s father, which struggles for
the mastery with his love for the Holy City.

A more ambitious work was the "Itinera Mundi" of Abraham Farissol,
written in the autumn of 1524. This treatise was based upon original
researches as well as on the works of Christian and Arabian geographers.
He incidentally says a good deal about the condition of the Jews in
various parts of the world. Indeed, almost all the geographical
writings of Jews are social histories of their brethren in faith.
Somewhat later, David Reubeni published some strange stories as to the
Jews. He went to Rome, where he made a considerable sensation, and was
received by Pope Clement VII (1523-1534). Dwarfish in stature and dark
in complexion, David Reubeni was wasted by continual fasting, but his
manner, though harsh and forbidding, was intrepid and awe-inspiring. His
outrageous falsehoods for a time found ready acceptance with Jews and
Christians alike, and his fervid Messianism won over to his cause many
Marranos--Jews who had been forced by the Inquisition in Spain to assume
the external garb of Christianity. His chief claim on the memory of
posterity was his connection with the dramatic career of Solomon Molcho
(1501-1532), a youth noble in mind and body, who at Reubeni's
instigation personated the Messiah, and in early manhood died a martyr's
death amid the flames of the Inquisition at Mantua.

The geographical literature of the Jews did not lose its association
with Messianic hopes. Antonio de Montesinos, in 1642, imagined that he
had discovered in South America the descendants of the Ten Tribes. He
had been led abroad by business considerations and love of travel, and
in Brazil came across a mestizo Indian, from whose statements he
conceived the firm belief that the Ten Tribes resided and thrived in
Brazil. Two years later he visited Amsterdam, and, his imagination
aflame with the hopes which had not been stifled by several years'
endurance of the prisons and tortures of the Inquisition, persuaded
Manasseh ben Israel to accept his statements. On his death-bed in
Brazil, Montesinos reiterated his assertions, and Manasseh ben Israel
not only founded thereon his noted book, "The Hope of Israel," but under
the inspiration of similar ideas felt impelled to visit London, and win
from Cromwell the right of the Jews to resettle in England.

Jewish geographical literature grew apace in the eighteenth century. A
famous book, the "Work of Tobiah," was written at