Of course, Europe was too cold to actually grow the fruit and supplies depended on the luck of a fast voyage until the necessary hothouse technology could be developed.
After a relatively fast voyage of 120 days, the rhinoceros was finally unloaded in Portugal, near the site where the Manueline Belém Tower was under construction.
It's a fast-paced voyage along the twisting branches of a decision tree, in the style of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
Last Monday, the 110-foot catamaran Orange made a triumphant French landfall after completing a nonstop circumnavigation in 64 days 8 hours 37 minutes to win the Trophée Jules Verne for the fastest voyage around the planet.
Earlier that day, with the American adventurer Steve Fossett and eight other crewmen on the maxi-catamaran PlayStation, Honey was in the navigator's seat when the 125-foot boat put the finishing touches on the fastest voyage across the Atlantic Ocean ever recorded under sail.
Tuned percussion adds a suitably exotic element, but this relatively protracted voyage needed a faster following wind.
In my view, we could steer a faster and more direct course... by agreeing that what we seek at the end of the voyage is the full realization of the benefits of a world economy.
Johnson's A Voyage to Abyssinia was published a year later.
Later this month, de Kersauson and his crew will set out from France to compete again for the Trophée Jules Verne, an award emblematic of the fastest nonstop voyage around the world beginning and ending at the French port of Brest.
The first, by far liveliest voyage begins in the chaos of Tapachula in Chiapas, Mexico, where Casper (Edgar Flores), a teenage member of the vicious street gang Mara Salvatrucha, is making a fast run toward an early grave.
