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his own faith, and Friar John de' Marignolli, who in 1338 was sent by the Pope on a mission to the Great Kaan.

Odoric is supposed to have been born in 1286, to have begun his Oriental travels about 1318, to have returned to Europe in 1330 or thereabouts, and to have dictated his reminiscences to a brother Franciscan at Padua ere he crept home to the House of his Order at Udine, where he died in January, 1331. He made his way to Constantinople, thence overland to the Persian Gulf, eventually reaching the coast of Malabar, where he visited the shrine of St. Thomas the Apostle at Mailapur, the modern Madras.

"Departing from this region towards the south across the ocean sea," he tells us, "I came in fifty days to a certain country called Lamori (the State in Sumatra called Al Ramni by the Arabs and Lambri by Polo) in which I began to lose sight of the north star, as the earth intercepted it. And in that country the heat is so excessive that all folk there, both men and women, go naked, not clothing themselves in any wise."

The natives of this State are described as "an evil and pestilent generation" who had no formal marriage, all women being in common. This is an allegation often made against savage and semi-savage communities since Cæsar wrote of Britain, and on closer examination it is usually found to be based upon a misunderstanding of native customs.

Odoric's narrative is interesting because he is the first writer to make mention of a "kingdom by name