THE SUCCESSORS OF MARCO POLO 49 



Near this island is the country called Panten, which 

 has been identified with Singapore Island, 1 and " by the 

 coast of this country is the sea called Mare Mortuum, 

 which runneth continuously Southward, into the which 

 whosoever falleth is never seen after." 2 



Friar Odoric then takes us to Campa, Marco Polo's The truth 

 Chamba (Cochin China), where fishes pay homage to 

 the emperor by casting themselves on shore for the 

 space of three days, and where he saw a tortoise 

 11 bigger in compass than the dome of St. Anthony's 

 Church in Padua." Next he mentions that he travelled 

 on further by ocean sea to the South, till he came to 

 an island named Nicoveran (the Nicobars), two thousand 

 miles in circuit, " wherein men and women have dogs' 

 faces, and worship an ox for their god." Then he men- 

 tions Sillan (Ceylon), with its huge mountain, where, 

 the inhabitants report, Adam and Eve mourned for Abel 

 for the space of five hundred years, weeping so copiously 

 that their tears formed a lake which still existed ; " how- 

 beit, I proved that to be false, because I saw the water 

 flow in the lake." Here he saw " fowls as big as our 

 country geese, having two heads, and other miraculous 

 things which no man would credit, unless he saw them 

 with his own eyes " though the Friar will relate " nothing 

 but of that only whereof I am as sure as a man can be sure." 

 From Ceylon he travelled East to Mangi in China, wherein 

 the Friars have two places of abode. Here he lived for 

 three years, and he gives an account of the country which 

 is evidently based on personal knowledge. 



Our modern critic accepts Friar Odoric as a veracious 

 witness, telling according to his measure of ability of things 



1 Yule's Cathay, vol. ii. p. 156. Cordier's Ser Marco Polo, p. 105. 



2 Mauro's map (fifteenth century) has a legend in the region of the 

 South-East of India, " ships sailing towards the South which allow 

 themselves to approach the Dim Islands will be carried by the currents 

 into the Darkness, and, once entered into those regions, through the 

 density of the air, and of the tenacious waters, they must perish " 

 (Yule's Cathay, vol. ii. p. 160). See map, p. 59. Barros, a Portuguese 

 writer of the sixteenth century, says that the natives of Java hold that 



whoever should proceed beyond the straits of Bali to the South would 

 be hurried away by strong currents so as to never return." 

 W.A. D 



