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The summer in this northern country of the Samojeds is extremely short; but the expression here used, must allude to the long-continued summer day, when, for several months, the sun never sets. Travels of Oderic of Portenau, into China and the East, in 1318 .

Many things are related by various authors, concerning the customs, fashions, and conditions of this world: Yet, as I, friar Oderic of Portenau in the Friul, have travelled among the remote nations of the unbelievers, where I saw and heard many great and wonderful things, I have thought fit to relate all these things truly.

VIII. Travels of John de Piano Carpini, in 1246 IX. Travels of W. de Rubruquis, about 1253 X. Travels of Haitho, Prince of Armenia, in 1254 XI. Travels of Marco Polo into China and the East; from A.D. 1260 to 1295 XII. Travels of Oderic of Portenau, in 1318 XIII. Travels of Sir John Mandeville, in 1322 XIV. Itinerary of Pegoletti, between Asof and China, in 1355

I, friar Oderic of Portenau, in the Friuli, of the order of minorites, do hereby testify, and bear witness to the reverend father Guidotus, minister of the province of St Anthony, in the marquisate of Trevigi, by whom I was commanded so to do, that all which is here written, was either seen by myself or reported to me by credible and worthy persons; and the common report of the countries through which I travelled, testifies all those things which I have seen and related to be true.

Oderic of Portenau, a minorite friar, travelled into the eastern countries in the year 1318, accompanied by several other monks, and penetrated as far as China. After his return, he dictated, in 1330, the account of what he had seen during his journey to friar William de Solona, or Solangna, at Padua, but without order or arrangement, just as it occurred to his memory.

Porto-Nahonis, or Portenau, is the Mutatio ad nonum, a station or stage which is mentioned in the Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum, or description of the various routes to Jerusalem, a work compiled for the use of pilgrims; and its name is apparently derived from the Kymerian language, apparently a Celtic dialect, in which port signifies a stage, station, or resting-place, and nav or naou signifies nine; Port-nav, Latinized into Portus naonis, and Frenchified into Portenau, implies, therefore, the ninth station, and is at present named Pordanone in the Friul.

The remarkable excrescence on the beak of this extraordinary bird may serve to explain the statement of the Minorite friar Odoric, of Portenau in Friuli, who travelled in Ceylon in the fourteenth century, and brought suspicion on the veracity of his narrative by asserting that he had there seen "birds with two heads."