Page:Travels and adventures of William Lithgow.pdf/6

 just as half his body and his right arm fell into the fire. This friar was forty-six years old, and had been confessor of that nunnery of Sancta Lucia five years. Most of these nuns were Senator’s daughters —Fifteen (all pregnant) were sent home to their father’s palaces: the lady prioress and the rest were banished for ever: the nunnery was razed to the ground: the revenues were given to the poor, and the church converted to an hospital. Here our travellers separated, Arthur returning homeward, and Lithgow proceeding to Greece and Asia; but first visiting Padua, Verona, and Ferrara. At Padua he staid three months, learning Italian of one of his countrymen, Dr John Wedderburn, an eminent mathematician, who afterwards settled in Moravia. At his return to Venice, he embarked in a carmoesalo for Zara Nova in Dalmatia; but meeting with a violent storm, they were driven for shelter into the port of Parenzo, in Istria. Thence sailing by the isles Briani, the ruins of Pola, the isles Sangego, Osero, &c on the 8th day they arrived at Zara, where our traveller got a passage into a Greek carmoesalo for Lesina, the largest island in the Adriatic. He afterwards sailed successively to Ragusa and the island of Corfu. Near the island of St Maure the vessel was attacked by a Turkish galley of Biserta, from which, after a long and doubtful fight,