and of a stone on which whosoever sitteth
shall suddenly have a rupture in his body."
[An awkward land, this, to travel in!] "We
are told also that hereabouts are taken
tortoises of that bignesse that ten men might
sit and dine within one of the shells; and
that here is a tree which all the day time
hath not a floure on it, but within half an
houre after sunne-set is full of them. All
huge and monstrous lies."

Nevertheless, when Peter gets into Africa,
he entertains us with similar relations.
Africa, by the way, he calls a country,
instead of a quarter of the globe; and speaks
of the Vandal kings thereof, as though they
had ruled over the whole region from sea to
sea. In speaking of an expedition by the
Goths of Spain against the Romans in Italy,
which was defeated on account of the former
refusing to fight on a Sunday, while the
latter had no such scruples, and consequently
massacred their unresisting enemies, he makes
a remark which we commend to all over
strict Sabbatarians. "Works of necessity,"
he observes, " are allowed by the best divines,
as consonant to God's word, to bee done on
that day." He appends an anecdote of a
Jew, who, "being at Alexandria, and refusing
to take shippe, when the winde served very
happily, to saile into Palestine, because it was
Saturday,—the better to cousen his
conscience, hired a Janizary to beate him aboard:
which task the Janizary, partly in love to
knavery, and partly in hate to the nation,
performed not by halfes, and in jest, but
lashed him sorely, and to the purpose."

The women of Barbary, Peter quaintly
pourtrays in a few words; describing them
as " sumptuous in jewels, beautifull in black-
nesse, having delicate soft skinnes." But
the people of Negroland provoke his contempt
in the highest degree. Of this nation he
says: " The very nobles (if so noble a name
may without offence bee given to so blockish
a people) are so stupid that when they are in
presence of their king they never looke him
in the face, but sit flat with their elbowes on
their knees, and their hands on their faces;
and, for their greater gallantry, they annoint
their haire with the fat of fishes, which
maketh them stinke abominably." In the
more civilised parts of Africa wonders come
crowding in upon us in every direction; as,
for instance, at the city of Morocco, where it
appears that on a tower of the castle are
three globes of pure gold, weighing one
hundred and thirty thousand Barbary ducats,
and that several kings have essayed to take
them down, in order to use them for the
benefit of their exchequer, but have
invariably suffered some calamity in consequence,
so that the vulgar believe they are guarded
by spirits. We hear also of the Psylli, a
people of Lybia, so venomous in themselves
that they could poison a snake; and we are
told that the inhabitants of Ethiopia Superior
are of an olive-tawny complexion, "excepting
only their king himself, who is alwaies of a
white complexion: a wonderfull prerogative,
if true." At the island of Pharos, Peter
does not forget to inform us that here
Ptolemy built a tower of glass (a sort of
ante-type of the Crystal Palace), " which,
being by reason of magicke enchantments
impregnable, was by him laid levell to the
ground with a handfull of beanes." Of the
last cataract of the Nile, we read that " the
hideousnesse of the noyse which it maketh
not only deafeth all the by-dwellers, but the
hills also are torne with the sound." This is
very grand, and is perhaps not far from the
truth; but we cannot say as much for a
tradition concerning the island of Teneriffe,
"the inhabitants of which never heard of a
showre or river, but receive all their fresh
waters from a most high mountaine, wherein
there is a tree covered continually with a
moist cloud, which every noone dissolveth
into water, and is by cisterns conveighed into
divers parts of the iland." The same story
has been told of another of the Canary Islands.

America in the time of Heylyn was a very
different place from the America of the
present day. The red man still held possession
of a large part of his ancestral earth; the
primeval forests had been but slightly
encroached upon by modern cities; and the
great republic of the north-west had not even
been dreamt of as a possibility. In the south
the Spaniards had made some progress; but
the Pilgrim fathers had not long crossed
the Atlantic, and only a nucleus or so of
English society existed in the north. Peru
was the California of those days, from which
such large quantities of gold were poured into
Europe that, according to Heylyn, they were
supposed by many to have created a " dearth
of all things in respect of former times;" we
suppose, by putting a stop to production. A
story which he tells touching this subject
may be perused with advantage by many of
our fellow-countrymen in Australia at the
present day. " Two merchants, departing
from Spaine to get gold, touched upon part of
Barbary, where the one buyeth Moores to
dig and delve with, the other fraughteth his
vessell with sheep; and, being come to the
Indies (America), the one, finding mines, set
his slaves to worke, and the other, hapning
in grassie ground, put his sheepe to grasing.
The slaves, growne cold and hungry, call for
food and cloathing, which the sheep-master by
the increase of his cattle had in abundance:
so that what the one got in gold, with toyle,
charges, and hazard, hee gladly gave unto the
other for continuall supplies of victuals and
rayments    for himselfe and his servants. In
the end, the mines being exhausted, and all
the gold thence arising being exchanged with
the sheepheard for such necessaries as nature
required, home returned the sheepheard in
triumph; his companion having nothing to
shew for the improvement ot his stock."
Schemes for cutting through the Isthmus of