We speak of the “unchanging East,” and adopt the phrase with more or less of thoughtful acquiescence, but it is distinctly interesting in the pages of Jordanus, for example, to find the Parsee funeral customs and the Tower of Silence thus referred to:—“There be pagan folk in this India who worship fire; they bury not their dead, neither do they burn them, but cast them into the midst of a certain roofless tower, and there expose them totally uncovered to the fowls of heaven.” He was present also at Suttee, for he says:—“I have sometimes seen for one dead man who was burnt, five living women take their places on the fire with their dead, and for the love of their husbands and for eternal life burn along with them, with as much joy as if they were going to be wedded.” This Jordanus was a missionary bishop in India. He was appointed to the bishopric of Columbum by Pope John XXII., by a Bull bearing date April 5th, 1330. There are indications that there was at that time a considerable body of Christians at Columbum, but the locality is now entirely unknown. Many conflicting theories have been held, and each one demolished as hopeless by the holders of the others. His book, entitled “Mirabilia descripta,” was written in Latin. “Like many other old writers,” very justly observes Colonel Henry Yule, who published an English translation of his book from which we quote, “whilst endeavouring to speak only truth of what he had seen, Jordanus retails fables enough from hearsay. What he did see in his travels was so marvellous to him that he was quite ready to accept what was told him of regions more remote from Christendom, when it seemed but in reasonable proportion more marvellous.” Of the truth of this we shall doubtless find illustration in subsequent references to his book.