448 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



bodies after death, and when tlie husband dies before the wife, the wife burns herself 

 alive with her husband, saying that she is going to be happy with iiini in the other 

 world, and it is done in this way, that, the husband dying, the wife gives a great 

 entertainment and dresses herself in the richest garments she has, to which entertain- 

 ment come all her relatives niid those of her husl)and, and after having eaten, she goe3 

 with ail the people to a place where a very great tire has been built, singing and dancing 

 iintil she reaches the said fire, and then they throw in the dead bodj' of the husband, 

 and at once she bids farewell to her relatives and friends and leaps into the fire, and 

 she who most nobly throws herself into the fire brings most honor upon her family . 

 but even now this custom is not observed as it used to be, since the Portuguese have 

 traded with them and given them to understand that Our Lord God is not served by 

 such a practice. 



N° 15. The grand Khan of the Tartars is a very great lord and very mighty, he is 

 called King of Kings and Lord of Lords : he is wont to give to his liegemen garments 

 thirteen times a year, at thirteen very great feasts which he holds each year ; and 

 these garments are of greater or less value according to the ([uality of the person to 

 whom they are given, and to each one is given a^ belt and leggings, a hat adorned with 

 gold and pearls and precious stones according to the greatness of the personage, and 

 these garments which the said grand Khan gives each year are 156,000 ; and this he 

 docs to give greatness and magnificence to his feasts, and when he dies they bear him 

 to be buried to a mountain which is called Alcay, were are buried the grand Khans, 

 Emperors of the Tartars, and those who bear him to burial slay all those they find, 

 saying to them go and serve our master in the other world ; and in the same way they 

 slay all his horses, camels, and baggagen.ules which they have, thinking that they will 

 go to serve their lord. When Afonyui Khan, Emperor of the Tartars, died, there were 

 slain three hundred thousand men, whom those who bore him to burial met on the way 

 as Marco Polo says in his book, chapter 42. ^ Poggio the Florentine, secretary of Pope 

 Eugenius IV, (oirurds the end q/his second book, which he wrote on the variation and 

 changes of Fortune, does much to confirm what the said Marco Polo wrote in his book. 



N° 16. There are various opinions as to what is Trapo\ana,° since the Spaniards 

 and Portuguese have navigated the Indian Ocean. How Ptolemy places it in degrees 

 of latitude and longitude I think is well known to all. Some modern explorers hold 

 that the island of Ceylon is Trapovana ; others hold that it is the island of Sumatra.'' 

 Pliny writes of Trapovana in his sixth book, chapter 22, and says there was a time 

 wlien the opinion was held that Trapovana was another world, and that it was called 

 Antichton, and that Alexander was the first to inform us that it was an island, and 

 that Onesechritus, admiral of his fleet, [says] that in the said island of Trapovana there 

 are larger and more warlike elephants than in India, and that Magasaene gives as its 

 length seven thousand stadia, and as its width five thoiisand ; that there is no walled 

 city in it, but seven hundred villages, and that in Claudius' reign" ambassadors came 

 from the said island to Rome. In this way : the freedman Damius Plocamius, who 

 had bought of the republic" the taxes of the Red Sea and sailing around Arabia was 

 carried by the north wind in such a way that on the fifteenth day he entered a port of 

 the said island called Hipnus,'' and was very generously received and treated by the 

 king, and that after having remained in the said island six months he learned the 

 language, and that one day talking with the king he told him that the Romans and 

 their Emperor were incredibly just, and that the king, seeing that the coins which tlie 

 said freedman had were of equal weight although the stamp showed that they were of 

 different emperors, moved by this, sent ambassadors to Rome, the chief of whom was 

 Rachia, to make friendship with Claudius, from which ambassadors he heard that in 

 the said island there were five hundred cities, and tliat the said ambassadors were 

 astonished to see in these heavens of ours the north star and the Pleiades as something 

 now and to them unknown, and that they said that in the said island thej' only saw 

 tlie moon above the earth from the eighth day to the fifteenth, and they were especially 

 astonished that shadows turned.? towards our sky and not* towards theirs, and that 

 the sun rose on the right and set on the left, from which aforesaid reasons it seems 

 that in the said island where the said freedman made harbor the north star is not seen, 

 which is seen in the island Trapovana, whence it might be said, considering whence 

 the said ireedman Damius Proclamius started and the course he might have made with 

 a raging north mind,'" that the island where he made harbor was the island of San 

 Lorenzo and not Trapul>ana. And that as king of the said island an old and mild man 



1 belts, leggings, shoes, helmets or shafle liats [cf. .Miirco Polo.] 



2 in tlie twenty-fourth chapter of his fourth book. 3 and where it is situated. 



4 fWhat follows is not taken from the text of Pliny, but is translated directly from th« 

 -piuiisli.] 



5 about the beginning of his government. 6 the Romans. 



7 Hippurus [cf. PliiiyJ. 8 to the right towards our pole. 



when in their country they saw theni always go the left. 

 10 and the narration of the envoys to Tiberius. 



