Four Pilgrims - free ebook by William Boulting

FOUR PILGRIMS

BY WILLIAM BOULTING Author of Giordano Bruno: his Life, Thought, and Martyrdom ; Woman in Italy, 1100–1600 A.D. , etc. London : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER &amp; CO., LTD., NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON &amp; CO....

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ERRATA.

Page 84, Line 2. For “a little before” read “some time after.”...

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PREFACE

Pilgrimage has been popular in all countries and at all times. For what could be happier than an agreeable change which should contribute at once to welfare of soul, refreshment of spirit, and vigour of body? Adventures on the way gave zest to the enterprise. If the more timid or feeble were content to visit neighbouring shrines, those of hardier mould, like the Wife of Bath, took more formidable journeys. Some of the boldest and bravest of ancient travellers were pilgrims, and we have their rec

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CHAPTER I. THE ISOLATION OF CHINA

For thousands of years China was a world to itself, cut off from the races of men. The main causes of this singular seclusion are simple:— China was protected from serious invasion by her geographical position. Northward, it was no easy business for the barbarous intruder to find a way into China from the Manchurian plain, or for a Chinaman to find a way out; and it was still more difficult to effect a passage by force. To the North-West rose the forbidding walls of the Altai Mountains; and, bet

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CHAPTER II. BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.

Gautama was the son of a petty chieftain, who exercised limited authority in a district which lay north of Faîzâbâd. He lived about 600 years before the beginning of the Christian era—about the time when Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar and Assyria to the Medes. The evils of disease, old age, and death weighed on the melancholy mind of the young princelet: he sought for some way of escape from the curse of craving flesh and the wild delirium of desire. He abandoned wife and family; and dwelt, at

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CHAPTER III. AN ADVENTUROUS JOURNEY.

This boldest of pilgrims, greatest of Chinese travellers came into the world A.D. 603—nearly twelve hundred years after the founder of his faith. He was the fourth son of a Chinese Professor in the Province of Ho-nan, in Central China. Probably he shewed mental ability and a devotional spirit early; for the second of his elder brethren took him into his own monastery at Lo-Yang, the Eastern Capital, to supervise his education. The boy is said to have evinced such brilliant parts and such a spiri

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CHAPTER IV. THROUGH INDIA IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY.

He passed the wet season at Kapiśa, and then, protected by the King’s envoys, went along the North bank of the Kâbul river and through districts memorable in the record of the Indian expedition of Alexander the Great. Again and again do we come across the names of places familiar to the reader of Arrian and Strabo. He visited Peshâwar and Attock; he travelled through many a little Kingdom of what is now North-Eastern Afghanistan and the North-West Provinces of India, by zig-zag and perplexing ro

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CHAPTER V. INDIAN SOCIAL LIFE IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY.

Once more we find Hiuen-Tsiang by the Kâbul river. Many years had passed since he rested on its banks and and entered India. Since that time he had made himself a finished Sanskrit scholar; he had visited three and a half score of States; he had traversed the whole breadth and well-nigh the whole length of the great Peninsula; he had debated the subtlest questions with the profoundest scholars and acutest minds in India; he had been entertained by powerful princes as their venerated guest. In ev

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CHAPTER VI. THE JOURNEY HOME BY A NEW AND PERILOUS ROUTE.

We left our hero on the Kâbul river, beyond the boundaries of India: a royal reception awaited him at Kapiśa, and a hundred experienced men were chosen to conduct and protect him in the passage across the Hindû Kûsh. The shortest, but most difficult of the passes—probably the Khawak, which reaches 13,000 feet, was selected. Seven days of travel brought the party to those snow-mountains of which Hiuen-Tsiang always speaks with mingled wonder, fear and dislike. Born and brought up in a mild climat

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CHAPTER VII. PEACEFUL DAYS.

At intervals an order came from T’ai-Tsung and his successor to appear within the green enclosure which surrounded the Imperial Throne. It was by Imperial command that the world possesses Hiuen-Tsiang’s report of the States he had visited and of eighteen other States of which he believed himself to have gathered authentic information. The work, as already stated, is full of the absurd, fantastic fables of corrupted Buddhism, related at full length and with perfervid unction; but it is also a rec

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CHAPTER I. EARLY PILGRIMAGE TO PALESTINE.

Very soon after Hiuen-Tsiang set forth on his arduous enterprise, Jerusalem witnessed a remarkable scene ( A.D. 629). Heraclius, Emperor of New Rome, had overthrown the hosts of Chosroes II, the Persian, and now he marched on foot through streets which that monarch had so lately ravaged and shorn of half their population. A spirit of devout and humble thankfulness possessed Heraclius and his chastened people. The imperial feet were naked; the imperial shoulders bore the weight of that True Cross

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CHAPTER II. “DIEU LE VEULT.”

One of the eye-witnesses of the wretchedness of Christians in Palestine was a certain Peter, a man from Picardy; high-strung; one to whom a very varied experience brought no satisfaction. His restless disposition had driven him into the profession of arms; he had sought for peace in study; he had tried the companionship of a wife, who had borne him the boon of children; his spirit found no tranquility among cloistered monks; he fled to the greater seclusion of a hermitage. There visions left his

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CHAPTER III. SÆWULF’S RECORD.

There is preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, a valuable collection of ancient manuscripts presented by an old pupil of the College, who was no other than Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Among these manuscripts is a mere fragment, written in Mediæval Latin, which tells of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem of one Sæwulf, an Englishman, who must have started from his native shores thirty-six years after the landing of William the Conque

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CHAPTER I. THE WHIRLWIND FROM ARABIA AND WHAT FOLLOWED.

Marauder as he was, the Arab, like his half-brother the Hebrew, carried an ethical spark in his bosom which could be readily fanned into a consuming blaze. He was accustomed, in the silence of the stony waste and of the stars, to plunge into the depths of his own spiritual being, or to await, in patience, some portent from the unseen. Mohammed, a mystic, like unto the ancient prophets of Israel, hating false gods and illuminated by the “One All Merciful, Lord of Creation and Sultan of Life,” in

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CHAPTER II. A RESOLUTE PILGRIM

Among Mohammedan pilgrims and travellers Ibn Batûta stands without a peer. He was born in a city which was once an extreme outpost of Roman rule in Africa, the Ancient Tingis, the modern Tangiers, in the Sultanate of Fez, 24th February, 1304. He devoted his youth to the study of the Koran and its exegesis; becoming thereby an expert in theology and jurisprudence. For, throughout the Mohammedan world the Koran is the living fountain of all law and of all piety: hence Moslem theology and law are i

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CHAPTER III A ROUNDABOUT PILGRIMAGE

Now , besides the shrewd reading of Batûta’s character by the holy man of Alexandria, who saw in him the born traveller, another Sheik had also read his man aright and foretold that he should meet the seer’s brothers in widely separated parts of the world. Oracles are often suggestive and start the way to their own fulfilment. These predictions actually came about. Batûta assures us that he had at the time no intention of running over nearly all of the known earth; but by now an inborn tendency

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CHAPTER IV GLIMPSES OF ARABIA, PERSIA AND EAST AFRICA IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

After duly visiting the tomb of the Prophet at Medina and performing the prescribed rites at Mecca, Batûta, still insatiate of travel, joined the Persian caravan on its homeward journey, and soon came to the place where, to this day, the devil is lapidated. “It is a great collection of stones. Everyone who comes to it hurls one. They say there was once a heretic who was stoned to death there.” From Medina, Central Arabia was crossed, and a journey of 600 miles brought the caravan to a town in th

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CHAPTER V TO INDIA BY WAY OF CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE STEPPES

Batûta joined the Persian Caravan to Mecca, and once again journeyed across the territory of the Wahabi in Central Arabia. This, his third pilgrimage, over, he resolved to see India. But the wretched ship in which he put forth was storm-tossed, and finally driven into a little port on the Egyptian coast. So he made across the desert, seeing, now and again, the tents of a few wandering Arabs or an ostrich or gazelle. After much hardship, he reached Syene and travelled once more along the banks of

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CHAPTER VI AN EASTERN DESPOT

He waited forty days for the snows to melt on the “Hindu Kûsh—the Slayer of the Hindus, so called because most of the slaves brought from India die here of the bitter cold thereof.” The Afghans were at that time subjects of the Khân of Turkestan (Transoxiana); a turbulent, violent race, impatient of the slightest curb. Bandits attacked the party he joined in the Kâbul pass; but bow and arrow kept them at a distance. Fierce invaders had poured down the mountain passes from Afghanistan from the en

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CHAPTER VII PERILS BY LAND AND SEA

Our ambassador sets off with the returning mission attended by two favourites of the Sultan, and a guard of 1,000 horse. He has charge of gifts which far surpass the Chinese presents—100 horses of the best breed, richly caparisoned, 100 Hindu singing and dancing girls, robes of rich brocade, jewelled arms, instruments of gold and silver, silks and stuffs, and 1,700 rich dresses. He has not travelled 100 miles from Delhi when he finds a district in revolt against the Mohammedan conquerors. The Hi

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CHAPTER VIII OFF TO MALAYSIA AND CATHAY

Batûta speaks of Bengal as the land of plenty. Everything was cheaper there than anywhere else in the wide world. He picked up a very beautiful slave-girl for a trifle. But the muggy climate made Bengal “a hell full of good things.” The Sultan was in revolt against his lord-paramount at Delhi; and as Batûta was a prudent person, held Mohammed Tughlak in wholesome awe, and could not predict the issue of the contest, he did not visit the Bengalese Court. He went up to the hill-country, half-way to

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CHAPTER IX MOORS OF SPAIN AND NEGROES OF TIMBUKTU

But Batûta’s travels were by no means at an end. He made a filial visit to the place where earth that “makes all sweet” had closed on his father’s history. Once at Tangier, the temptation was strong to cross the Straits and visit the shrinking Moslem dominion in Spain. He landed where his compatriots had landed to conquer the Peninsula—at Gibraltar (Jabal Tarik, the Hill of Victory). He saw a cousin by his mother’s side, who had settled here; ran all over Moorish Andalusia, visiting renowned cit

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CHAPTER I. THE GREAT AGE OF THE RENAISSANCE AND OF DISCOVERY.

By the close of the Fifteenth Century, the relative stability of society and of its convictions during the Middle Ages was undone. The Italian, at least, had cast off the restraints of that rigid and traditional world, and was in reaction against it. For, social bonds were loosened, and the corporate life of guild and city was in decay. With the revival of letters, society became imbued once again with the Greek and Roman conception of man as a progressive creature, and was awakened to the richn

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CHAPTER II.—FROM VENICE TO DAMASCUS.

No commercial arithmetic called a certain Ludovico di Varthema to adventure. Like Dante’s Ulysses, “nothing could quench his inward burning to have full witness of the world.” “Ungifted,” so he tells us, “with that far-casting wit for which the earth in not enough, and which ranges through the loftiest regions of the firmament with careful watch and survey; but possessed of slender parts merely,” he fixed his mind on beholding with his own eyes some unknown part of the world and on marking “wher

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CHAPTER III OVER THE DESERT TO MECCA

Now , the yearly caravan from Damascus to the Holy Cities of Arabia was in preparation—a journey which the pious Moslem makes by rail to-day. For, as has been truly remarked, “the unchanging East” is a venerable catchword: the Orient moves on, but slowly. No “unbelieving dog” might plant his foot on Arabian soil; no European Christian had ever seen its sacred fanes. Here was a golden opportunity for one “longing for novelty.” Varthema had learned to speak Arabic. That insinuating smile, persuasi

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CHAPTER IV. THE ESCAPE FROM THE CARAVAN

And now, in the spirit of Alexander sighing for new worlds to conquer, he looked forward with dismay to the return-journey of the caravan. A perilous surprise awaited him which, with wonted adroitness, he turned to his purpose. “Having charge from my Captain to buy certain things, a Moor looked me in the face, knew me and asked me ‘Where are you from?’ I answered: ‘I am a Moslem.’ His reply was: ‘You lie.’ ‘By the head of the Prophet,’ I said, ‘I am a Moslem’; whereto he answered: ‘Come to my ho

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CHAPTER V. CERTAIN ADVENTURES IN ARABIA THE HAPPY.

On arriving at Aden; which was a place of call for every ship trading with India, Persia, and Ethiopia, custom-house officers at once came on board the ship, ascertained whence and when it had sailed, the nature of its freight, and how many were on board. Then the masts, sails, rudders and anchors were removed to ensure the payment of dues. On the second day after Varthema’s arrival, a passenger or sailor on board called him a “Christian dog, son of a dog,” the usual polished address of the prou

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CHAPTER VI. EASTWARD HO!

For six days the wind was favourable; but it was now December of the year 1503; and on the seventh day out, the North Eastern monsoon drove the vessel back “with 25 others, laden with madder for the dyeing of clothes. By dint of very great labour, we made the port of Zeila” (on the African Coast, opposite to Aden); “and tarried there five days both to see it and to wait for better weather.” Zeila was a great place for traffic in gold and ivory, the law was well administered; but the cruel slave-

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CHAPTER VII. THE PAGANS OF NARSINGA.

Before Batûta reached India, and therefore long before Varthema’s time, Afghan chiefs had swooped down on the fertile plains of India with the war cry of “Allah and the Prophet,” and Northern India, with the exception of its southern and western districts, where the Rajpoots maintained their independence, was now under the rule of various Moslem despots. The Deccan was under the sway of a powerful Moslem dynasty—the Brahmany Sultans; but what is now the presidency of Madras and Mysore was divide

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CHAPTER VIII. FARTHER INDIA, MALAYSIA AND THE BANDA ISLANDS.

Alas! the visit was of little profit. As in Ibn Batûta’s time, nearly two centuries before, the island was divided between four kings, and “for that they were waging fierce war with each other, we could not tarry long time there.” Another reason for the short stay made in Ceylon was that Cazazionor got alarmed at false information concerning the good faith of one of the Kings to whom he was to carry his corals and saffron. This was given him by one of the Moorish traders who were settled in the

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CHAPTER IX. SOME CUNNING MANŒUVRES.

Having unloaded the junk, our travellers chartered a sampan and sailed to Quilon. Now Varthema was very silent about the Portuguese at Cochin and Cannanore when he was on his outward voyage, and indeed he discreetly avoided them, lest discovery of his nationality should wreck his purpose. They must have been at Quilon, too, when he was there before; for the Râja of the district had welcomed Pedro Alvarez Cabal in 1503, and permitted the building of a Portuguese factory. There were now 22 Portugu

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CHAPTER X. WAR BY LAND AND SEA

Albeit sheltered by a cognate Latin people, our traveller had by no means found a haven of perfect safety. In a few days, we find him taking his part in a great sea-fight between the Portuguese fleet of eleven ships (of which two were galleons and one a brigantine), commanded by Don Francisco de Almeyda, and the great Indian fleet of two hundred and nine sail, which had gathered together from all those parts of the Malabar coast which remained in the hands of the Mohammedan traders. But only eig

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CHAPTER XI. THE NEW WAY ROUND THE CAPE.

The home-bound fleet was now loading. Varthema had given the Portuguese a year and a half of faithful service; he tells us that he was anxious to return to Europe; he had had fully five years of perilous wanderings through Moslem and Pagan lands to where no European foot hitherto had pressed the soil; and he was urged “by the affection and kindly feeling I bore my country, and my desire to carry thither and place upon record news concerning a great part of the world.” The grace demanded was free

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