'This is a traveller, sir, knows men and -BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE-JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT SIR MARTIN FROBISHER SIR FRANCIS DRAKE-CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH-LORD ANSON CAPTAIN JAMES COOK-JAMES BRUCE-LEDYARD-MUNGO PARK-DR. LIVINGSTONE. It has been remarked that 'the | says Bale, as translated by narration of voyages and travels, Hakluyt, born in the town of the histories of geographical re- St. Albans, was so given to search and discovery, form by study from his childhood, that themselves a library more co- he seemed to plant a good part pious than any single reader of his felicity in the same, for could hope to master, and more he supposed that the honour of interesting than any literature his birth would nothing avail of fiction.' him, except he would render the same more honourable by his knowledge in letters.' His favourite pursuit had been the study of medicine; but in the year 1322 he left his native land, perhaps disgusted with the civil dissensions in which it was involved during the disastrous year which closed the reign of Edward II., and set out with the intention of travelling to the Holy Land. SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE.1 The first traveller we shall notice is the famous Sir John Mandeville. 'John Mandeville, Knight,' For fuller details regarding the travels by Mandeville, James Bruce, and Mungo Park, see The English Explorers. W. P. Nimmo, London and Edinburgh. had seen 62 degrees upon that o (one) part (the north), and 33 upon that other part (the south); that ben 95 degrees out of the other 180.' He pursued his journey no further; averring, however, that 'gif he had companye and schipping for to go more beyonde, he trowed wel in certeyn that he scholde have seen all the roundness of the firmament alle aboute,' and de Proceeding in the first instance to Egypt, he engaged in the service of Melek Madaron, sultan of that country, and fought in his wars against that restless but changeless people, the Bedouin Arabs. The monarch became really attached to him, and would have detained him at his Court by most advantageous proposals, which his steady attachment to his religion determined him to reject.claring his belief in the spherical 'And he wolde (says he) have form of the earth. maryed me fulle highely to a gret princess' daughter, if that I would have forsaken my law and my beleve. But I thank God, I had not wille to do it for nothing that he behighten me.' On his return in 1356, after an absence of thirty-four years, he compiled his book of travels, which is not only said to be founded on his own observations, but aftre informacion of men that knewen ef things that he had not seen;' and submitted it to the judgment of the Pope, who 'remytted' it to be examyned and preved by the avys of his conseille; be the whiche,' he adds, my boke was preved for twewe, in so moche, that thei schewed me a boke that my boke was examyned by [probably the journals of some of the missionaries] that comprehended fulle moche more be an hundred parte, be the which the Mappa Mundi was made after.' His curiosity being excited by the accounts of the Eastern countries, which reached him through the commercial frequenters of the Mediterranean ports, he determined to pursue his journey from the Holy Land, the next scene of his travels, to the Cham of Tartary, whom he served, with four other knights, in his wars against the King of Mance, for the sake of the opportunities which that employment afforded them of obtaining a more intimate acquaintance with the government and internal economy of that part of Asia. Thus he remarks, from observation upon an astrolabe which he met with in his travels, he had seen that half of the firmament which is situated be-ney, which were preserved as tween the two pole stars, or 180 degrees and of the other half, He appears to have died and been buried in a convent at Liège in 1371 or 1372; and Ortellius, in his Itinerarium Belgicæ, gives the epitaph on his tomb there, and adds that he saw the accoutrements of his jour relics. St. Albans, however, also claims the honour of his burial. This epitaph read if you can; of romance. What he himself saw he generally describes accurately and judiciously; his authority is thus weighty, and his testimony true. Many instances might be produced of striking coincidences between Mandeville and the accounts of other writers of the age; and these confirm his assertion that "Twill tell you a tomb once stood in he consulted their works in the this roome, Of a brave-spirited man. John Mandeville by name, a knight of great fame, Born in this honoured towne ; Before him was none that ever was knowne For travaile of so high renown. 'As the knights in the Temple, crosselegged in marble, In armour, with sword, and with shield; So was this knight grac't, which time hath defac't, That nothing but ruines doth yeeld. 'His travailles being done, he shines like the sun, In Heavenly Canaan ; composition of his own book. Marco Polo had gone over much of the same country nearly half a century before. His narrative of what he saw of manners and customs, as well as of his personal adventures, is simple, and bears the stamp of truth. Mandeville's account of the old man who made a 'paradyse' on a mountain, in which, by all sorts of enticements, he sought to seduce strangers into serving of the tomb of St. Thomas; of his purposes of assassination; the general customs of the Tar To which blessed place, the Lord of tars, and the Court of Cham; his grace Brings us all, man after man.' Mandeville has been much ridiculed for the wonders which his book contains; and not without reason. His design seems to have been to commit to writing whatever he had read, or heard, or known, concerning the places which he saw or has mentioned. Agreeably to this plan, he has described monsters from Pliny; copied miracles from legends; and repeated, without quoting, stories from authors who are now justly ranked among writers remarkably agree with the account of Marco Polo. The fabulous parts of each also often concur. Marco Polo tells us of the men with tails; of Gog and Magog; of the tree of life, whose leaves are green above and white beneath; and of the islands beyond Madagascar, where the wonderful bird is to be found which can carry an elephant through the air. Mandeville seems also to have been acquainted with Hayton, for his account of the origin of the Tartar monarchy perfectly agrees with that author's; so also does his description of the in the course of his long jourEgyptian dynasty of Sultans; ney, does he complain of any of the dethroning of Mango ill-usage on the part of the MusCham; of the Calif of Baldak❘ sulman powers, either to him(Bagdad), and his death by star-self or their Christian subjects. vation in the midst of a sumptuous feast of 'precyous stones, ryche perles, and treasure;' and of the province of Georgia, called Hanyson, three days' journey round which is alle covered with darkness, and withouten any brightness or light though men witen well that men dwellen therein, but they knew not what men.' 'Mandeville,' says Isaac Disraeli, was the Bruce of the fourteenth century, as often calumniated and even ridiculed. The most ingenious of voyagers has been condemned as an idle fabulist; the most cautious, as credulous to fatuity; and the volume of a genuine writer, which has been translated into every European language, has been formally ejected from the collection of authentic travels. Much, however, rested upon the simple and unsupported authority of Mandeville, which 'At a period when Europe later discoveries and inquiries could hardly boast of three have abundantly confirmed, al- leisurely wayfarers stealing over though for a long time they the face of the universe; when might have ranked with Marco the Orient still remained but a Polo's account of the stones land of Faery, and the "map of used for fuel. He notices the the world" was yet unfinished; cultivation of pepper; the burn- at a time when it required a ing of widows upon the funeral whole life to traverse a space piles of their husbands; the trees which three years might now which bear wool of which cloth- terminate, Sir John Mandeville ing is made; the carrier pigeons; set forth to enter unheard-of the gymnosophists; the Chinese regions. Returning home after predilection for small feet; the an absence of more than thirty variety of diamonds; the arti-years, he discovered a "merficial egg hatching in Egypt; the balsam trade; the south pole stars, and other astronomical appearances, from which he argues for the spherical form of the earth; the crocodile, the hippopotamus, the giraffe, the rattlesnake, and many other singular productions of nature not before known by the inhabitants of Europe. It is remarkable that, nowhere vayle" strange as those which he loved to record-that he was utterly forgotten by his friends! 'He had returned "maugre himself," for four-and-twenty years had not satisfied his curiosity; his noble career had submitted to ordinary infirmities-to gout and the aching of his limbs; these, he lamentably tells us, had "defined the end of my labour against my will, writer in this devotion of his pen. 'Copies of these travels were multiplied till they almost equalled in number those of the Scriptures. Now we may smile at the "mervayles" of the fourteenth century, but it was the spirit of these intrepid and credulous minds which has marched us through the universe. To these children of imagination, perhaps, we owe the circumnavigation of the globe and the universal intercourse of nations.' God knoweth!" The knight in this pilgrimage of life seems to have contracted a duty with God, that while he had breath he should peregrinate, and, having nothing to do at home, be honourable in his generation by his enterprise over the whole earth. And earnestly he prays "to all the readers and hearers of my book" (for "hearers" were then more numerous than "readers") to say for him "a Paternoster with an Ave-Maria." He wrote for "solace in his wretched rest;" but the old passion, the devotion of his soul, finally triumphed over all arthritic pangs. The globe, evidently, was his true home; and thus Liège, and not Lon-bus-a renown, indeed, richly don, received the bones of an unwearied traveller, whose thoughts were ever passing beyond the equator. 'Mandeville first composed his travels in the Latin language, which he afterwards translated into French, and, lastly, out of French into English, that "every man of my nation may understand it." We see the progressive estimation of the languages by this curious statement which Mandeville has himself given. The author first secured the existence of his work in a language familiar to the whole European world; the French was addressed to the politer circles of society; and the last language the author cared about was the vernacular idiom, which, at that time the least regarded, required all the patriotism of the JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT. deserved-says a writer in the |