ervant or slave of a Persian
merchant, though he calls himself his companion, and along with whom he
made various extensive peregrinations in India. At length he contrived,
when at Cananore, to desert again to the Portuguese, through whose means
he was enabled to return to Europe.

In this itinerary, as in all the ancient voyages and travels, the names
of persons, places, and things, are generally given in an extremely
vicious orthography, often almost utterly unintelligible, as taken down
orally, according to the vernacular modes of the respective writers,
without any intimate knowledge of the native language, or the employment
of any fixed general standard. To avoid the multiplication of notes, we
have endeavoured to supply this defect, by subjoining those names which
are now almost universally adopted by Europeans, founded upon a more
intimate acquaintance with the eastern languages. Thus the author, or
his translator Eden, constantly uses _Cayrus_ and _Alcayr_, for the
modern capital of Egypt, now known either by the Arabic denomination Al
Cahira, or the European designation Cairo, probably formed by the
Venetians from the Arabic. The names used in this itinerary have
probably been farther disguised and vitiated, by a prevalent fancy or
fashion of giving _latin_ terminations to all names of persons and
places in latin translations. Thus, even the author of this itinerary
has had his modern _Roman_ name, _Verthema_, latinized into
_Vertomannus_, and probably the _Cairo_, or _Cayro_ of the Italian
original, was corrupted by Eden into _Cayrus_, by way of giving it a
latin sound. Yet, while we have endeavoured to give, often
conjecturally, the better, or at least more intelligible and now
customary names, it seemed proper to retain those of the original
translation, which we believe may be found useful to our readers, as a
kind of _geographical glossary_ of middle-age terms.

Of _Verthema_ or _Vertomannus_, we only know, from the title of the
translation of his work by Eden, that he was a _gentleman of Rome;_ and
we learn, at the close of his itinerary, that he was knighted by the
Portuguese viceroy of India, and that his patent of knighthood was
confirmed at Lisbon, by the king of Portugal. The full title of this
journal or itinerary, as given by the original translator, is as
follows; by which, and the preface of the author, both left unaltered,
the language and orthography of England towards the end of the sixteenth