CLAUDIUS CLAVUS 



the other side of the North Pole. Therefore the ocean does not wash the 

 limit of the continent under the Pole [Arctic Circle?] itself, as all ancient 

 authors have asserted; and therefore the noble English knight, John Mande- 

 vil, did not lie when he said that he had sailed from the Indian Seres [i.e., 

 China?] to an island in Norway." 



If we compare this with the " R5nnbegla " tract already men- 

 tioned [1780, p. 466], we see that these are much the same ideas 

 as there expressed. We read there 



" that it is the report of the same men that the sea is full of eternal ice to the 

 north of us and under the pole-star, where the arms of the Outer Ocean 

 meet. ..." 



When it is there stated that 



" those shores [under the pole-star] hinder the ring of the ocean from coming 

 together [i.e., round the earth]." . . . and "that one can go on foot . . . 

 from Greenland to Norway " (cf. above, p. 239). 



this is evidently something similar to what Clavus says; but 

 the latter's words as to the voyage which he attributes to 

 Mandeville from the Indian Seres to Norway being more 

 probable because there is land at the North Pole, are somewhat 

 incomprehensible. 



John Mandeville's book about a voyage through many lands to the Far 

 East and China dates from between 1357 and 1371, and is put together from 

 various accounts of voyages, with the addition of all kinds of fables. Mande- 

 ville does not himself claim to have made any such voyage from China to 

 Norway; on the other hand, he has much to say, in chapter xvii., about the 

 possibility of sailing round the world, which he declares to be practicable, 

 and if ships were sent out to explore the world, one could sail round the 

 world, both above and below. He says that when he was young he heard 

 of a man who set out from England to explore the world, and who went past 

 India and the islands beyond it, where there are more than five thousand 

 islands, and so far did he travel over sea and land that he finally came to an 

 island where he heard them calling to the ox at the plow in his own lan- 

 guage, as they did in his own country. This island afterwards proved to be 

 in Norway.! 



Clavus's assertion that he himself saw (ut uidi) Kare- 

 lians in Greenland is impossible. As it is expressly stated that 

 there was land at the North Pole, and as it is not mentioned that 

 these Karelians had hide-boats like the Pygmies, the meaning 



1 Cf. Mandeville, 1883, pp. 180, 182, 183 f. Mandeville also says that in the 

 opinion of the old wise astronomers the circumference of the world wa^ 

 20,425 English miles; but he himself maintains that it is 31,500 miles. 



271 



