Note 812 — Chapter XII · Peter’s Orchards.
Reading edition
The Rev. Baring-Gould quotes portions of this epistle in his Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, but its contents are evidently distasteful to him as he breaks off: “I may be spared further extracts from this extraordinary letter which proceeds to describe the church in which Prester John worships, by enumerating the precious stones of which it is constructed, and their special virtues”: as a matter of fact, the account is an agreeable fairy-tale or fable which is no more extravagant than the account of the four-square, cubical, golden-streeted New Jerusalem attributed to the Revelations of St. John.