[Footnote 1: This word is very puzzling. It seems to me that it probably means _wheel work_, from Lat. _orbis_, a circle; but Rd. Braithwaite, in his _Arcadian Princesse_, says: "In the lowest border of the garden, I might see a curious _orbell_, all of touch, wherein the Syracusan tyrants were no lesse artfully portrayed, than their severall cruelties to life displayed."] [Footnote 2: As if they had been alive.] [Footnote 3: Misprint for Wells.] [Footnote 4: Conduit.] [Footnote 5: Wells.] [Footnote 6: Made.] [Footnote 7: Deceit.] [Footnote 8: Ill intent, evil mind.] [Footnote 9: Wells.] CAP. XCI. _Of a marvelous vale that is beside the river of Physon._ AND a lyttle from that place, on the left syde besyde the river of Physon is a great marvaile. There is a vale betwene two hils, and that is foure myle longe, and some men call it the valay enchaunted, some y^e valey of Divels, some the valey perylous,[1] and in that valey are many tempests & a great noyse very hydeous bothe day & night & sound as it were a noise of Taburines[2] of nakers[3] & of trumpets as it were a great feast. This valey is all full of devils, and hath ben alway, and men say thereby y^t it is a enter[4] to hell. In this valey is muche golde & silver, wherefore many Christen men & other go thether for covetise of that golde and silver, but few of them come out againe, for they are anon strangled with divels. And in the middes of that vale on a roche is a visage, & the head of a fiend bodely, right hideous and dreadfull to see, and there is nothing sene but the head to y^e shoulders, but there is no christen men in y^e world nor other so hardy but y^t he should be greatly afraide to beholde it, for he beholdeth eche man so sharply & felly[5] & his eyes are so staring & so sprinkling[6] as fyre & he chaungeth so often his countenaunce that no man dare come nere for all the worlde, and out of his mouth & his nose cometh great plenty of fyer of divers colours, & sometime is the fyer so stynking, that no man may suffer it, but alway a good christen man, and one that is stedfast in the fayth may go therein without harme, if they shrive them well and blesse them with the token of the crosse, then shall the divels haue no power over them. And ye shall understande that when my felowes & I were in that valey, we had full great dought[7] if we shold put our bodies in a venture to go through it, & some of my felows agreed therto, & some wold not, and there were in our company two friers minours of Lombardy & sayd if any of us wold go in, they wold also, as they had sayd so, and upon trust of them we sayd that we wold go, & we dyd sing a masse and were shriven & houseled,[8] and we went in xiiii men & when we came out we were but x[9] & we wist not whether our felowes were loste there, or that they turned againe, but we saw no more of them, others of our