His journey begins in the year 1320 and his account has come down to us as a book of popular history [Volksbuch], though unfortunately a quite shapeless one.144 It may be acknowledged of the author that he undertook great journeys, saw a great deal and saw it well, and described it accurately to boot. But he likes not only to ‘plough with strange heifers’145 but to slip in fables old and new so that the true loses all credibility. Translated from the original Latin first into Low German, then into High German, the little book suffers from new distortions of its name. Even its translator feels entitled to leave things out and insert others, as our own Görres146 shows in his worthy book on German popular literature; and in this way both the pleasure and the utility of this important work have been lessened.