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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 cover

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 17: CAP. IX.
By Sir John Mandeville
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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. IX.

Of the hill Carme.

AND the yle of Grece1 is right in the mid way, and beside this citie of Acon towarde the sea at viii2 hundred furlonges on the righte hande towarde the southe is the hil Carme3 where Elias the prophet dwelled, and there was the ordre of Carme4 fyrst founded. This hyl is not ryghte greate, ne hygh, and at the foote of this hill was sometime a good citie of chrysten men, that was called Cayphas, for Cayphas founded it, but it is nowe all wasted. And at the lyfte syde of the hyll is a Town that men call Saffre, and that is sette upon another hil, there was Sainct James and saynt John borne, and in the worshippe of them is there a faire church made. And from Tholomayda that men now call Acon, to a great hill that men call Ekale5 de Tyrreys is an hundred furlongs, and beside that citie of Acon runneth a lyttle ryver that men call Belyon, and there nere is the fosse of Minon6 all round that is a hundred cubytes or shaftments7 broade, and it is all full of gravell, cleare shyninge, whereof men make white glasse cleare, and men come from far countreys by shippe, and by lande with cartes to take of the gravell & if there be never so much taken thereof in a daye, on the morow it is full againe as ever it was, and that is great marvaile, and there is alwaye winde in that fosse that styreth alway the gravell and maketh it troubled. And if a man put or do therein any mettal, as sone as it is therein it waxeth glasse, and the glasse that is made of this gravell if it be done8 into the gravell tourneth againe into the gravell as it was before & some say that it is a swallow9 of the sea gravell.10

1:  Crete.

2:  Pynson and others say 120 furlongs.

3:  Carmel.

4:  Carmelite friars.

5:  The scale, or ladder, of Tyre.

6:  Meaning the sepulchre of Memnon.

7:  A shaftment was a measure taken from the top of the extended thumb to the outmost part of the palm—usually taken as six inches.

8:  Buried.

9:  Whirlpool.

10:  This story is said to come from Solinus, and is mentioned in Münster's Cosmographia, and in other books.