Sir John Mandeville set off from England in 1322, with the intention of making a pilgrimage to the churches and shrines of Jerusalem. But thirty-four years later he arrived back in England claiming to have visited not only the Holy Land but India, China, Java, and Sumatra as well. And what stories he had gathered in the years that he was away! Kings and priests studied The Travels to satisfy their thirst for knowledge of faraway lands. Geographers used his newfound information to redraw their maps. Monastic scribes translated his book from language to language until it had spread throughout the monasteries of Europe. By the time this mysterious knight died in the 1360s, his book was available in every European language, including Dutch, Gaelic, Czech, Catalan, and Walloon. The sheer number of surviving manuscripts is testament to Mandeville's popularity: more than three hundred handwritten copies of The Travels still exist in Europe's great libraries&-four times the number of Marco Polo's book.