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Though Friar ODORIC is said to have visited it about 1322, and LUDOVICO BERTHEMA, of Bologna, between 1503 and 1507, the existence of this great island, variously estimated to be from 263,000 to 300,000 square miles in extent, did not become generally known to Europeans until, in 1518, the Portuguese LORENZO DE GOMEZ touched at the city of Brunai.
For years this interesting work and its unknown author were subjects of endless dispute; but it is now fairly certain that this collection of travelers' tales is simply a compilation from Odoric, Marco Polo, and various other sources.
This account of Hangchow is taken partly from Marco Polo, op. cit., bk. II, c. LXVIII: 'Of the noble and magnificent city of Kinsai'; and partly from Odoric of Pordenone, Cathay and the Way Thither, ed. Yule, pp. 113-20.
Odoric of Pordenone, another friar, and a very good observer too, set forth in 1316 and sailed round India and through the Spice Islands by the same sea route by which the Polos had brought their Tartar princess back to Persia, and so reached Canton, 'a city as big as three Venices ... and all Italy hath not the amount of craft that this one city hath. He left a wonderful account of his travels in China, including descriptions of Peking and Hangchow, and ends his stories with the words, 'As for me, from day to day I prepare myself to return to those countries, in which I am content to die, if it pleaseth Him from whom all good things do come' no doubt where he had left his heart, but he died at Udine in Italy.
Sir John Mandeville also wrote of his travels, but most of his descriptions were taken from the work of Friar Odoric, of Pordenone, who had visited the Far East. Merchants did not venture so far as did bold explorers of a scientific turn. Commerce in the Middle Ages was mainly in two districts, the borders of the North Sea and of the Baltic, and the countries upon the Mediterranean.
For he saith that ye did pill your tales out of Odoric his book, and that ye never saw snails with shells as big as houses, nor never met no Devyls, but part of that ye say, ye took it out of William of Boldensele his book, yet ye took not his wisdom, withal, but put in thine own foolishness.
Odoric, speaking of the wonders of Hangchow, refers for confirmation to Venetian traders who have visited it: ''Tis the greatest city in the whole world, so great indeed that I should scarcely venture to tell of it, but that I have met at Venice people in plenty who have been there'; John of Monte Corvino was accompanied by Master Peter of Lucolongo, 'a great merchant, and John Marignolli mentions a fondaco for the use of Christian merchants, which was attached to one of the Franciscan convents at Zaiton.
Money cannot purchase it. Likewise Maundevile tells of it, and how the Great Khan would have it, but was refused; and so Odoric, the two giving various Sizes, and both placing it falsely in the Island of Nacumera or Nicoveran.
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."
One of the earliest of European travellers in India, Odoric de Pordenone, says: "The province where pepper grows is named Malabar, and in no other part of the world does pepper grow except in this country. Ginger was produced in many parts of the East; in Arabia, India, and China. Precious stones were of almost as much interest to the men of the Middle Ages as were spices.
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