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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 68: CAP. LX.
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. LX.

Of the ylande of Melke wherein dwelleth evill people.

FROM thence menne go through many yles by sea unto an yle that men call Melke, and there be full yll people, for they haue none other delyte but to fyght and slee men, for they drinke gladly mans blood, which blood they call good, and they that maye most sleay is of moste name amonge them. And if two men there be at stryfe and after bee made at one, it behoveth them to drink eyther others blood, or else the accorde is nought. From this yle men go to an yle that is called Tracota where all men are as beastes & not reasonable, they dwell in caves, for they haue not wyt to make them houses, they eate adders1 and they speake not, but they make such a noyse as adders doe one to another, and they make no force of ryches but of a stone that hath forty colours, and it is called Traconyt after that yle, they know not the vertue thereof but they covete it for the great fayreness.

1:  Pliny speaks (Book 7, cap. 2) of adder-eating people in India and elsewhere, but he says they live to the age of four hundred years, which is supposed to be owing to the flesh of vipers, which they use as food, in consequence of which they are free from all noxious animals, both in their hair and their garments. In book 29, c. 38, he also gives directions for the preparation of viper's flesh for food.