Note 636 — Chapter II · THE OUTWARD VOYAGE 1190

Est., ll. 2165-84; Itin., 206. The brief accounts in Gesta and R. Howden say nothing of the serpents; R. Diceto, l.c., mentions among the contents of the ship “serpentium ignitorum plena vasa plurima”; I have thought it right to adopt the interpretation of the “serpents” which these words imply, although a curious question seems to be suggested by comparing the story with an account in the Morning Post of August 14, 1914, of a captured German liner whose cargo is there said to have included “about sixty alligators and reptiles.”