And as so many places beyond the Tropic of Capricorn have been sought, found, and carefully examined, both by the Spaniards in the south-west and by the Portuguese sailing eastwards, and as the remainder of the whole world has now been sailed over by our countrymen, and yet nothing trustworthy has been heard concerning these man-monsters, it must be believed that the accounts of them are fabulous, lying, and old women’s tales, handed down to us in some way by no credible author. But lest I, who have to travel over the whole world, should seem too diffuse in my introduction, I return to my story. When, nearly thirty years ago, the Spaniards in the west, and the Portuguese in the east, began to search for new and unknown lands, their two kings, lest one should be a hindrance to the other, divided the whole globe between them by the authority, most likely, of Pope Alexander the Sixth, in this manner: that a straight line should be drawn 360 miles, which they call leucæ, west of the islands of the Hesperides, which are now called the islands of Cape Verd; towards the north, and another towards the south Pole, till they should meet again, and so divide the world into two equal parts. And whatever strange land should be discovered eastwards (of this line) should be ceded to the Portuguese, and whatever west of it to the Spaniards. In this manner it happened that the Spaniards always sailed south-west, and there they discovered a very large continent and very great and innumerable islands, rich in gold and pearls and in other wealth, and now, quite lately, have they discovered the vast Mediterranean city, Tenostica,[438] situated in a lake, like Venice. About this city Peter Martyr, an author more careful about his facts than the elegance of his style, has written many wonderful, and yet true, things. But the Portuguese, passing southwards by the shores of the Hesperides, and of the ichthyophagous Æthiopians, and crossing the equinoctial line and the Tropic of Capricorn, sailed eastward, and discovered many great and unknown islands, and afterwards the sources of the Nile and the land of the Troglodytæ. Thence they sailed past the Arabian and Persian Gulfs to the shores of India, within the Ganges, where there is now the mighty emporium and kingdom of Calicut. Thence they sailed to Taprobanes, which they now call Zamatara. For there is now no island which either can be, or can be supposed to be, Taprobanes, in the position in which Ptolemy, Pliny, and the other cosmographers placed it. Going thence, they arrived at the Golden Chersonesus, where now is situated that most famous city of Malacca, the greatest emporium of the East. After this they entered the Great Gulf,[439] which reaches as far as the country of the Sinæ, which they now call Schinæ, where they found a white and tolerably civilised people, like our Germans. They believe that the Seres and the Asiatic Scythians extend as far as there.