One of those five ships has lately returned which Cæsar sent in former years, when he was living at Saragossa, to a strange, and for so many ages, an unknown world, in order to search for the islands where spices grow. For though the Portuguese bring a great quantity of them from the Golden Chersonesus, which we now suppose to be Malacca, yet their own Indies produce nothing but pepper. Other spices, such as cinnamon, cloves, and the nutmeg, which we call muscat, and its covering (mace), which we call muscat flower, are brought to their own Indies from distant islands till now only known by name, and in ships which are fastened together not by iron but by palm leaves. The sails of these ships are round and woven, too, of the palm-fibre. This sort of ships they call junks, and they only use them with a wind directly fore and aft. It is no wonder that these islands should be unknown to any human beings almost up to our time. For whatever we read concerning the native soil of the spices has been told us by ancient authors, and is partly, certainly, fabulous; and, partly, so far from the truth, that even the very countries in which they said that they grew naturally, are but little less distant from those where it is now known that they grow, than we are. For to omit others, Herodotus, in other respects a most famed author, has said that cinnamon is found in birds’ nests, to which the birds have brought it from most distant regions, and specially the Phœnix, and I know not who has seen his nest. But Pliny, who thought himself able to give more certain information, because, before his time, many things had been made clear by the voyages of the fleets of Alexander the Great and of others, relates that cinnamon grows in Æthiopia on the borders of the land of the Troglodytæ, whilst now it is known that cinnamon is produced very far from any part of Æthiopia, and specially from the Troglodytæ (that is, the dwellers in subterranean caverns). But our men, who have now returned, and who were perfectly acquainted with Æthiopia, have been obliged to make a complete circuit of the world, and that a very wide one, before they could find the islands and return. As this voyage may be considered marvellous, and not only unaccomplished, but even unattempted either in our age or in any previous one, I have resolved to write as truly as possible to your Reverence the course (of the expedition) and the sequence of the whole matter. I have taken care to have everything related to me most exactly by the captain and by the individual sailors who have returned with him. They have also related each separate event to Cæsar and to others with such good faith and sincerity, that they seemed not only to tell nothing fabulous themselves, but by their relation to disprove and refute all the fabulous stories which had been told by old authors. For who can believe that these were Monosceli, Scyopodæ, Syritæ, Spitamei, Pygmies, and many others, rather monsters than men.