SOME MONSTERS (3) : REASONS TO AVOID BACTRIA

From this land men go to the land of Bactria... In this land too there are many hippopotami, which live sometimes on dry land and sometimes in the water; they are half man and half horse. And they eat men, wherever they can get them, no meat more readily. And in that land are many griffons, more than in any other country. Some men say they have the foreparts of an eagle and the hindparts of a lion; that is indeed true. Nevertheless the griffon is stronger than eight lions of these countries, and bigger and stronger than a hundred eagles. For certainly he will carry to his nest a great horse with a man on his back, or two oxen yoked together, as they work together at the plough. He has talons on his feet as great and long as the horns of oxen, and they are very sharp. Of these talons men make cups to drink out of, as we do with the horns of bulls; and the ribs of his feathers they make into strong bows to shoot with.

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

ITALICS MINE (10)

Sculpture of Genghis Khan at Marble Arch, London
(The Khan Mandeville writes about would have been
generations removed from Genghis.)

For truly under the firmament there is no lord so great nor so rich as the Great Khan of Tartary. Not even Prester John, Emperor of Greater and Lesser India, nor the Sultan of Babylon, nor the Emperor of Persia, nor anyone else can be compared to him. Truly, it is a great pity that he is not a Christian; nevertheless he will gladly hear men speak of God and allow Christian men to live in his empire. For in his land no man is forbidden to believe in whatever religion it pleases him to believe. And if some men perhaps will not believe me about what I will have said, and say it is all fable, what I say about the nobleness and the excellence and riches of the Great Khan and his court, and the multitude of men there that I told of, I do not really care. But let the man who will, believe it; and leave him alone who will not. I shall nevertheless say something of what I saw with my own eyes, whether they will believe it or not... Nevertheless I well know that if anyone had been there (or in the countries that border his land, if he had not been to his court), he would have heard so much of his nobility and his excellence that he would easily believe what I myself have said. So I am not going to stop telling you things that I know are true because of those that are ignorant of them or will not believe them.

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

Translated by C.W. R. D Moseley

Penguin Edition.

(Click of Italics label for more annotated readings.)

SOME MONSTERS (1): A DESERT BEAST

In the desert of the land of Egypt a holy hermit, once upon a time, met a monstrously shaped beast; for it had the shape of a man from the navel upwards and from their downward the form of a goat, with two horns standing up on its head. The hermit asked him, in God's name, what he was; and the beast answered and said, "I am a mortal creature as God made me, and in the desert I dwell, and I go about seeking my suffrance. Therefore I pray you, hermit, to pray to God for me, that He who came from Heaven to earth for the salvation of man's soul, and who was born of maiden, and suffered bitter Passion, through whom we all live and have our being, may have mercy upon me." The head of that beast, with the horns, is still kept in Alexandria as a marvelous thing.

From   The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

Penguin Edition