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0105 Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2
Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 / Page 105 (Color Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000042
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BY JOHN DE' MARIGNOLLI.   345

So after a year and four months I took leave of the brethren, and after accomplishing many glorious works I

scarcely entered—(does not one still feel disappointment every time the

story is read ?)—and in defiance of history prolonged his expedition to

the ends of the earth. We have seen before that the cave temples of

Western India were ascribed to him (ante, p. 57) ; Tennent cites a Persian

poem describing his journey to Ceylon and Adam's Peak (Ceylon, i, 605) ;

whilst Friar Mauro's Map attributes to Alexander the chains that still aid pilgrims in climbing that mountain. John of Hese likewise, in his imaginary travels, finds within a mile of the Mountain of Paradise another mountain, on which Alexander is said to have stood when he claimed tribute also from Paradise. Earlier than these the versifying geographers in their apparent identification of Solis (the idea of which is Cape Comorin, though the name may have belonged to a more eastern promontory) with Aornos, seem to indicate that in their notions Alexander had attained the furthest extremity of India. Thus Dionysius-

" 7rapâ r pµaTa KwAlSos 'luny

`H 3'5rot 7rpov4VEVKEY 47r 'S2KEavbv ßaeuSév7)v

'HÀ1ßaTOS TaXLVOîTL SvaEµßaTOS oLcovao- V

To vEKa /MY Kai wTES E'7rLKNeiovo-u,'AopvLv."—(Orb. Descrip., v. 1148.)

Dobner indeed refers to a passage in the same author as speaking of the columns erected by Alexander on the ocean, but though otherwise appropriate, it is of Bacchus that the geographer speaks ; it runs in the paraphrase of Festus Avienus :

" Oceani Eoi prætenti denique Bacchus

Littore, et extrem t terrarum victor in orâ

Ducit laurigeros post Indica bella triumphos,

Erigit et gemmas telluris fine columnas."—(V. 1380.)

But the most appropriate illustration is in a passage of Mandeville quoted by Meinert from a German edition, but which I do not find in Wright's :

So he set up his token there as far as he had got, like as Hercules did on the Spanish Sea towards the sunset. And the token that Alexander set up towards the sunrising, hard by Paradise, hight Alexander's Gades, and that other hight Hercules's Gades : and these be great Pillars of Stone, that stand upon lofty mountains, for an eternal Sign and Token that no man shall pass beyond those pillars."

Was this pillar of Marignolli's that which the Dutch chaplain Baldaeus thus mentions : Upon the rocks near the sea shore of Coulang stands a Stone Pillar, erected there, as the inhabitants report, by St. Thomas ; I saw the Pillar in 1662." Three hundred years of tradition might easily swamp the dim memory of John the Legate in that of Thomas the Apostle. Mr. Day (Land of the Permauls, p. 212) tells us that this pillar still exists, but Mr. Broadley Howard in a recent book (Christians of St. Thomas, p. 9) says in reference to the passage of Baldæus just quoted : " Mr. D'Albedhyll, the Master Attendant at Quilon, told me that he had

seen the pillar, and that it was washed away a few years ago." I wish some one would still look for it !