One
Of The Sultan’S Three Wives, On The Departure Of Her Lord And Master,
Bestowed Her Heart Upon The Traveller.
She was “very faire and comely,
after theyr maner, and of colour inclynyng to blacke:” she
[P.336] would spend the whole day in beholding Bartema, who wandered
about simulating madness,[FN#5] and “in the meane season, divers tymes,
sent him secretly muche good meate by her maydens.” He seems to have
played his part to some purpose, under the colour of madness,
converting a “great fatt shepe” to Mohammedanism, killing an ass because he
refused to be a proselyte, and, finally, he “handeled a Jewe so euyll
that he had almost killed hym.” After sundry adventures and a trip to
Sanaa, he started for Persia with the Indian fleet, in which, by means
of fair promises, he had made friendship with a certain captain. He
visited Zayla and Berberah in the Somali country, and at last reached
Hormuz. The 3rd book “entreateth of Persia,” the 4th of “India, and of the
cities and other notable thynges seene there.” The 8th book contains the
“voyage of India,” in which he includes Pegu, Sumatra, Borneo, and Java,
where, “abhorryng the beastly maners” of a cannibal population, he made but
a short stay. Returning to Calicut, he used “great subtiltie,” escaped to
the “Portugales,” and was well received by the viceroy. After describing in
his 7th book the “viage or navigation of Ethiopia, Melinda, Mombaza,
Mozambrich (Mozambique), and Zaphala (Sofala),” he passed the Cape called
“Caput Bonæ Spei, and repaired to the goodly citie of Luxburne (Lisbon),”
where he had the honour of kissing hands. The king confirmed with his
great seal the “letters patentes,” whereby his lieutenant the viceroy of
India had given the pilgrim the order of knighthood. “And thus,” says
Bartema by way of conclusion, “departing from thence with the kyngs
pasporte and safe conducte, at the length after these my long and great
trauayles and
[p.337] dangers, I came to my long desyred native countrey, the citie
of Rome, by the grace of God, to whom be all honour and glory.”
This old traveller’s pages abound with the information to be collected in
a fresh field by an unscrupulous and hard-headed observer. They are of
course disfigured with a little romancing. His Jews at Khaybor, near
Al-Madinah, were five or six spans long. At Meccah he saw two unicorns,
the younger “at the age of one yeare, and lyke a young coolte; the horne
of this is of the length of four handfuls.[FN#6]” And so credulous is he
about anthropophagi, that he relates of Mahumet (son to the Sultan of
Sanaa) how he “by a certayne naturall tyrannye and madnesse delyteth to
eate man’s fleeshe, and therefore secretly kylleth many to eate
them.[FN#7]” But all things well considered, Lodovico Bartema, for
correctness of observation and readiness of wit, stands in the foremost
rank of the old Oriental travellers.
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