54 THE NATUEAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 



Few of the innumerable pilgrims to the Holy Land 

 brought home anything better than chance scraps of 

 information about the remarkable animals and plants 

 of Syria. Among the most enterprising was one of 

 the latest pilgrims, Bernard de Breydenbach, a canon 

 of Mayence, who travelled in Palestine and Arabia 

 during 1482 and following years. He wrote an account 

 of what he had seen,^ which is illustrated by very 

 curious woodcuts. A painter named Eemich made one 

 of the party, and drew several strange animals, among 

 which was a giraffe (" seraffa ") ; no earlier portrait of 

 this animal, taken from the life, is known. Breydenbach 

 was probably the first traveller whose descriptions and 

 figures were multiplied by the printing-press. Mena- 

 geries, containing remarkable foreign animals, now 

 began to be common ornaments of the courts of 

 Italian princes. 



Here would come in order of time the great geo- 

 graphical discoveries of Vasco da Gama and Columbus. 

 We shall however defer this topic until we have tried 

 to show by two or three examples how the new spirit of 

 the Eenaissance stirred up explorers to examine more 

 closely the natural products of countries less distant 

 from civilised Europe. 



Pierre Belon, of whose life a sketch has already 

 been given (p. 40), visited the eastern end of the 

 Mediterranean during the years 1546-9. In 1553 he 

 published a little book called Les observations des 

 plusieurs singularitez et choses memorahles trouve'es 

 en Grece, Asie, Judee, Egypte, Arahie et autres pays 

 estranges, which was highly esteemed, passing through 

 several editions, and being translated into Latin by the 



1 Opusculum saiKtarum peregrinationum, Mainz, 1486, often reprinted and 

 translated into several modem languages before 1500. Some beautiful manu- 

 script copies also exist. 



