Though containing no important information, it were unpardonable in an
English collection of voyages and travels, to omit the scanty notice which
remains on record, respecting a voyage by two Englishmen to India, at so
early a period. All that is said of this singular incident in the Saxon
Chronicle, is[2], "In the year 883, Alfred sent Sighelm and Athelstan to
Rome, and likewise _to the shrine_ of Saints Thomas and Bartholomew,
in India, with the alms which he had vowed." [Bartholomew was the messenger
of Christ in India, the extremity of the whole earth.]--The words printed
in _Italics_ are added in translating, by the present editor, to
complete the obvious sense. Those within brackets, are contained in one MS.
Codex of the Saxon Chronicle, in addition to what was considered the most
authentic text by Bishop Gibson, and are obviously a note or commentary,
afterwards adopted into the text in transcription.

This short, yet clear declaration, of the actual voyage, has been extended
by succeeding writers, who attribute the whole merit to Sighelm, omitting
all mention of Athelstan, his co-adjutor in the holy mission. The first
member of the subsequent paraphrase of the Saxon Chronicle, by Harris,
though unauthorized, is yet necessarily true, as Alfred could not have sent
messengers to a shrine, of which he did not know the existence. For the
success of the voyage, the safe return, the promotion of Sighelm, and his
bequest, the original record gives no authority, although that is the
obvious foundation of the story, to which Aserus has no allusion in his
life of Alfred.

"In the year 883, Alfred, King of England, hearing that there existed a
Christian church in the Indies, dedicated to the memory of St Thomas and St
Bartholomew, dispatched one Sighelm, or Sithelm, a favourite ecclesiastic
of his court, to carry his royal alms to that distant shrine. Sighelm