2: See the drawing, [page 612.]
The next Venetian whose travels qualified him to speak of Ceylon was the Minorite friar ODORIC, of Portenau in Friuli[1], who, setting out from the Black Sea in 1318, traversed the Asian continent to China, and returned to Italy after a journey of twelve years. In Ceylon he was struck by the number of serpents, and the multitude of wild animals, lions (leopards?), bears, and elephants. "In it he saw the mountain on which Adam for the space of 500 years mourned the death of Abel, and on which his tears and those of Eve formed, as men believed, a fountain;" but this Odoric discovered to be a delusion, as he saw the spring gushing from the earth, and its waters "flowing over jewels, but abounding with leeches and blood-suckers." The natives were permitted by the king to collect the gems; and in doing so they smear their bodies with the juice of lemons to protect them from the leeches. The wild creatures, they said, however dangerous to the inhabitants of the island, were harmless to strangers. In that island Odoric saw "birds with two heads," which possibly implies that he saw the hornbill[2], whose huge and double casque may explain the expression.
1: Itinerarium Fratris ODORICI de Foro Julii de Portu-Vahonis.
2: Buceros Pica. See ante, [Part II. ch. ii. p. 167.]
In the succeeding century[1] the most authentic account of Ceylon is given by NICOLO DI CONTI, another Venetian, who, though of noble family, had settled as a merchant at Damascus, whence he had travelled over Persia, India, the Eastern Archipelago, and China. Returning by way of Arabia and the Red Sea, in 1444, he fell into danger amongst some fanatical Mahometans, and was compelled to renounce the faith of a Christian, less from regard for his own safety than apprehension for that of his children and wife. For this apostacy he besought the pardon of Pope Eugenius IV., who absolved him from guilt on condition that he should recount his adventures to the apostolic secretary, Poggio Bracciolini, by whom they have been preserved in his dissertation on "The Vicissitudes of Fortune."[2]
1: Among the writers on India in the 14th century, A.D. 1323, was the Dominican missionary JOURDAIN CATALANI, or "Jordan de Severac," regarding whose title of Bishop of Colombo, "Episcopus Columbensis," it is somewhat uncertain whether his see was in Ceylon, or at Coulam (Quilon), on the Malabar coast. The probability in favour of the latter is sustained by the fact of the very limited accounts of the island contained in his Mirabilia, a work in which he has recorded his observations on the Dekkan. Cinnamon he describes as a production of Malabar, and Ceylon he extols only for its gems, pre-eminent among which were two rubies, one worn by the king, suspended round his neck, and the other which, when grasped in the hand could not be covered, by the fingers, "Non credo mundum habere universum tales duo lapides, nec tanti pretii." The MS. of Fra. JORDANUS'S Mirabilia has been printed in the Recueil des Voyages of the Société Géogr. of Paris, vol. i. p. 49. GIOVANNI DE MARIGNOLA, a Florentine and Legate of Clement VI., landed in Ceylon in 1349 A.D., at which time the legitimate king was driven away and the supreme power left in the hands of a eunuch whom he calls Coja-Joan, "pessimus Saracenus." The legate's attention was chiefly directed to "the mountain opposite Paradise."—DOBNER, Monum. Histor. Boemiæ. Pragæ, 1764-85.
JOHN OF HESSE in his "Itinerary" (in which occurs the date A.D. 1398) says, "Adsunt et in quâdam insulâ nomine Taprobanes viri crudelissimi et moribus asperi: permagnas habent aures, et illas plurimis gemmis ornare dicuntur. Hi carnes humanas pro summis deliciis comedunt."—JOHANNIS DE HESSE, Presbyteri Itinerarium, etc.
2: De Varietate Fortunæ, Basil, 1538. An admirable translation of the narrative of DI CONTI has recently been made by R.H. Major, Esq., for the Hakluyt Society. London, 1857.
Di Conti is, I believe, the first European who speaks of cinnamon as a production of Ceylon. "It is a tree," he says, "which grows there in abundance, and which very much resembles our thick willows, excepting that the branches do not grow upwards, but spread horizontally; the leaves are like those of the laurel, but somewhat larger; the bark of the branches is thinnest and best, that of the trunk thick and inferior in flavour. The fruit resembles the berries of the laurel; the Indians extract from it an odoriferous oil, and the wood, after the bark has been stripped from it, is used by them for fuel."[1]
1: POGGIO makes Nicolo di Conti say that the island contains a lake, in the middle of which is a city three miles in circumference; but this is evidently an amplification of his own, borrowed from the passage in which Pliny (whom Poggio elsewhere quotes) alludes to the fabulous Lake Megisba.—PLINY, lib. vi. ch. xxiv.