Early Travels in Palestine: Comprising the Narratives of Arculf, Willibald, Bernard, Sæwulf, Sigurd, Benjamin of Tudela, Sir John Maundeville, de la Brocquière, and Maundrell
History
Early Travels in Palestine: Comprising the Narratives of Arculf, Willibald, Bernard, Sæwulf, Sigurd, Benjamin of Tudela, Sir John Maundeville, de la Brocquière, and Maundrell
Middle East -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Palestine -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
Beyond this isle men go by sea to another rich isle, called
Calonak[381], the king of which has as many wives as he will; for he
makes search through the country for the fairest maidens that may be
found, who are brought before him, and he taketh one one night, and
another another, and so forth in succession; so that he hath a thousand
wives or more. And he lies never but one night with one of them, and
another night with another, unless one happens to be more agreeable to
him than another. Thus the king gets many children, sometimes a hundred,
sometimes two hundred, and sometimes more. He hath also as many as
fourteen thousand elephants, or more, which are brought up amongst his
serfs in all his towns. And in case he has war with any of the kings
around him, he causes certain men of arms to go up into wooden castles,
which are set upon the elephants' backs, to fight against their enemies;
and so do other kings thereabouts; and they call the elephants _warkes_.
And in that isle there is a great wonder; for all kinds of fish that are
there in the sea come once a year, one kind after the other, to the
coast of that isle in so great a multitude that a man can see hardly any
thing but fish; and there they remain three days; and every man of the
country takes as many of them as he likes. And that kind of fish, after
the third day, departs and goes into the sea. And after them come
another multitude of fish of another kind, and do in the same manner as
the first did another three days; and so on with the other kinds, till
all the divers kinds of fishes have been there, and men have taken what
they like of them. And no man knows the cause; but they of the country
say that it is to do reverence to their king, who is the most worthy
king in the world, as they say, because he fulfils the commandment of
God to Adam and Eve, "Increase and multiply, and fill the earth;" and
because he multiplies so the world with children, therefore God sends
him the fishes of divers kinds, to take at his will, for him and all his
people; and thus all the fishes of the sea come to do him homage as the
most noble and excellent king of the world, and that is best beloved of
God, as they say.
There are also in that country a kind of snails, so great that many
persons may lodge in their shells, as men would do in a little house.
And there are other snails that are very great, but not so huge as the
other, of which, and of great white serpents with black heads, that are
as great as a man's thigh, and some less, they make royal meats for the
king and other great lords. And if a man who is married die in that
country, they bury his wife alive with him, for they say that it is
right that she make him company in the other world, as she did in this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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