ream of devotees to Italy and to Syria, a fresh revival of the
fourth century habit of pilgrimage; but when mediaeval Christendom had
been formed, and religious passion was more steady and less unworldly,
the discoverer and observer blends with the pilgrim in all the records
left to us.

Saewulf was a layman and a trader, who went on a pilgrimage (1102), and
became a monk at the instance of his confessor, Wulfstan, Bishop of
Worcester. But though his narrative has been called an immense advance
on all earlier guide-books, it ends with the Holy Land and does not
touch even the outlying pilgrim sites, in Mesopotamia or Egypt, visited
and described by Silvia or Fidelis.

Starting some three years after the Latin capture of Jerusalem in 1099,
the English traveller takes us up six different routes from Italy to
Syria, evidence of the vast development of Mediterranean intercourse and
of practical security against pirates, gained very largely since the
second millennium began.

His own way, by Monopoli, Corfu, Corinth, and Athens, took him to Rhodes
"which once had the Idol called Colossus, one of the Seven Wonders of
the World, but destroyed by the Persians, with nearly all the land of
Roumania, on their way to Spain. These were the Colossians to whom St.
Paul wrote."

Thence to Myra in Lycia, "the port of the Adriatic as Constantinople is
of the AEgean."

Landing at Jaffa, after a sail of thirteen weeks, Saewulf was soon among
the wonders of Jerusalem, that had not grown less since Arculf's day. At
the head of the Sepulchre Church was the famous Navel of the Earth,
"now called Compas, which Christ measured with his own hands, working
salvation in the midst, as say the Psalms." For the same legends were
backed by the same texts as in the sixth or seventh century.

Going down to the Jordan, "four leagues east of Jericho," Arabia was
seen beyond "hateful to all who worship God, but having the Mount whence
Elias was carried into Heaven in a chariot of fire."

Eighteen days journey from the Jordan is Mount Sinai, by way of Hebron,
where "Abraham's Holm Oak" was still standing, and where, as pilgrims
said, he "sat and ate with God," but Saewulf himself did not go outside
Palestine, on this side. After travelling through Galilee and noting the
House of Saint Archi-Triclin (Saint "Ruler-of-the-Feast"), at Cana, he
made his way to Byzantium by sea, escaping the Saracen cruisers and
weathering the storms that wrecked in the ro