‘The travels of Ludovico di Varthema in Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and Arabia Felix, in Persia, India, and Ethiopia, A.D. 1503 to 1508’ [‎241] (406/492)

LUDOVICO DI VARTHEMA.
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are found here in great quantities, and in my time I saw
one weighed which weighed one hundred and three pounds.
I also saw two elephants' teeth which weighed three hun
dred and thirty-five pounds. And I saw, moreover, in this
island, serpents very much larger than those of Calicut. Let
us revert to our Christian companions, who were desirous of
returning to their country ; wherefore they asked us what
was our intention, whether we wished to remain here, or to
go farther on, or to return back. My companion answered
them : " Since I am brought where the spices grow, I
should like to see some kinds before I return back." They
said to him : "No other spices grow here excepting those
which you have seen." And he asked them where the nut
megs and the cloves grew. They answered : " That the
nutmegs and mace grew in an island which was distant from
there three hundred miles." We then asked them if we
could go to that island in safety, that is, secure from robbers
or corsairs. The Christians answered: " That secure from
robbers we might go, but not from the chances of the sea;"
and they said that we could not go to the said island with
that large ship. My companion said : " What means then
in length and breadth, he remarks :—" The account of these animals is
not to be attributed to a licentious exuberance of fancy in the Arabian
author. He might have seen in ^Elian {De Naturd Anim., 1. xvi. c. xvii.)
that the tortoises, whose shells were fifteen cubits in length, and
sufficiently large to cover a house, were found near the island of
Taprobane. Pliny and Strabo mention the same circumstance (Xat.
Hist., 1. ix. c. 10) : they likewise turn them upside down, and say that
men used to row in them as in a boat. {Geoff., 1. xvi. 6.) Diodorus
Siculus adds to their testimony, and assures us, on the faith of an his
torian, that the chelonophagi (shell-fish eaters, L. iv. c. 1) derived a
threefold advantage from the tortoise, which occasionally supplied them
with a roof to their houses, a boat, and a dinner." Mr. Major then
proceeds to identify this colossal tortoise with the Colossochelys Atlas,
the first fossil remains of which were discovered in the sub-Himalayahs
by Dr. Falconer and Major Cautley in 1835, an idea of the vast size of
which is aftbrded by the cast in the upper galleries of the British
Museum. See Introduction to India in the Fifteenth Cent., pp. xliii-v.
R