MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 



[PART V. 



merchant at Damascus, whence he had travelled over 

 Persia, India, the Eastern Archipelago, and China. 

 Keturning by way of Arabia and the Eed Sea, in 1444, 

 he fell into danger amongst some fanatical Mahometans, 

 and was compelled to renounce the faith of a Christian, 

 less from regard for his own safety than apprehension for 

 that of his children and wife. For this apostacy he be- 

 sought the pardon of Pope Eugenius IV., who absolved 

 him from guilt on condition that he should recount his 

 adventures to the apostolic secretary, Poggio Bracciolini, 

 by whom they have been preserved in his dissertation on 

 " The Vicissitudes of Fortune" l 



Di Conti is, I believe, the first European who speaks 

 of cinnamon as a production of Ceylon. " It is a tree," 

 he says, " which grows there in abundance, and which 

 very much resembles our thick willows, excepting that 

 the branches do not grow upwards, but spread hori- 

 zontally ; the leaves are like those of the laurel, but 

 somewhat larger ; the bark of the branches is thinnest 

 and best, that of the trunk thick and inferior in flavour. 

 The fruit resembles the berries of the laurel ; the In- 

 dians extract from it an odoriferous oil, and the wood, 

 after the bark has been stripped from it, is used by them 

 for fuel." 2 



The narrative of Di Conti, as it is printed by Eamusio, 

 from a Portuguese version, contains a passage not found 

 in Poggio, in which it is alleged that a river of Ceylon, 

 called Arotan, has a fish somewhat like the torpedo, but 

 whose touch, instead of electrifying, produces a fever so 

 long as it is held in the hand, relief being instantaneous 

 on letting it go. 3 



1 De Varietate Fortuna, Basil, 

 1538. An admirable translation of 

 the narrative of Di CONTI has re- 

 cently been made by R. H. Major, 

 Esq., for the Hakluyt Society. Lon- 

 don, 1857. 



2 POGGIO makes Nicolo di Conti say 

 that the island contains a lake, in the 

 middle of which is a city three miles 



in circumference ; but this is evi- 

 dently an amplification of his own, 

 borrowed from the passage in which 

 Pliny (whom Poggio elsewhere 

 quotes) alludes to the fabulous Lake 

 Megisba. PLINY, lib. vi. ch. xxiv. 



3 Di CONTI in Itamusio, vol. i. p. 

 344. There are two other Italian 

 traveller's of this centuiy who touched 



