JOURNAL OF JOHN LAUDER

!O

of some theife it may be) in a bowll of beaten silver. In a
selver 1 besyde was shank bones, finger bones and such like wery
religiously keipt. He showed us among others also a very
masay silver crosse' watered over wt gold very ancient, which
he said was gifted them by a Englishman. I on that enquired
whow they might call him. He could not tell til he cost up
his book of memorials of that church and then he found that
they called him Bruce, on which 1 assured him that that was a
Scots name indeed of a wery honorable family.

Then we returned back to Tours, wheir we went first to sie
their mail (which I counted by ordinar paces of whilk it was
1000.7 arbres).8 About the distance of less than halfe a league
we saw the Bridge that lays over the river of Chere, which
payes its tribut ta the Loier at Langes,~ a little beneath Tours.
Next we went and saw some of their churches. In their prin-
cipal was hinging a iron chain'e by way of a trophee. I
demanding what it might mean, 1 was told it was brought
their by the Chevaliers or Knights of Malta.

We lodged at the Innes.6 To-morrow tymously we took boat
for Saumur (St. Louis). Al the way we fand nothing but brave
houses and castles standing on the riv er, and amongst other that
of Monsoreau tuo leagues large from Saumur, wheir the river
of Chattellerault or Vienne, which riseth in the province of
Limosin, tumbleth it selfe into the Loier this Monsereau is
the limits of 2 provinces of Torrain, to the east of whilk
Tours is the capital, and of Anjou to the west, in whilk is
Saumur, but Angiers is the capitall. When we was wtin a
league of Saumurs they ware telling us of the monstrous
outbreakings the river had made wtin these 12 years upon all
the country adiacent, which made us curious to go sie it.
Whence we landed and being on the top of the bank we

1 Salver.

2 English, mall. Originally an alley where'a game was played with a mail,
a strong, iron-bound club, with long, flexible handle, and a ban of boxwood.
3 Arbre (arbour) probably means 'a shaded or covered alley or walk.
Murray's N~ur Engli.rh Di~t., s.v. 'Arbour.' The history of the word, with its
double derivation from the Anglo-Saxon root of 'harbour' and the Latin arbor,
is very curious. See Introduction, p. 1,'note 2.

Langest in Blaeuw's map, now Langeais.

o Innes for inn, cf. p. 38 at top.