The Voiage and Travayle of Sir John Maundeville Knight / Which treateth of the way towards Hierusalem and of marvayles of Inde with other ilands and countreys

Chapter 100: CAP. XCII.

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About This Book

The narrator offers a medieval travelogue that traces routes toward Jerusalem and across regions of Asia, Africa, and India, blending eyewitness-style observations, borrowed reports, and fantastic tales. It catalogs cities, landscapes, animals, plants, trade goods, and unfamiliar customs, alternating itinerary notes with moral and religious commentary. Frequent digressions present marvels and monstrous races alongside practical details about pilgrim routes, local rites, and fortifications, producing a text that shifts between guidebook information and imaginative storytelling. The structure mixes descriptive chapters with episodic anecdotes, inviting readers to weigh veracity while encountering the era's geographical knowledge, commerce, and popular curiosities.

CAP. XCII.

Of an yland wherein dwell people as great as giants of xxviii or xxx fote of length & other things.

AND beyond that valey is a great yle, where people as great as giaunts of xxviii fote long & they haue no clothinge but beasts skyns that hang on them, & they eate no bread but flesh raw and they drink milke, & they haue no houses, & they eat gladlyer fleshe of men, than other, & men saye to us, that beyond that yle is a yle where are greater giaunts as xlv or L fote long, & some sayd L cubits long, but I saw not them, and among those giaunts are great shepe, as it were young oxen, and they beare great wolle, these shepe haue I sene many times. An other yle is there northward where are many evill and fell women and they haue precious stones in their eies, & they haue suche kinde y^t if they beholde any man with wrath, they sley them of the beholding as the Basalysk doeth.¹

1: Here a passage is omitted.