on their left.

This proved a much shorter cut; for without shipwreck, danger, or loss of
men, with uninterrupted good weather, except one day near the island of the
Macreons, they performed in less than four months the voyage of Upper
India, which the Portuguese, with a thousand inconveniences and innumerable
dangers, can hardly complete in three years. And it is my opinion, with
submission to better judgments, that this course was perhaps steered by
those Indians who sailed to Germany, and were honourably received by the
King of the Swedes, while Quintus Metellus Celer was proconsul of the
Gauls; as Cornelius Nepos, Pomponius Mela, and Pliny after them tell us.



Chapter 4.II.

How Pantagruel bought many rarities in the island of Medamothy.

That day and the two following they neither discovered land nor anything
new; for they had formerly sailed that way: but on the fourth they made an
island called Medamothy, of a fine and delightful prospect, by reason of
the vast number of lighthouses and high marble towers in its circuit, which
is not less than that of Canada (sic). Pantagruel, inquiring who governed
there, heard that it was King Philophanes, absent at that time upon account
of the marriage of his brother Philotheamon with the infanta of the kingdom
of Engys.

Hearing this, he went ashore in the harbour, and while every ship's crew
watered, passed his time in viewing divers pictures, pieces of tapestry,
animals, fishes, birds, and other exotic and foreign merchandises, which