to shoot elephants from a tree with bows and arrows. At last, after many other adventures and having made seven long voyages, poor Sindbad reached his home.
CHAPTER XVI
TRAVELLERS TO THE EAST
But if the Sindbad saga is based on the stories of Mohammedan travellers and sum up Arab adventure by sea in the tenth century, we must turn to another Arab—Massoudy by name—for land travel of the same period. Massoudy left his home at Bagdad very young and seems to have penetrated into every Mohammedan country from Spain to farther India. In his famous Meadows of Gold, with its one hundred and thirty-two chapters, dedicated to "the most illustrious Kings," he describes the various lands through which he has travelled, giving us at the same time a good deal of incorrect information about lands he has never seen.
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"I have gone so far towards the setting sun That I have lost all remembrance of the east, And my course has taken me so far towards the rising sun That I have forgotten the very name of west." |
One cannot but look with admiration on the energetic Arab traveller, when one remembers the labour of travel even in the tenth century. There were the long, hot rides through central Asia, under a burning sun, the ascent of unknown mountains, the crossing of unbridged rivers. From his lengthy work we will only extract a few details. Though he had "gone so far toward the setting sun," his knowledge of the West was very limited, and while Vikings tossed on the Atlantic westwards, Massoudy tells us that it is "impossible to navigate beyond the Pillars of Hercules, for no vessel sails on that sea; it is without cultivation or inhabitant, and its end, like its depth, is unknown." Such was the "Green Sea of Darkness" as it was called by the Arabs. Massoudy is more at home when he journeys towards the rising sun to the East, but his descriptions of China, the "Flowery Land," the "Celestial Country," were to be excelled by others.
We must pass over Edrisi, who in 1153 wrote on "The going abroad of a curious Man to explore all the Wonders of the World," which wonders he explored very imperfectly, though he has left us a map of the world, which may be seen to-day at the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
But we cannot pass over Benjamin of Tudela in so few words. "Our Benjamin" he is called by Pinkerton, who in the eighteenth century made a wonderful collection of voyages and travels of all ages. "Our Benjamin" was a Jew hailing from Tudela in Spain, and he started forth on his travels with a view to ascertaining the condition and numbers of Jews living in the midst of the great Mohammedan Empire. Benjamin made his way in the year 1160 to the "exceeding great city" of Constantinople, which "hath none to compare with it except Bagdad—the mighty city of the Arabs." With the great temple of St. Sophia and its pillars of gold and silver, he was immensely struck. In wrapt admiration he gazed at the Emperor's palace with its walls of beaten gold, its hanging crown suspended over the Imperial throne, blazing with precious stones, so splendid that the hall needed no other light. No less striking were the crimson embroidered garments worn by the Greeks, who rode to and from the city like princes on horseback. Benjamin turns sadly to the Jewish quarter. No Jew might ride on horseback here. All were treated as objects of contempt; they were herded together, often beaten in the streets.
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JERUSALEM AND THE PILGRIMS' WAYS TO IT IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY. From a map of the twelfth century at Brussels. |
From the wealth and luxury of Constantinople Benjamin makes his way to Syria. At Jerusalem he finds some two hundred Jews commanding the dyeing trade. And here we must remind ourselves that the second crusade was over and the third had not yet taken place, that Jerusalem, the City of Peace, had been in the hands of the Mohammedans or Saracens till 1099, when it fell into the hands of the Crusaders. From Jerusalem, by way of Damascus, Benjamin entered Persia, and he gives us an interesting account of Bagdad and its Khalifs. The Khalif was the head of the Mohammedans in the same way that the Pope was the head of the Christians. "He was," says "Our Benjamin," "a very dignified personage, friendly towards the Jews, a kind-hearted man, but never to be seen." Pilgrims from distant lands, passing through Bagdad on their way to Mecca, prayed to be allowed to see "the brightness of his face," but they were only allowed to kiss one end of his garment. Now, although Benjamin describes the journey from Bagdad to China, it is very doubtful if he ever got to China himself, so we will leave him delighting in the glories of Bagdad, with its palm trees, its gardens and orchards, rejoicing in the statistics of Jews, and turn to the adventures of one, Carpini, who really did reach Tartary.
This Carpini, or Friar John, was a Franciscan who was chosen by the Pope to go to the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which was threatening to overrun Christendom. On 16th April 1245, Friar John left the cloister for the unknown tract of country by which he had to pass into China. By way of Bohemia he passed into Russia, and, having annexed Brother Benedict in Poland and Brother Stephen in Bohemia, together with a guide, Carpini made his way eastwards. It was mid-winter; the travellers had to ride on Tartar horses, "for they alone could find grass under the snow, or live, as animals must in Tartary, without hay or straw." Sometimes Friar John fell so ill that he had to be placed in a cart and carried through the deep snow.
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TWO EMPERORS OF TARTARY. From the Catalan map, 1375. |
It was Easter 1246, just a year after their start, that Friar John and his companions began the last section of their journey beyond the Volga, and "most tearfully we set out," not knowing whether it was "for life or for death." So thin had they all become that not one of them could ride. Still they toiled on, till one July day they entered Mongolia and found the headquarters of the Great Khan about half a day's journey from Karakorum. They arrived in time to witness the enthronement of the new Khan in August. Here were crowds of ambassadors from Russia and Persia as well as from outlying parts of the growing Mongol Empire. These were laden with gifts—indeed, there were no less than five hundred crates full of silks, satins, brocades, fur, gold embroidery. Friar John and his companions had no gifts to offer save the letter from the Pope.
Impressive, indeed, in the eyes of the once cloistered friar must have been this first sight of Eastern splendour. High on a neighbouring hill stood the Khan's tent, resting on pillars plated with gold, top and sides covered with silk brocades, while the great ceremony took place. But the men of the West were not welcomed by the new Emperor of the East. It was supposed that he intended shortly to unfurl his Standard against the whole of the Western world, and in November Friar John and his companions found themselves formally dismissed with a missive from the Great Khan to the Pope, signed and sealed by the Khan himself.