dealing, obtained from the Pope, the Emperor of Germany, and all the kings of Europe, except that of England, permission to wander for fifty years as pilgrims, declaring that they

had been Christians, but, having become renegades, the King of Hungary had imposed a penance on them of half a century’s exile.  Then I informed them that precisely the same story had been told by them to the rulers in Syria and Egypt, only that in the Mohammedan countries they pretended to be good followers of Islam.  I said there was reason to believe that some of their people had been in Poland and the other Slavonic countries ever since the eleventh century, but that those of England must have gone directly from Eastern Europe to Great Britain; for, although they had many Slavic words, such as krallis (king) and shuba, there were no French terms, and very few traces of German or Italian, in the English dialect.  I observed that the men all understood the geographical allusions which I made, knowing apparently where India, Persia, and Egypt were situated—a remarkable contrast to our own English “travelers,” one of whom once informed me that he would like to go “on the road” in America, “because you know, sir, as America lays along into France, we could get our French baskets cheaper there.”