The Travels and Adventures
of Pero Tafur
 

INTRODUCTION

Tafur's travels were firft printed in Madrid in 1874,
and were edited by D. Marcos Jimenez de la Espada.
The full title is: Andanqas e Viajes de Pero Tafur por
diversas partes del mundo avidos (1435--1439), and the
work appeared as vol. 8 of the Coleccion de Libros
Espaholes raros 6 curiosos. The editor used the only
known manuscript from the library of the Colegio
mayor de S. Bartolome de Cuenca in Salamanca,
now in the Biblioteca Patrimonial (sala 2^ J. pi. 4).
This appears to be an early i8th century copy of an
earlier manuscript. It is written on 9i|- folios, and
preserves the spelling, the irregular pundluation, as
well as the turns of speech current in the middle of
the 15th century. It also shows the condition of the
earlier manuscript, indicating by dots the blanks due
to omissions of words or lines, or to damage due to
careless handling or age. It may be inferred that this
earlier manuscript was written in two columns, that
about a third of a page was missing at the top of p. i,
which contained on one side the title of the book and
half the prologue, and on the other the re^ of the
prologue, that a few lines of the text at the beginning
were illegible and that the laft page of the manuscript
was missing, since the narrative breaks off abruptly.
Calculating the missing portion by the space given in
Clavijo's Embassy to the Court of Timour^ 1403-1406,
to the return journey from Sicily to Spain, Tafur's
account of his voyage from Sardinia to the coaft of
Spain would not fill more than a page.    No further

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