Lands Of Lost Borders Quotes

You are on your way when you decipher the pounding of rain as Morse code for making progress.

I’m not sure where I go when I spin wheels for hours on end like that, except into the rapture of doing nothing deeply—although ‘nothing,’ in this case, involves a tantrum of pedal strokes on a burdened bicycle along a euphemism for a highway through the Himalaya.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

Every time I got on my bicycle after a long hiatus it was like riding back to myself, the only way there. The dissipation of life in the city—days of to-do lists, errands, emails, small talk with strangers—generated static in my mind that I didn’t notice was there until I started pedalling and realized it was gone, the way you don’t hear the hum of a refrigerator until it stops. Such is the paradoxical freedom of cycling the Silk Road. In restricting the range of directions you can travel, in charging ordinary movement with momentum, a bike trip offers that rarest, most elusive of things in our frenetic world: clarity of purpose. Your sole responsibility on Earth, as long as your legs last each day, is to breathe, pedal, breathe—and look around.

define stones as rocks that have been put to use, so that, as the poet Don McKay put it, “What happens between a rock and stone is simply everything human.” At

Her womb from her body. Separation. Her clitoris from her vulva. Cleaving. Desire from her body. We were told that bodies rising to heaven lose their vulvas, their ovaries, wombs, that her body in resurrection becomes a male body. The Divine Image from woman, severing, immortality from the garden, exile, the golden calf split, birth, sorrow, suffering. We were told that the blood of a woman after childbirth conveys uncleanness. That if a woman's uterus is detached and falls to the ground, that she is unclean. Her body from the sacred. Spirit from flesh. We were told that if a woman has an issue and that issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be impure for seven days. The impure from the pure. The defiled from the holy. And whoever touches her, we heard, was also impure. Spirit from matter. And we were told that if our garments are stained we are unclean back to the time we can remember seeing our garments unstained, that we must rub seven substances over these stains, and immerse our soiled garments. Separation. The clean from the unclean. The decaying, the putrid, the polluted, the fetid, the eroded, waste, defecation, from the unchanging. The changing from the sacred. We heard it spoken that if a grave is plowed up in a field so that the bones of the dead are lost in the soil of the field, this soil conveys uncleanness. That if a member is severed from a corpse, this too conveys uncleanness, even an olive pit's bulk of flesh. That if marrow is left in a bone there is uncleanness. And of the place where we gathered to weep near the graveyard, we heard that planting and sowing were forbidden since our grieving may have tempted unclean flesh to the soil. And we learned that the dead body must be separated from the city. Death from the city. Wilderness from the city. Wildness from the city. The Cemetery. The Garden. The Zoological Garden. We were told that a wolf circled the walls of the city. That he ate little children. That he ate women. That he lured us away from the city with his tricks. That he was a seducer and he feasted on the flesh of the foolish, and the blood of the errant and sinful stained the snow under his jaws. The errant from the city. The ghetto. The ghetto of Jews. The ghetto of Moors. The quarter of prostitutes. The ghetto of blacks. The neighborhood of lesbians. The prison. The witch house. The underworld. The underground. The sewer. Space Divided. The inch. The foot. The mile. The boundary. The border. The nation. The promised land. The chosen ones.

One could raise a similar set of objections regarding America’s alleged theft of Mexican land. Texas used to be part of Mexico but broke off because of tyrannical laws imposed by a Mexican dictator. Texas then opted to join the United States. The Mexican War arose over a border dispute between Texas and Mexico. Mexico lost the war, and ceded the disputed land in a treaty in which the United States paid money and wrote off Mexican debts.

Borders are about claims to land, but as soon as you draw one you limit yourself. Every border is also an act of denial, an acknowledgment of another’s rights. By contrast, the claim to want no borders, much prized by corporate executives and anticapitalist activists alike, is a claim to the whole world. Borders have a far more ambivalent and complex relationship to territory; they combine both arrogance and modesty, both demand and denial.

You run off when things get a little more complicated than you'd like, and leave us to cover your tracks so the whole valley doesn't find out that Hytanica bloody lost its King-meanwhile, the Cokyrians are infiltrating our lands to the north, so it becomes entirely possible that you've walked right into their camp. We have men out there still searching for you,men who should be helping to barricade the northern border-to make sure that in a week you still have a kingdom to rule. And you have the gall to strut in here and be an ass! I swear, Steldo, if we didn't need someone to sit on that throne, I'd dispatch you with my own hands!" The two erstwhile companions stared at each other, Galen challenging Steldor to respond, and Steldor too staggered to do so.Eventually,the sergeant threw his hands in the air and marched into his office,slamming the door behind him. In the silence that followed Galen's departure, I came to appreciate the true meaning of the word awkward. Steldor did not rise to his feet, and his eyes were glazed. I felt un-needed,but there was no way for me to make a polished exit. The Palace Gaurds,bound by duty to remaind, searched the walls, the floor, the ceiling, for anything plausible in which to show an interest, not wanting to be caught gawking at their King.

They scarcely spoke all day. His father rode sitting forward slightly in the saddle, holding the reins in one hand about two inches above the saddlehorn. So thin and frail, lost in his clothes. Looking over the country with those sunken eyes as if the world out there had been altered or made suspect by what he’d seen of it elsewhere. As if he might never see it right again. Or worse did see it right at last. See it as it had always been, would forever be. The boy who rode on slightly before him sat a horse not only as if he’d been born to it which he was but as if were he begot by malice or mischance into some queer land where horses never were he would have found them anyways. Would have known that there was something missing for the world to be right or he right in it and would have set forth to wander wherever it was needed for as long as it took until he came upon one and he would have known that that was what he sought and it would have been.

The most recent flood of newcomers, however, seemed different. The empire had always been able to absorb new people into its expanding body, and the immigrants had proved more often than not to be a source of strength, but times had changed. The empire was now on the defensive, and the Germanic peoples crossing its borders wanted its land, not its culture. They were coming on their own terms, unwilling to be absorbed, speaking their own languages, and retaining their distinct cultures. The influx of new blood was no longer the source of strength it had always been. For many of those watching the traditions of millennia getting swept away, the strangers seemed like a frightening wave threatening to overwhelm the empire.

What all Christians should appreciate is that the more they can grasp about migration and the experiences of immigrants, the more they will understand their faith—that is, the truths of such convictions as the reality of having another (heavenly) citizenship and the rejection that can come from being different, as well as the vulnerability that surfaces with needing to be dependent on God. Sadly, it is not uncommon for Christians to not feel like “strangers in a strange land”; their place of residence has lost its strangeness, and now they join others in wanting to keep strangers out. The

Thus it can be said that, until the fifteenth century, Black Africa never lost its civilization. Frobenius reports: Not that the first European navigators at the end of the Middle Ages failed to make some very remarkable observations. When they reached the Bay of Guinea and alighted at Vaida, the captains were astonished to find well-planned streets bordered for several leagues by two rows of trees; for days they traversed a countryside covered by magnificent fields, inhabited by men in colorful attire that they had woven themselves! More to the south, in the Kingdom of the Congo, a teeming crowd clad in silk and velvet, large States, well ordered down to the smallest detail, powerful rulers, prosperous industries. Civilized to the marrow of their bones! Entirely similar was the condition of the lands on the east coast, Mozambique, for example. The revelations of the navigators from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries provide positive proof that Black Africa, which extended south of the desert zone of the Sahara, was still in full bloom, in all the splendor of harmonious, well-organized civilizations. This flowering the European conquistadors destroyed as they advanced.

Shall we go," he said, "from the woods that all folk know, and the pleasant ways of the Land, to see a new thing, and be swept away by time?" And there was a murmur among the trolls, that hummed away through the forest and died out, as on Earth the sound of beetles going home. "Is it not to-day?" he said. "But there they call it to-day, yet none knows what it is: come back through the border again to look at it and it is gone. Time is raging there, like the dogs that stray over our frontier, barking, frightened and angry and wild to be home." "It is even so," said the trolls, though they did not know; but this was a troll whose words carried weight in the forest. "Let us keep to-day," said that weighty troll, "while we have it, and not be lured where to-day is too easily lost. For every time men lose it their hair grows whiter, their limbs grow weaker and their faces sadder, and they are nearer still to to-morrow." So gravely he spoke when he uttered that word "to-morrow" that the brown trolls were frightened. "What happens to-morrow?" one said. "They die," said the grizzled troll. "And the others dig in their earth and put them in, as I have seen them do, and then they go to Heaven, as I have heard them tell." And a shudder went through the trolls far over the floor of the forest. And Lurulu who had sat angry all this while to hear that weighty troll speak ill of Earth, where he would have them come, to astonish them with its quaintness, spoke now in defence of Heaven. "Heaven is a good place," he blurted hotly, though any tales he had heard of it were few. "All the blessed are there," the grizzled troll replied, "and it is full of angels. What chance would a troll have there? The angels would catch him, for they say on Earth that the angels all have wings; they would catch a troll and smack him forever and ever." And all the brown trolls in the forest wept.

In the six centuries since the birth of Islam, the religion had expanded greatly and lost control of a few border zones, but never had so much of the Muslim world fallen under the rule of pagans. The four decades from Genghis Khan’s attack on Bukhara until the fall of Baghdad and Damascus represented the lowest point in Muslim history. While the Crusaders had only managed to take a toehold in a few ports, the Mongols conquered every Muslim kingdom and city from the Indus River to the Mediterranean. They had conquered almost all of the Muslim lands in Asia; only the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa remained beyond their control.

Our voices sounded small in the noisy darkness. We called her name again and again. We waved our flashlights in hope that she’d see their bobbing light. We were hoarse from calling. And desperate when she didn’t answer. The faint trail gave out, and we began circling back to the house without realizing it until we saw the lights in the windows. “We need to call the police,” Dad said. “We don’t know the land the way they do. We’ll get lost ourselves if we keep going.” Wordlessly, we made our way home. Mom was on the front porch, shivering in her warmest down coat. “You didn’t find her?” “No.” Dad stopped to hug her. Mom clung to him. They stood there whispering to each other, as if they’d forgotten about me. I waited, shifting my weight from one frozen foot to the other, afraid Bloody Bones might be watching us from the trees. Not that I believed he actually existed, not in my world, the real world, the five-senses world. But with the wind blowing and the moon sailing in and out of clouds like a ghost racing across the sky, I could almost believe I’d crossed a border into another world, where anything could be true—even conjure women and spells and monsters. The police came sooner than we’d expected. We heard their sirens and saw their flashing lights before they’d even turned into the driveway. Four cars and an ambulance stopped at the side of the house. Doors opened, men got out. A couple of them had dogs, big German shepherds who

We learn to flex our faith muscles through practice. Since faith without works is dead, then what if we, through practicing together, put feet on our faith and built into our lives the habit of trust? What if our faith quickened and rose to life with the habit of practice? When the anxiety pounds and we want to retreat, we practice stepping out, and forging ahead anyway. When life overwhelms and the way is dark, we refrain from lighting our own candles to practice relying on our God instead.[1] When the child seems lost and our own strength isn’t enough, we trust God is faithful and He will do it.[2] When things look hopeless in the land of famine, we practice picking up the oil jar and pouring that last bit out anyway.

Beyond the borders of the land that was his lay the wilderness that was its own. The upthrust stone, the shoulders of the Bighorns, reddish gray where they stood near to the homestead and blue where they stood far—bluer, dissipating veils of blue lost against an indistinct horizon. The pale gold of autumn grass like the rough hide of an animal, wind-riffled down the mountain’s flank. The low trough where the river ran, a score mark in wet clay—dark, shadow-and-green, redolent of moving water, of soil that never went dry. And the infinite sweep of the prairie, yellow shaded with folds of violet until, a hundred miles away or more, the whole plain was swallowed by color and consumed, taken up by the lower edge of a sagging purple sky.

I gazed at my bare and battered feet, with their smattering of remaining toenails. They were ghostly pale to the line a few inches above my ankles, where the wool socks I usually wore ended. My calves above them were muscled and golden and hairy, dusted with dirt and a constellation of bruises and scratches. I’d started walking in the Mojave Desert and I didn’t plan to stop until I touched my hand to a bridge that crosses the Columbia River at the Oregon-Washington border with the grandiose name the Bridge of the Gods. I looked north, in its direction—the very thought of that bridge a beacon to me. I looked south, to where I’d been, to the wild land that had schooled and scorched me, and considered my options. There was only one, I knew. There was always only one. To keep walking.

eyes. She felt the changes shimmer across her scales. The hardest part was the extra horns IceWings had around their heads. She concentrated on making her ruff look like it was made of icicles and hoped that would do. She also couldn’t make her claws ridged like IceWing claws, and her tail wasn’t as whip-thin at the end as an IceWing’s would be. Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe there’s no way I’ll get away with it. But it was still pretty dark out . . . and she really, really wanted to know what a NightWing was doing out here. Well, she thought ruefully, if he figures me out, I guess I’ll just kill him. Somehow it didn’t sound as funny as she’d hoped. She leaped into the air and flew back to the spot where she’d seen the strange dragon. For a moment she was afraid she’d lost him, before she realized that he was lying down, his black scales half-hidden in the long shadows. Confidence, she told herself. It’s all about attitude. “Hey!” she barked, landing with a thump beside him. “Who are you, and what are you doing in our territory?” The NightWing leaped up in surprise and stared at her. He was a lot younger and smaller than Morrowseer, wiry and graceful in his movements even when he was startled. The silver scales sparkling under his wings caught the morning light like trapped stars. “Great moons. Where did you come from?” he asked. He looked up at the sky with a puzzled expression. “Where do you think?” she said. “And I’m asking the questions here. What are you doing in the Ice Kingdom?” “Technically this isn’t the Ice Kingdom yet,” he said. “Or didn’t you know that?” It isn’t? she thought. The map she’d memorized didn’t exactly have borders drawn on it, not that those would have helped her out here anyway.

The men who had inhabited prehistoric Egypt, who had carved the Sphinx and founded the world‘s oldest civilization, were men who had made their exodus from Atlantis to settle on this strip of land that bordered the Nile. And they had left before their ill-fated continent sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, a catastrophe which had drained the Sahara and turned it into a desert. The shells which to-day litter the surface of the Sahara in places, as well as the fossil fish which are found among its sands, prove that it was once covered by the waters of a vast ocean. It was a tremendous and astonishing thought that the Sphinx provided a solid, visible and enduring link between the people of to-day and the people of a lost world, the unknown Atlanteans. This great symbol has lost its meaning for the modern world, for whom it is now but an object of local curiosity. What did it mean to the Atlanteans? We must look for some hint of an answer in the few remnants of culture still surviving from peoples whose own histories claimed Atlantean origin. We must probe behind the degenerate rituals of races like the Incas and the Mayas, mounting to the purer worship of their distant ancestors, and we shall find that the loftiest object of their worship was Light, represented by the Sun. Hence they build pyramidal Temples of the Sun throughout ancient America. Such temples were either variants or slightly distorted copies of similar temples which had existed in Atlantis. After Plato went to Egypt and settled for a while in the ancient School of Heliopolis, where he lived and studied during thirteen years, the priest-teachers, usually very guarded with foreigners, favoured the earnest young Greek enquirer with information drawn from their well-preserved secret records. Among other things they told him that a great flat-topped pyramid had stood in the centre of the island of Atlantis, and that on this top there had been build the chief temple of the continent – a sun temple. […] The Sphinx was the revered emblem in stone of a race which looked upon Light as the nearest thing to God in this dense material world. Light is the subtlest, most intangible of things which man can register by means of one of his five senses. It is the most ethereal kind of matter which he knows. It is the most ethereal element science can handle, and even the various kind of invisible rays are but variants of light which vibrate beyond the power of our retinas to grasp. So in the Book of Genesis the first created element was Light, without which nothing else could be created. „The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the Deep,“ wrote Egyptian-trained Moses. „And God said, Let there be Light: and there was Light.“ Not only that, it is also a perfect symbol of that heavenly Light which dawns within the deep places of man‘s soul when he yields heart and mind to God; it is a magnificent memorial to that divine illumination which awaits him secretly even amid the blackest despairs. Man, in turning instinctively to the face and presence of the Sun, turns to the body of his Creator. And from the sun, light is born: from the sun it comes streaming into our world. Without the sun we should remain perpetually in horrible darkness; crops would not grow: mankind would starve, die, and disappear from the face of this planet. If this reverence for Light and for its agent, the sun, was the central tenet of Atlantean religion, so also was it the central tenet of early Egyptian religion. Ra, the sun-god, was first, the father and creator of all the other gods, the Maker of all things, the One, the self-born [...] If the Sphinx were connected with this religion of Light, it would surely have some relationship with the sun.

The Old Issue October 9, 1899 “HERE is nothing new nor aught unproven,” say the Trumpets, “Many feet have worn it and the road is old indeed. “It is the King—the King we schooled aforetime !” (Trumpets in the marshes—in the eyot at Runnymede!) “Here is neither haste, nor hate, nor anger,” peal the Trumpets, “Pardon for his penitence or pity for his fall. “It is the King!”—inexorable Trumpets— (Trumpets round the scaffold at the dawning by Whitehall!) “He hath veiled the Crown and hid the Sceptre,” warn the Trumpets, “He hath changed the fashion of the lies that cloak his will. “Hard die the Kings—ah hard—dooms hard!” declare the Trumpets, Trumpets at the gang-plank where the brawling troop-decks fill! Ancient and Unteachable, abide—abide the Trumpets! Once again the Trumpets, for the shuddering ground-swell brings Clamour over ocean of the harsh, pursuing Trumpets— Trumpets of the Vanguard that have sworn no truce with Kings! All we have of freedom, all we use or know— This our fathers bought for us long and long ago. Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw— Leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the Law. Lance and torch and tumult, steel and grey-goose wing Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the King. Till our fathers ’stablished, after bloody years, How our King is one with us, first among his peers. So they bought us freedom—not at little cost Wherefore must we watch the King, lest our gain be lost, Over all things certain, this is sure indeed, Suffer not the old King: for we know the breed. Give no ear to bondsmen bidding us endure. Whining “He is weak and far”; crying “Time shall cure.”, (Time himself is witness, till the battle joins, Deeper strikes the rottenness in the people’s loins.) Give no heed to bondsmen masking war with peace. Suffer not the old King here or overseas. They that beg us barter—wait his yielding mood— Pledge the years we hold in trust—pawn our brother’s blood— Howso’ great their clamour, whatsoe’er their claim, Suffer not the old King under any name! Here is naught unproven—here is naught to learn. It is written what shall fall if the King return. He shall mark our goings, question whence we came, Set his guards about us, as in Freedom’s name. He shall take a tribute, toll of all our ware; He shall change our gold for arms—arms we may not bear. He shall break his judges if they cross his word; He shall rule above the Law calling on the Lord. He shall peep and mutter; and the night shall bring Watchers ’neath our window, lest we mock the King— Hate and all division; hosts of hurrying spies; Money poured in secret, carrion breeding flies. Strangers of his counsel, hirelings of his pay, These shall deal our Justice: sell—deny—delay. We shall drink dishonour, we shall eat abuse For the Land we look to—for the Tongue we use. We shall take our station, dirt beneath his feet, While his hired captains jeer us in the street. Cruel in the shadow, crafty in the sun, Far beyond his borders shall his teachings run. Sloven, sullen, savage, secret, uncontrolled, Laying on a new land evil of the old— Long-forgotten bondage, dwarfing heart and brain— All our fathers died to loose he shall bind again. Here is naught at venture, random nor untrue— Swings the wheel full-circle, brims the cup anew. Here is naught unproven, here is nothing hid: Step for step and word for word—so the old Kings did! Step by step, and word by word: who is ruled may read. Suffer not the old Kings: for we know the breed— All the right they promise—all the wrong they bring. Stewards of the Judgment, suffer not this King!

Finally the ox ambled off, a slow, unhurried swaying that set its hump nodding in all directions, from side to side and up and down in that manner so distinctive of the Indian subcontinent, as if saying yes and no to everything at once.

It was during this savage campaign that some peculiarly outrageous behaviour of the borderers was first recorded by officers on both sides. The carnage would be well under way – the soldiers having orders to kill and to take no prisoners – when some Scottish and English warriors, standing less than a spear’s length from each other, were seen to be engaged in polite conversation. When they noticed the furious eye of a commanding officer, they began to prance about like novices in a fencing school, striking, as it were, only ‘by assent and appointment’. Some of those faux combatants eventually left the battlefield with half a dozen prisoners who seemed quite undismayed by their capture. This was all the more incredible since these men who seemed to be treading the planks of a stage rather than a blood-soaked mire were beyond suspicion of cowardice. These were the English and Scottish borderers whose reputation for martial skill and bravery was second to none.

Mother Susan died on the temple steps, in hearing distance of her husband’s Sunday sermon. Uncle G shouted about the sin that had been committed against their land of refuge, and against the children of God who lived within its borders. As his voice rose to preach the need for a blood atonement, his wife lay bleeding on the concrete landing outside the temple. The irony was lost on Grace until much later.

Oannes was a civilizing hero revered by all the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia. He was said to have appeared there in the remotest antiquity and to have taught the’ inhabitants: the skills necessary for writing and for doing mathematics and for all sorts of knowledge: how to build cities, found temples … make laws … determine borders and divide land, also how to plant seeds and then to harvest their fruits and vegetables. In short [he] taught men all those things conducive to a civilized life.

The wildness of a place or experience isn’t in the place or experience, necessarily, but in you—your capacity to see it, feel

Isn’t that the final, most forceful triumph of borders? The way they make us accept as real and substantial what we can’t actually see?

ROWLAND HAD ALWAYS ADMIRED ABRAHAM LINCOLN. SURE, LINCOLN was remembered for his monumental successes. Elected president twice. Saved the Union. Ended slavery. Won the war. But he’d always believed that the key to success was failure. And Lincoln had a long list of those. In 1832, defeated for election to the Illinois legislature. In 1833, failed in business. In 1835, the woman he loved died. In 1836, had a nervous breakdown. In 1838, denied being the speaker of the Illinois legislature. In 1843, defeated for Congress. In 1848, lost his bid to be reelected. In 1849, rejected for land officer. In 1854, lost the election for the U.S. Senate. In 1856, rejected for nomination as vice president. In 1858, defeated again for the U.S. Senate. No question. Lincoln failed his way to success. And the same could be said for himself. Yet his failure bordered on the unthinkable.

The age of territory was driven by acquisition. Leaders of nations sought to increase their nation’s power by gaining territory—mostly through force. Accumulated military prowess by one drove would-be victims to arm. War was thus inevitable. Lost lives and wasted resources were its currency. And always, one side’s gain was the other’s loss. Today, the importance of land as the primary source of human livelihood has diminished, giving way to science instead. Unlike territory, science has no borders or flags. Science can’t be conquered by tanks or defended by fighter jets. It has no limitations. A nation can increase its scientific achievement without taking anything from somebody else. In fact, great scientific achievement by one nation lifts the fortunes of all nations. It is the first time in history that we can win, without making anyone lose. In the age of science, the traditional power of states and leaders is declining. Rather than politicians, it is innovators that drive the global economy and wield the most influence. The young leaders who created Facebook and Google have sparked a revolution without killing one person. The globalized economy affects every state, yet no single state is powerful enough to determine outcomes. We are participating in the birth of a new world.

Our world is no longer a safe place. Perhaps it never was. Between 1985 and 1993, exposure to violence increased 176 percent for the average junior high school student. Fifty percent of the women in our culture will experience some form of sexual assault during their lifetimes. We are all aware of the shrinking global village. Violence in other lands seems closer than ever before. Terrorism and hatred leak across our borders. No longer can we say that it’s not our problem. We know what violence does to people. Alice Miller, the famous psychotherapist, described the process in her classic book For Your Own Good. German children in the 1920s and 1930s became acclimatized to physical violence. They saw it in their homes, where physical punishment was routine. By today’s standards, this same form of punishment would be abusive. They saw it in the streets. Germany lost a war they felt they should have won. They felt betrayed by their leaders. Political and economic chaos surrounded them. Children learned to split off from the violence. They learned to make it unreal, which is why as adults, Miller points out, they could be in the presence of concentration camps and remain unmoved.2

Suppiluliuma's first orders of business were to secure his borders, make peace with his enemies and retake the lands that had been lost during the rule of his father. A

The true risks of travel are disappointment and transformation: the fear you'll be the same person when you go home, and the fear you won't.

The suspicion that European travellers in the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth century may from time to time have stumbled across charts and maps containing the remnants of a lost geography (perhaps even the maps of Marinus of Tyre, said to have been superior to those of Ptolemy) is intriguingly enhanced by the first of Alfonso de Albuquerque's two letters. It introduces a 'piece of a map' that Albuquerque has acquired in his travels in the Indian Ocean and that he is sending to King Manuel. The fragment, he explains, is not the original but was 'traced' by Francisco Rodrigues from: 'a large map of a Javanese pilot, containing the Cape of Good Hope, Portugal and the land of Brazil, the Red Sea and the Sea of Persia, the Clove islands [effectively a world map, therefore], the navigation of the Chinese and the Gores [an unidentified people, thought by some to be the Japanese, or the inhabitants of Taiwan and the Ryukyu archipelago] with their rhumbs and direct routes followed by the ships, and the hinterland, and how the kingdoms border on each other. It seems to me, Sir, that this was the best thing I have ever seen, and Your Highness will be very pleased to see it; it had the names in Javanese writing, but I had with me a Javanese who could read and write.