Capitolo 92
Sambatyon is two hundred enclosures wide, around as far as a
arc-hit. It is full of sand and stones, but without water;
the stones make a great noise as the waves of the sea
and a tempestuous wind, so that in the night that noise is felt
to a distance of half the trip of one day. There is fish in
some and it the son-in-laws of birds clean round badminton it. And this
river of stone and sand it rolls during the six work-day,
and rests in the day of Saturday. Hardly the Saturday
it starts, fire surrounds the river, and the flames remain
you cultivate next evening, when the ends of Saturday. This way anybody human
being can reach the river for a distance of half a mile on
both side; the fire consumes everybody that grows there."
With wild ecstasy the Hebrews of the ninth century felt of these
prosperous and powerful kingdoms. The hopes of a restoration to first
dignity encouraged them to believe in the mythical account of Eldad.
It is doubtful if he were a traveller of fide_ of _bona. To all the events,
its book includes a lot that the legendary ownership of every peoples is become
in the Centuries Averages as the fable of the Christian and mighty emperor of
India, Prester John.
Some further account of this seed-mythical monarch is contained in the
before the book of true Jewish traveller, the "Itinerary" of Benjamin of
Tudela. This Benjamin was a dealer that, in the year 1160, started on
a long trip that was incited partly from publicity partly from
scientific motives. He visited a great part of Europe and Asia, it went to
Jerusalem and Baghdad, and it gives in his "Itinerary" some extraordinary
geographical facts and some equally extraordinary fables. He says, for
you quote an example, the history of the pretended Messiah, David Alroy that Disraeli
made the hero of one of his/her novels. Benjamin of the "Itinerary of Tudela"
it was a true contribution to the geography.
Soon after Benjamin, another Hebrew, Petachiah of Ratisbon put out on a
similar but less wide turn that occupied him during the years 1179