Page:The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart.pdf/110

106 striving; also that from rain, snow, sleet, snow-drifts, cold, and heat they suffered much discomfort; and when I also saw that everywhere on the mountain passes men lay in ambush for them and emptied their pouches (and to escape this, neither wrath, nor scuffling, nor raging availed), and that on the highroads a rapacious rabble attacked them, then I lost all pleasure in this order.

11. They then said that there was a more convenient fashion of flying along the world; that was by means of navigation; there, they said, a man did not tremble, and was not soiled or delayed by the mud, and he could fly from one end of the world to the other, finding everywhere something new, unseen and unheard of; and they lead me to the boundary of the land, where we could see nothing before us but sky and water.

12. Then they bade me enter a little hut constructed out of planks; and this did not stand on the earth, neither had it a foundation, nor was it strengthened by any ceiling, beams, columns, or props; but it stood on the water and rocked to and fro, so that one had even to enter it with prudence. But as others went there I also went, not to appear timid, for they said that this was our carriage. But while I thought that we should proceed, or rather, as they