n the upper part and twisted at the summit like a spire. On
measuring a side of one of them, it was found to be four hundred feet."
From the Nile Fidelis sailed by the freshwater canal of Necho, Hadrian,
and Amrou, not finally blocked up till 767, direct to the Red Sea, "near
where Moses crossed with the Israelites." The pilgrim wanted to go and
look for Pharaoh's chariot-wheels, but the sailors were obstinate, and
took him round the Peninsula of Sinai, down one arm of the sea and up
another, to Eziongeber and Edom.

Bernard, "the French Monk" of Mont St. Michel, took the straight route
overland by Rome to Bari, then a Saracen city, whose Emir forwarded the
pilgrims in a fleet of transports carrying some nine thousand Christian
slaves to Alexandria. Here, like Willibald, Bernard found himself
"suspect"--thrown into prison till Backsheesh had been paid, then only
allowed to move stage by stage as fees were prompt and sufficient, for a
traveller must pay, as an infidel, not only the ordinary tribute of the
subject Christians of Egypt, but the "money of the road" as well. Islam
has always made of strangers a fair mark for extortion.

Safe at last in Jerusalem, the party (Bernard himself and two friends,
one a Spaniard, the other a monk of Beneventum) were lodged "in the
Hostel of the glorious Emperor Charles, founded for all the pilgrims who
speak the Roman tongue," and after making the ordinary visits of
devotion, and giving us their account of the Easter Miracle of the Holy
Fire at the Church of the Sepulchre, they took ship for Italy, and
landed at Rome after sixty days of misery at sea.

Bernard's account closes with the Roman churches--the Lateran, where the
"keys of the whole city are given every night into the hands of the
Apostolic Pope," and St. Peter's on the "West side of Rome, that for
size has no rival in the world."

At the same time, or a little earlier than the Breton traveller (_c._
808-850), another Latin had written a short tract _On the Houses of God
in Jerusalem_, which, with Bernard's note-book, is our last geographical
record before the age of the Northmen.

A new time was coming--a time not of timid creeping pilgrims only, but
of sea-kings and seamen, who made the ocean their home, and, for the
North of Europe at least, broke the tradition of land journeys and
coasting voyages.

But the early pilgrims after all have their place. It is of no use
insisting that the mental outlook of these men is