ILLUSTRATION: SUE GENT
The shore was a tangle of mangrove roots and the air was dense with humidity. Overhead, the tropical sun was burning with relentless intensity. After years of weary voyaging, the medieval English knight Sir John Mandeville had reached the utmost ends of the Earth. He was more than 5,000 miles from home.
Or so he claimed. And it was not his only claim. He said he had been on the road for a full 34 years and had undertaken an eye-stretching expedition that covered most of the known world, and much of the unknown world as well.