This
Pilgrimage from which the adventures forming their subject may be said
to date.
The text has been carefully revised, and the "baggage of notes" has
been materially lightened.[FN#1] From the Appendix I have removed
matter which, though useful to the student, is of scant general
interest. The quaint and interesting "Narrative and Voyages of
Ludovicus Vertomannus, Gentleman of Rome," need no longer be read in
extracts, when the whole has been printed by the Hakluyt Society. (The
Travels of Ludovico di Varthema in Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and
Arabia Felix, in Persia, India, and Ethiopia, A.D. 1503 to 1508.
Translated from the original Italian edition of 1510, with a Preface by
John Winter Jones, Esq., F.S.A., and edited,
[p.xx]with notes and an Introduction, by George Percy Badger, late
Government Chaplain in the Presidency of Bombay. London.) On the other
hand, I have inserted after the Appendix, with the permission of the
author, two highly interesting communications from Dr. Aloys Sprenger,
the well-known Orientalist and Arabist, concerning the routes of the
Great Caravans. My friend supports his suspicions that an error of
direction has been made, and geographers will enjoy the benefit of his
conscientious studies, topographical and linguistic.
The truculent attacks made upon pilgrims and Darwayshes call for a few
words of notice. Even that learned and amiable philanthropist, the late
Dr. John Wilson of Bombay ("Lands of the Bible," vol. ii., p. 302)
alludes, in the case of the Spaniard Badia, alias Ali Bey al-Abbasi, to
the "unjustifiable fanciful disguise of a Mohammedan Pilgrim." The
author of the Ruddy Goose Theory ("Voice of Israel from Mount Sinai")
and compiler of the "Historical Geography of Arabia" has dealt a foul
blow to the memory of Burckhardt, the energetic and inoffensive Swiss
traveller, whose name has ever been held in the highest repute. And now
the "Government Chaplain" indites (Introduction, p. xxvii.) the
following invidious remarks touching the travels of Ludovico di
Varthema-the vir Deo carus, be it remarked, of the learned and laical
Julius Caesar Scaliger:
"This is not the place to discuss the morality of an act involving the
deliberate and voluntary denial of what a man holds to be truth in a
matter so sacred as that of Religion. Such a violation of conscience is
not justifiable by the end which the renegade (!) may have in view,
however abstractedly praiseworthy it may be; and even granting that his
demerit should be gauged by the amount of knowledge which he possesses
of what is true and what false, the conclusion is inevitable, that
nothing short of utter ignorance of the precepts of his faith, or a
[p.xxi]conscientious disbelief in them, can fairly relieve the
Christian, who conforms to Islamism without a corresponding persuasion
of its verity, of the deserved odium all honest men attach to apostasy
and hypocrisy."
The reply to this tirade is simply, "Judge not; especially when you are
ignorant of the case which you are judging." Perhaps also the writer
may ask himself, Is it right for those to cast stones who dwell in a
tenement not devoid of fragility?
The second attack proceeds from a place whence no man would reasonably
have expected it.
