The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema in Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and Arabia Felix, in Persia, India, and Ethiopa, A.D. 1503 to 1508: Translated from the Original Italian Edition of 1510

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This 1863 volume contains a Victorian translation of Ludovico di Varthema’s account of his travels, originally published in 1510, and translated into many European languages within a few years. Ludovico set off from Italy in 1502 (determined, he says, ‘to investigate some small portion of this our terrestrial globe’) and travelled first to Egypt and Syria; he then journeyed through the Arabian peninsula (where he was imprisoned as a spy), Persia and India, and reached the Molucca islands before returning to Europe in 1508.