The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road

20. Imaginary People

IT IS NOT FRIVOLOUS TO CONSIDER THE TRAVEL literature that describes men with tails, or one-eyed people, or dragons. Such marvels are the reasons the early travel books commanded attention. The Tang Dynasty traveler Xuanzang, who was meticulous in his topographical descriptions, often mentions the presence of dragons. ¶ The many varieties of travel narrative show what readers wish to find in travel — the strange, the sexy, the disgusting, the amazing, the Other. Susan Sontag analyzed this fascination (and gullibility) in her essay "Questions of Travel," where she wrote, "Books about travel to exotic places have always opposed an 'us' to a 'them'—a relation that yields a limited variety of appraisals. Classical and medieval literature is mostly of the 'us good, them bad'—typically, 'us good, them horrid'—sort. To be foreign was to be abnormal, often represented by physical abnormality; and the persistence of those accounts of monstrous peoples, of 'men whose heads / Do grow beneath their shoulders' (Othello's winning tale), of anthropophagi."

Those men whom Othello mentions having seen appear in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages. It was popular precisely because of the bizarre people and places it described. Mandeville claimed that he traveled the world from 1322 to 1356. The first known edition appeared in French in 1371, and in English translation in the early fifteenth century. It went through many editions, and was augmented and embellished as it was reprinted. Mandeville probably did not exist, or if he did exist as a fantasizing Frenchman of the fourteenth century, he may not have gone anywhere: many of Mandeville's strange tales also appeared in the books of other travelers of the time.

Such grotesque and outlandish accounts hold an enduring fascination, even though it was known (as Henry Fielding wrote) that there was a "vast pile of books which pass under the names of voyages, travels, adventures, lives, memoirs, histories, &c., some of which a single traveler sends into the world in many volumes, and others are, by judicious booksellers, collected into vast bodies in folio, and inscribed with their own names, as if they were indeed their own travels; thus unjustly attributing to themselves the merit of others."

We know from comparing parallel passages that Chaucer probably read Mandeville. Shakespeare certainly did. Some of the book represents accurate geography; other parts are distorted, fanciful, absurd, and freakish.

Mandeville's Marvels

THE ISLANDS NEAR JAVA

In that country and others thereabout there be wild geese that have two heads. And there be lions, all white and as great as oxen, and many other diverse beasts and fowls also that be not seen amongst us.

In one of these isles be folk of great stature, as giants. And they be hideous for to look upon. And they have but one eye, and that is in the middle of the front. And they eat nothing but raw flesh and raw fish.

And in another isle toward the south dwell folk of foul stature and of cursed kind that have no heads. And their eyen be in their shoulders.

And in another isle be folk that have the face all flat, all plain, without nose and without mouth. But they have two small holes, all round, instead of their eyes, and their mouth is flat also without lips.

And in another isle be folk of foul fashion and shape that have the lip above the mouth so great, that when they sleep in the sun they cover all the face with that lip…

And in another isle be folk that have horses' feet. And they be strong and mighty, and swift runners; for they take wild beasts with running, and eat them.

And in another isle be folk that go upon their hands and their feet as beasts. And they be all skinned and feathered, and they will leap as lightly into trees, and from tree to tree, as it were squirrels or apes.

And in another isle be folk that be both man and woman, and they have kind; of that one and of that other. And they have but one pap on the one side, and on that other none. And they have members of generation of man and woman, and they use both when they list, once that one, and another time that other. And they get children, when they use the member of man; and they bear children, when they use the member of woman.

And in another isle be folk that go always upon their knees full marvellously. And at every pace that they go, it seemeth that they would fall. And they have in every foot eight toes.

IN THE KINGDOM OF PRESTER JOHN

In that desert be many wild men, that be hideous to look on; for they be horned, and they speak nought, but they grunt, as pigs. And there is also great plenty of wild hounds. And there be many popinjays, that they clepe psittakes their language. And they speak of their proper nature, and salute men that go through the deserts, and speak to them as apertly as though it were a man. And they that speak well have a large tongue, and have five toes upon a foot. And there be also of another manner, that have but three toes upon a foot, and they speak not, or but little, for they can not but cry.

DEFLOWERING

Another isle is there, full fair and good and great, and full of people, where the custom is such, that the first night that they be married, they make another man to lie by their wives for to have their maidenhead: and therefore they take great hire and great thank. And there be certain men in every town that serve of none other thing; and they clepe them cadeberiz, that is to say, the fools of wanhope. For they of the country hold it so great a thing and so perilous for to have the maidenhead of a woman, that them seemeth that they that have first the maidenhead putteth him in adventure of his life.

SEXUAL HABITS ON "ANOTHER ISLE" NEARBY

In that country they take their daughters and their sisters to their wives, and their other kinswomen. And if there be ten men or twelve men or more dwelling in an house, the wife of everych of them shall be common to them all that dwell in that house; so that every man may lie with whom he will of them on one night, and with another, another night. And if she have any child, she may give it to what man that she list, that hath companied with her, so that no man knoweth there whether the child be his or another's. And if any man say to them, that they nourish other men's children, they answer that so do over men theirs… And I asked them the cause why that they held such custom: and they said me, that of old time men had been dead for deflowering of maidens, that had serpents in their bodies that stung men upon their yards, that they died anon: and therefore they held that customs to make other men ordained therefore to lie by their wives, for dread of death, and to assay the passage by another [rather] than for to put them in that adventure.

Marco Polo's Human Oddities

Let me tell you next of the kingdom of Lambri [in present-day Sumatra], which also has a king of its own but professes allegiance to the Great Khan. The people are idolaters…

Now here is something really remarkable. I give you my word that in this kingdom there are men who have tails full a palm in length. They are not at all hairy. This is true of most of the men — that is, of those who live outside in the mountains, not of those in the city. Their tails are as thick as a dog's. There are also many unicorns [probably rhinos] and a profusion of wild game, both beast and bird.

— The Travels of Marco Polo, translated by Ronald Latham (1958)

Andaman is a very big island. The people have no king. They are idolaters and live like wild beasts. Now let me tell you of a race of men well worth describing in our book. You may take it for a fact that all the men of this island have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes like dogs; for I assure you that the whole aspect of their faces is that of big mastiffs. They are a very cruel race: whenever they can get hold of a man who is not one of their kind, they devour him.

— The Travels of Marco Polo