THE DECLINE AND FALL

174

CHAP.

LXVII.

band of music; -and the term of his costly em-bassy was protracted above two years. On hisarrival in Georgia or Iberia , the natives from thetowns and villages flocked around the strangers;and such was their simplicity, that they were de-lighted with the effects, without understandingthe cause, of musical harmony. Among thecrowd was an old man, above an hundred yearsof age, who had formerly been carried away acaptive by the barbarians,' and who amused hishearers with a tale of the wonders of India , d fromwhence he had returned to Portugal by an un-known sea.' From this hospitable land Phranzaproceeded to the court of Trebizond, where hewas informed by the Greek prince of the recentdecease of Amurath. Instead of rejoicing in thedeliverance, the experienced statesman express-ed his apprehension that an ambitious youthwould not long adhere to the sage and pacificsystem of his father. After the sultan’s decease,his Christian wife Maria/ the daughter of the Ser-

* Suppose him to have been captured in 1394, in Timour ’s first warin Georgia (Sherefeddin, 1. iii, c. 50): he might follow his Tartar mas-ter into Hindostan in 1398, and from thence sail to the spice islands.

• 4 The happy and pious Indians lived an hundred and fifty years, andenjoyed the most perfect productions of the vegetable and mineral king-doms. The animals were on a large scale; dragons seventy cubits,ants (the formica Indica) nine inches long, sheep like elephants, elephantslike sheep. Quidlibet audendi, &c.

e He sailed in a country vessel from the spice islands to one of theports of the exterior India ; invenitque navem grandem Ibeticam, quiin Portugalliam est delatus. This passage, composed in 1477 (Phranza,I. hi. c. 30), twenty years before the discovery of the Cape of GoodHope , is spurious or wonderful. But this new geography i- sullied bythe old and incompatible error, which places the source of the Nile inIndia .

' Cantemir (p. 83), who styles her the daughter of Lazarus Ogli, andthe Helen of the Servians, places her marriage with Amurath ia the