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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 93: CAP. LXXXV.
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. LXXXV.

Of the land of Bactry, and of many Griffons and other beastes.

FROM this land men shal go unto the land of Bactry,1 where are many wicked men & fell,2 in that land are trees that beare wol,3 as it were shepe, of which they make cloth. In this land are ypotains4 that dwel sometime on land, sometime on water, and are halfe a man and halfe a horse, and they eate not but men, when they may get them. In this land are many gryffons, more than in other places, and some say they haue the body before as an Egle, and behinde as a Lyon, and it is trouth, for they be made so; but the Griffen hath a body greater than viii Lyons and stall worthier5 than a hundred Egles. For certainly he wyl beare to his nest flying, a horse and a man upon his back, or two Oxen yoked togither as they go at plowgh, for he hath longe nayles on hys fete, as great as it were hornes of Oxen,6 and of those they make cups there to drynke of, and of his rybes7 they make bowes to shoote with.

1:  Bactria.

2:  Crafty.

3:  Wool.

4:  Hippopotamuses.

5:  Stouter, braver.

6:  The editor of the edition of 1827 says, in a footnote, p. 325: "One 4 foot long, in the Cotton Library, has a Silver Hoop about the end, whereon is engraven Griphi Unguis, Divo Cuthberto Dunelmensi sacer. Another, about an Ell long, is mentioned by Dr. Greis, in his History of the Rarities of the Royal Society, p. 26; tho' the Doctor there supposes it rather the horn of a Rock Buck, or of the Ibex mas." Such was science a little over fifty years since!

7:  Ribs.