shipping, and guides; and always they would find men, lands, and isles, as well as in our part of the world. For they who are towards the antarctic are directly feet opposite feet of them who dwell under the polar star; as well as we and they that dwell under us are feet opposite feet. For all parts of sea and land have their opposites, habitable or passable. And know well that, after what I may perceive and understand, the lands of Prester John, emperor of India, are under us; for in going from Scotland or from England, towards Jerusalem, men go always upwards; for our land is in the low part of the earth, towards the west; and the land of Prester John is in the low part of the earth, towards the east; and they have there the day when we have night; and, on the contrary, they have the night when we have the day; for the earth and the sea are of a round form, as I have said before; and as men go upward to one part, they go downward to another. Also you have heard me say that Jerusalem is in the middle of the world; and that may be proved and shown there by a spear which is fixed in the earth at the hour of midday, when it is equinoxial, which gives no shadow on any side. They, therefore, that start from the west to go towards Jerusalem, as many days as they go upward to go thither, in so many days may they go from Jerusalem to other confines of the superficialties of the earth beyond. And when men go beyond that distance, towards India and to the foreign isles, they are proceeding on the roundness of the earth and the sea, under our country. And therefore hath it befallen many times of a thing that I have heard told when I was young, how a worthy man departed once from our country to go and discover the world; and so he passed India, and the isles beyond India, where are more than five thousand isles; and so long he went by sea and land, and so environed the world by many seasons, that he found an isle where he heard people speak his own language, calling on oxen in the plough such words as men speak to beasts in his own country, whereof he had great wonder, for he knew not how it might be. But I say that he had gone so long, by land and sea, that he had gone all round the earth, that he was come again to his own borders, if he would have passed forth till he had found his native country. But he turned again from thence, from whence he was come; and so he lost much painful labour, as himself said, a great while after, when he was coming home; for it befell after, that he went into Norway, and the tempest of the sea carried him to an isle; and when he was in that isle, he knew well that it was the isle where he had heard his own language spoken before, and the calling of the oxen at the plough. But it seems to simple and unlearned men that men may not go under the earth, but that they would fall from under towards the heaven. But that may not be any more than we fall towards heaven from the earth where we