- E.
[4] There are no elephants in Madagascar, yet these teeth might have been
procured from southern Africa. - E.
[5] By India Minor he obviously means what is usually called farther India,
or India beyond the Ganges, from the frontiers of China to Moabar, or
the north part of the Coromandel coast, including the islands. - E.
[6] Abyssinia, here taken in the most extended sense, including all the
western coast of the Red Sea, and Eastern Africa. - E.
[7] This paragraph obviously alludes to the Tartar kingdom of Siberia. - E.
[8] 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. - E.
CHAP. XII.
Travels of Oderic of Portenau, into China and the East, in 1318[1].
INTRODUCTION.
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.
This traveller has been named by different editors, Oderic, Oderisius, and
Oldericus de Foro Julii, de Udina, Utinensis, or de Porto Vahonis, or
rather Nahonis.
