The traveller is recommended to buy in Venice a padlock with which to keep his cabin locked, three barrels, two for wine and one for water, and a chest to hold his stores and things:  ’For though ye shall be at table with the patron, yet notwithstanding, ye shall full ofttimes have need to your own victuals, as bread, cheese, eggs, wine and other to make your collation.  For some time ye shall have feeble bread and feeble wine and stinking water, so that many times ye will be right fain to eat of your own.’  Besides this he will want ’confections and confortatives, green ginger, almonds, rice, figs, raisins great and small, pepper, saffron, cloves and loaf sugar’.  For equipment he should take ’a little caldron, a frying-pan, dishes, plates, saucers, cups of glass, a grater for bread and such necessaries’.  ’Also ye shall buy you a bed beside St. Mark’s Church in Venice, where ye shall have a featherbed, a mattress, a pillow, two pair sheets and a quilt’ for three ducats.  ’And when ye come again, bring the same bed again, and ye shall have a ducat and a half for it again, though it be broken and worn.  And mark his house and his name that ye bought it of, against ye come to Venice.’  Further needs are ’a cage for half a dozen of hens or chickens’ and ‘half a bushel of millet seed for them’:  also ’a barrel for a siege for your chamber in the ship.  It is full necessary, if ye were sick, that ye come not in the air.’  The malady here considered is probably not that which is usually associated with the sea; though pilgrims were not immune from this any more than from other troubles.

On coming to haven towns, ’if ye shall tarry there three days, go betimes to land, for then ye may have lodging before another; for it will be taken up anon’.  Similarly at Jaffa in choosing a mount for the ride up to Jerusalem ’be not too long behind your fellows; for an ye come betime, ye may choose the best mule’ and ’ye shall pay no more for the best than for the worst’.  ’Also take good heed to your knives and other small japes that ye bear upon you:  for the Saracens will go talking by you and make good cheer; but they will steal from you if they may.’  ’Also when ye shall ride to flume Jordan, take with you out of Jerusalem bread, wine, water, hard eggs and cheese and such victuals as ye may have for two days.  For by all that way there is none to sell.’

Let us turn now to an individual narrative,[38] that of Felix Fabri, a learned and sensible Dominican of Ulm (1442-1502).  He had already made the journey once, out of piety, in 1480, with the company mentioned above, which had only nine days on shore.  He was desirous to go also to St. Catherine’s at Mount Sinai because she was his patroness-saint, to whom he had devoted himself on entering the Dominican order on her day (25 November) in 1452; and accordingly for the second time, in 1483, he procured from the Pope the permission, which every one needed, to visit the Holy Land:  those that went without this being