fountains Jor and Dan, whose waters unite in the
single river Jordan." In the Dead Sea a lighted lamp would float safely,
and no man could sink if he tried; the bitumen of this place was almost
indissoluble; the only fruit here about were the apples of Sodom, which
crumbled to dust in the mouth.

The three churches on the top of Tabor were "according to the three
tabernacles described by Peter."

From Damascus Arculf made for the port of Tyre, and so came by Jaffa to
Egypt. Alexandria he found so great that he was one entire day in merely
passing through. Its port he thought "difficult of access and something
like the human body in shape, with a narrow mouth and neck, then
stretching out far and wide."

The great Pharos tower was still lit up every night with torches. Here
was the "Emporium of the whole world"; "countless merchants from all
parts": the "country rainless and very fertile."

The Nile was navigable to the Town of Elephants; beyond this, at the
Cataracts, the river "runs in a wild ruin down a cliff." Its
embankments, its canals, and even its crocodiles, "not so large as
ravenous," are all described, and Arculf, returning home by
Constantinople, concludes with an account of the capital of Christendom,
"beyond doubt the metropolis of the Roman Empire, and by far the
greatest city therein"; lastly, as the pilgrim sails by Sicily he sees
the "isle of Vulcan vomiting smoke by day and flame by night, with a
noise like thunder, which is always fiercer on Fridays and Saturdays."

Willibald, a nephew of St. Boniface and related through his mother to
King Ina of Wessex, started for the East about 721, passed ten years in
travel, and on his return followed his countrymen to mission work and to
death among the heathen of Upper Germany. He went out by Southampton and
Rouen, by Lucca and the Alps, to Naples and Catania, "where is Mount
Etna; and when this volcano casts itself out they take St. Agatha's veil
and hold it towards the fire, which ceases at once." Thence by Samos and
Cyprus to Antaradus and Emesda, "in the region of the Saracens," where
the whole party, who had escaped the Moslem brigands of Southern Gaul,
were thrown into prison on suspicion of being spies. A Spaniard made
intercession for them and got their release; but Willibald went up
country one hundred miles, and cleared himself of all suspicion before
the Caliph at Damascus. "We have come from the West, where the sun has
his setting, and we know