"Of Paradise I cannot speak properly, for I was not there. It is far beyond, and I repent not going there; but I was not worthy." So wrote, more than five hundred years ago, an honest English knight who had spent some ten years journeying through that "most worthy land, most excellent and lady and sovereign of all other lands," which was "blessed and hallowed with the most precious body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ;" visiting portions of Africa and Asia; and picking up from all accessible sources legends and marvels, and scraps of the geography and history of distant countries. For something like two centuries the travels of Sir John Maundeville enjoyed a tremendous popularity; and though time can hardly be said to have improved the good gentleman's reputation for veracity and judgment, it has perhaps heightened rather than diminished the interest of his narrative. Alas! we can never know such travellers again. Men who go to Palestine in a steamboat, and are whirled by locomotives into the very presence of the Sphinx, bring us back no wonderful stories of the mysterious East, with its dragons and enchanters, and its sacred places miraculously barred against profane footsteps. Travel has no mysteries now. What is the earthly paradise but a Turkish pashalic? What is Prester John but a petty negro chieftain? And for dragons and chimæras dire, has not any good museum of natural history specimens of them all, nicely stuffed and labelled, or bottled in alcohol? In the days of Sir John, however, wonders were plenty; and if he did not see very many himself, he heard of men who had seen no end of them, and he described them all the same. It was from hearsay, and not from personal observation, that he learned of the Lady of the Land, in the island of Cos, then called Lango. This wonderful lady was the daughter of Ypocras or Hippocrates, in form and likeness of a great dragon which is a hundred fathoms in length, "as they say," adds Sir John, "for I have not seen her." She lies in an old castle in a cave, appearing twice or thrice in a year, and condemned "by a goddess named Diana" to remain in that horrible shape until a knight shall come and kiss her on the mouth; then she shall resume her natural form, and the knight shall marry her and be lord of the isles. Many have tempted the adventure, but fled in affright when they have seen her. And every knight who once looks upon her and flees, must die anon.