384 RECOLLECTIONS OF TRAVEL IN THE EAST,
It is a fact also that monstrous serpents exist [in the east] , and very like that which our lord the Emperor Charles hath in his park at Prague. There are also certain animals with countenances almost like a man's ; more particularly in the possession of the Queen of Saba, and in the cloister at Campsay in that most famous monastery where they keep so many monstrous animals, which they believe to be the souls of the departed.1 [Not that they really are so] for I ascertained by irrefragable proof that they are irrational animals, except, of course, in so far as the devil may make use of them as he once did of the serpent's tongue. [Such delusions] those unbelievers may deserve to bring upon themselves because of their unbelief. But otherwise I must say that their rigid attention to prayer and fasting and other religious duties, if they but held the true faith, would far surpass any strictness and self-denial that we practise.~ However [as I was going to say] those animals at Campsay usually come to be fed at a given signal, but I observed that they never would come when a cross was present, though as soon as it was removed they would come. Hence I conclude
fashion, from Falian downwards, see Tennent, i, 592, etc; and regarding the Poliars, see Markham's Travels in Peru and India, p. 404. A like fashion of trade is ascribed by Pliny (probably through some mistake) to the Seres ; by Ibn Batuta to the dwellers in the Dark Lands of the North (ii, 400, 401) ; and by Cosmas to the gold-sellers near the Sea of Zingium or Zanzibar (Montfaucon, ii, 139). See also Cadamosto in Ramusio, i, and Herodotus, iv, 196, with Rawlinson's note thereon.
1 This is a very curious and unexceptionable corroboration of Odoric's quaint story of the convent garden at Kingssé (see p. 118).
2 So Ricold of Montecroce, who frequented the Mahomedan monastic institutions to study their law with the view of refuting it (he afterwards published a translation of the Koran and an argument against it), expresses his astonishment at finding in lege tantce perfidice opera tantce perfectionis. Who would not be astonished, he goes on, to see the zeal of the Saracens in study, their devoutness in prayer, their charity to the poor, their reverence for the name of God, for the prophets and the holy places, the gravity of their manners, their affability to foreigners, their loving and peaceable conduct towards each other ?" (Peregrin. Quatuor,
etc., p. 131.)
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