CONCERNING THE ISLAND OF MADEIGASCAR.
Madeigascar is an Island towards the south, about a thousand miles from
Scotra. The people are all Saracens, adoring Mahommet. They have four
_Esheks_, _i.e._ four Elders, who are said to govern the whole Island.
And you must know that it is a most noble and beautiful Island, and one
of the greatest in the world, for it is about 4000 miles in compass.
The people live by trade and handicrafts.
In this Island, and in another beyond it called ZANGHIBAR, about which
we shall tell you afterwards, there are more elephants than in any
country in the world. The amount of traffic in elephants’ teeth in
these two Islands is something astonishing.
In this Island they eat no flesh but that of camels; and of these
they kill an incredible number daily. They say it is the best and
wholesomest of all flesh; and so they eat of it all the year round.{1}
They have in this Island many trees of red sanders, of excellent
quality; in fact, all their forests consist of it.{2} They have also a
quantity of ambergris, for whales are abundant in that sea, and they
catch numbers of them; and so are _Oil-heads_, which are a huge kind of
fish, which also produce ambergris like the whale.{3} There are numbers
of leopards, bears, and lions in the country, and other wild beasts in
abundance. Many traders, and many ships go thither with cloths of gold
and silk, and many other kinds of goods, and drive a profitable trade.
You must know that this Island lies so far south that ships cannot go
further south or visit other Islands in that direction, except this
one, and that other of which we have to tell you, called Zanghibar.
This is because the sea-current runs so strong towards the south that
the ships which should attempt it never would get back again. Indeed,
the ships of Maabar which visit this Island of Madeigascar, and that
other of Zanghibar, arrive thither with marvellous speed, for great as
the distance is they accomplish it in 20 days, whilst the return voyage
takes them more than 3 months. This (I say) is because of the strong
current running south, which continues with such singular force and in
the same direction at all seasons.{4}
’Tis said that in those other Islands to the south, which the ships are
unable to visit because this strong current prevents their return, is
found the bird _Gryphon_, which appears there at certain seasons. The
description given of it is however entirely different from what our
stories and pictures make it. For persons who had been there and had
seen it told Messer Marco Polo that it was for all the world like an
eagle, but one indeed of enormous size; so big in fact that its wings
covered an extent of 30 paces, and its quills were 12 paces long, and
thick in proportion. And it is so strong that it will seize an elephant
in its talons and carry him high into the air, and drop him so that he
is smashed to pieces; having so killed him the bird gryphon swoops down
on him and eats him at leisure. The people of those isles call the bird
_Ruc_, and it has no other name.{5} So I wot not if this be the real
gryphon, or if there be another manner of bird as great. But this I can
tell you for certain, that they are not half lion and half bird as our
stories do relate; but enormous as they be they are fashioned just like
an eagle.
The Great Kaan sent to those parts to enquire about these curious
matters, and the story was told by those who went thither. He also
sent to procure the release of an envoy of his who had been despatched
thither, and had been detained; so both those envoys had many wonderful
things to tell the Great Kaan about those strange islands, and about
the birds I have mentioned. [They brought (as I heard) to the Great
Kaan a feather of the said Ruc, which was stated to measure 90 spans,
whilst the quill part was two palms in circumference, a marvellous
object! The Great Kaan was delighted with it, and gave great presents
to those who brought it.{6}] They also brought two boars’ tusks, which
weighed more than 14 lbs. a-piece; and you may gather how big the boar
must have been that had teeth like that! They related indeed that there
were some of those boars as big as a great buffalo. There are also
numbers of giraffes and wild asses; and in fact a marvellous number of
wild beasts of strange aspect.{7}
NOTE 1.—Marco is, I believe, the first writer European or Asiatic,
who unambiguously speaks of MADAGASCAR; but his information about
it was very incorrect in many particulars. There are no elephants
nor camels in the island, nor any leopards, bears, or lions.
Indeed, I have no doubt that Marco, combining information from
different sources, made some confusion between _Makdashau_
(Magadoxo) and _Madagascar_, and that particulars belonging to
both are mixed up here. This accounts for Zanghibar being placed
entirely _beyond_ Madagascar, for the entirely Mahomedan character
given to the population, for the hippopotamus-teeth and staple
trade in ivory, as well as for the lions, elephants, and other
beasts. But above all the camel-killing indicates Sumáli Land and
Magadoxo as the real locality of part of the information. Says Ibn
Batuta: “After leaving Zaila we sailed on the sea for 15 days,
and arrived at Makdashau, an extremely large town. The natives
keep camels in great numbers, _and they slaughter several hundreds
daily_” (II. 181). The slaughter of camels for food is still a
Sumáli practice. (See _J. R. G. S._ VI. 28, and XIX. 55.) Perhaps
the _Shaikhs_ (_Esceqe_) also belong to the same quarter, for the
Arab traveller says that the Sultan of Makdashau had no higher
title than _Shaikh_ (183); and Brava, a neighbouring settlement,
was governed by 12 shaikhs. (_De Barros_, I. viii. 4.) Indeed, this
kind of local oligarchy still prevails on that coast.
We may add that both Makdashau and Brava are briefly described in
the Annals of the Ming Dynasty. The former, _Mu-ku-tu-su_, lies on
the sea, 20 days from _Siao-Kolan_ (Quilon?), a barren mountainous
country of wide extent, where it sometimes does not rain for years.
In 1427 a mission came from this place to China. _Pu-la-wa_ (Brava,
properly Baráwa) adjoins the former, and is also on the sea. It
produces olibanum, myrrh, and _ambergris_; and among animals
elephants, camels, rhinoceroses, spotted animals like asses, etc.[1]
It is, however, true that there are traces of a considerable
amount of ancient Arab colonisation on the shores of Madagascar.
Arab descent is ascribed to a class of the people of the province
of Matitánana on the east coast, in lat. 21°–23° south, and the
Arabic writing is in use there. The people of the St. Mary’s Isle
of our maps off the east coast, in lat. 17°, also call themselves
the children of Ibrahim, and the island _Nusi-Ibrahim_. And on the
north-west coast, at Bambeluka Bay, Captain Owen found a large Arab
population, whose forefathers had been settled there from time
immemorial. The number of tombs here and in Magambo Bay showed that
the Arab population had once been much greater. The government of
this settlement, till conquered by Radama, was vested in three
persons: one a Malagash, the second an Arab, the third as guardian
of strangers; a fact also suggestive of Polo’s four sheikhs
(_Ellis_, I. 131; _Owen_, II. 102, 132. See also _Sonnerat_, II.
56.) Though the Arabs were in the habit of navigating to Sofala,
in about lat. 20° south, in the time of Mas’udi (beginning of
10th century), and must have then known Madagascar, there is no
intelligible indication of it in any of their geographies that have
been translated.[2]
[M. Alfred Grandidier, in his _Hist. de la Géog. de Madagascar_,
p. 31, comes to the conclusion that Marco Polo has given a very
exact description of Magadoxo, but that he did not know the island
of Madagascar. He adds in a note that Yule has shown that the
description of Madeigascar refers partly to Magadoxo, but that
notwithstanding he (Yule) believed that Polo spoke of Madagascar
when the Venetian traveller does not. I must say that I do not see
any reason why Yule’s theory should not be accepted.
M. G. Ferrand, formerly French Agent at Fort Dauphin, has devoted
ch. ix. (pp. 83–90) of the second part of his valuable work
_Les Musulmans à Madagascar_ (Paris, 1893), to the “Etymology
of Madagascar.” He believes that M. Polo really means the great
African Island. I mention from his book that M. Guët (_Origines
de l’île Bourbon_, 1888) brings the Carthaginians to Madagascar,
and derives the name of this island from _Madax-Aschtoret_ or
_Madax-Astarté_, which signifies _Isle of Astarté_ and _Isle of
Tanit_! Mr. I. Taylor (_The origin of the name_ ‘Madagascar,’ in
_Antananarivo Annual_, 1891) gives also some fancy etymologies;
it is needless to mention them. M. Ferrand himself thinks that
very likely Madagascar simply means _Country of the Malagash_
(Malgaches), and is only a bad transcription of the Arabic
_Madagasbar_.—H. C.]
NOTE 2.—There is, or used to be, a trade in sandal-wood from
Madagascar. (See _Owen_, II. 99.) In the map of S. Lorenzo (or
Madagascar) in the _Isole_ of Porcacchi (1576), a map evidently
founded on fact, I observe near the middle of the Island: _quivi
sono boschi di sandari rossi_.
NOTE 3.—“The coast of this province” (Ivongo, the N.E. of the
Island) “abounds with whales, and during a certain period of the
year Antongil Bay is a favourite resort for whalers of all nations.
The inhabitants of Titingue are remarkably expert in spearing the
whales from their slight canoes.” (_Lloyd_ in _J. R. G. S._ XX.
56.) A description of the whale-catching process practised by the
Islanders of St. Mary’s, or Nusi Ibrahim, is given in the _Quinta
Pars Indiae Orientalis_ of _De Bry_, p. 9. Owen gives a similar
account (I. 170).
The word which I have rendered _Oil-heads_ is _Capdoilles_ or
_Capdols_, representing _Capidoglio_, the appropriate name still
applied in Italy to the Spermaceti whale. The _Vocab. Ital. Univ._
quotes Ariosto (VII. 36):—
—“_I_ Capidogli _co’ vecchi marini_
_Vengon turbati dal lor pigro sonno_.”
The Spermaceti-whale is described under this name by Rondeletius,
but from his cut it is clear he had not seen the animal.
NOTE 4.—De Barros, after describing the dangers of the Channel of
Mozambique, adds: “And as the Moors of this coast of Zanguebar make
their voyages in ships and sambuks sewn with coir, instead of being
nailed like ours, and thus strong enough to bear the force of the
cold seas of the region about the Cape of Good Hope, ... they never
dared to attempt the exploration of the regions to the westward
of the Cape of Currents, although they greatly desired to do so.”
(Dec. I. viii. 4; and see also IV. i. 12.) Kazwini says of the
Ocean, quoting Al Biruni: “Then it extends to the sea known as
that of Berbera, and stretches from Aden to the furthest extremity
of Zanjibar; beyond this goes no vessel on account of the great
current. Then it extends to what are called the Mountains of the
Moon, whence spring the sources of the Nile of Egypt, and thence to
Western Sudan, to the Spanish Countries and the (Western) Ocean.”
There has been recent controversy between Captain A. D. Taylor
and Commodore Jansen of the Dutch navy, regarding the Mozambique
currents, and (incidentally) Polo’s accuracy. The currents in the
Mozambique Channel vary with the monsoons, but from Cape Corrientes
southward along the coast runs the permanent Lagullas current,
and Polo’s statement requires but little correction. (_Ethé_ pp.
214–215; see also _Barbosa_ in _Ram._ I. 288; _Owen_, I. 269;
_Stanley’s Correa_, p. 261; _J. R. G. S._ II. 91; _Fra Mauro_ in
_Zurla_, p. 61; see also _Reinaud’s Abulfeda_, vol. i. pp. 15–16;
and _Ocean Highways_, August to November, 1873.)
[Illustration: The Rukh (from Lane’s “Arabian Nights”), after a
Persian drawing.]
NOTE 5.—The fable of the RUKH was old and widely spread, like
that of the Male and Female Islands, and, just as in that case,
one accidental circumstance or another would give it a local
habitation, now here now there. The _Garuda_ of the Hindus, the
_Simurgh_ of the old Persians, the _’Angka_ of the Arabs, the _Bar
Yuchre_ of the Rabbinical legends, the _Gryps_ of the Greeks, were
probably all versions of the same original fable.
Bochart quotes a bitter Arabic proverb which says, “Good-Faith,
the Ghul, and the Gryphon (_’Angka_) are three names of things
that exist nowhere.” And Mas’udi, after having said that whatever
country he visited he always found that the people believed these
monstrous creatures to exist in regions as remote as possible from
their own, observes: “It is not that our reason absolutely rejects
the possibility of the existence of the _Nesnás_ (see vol. i. p.
206) or of the _’Angka_, and other beings of that rare and wondrous
order; for there is nothing in their existence incompatible with
the Divine Power; but we decline to believe in them because their
existence has not been manifested to us on any irrefragable
authority.”
[Illustration: Frontispiece showing the Bird _Rukh_.]
The circumstance which for the time localized the Rukh in the
direction of Madagascar was perhaps some rumour of the great fossil
_Aepyornis_ and its colossal eggs, found in that island. According
to Geoffroy St. Hilaire, the Malagashes assert that the bird which
laid those great eggs still exists, that it has an immense power
of flight, and preys upon the greater quadrupeds. Indeed the
continued existence of the bird has been alleged as late as 1861
and 1863!
On the great map of Fra Mauro (1459) near the extreme point of
Africa which he calls _Cavo de Diab_, and which is suggestive of
the Cape of Good Hope, but was really perhaps Cape Corrientes,
there is a rubric inscribed with the following remarkable story:
“About the year of Our Lord 1420 a ship or junk of India in
crossing the Indian Sea was driven by way of the Islands of Men
and Women beyond the Cape of Diab, and carried between the Green
Islands and the Darkness in a westerly and south-westerly direction
for 40 days, without seeing anything but sky and sea, during which
time they made to the best of their judgment 2000 miles. The gale
then ceasing they turned back, and were seventy days in getting to
the aforesaid Cape Diab. The ship having touched on the coast to
supply its wants, the mariners beheld there the egg of a certain
bird called _Chrocho_, which egg was as big as a butt.[3] And the
bigness of the bird is such that between the extremities of the
wings is said to be 60 paces. They say too that it carries away an
elephant or any other great animal with the greatest ease, and does
great injury to the inhabitants of the country, and is most rapid
in its flight.”
G.-St. Hilaire considered the Aepyornis to be of the Ostrich
family; Prince C. Buonaparte classed it with the _Inepti_ or Dodos;
Duvernay of Valenciennes with aquatic birds! There was clearly
therefore room for difference of opinion, and Professor Bianconi
of Bologna, who has written much on the subject, concludes that it
was most probably a bird of the vulture family. This would go far,
he urges, to justify Polo’s account of the Ruc as a bird of prey,
though the story of its _lifting_ any large animal could have had
no foundation, as the feet of the vulture kind are unfit for such
efforts. Humboldt describes the habit of the condor of the Andes
as that of worrying, wearying, and frightening its four-footed
prey until it drops; sometimes the condor drives its victim over a
precipice.
Bianconi concludes that on the same scale of proportion as the
condor’s, the great quills of the Aepyornis would be about 10 feet
long, and the spread of the wings about 32 feet, whilst the height
of the bird would be at least four times that of the condor. These
are indeed little more than conjectures. And I must add that in
Professor Owen’s opinion there is no reasonable doubt that the
Aepyornis was a bird allied to the Ostriches.
We gave, in the first edition of this work, a drawing of the great
Aepyornis egg in the British Museum of its true size, as the
nearest approach we could make to an illustration of the _Rukh_
from nature. The actual contents of this egg will be about 2·35
gallons, which may be compared with Fra Mauro’s _anfora_! Except in
this matter of size, his story of the ship and the egg may be true.
A passage from Temple’s Travels in Peru has been quoted as
exhibiting exaggeration in the description of the condor surpassing
anything that can be laid to Polo’s charge here; but that is, in
fact, only somewhat heavy banter directed against our traveller’s
own narrative. (See _Travels in Various Parts of Peru_, 1830, II.
414–417.)
Recently fossil bones have been found in New Zealand, which seem
to bring us a step nearer to the realization of the Rukh. Dr.
Haast discovered in a swamp at Glenmark in the province of Otago,
along with remains of the _Dinornis_ or Moa, some bones (femur,
ungual phalanges, and rib) of a gigantic bird which he pronounces
to be a bird of prey, apparently allied to the Harriers, and calls
_Harpagornis_. He supposes it to have preyed upon the Moa, and
as that fowl is calculated to have been 10 feet and upwards in
height, we are not so very far from the elephant-devouring Rukh.
(See _Comptes Rendus, Ac. des Sciences_ 1872, p. 1782; and _Ibis_,
October 1872, p. 433.) This discovery may possibly throw a new
light on the traditions of the New Zealanders. For Professor Owen,
in first describing the _Dinornis_ in 1839, mentioned that the
natives had a tradition that the bones belonged _to a bird of the
eagle kind_. (See _Eng. Cyc._ Nat. Hist. sub. v. _Dinornis_.) And
Sir Geo. Grey appears to have read a paper, 23rd October 1872,[4]
which was the description by a Maori of the _Hokiol_, an extinct
gigantic bird of prey of which that people have traditions come
down from their ancestors, said to have been a black hawk of great
size, as large as the Moa.
I have to thank Mr. Arthur Grote for a few words more on that
most interesting subject, the discovery of a real fossil _Ruc_ in
New Zealand. He informs me (under date 4th December 1874) that
Professor Owen is now working on the huge bones sent home by Dr.
Haast, “and is convinced that they belonged to a bird of prey,
probably (as Dr. Haast suggested) a Harrier, _double the weight of
the Moa_, and quite capable therefore of preying on the young of
that species. Indeed, he is disposed to attribute the extinction of
the Harpagornis to that of the Moa, which was the only victim in
the country which could supply it with a sufficiency of food.”
One is tempted to add that if the Moa or Dinornis of New Zealand
had its _Harpagornis_ scourge, the still greater Aepyornis of
Madagascar may have had a proportionate tyrant, whose bones (and
quills?) time may bring to light. And the description given by Sir
Douglas Forsyth on page 542, of the action of the Golden Eagle of
Kashgar in dealing with a wild boar, illustrates how such a bird
as our imagined _Harpagornis Aepyornithōn_ might master the larger
pachydermata, even the elephant himself, without having to treat
him precisely as the Persian drawing at p. 415 represents.
Sindbad’s adventures with the Rukh are too well known for
quotation. A variety of stories of the same tenor hitherto
unpublished, have been collected by M. Marcel Devic from an Arabic
work of the 10th century on the “_Marvels of Hind_,” by an author
who professes only to repeat the narratives of merchants and
mariners whom he had questioned. A specimen of these will be found
under Note 6. The story takes a peculiar form in the Travels of
Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela. He heard that when ships were in danger
of being lost in the stormy sea that led to China the sailors were
wont to sew themselves up in hides, and so when cast upon the
surface they were snatched up by great eagles called gryphons,
which carried their supposed prey ashore, etc. It is curious that
this very story occurs in a Latin poem stated to be _at least_
as old as the beginning of the 13th century, which relates the
romantic adventures of a certain Duke Ernest of Bavaria; whilst
the story embodies more than one other adventure belonging to the
History of Sindbad.[5] The Duke and his comrades, navigating in
some unknown ramification of the Euxine, fall within the fatal
attraction of the Magnet Mountain. Hurried by this augmenting
force, their ship is described as crashing through the rotten
forest of masts already drawn to their doom:—
“Et ferit impulsus majoris verbere montem
Quam si diplosas impingat machina turres.”
There they starve, and the dead are deposited on the lofty poop to
be carried away by the daily visits of the gryphons:—
——“Quae grifae membra leonis
Et pennas aquilae simulantes unguibus atris
Tollentes miseranda suis dant prandia pullis.”
When only the Duke and six others survive, the wisest of the party
suggests the scheme which Rabbi Benjamin has related:—
——“Quaeramus tergora, et armis
Vestiti prius, optatis volvamur in illis,
Ut nos tollentes mentita cadavera Grifae
Pullis objiciant, a queis facientibus armis
Et cute dissutâ, nos, si volet, Ille Deorum
Optimus eripiet.”
Which scheme is successfully carried out. The wanderers then make
a raft on which they embark on a river which plunges into a cavern
in the heart of a mountain; and after a time they emerge in the
country of Arimaspia inhabited by the Cyclopes; and so on. The
Gryphon story also appears in the romance of Huon de Bordeaux, as
well as in the tale called ‘Hasan of el-Basrah’ in Lane’s Version
of the _Arabian Nights_.
It is in the China Seas that Ibn Batuta beheld the Rukh, first like
a mountain in the sea where no mountain should be, and then “when
the sun rose,” says he, “we saw the mountain aloft in the air, and
the clear sky between it and the sea. We were in astonishment at
this, and I observed that the sailors were weeping and bidding each
other adieu, so I called out, ‘What is the matter?’ They replied,
‘What we took for a mountain is “the Rukh.” If it sees us, it will
send us to destruction.’ It was then some 10 miles from the junk.
But God Almighty was gracious unto us, and sent us a fair wind,
which turned us from the direction in which the Rukh was; so we did
not see him well enough to take cognizance of his real shape.” In
this story we have evidently a case of abnormal refraction, causing
an island to appear suspended in the air.[6]
The Archipelago was perhaps the legitimate habitat of the Rukh,
before circumstances localised it in the direction of Madagascar.
In the Indian Sea, says Kazwini, is a bird of size so vast that
when it is dead men take the half of its bill and make a ship
of it! And there too Pigafetta heard of this bird, under its
Hindu name of _Garuda_, so big that it could fly away with an
elephant.[7] Kazwini also says that the ’Angka carries off an
elephant as a hawk flies off with a mouse; his flight is like the
loud thunder. Whilom he dwelt near the haunts of men, and wrought
them great mischief. But once on a time it had carried off a bride
in her bridal array, and Hamd Allah, the Prophet of those days,
invoked a curse upon the bird. Wherefore the Lord banished it to an
inaccessible Island in the Encircling Ocean.
The Simurgh or ’Angka, dwelling behind veils of Light and Darkness
on the inaccessible summits of Caucasus, is in Persian mysticism an
emblem of the Almighty.
In Northern Siberia the people have a firm belief in the former
existence of birds of colossal size, suggested apparently by the
fossil bones of great pachyderms which are so abundant there. And
the compressed sabre-like horns of _Rhinoceros tichorinus_ are
constantly called, even by Russian merchants, _birds’ claws_. Some
of the native tribes fancy the vaulted skull of the same rhinoceros
to be the bird’s head, and the leg-bones of other pachyderms to
be its quills; and they relate that their forefathers used to
fight wonderful battles with this bird. Erman ingeniously suggests
that the Herodotean story of the Gryphons, _from under which_ the
Arimaspians drew their gold, grew out of the legends about these
fossils.
I may add that the name of our _rook_ in chess is taken from that
of this same bird; though first perverted from (Sansk.) _rath_, a
chariot.
Some Eastern authors make the _Rukh_ an enormous beast instead
of a bird. (See _J. R. A. S._ XIII. 64, and _Elliot_, II. 203.)
A Spanish author of the 16th century seems to take the same view
of the Gryphon, but he is prudently vague in describing it, which
he does among the animals of Africa: “The _Grifo which some call_
CAMELLO PARDAL ... is called by the Arabs _Yfrit_ (!), and is made
just in that fashion in which we see it painted in pictures.”
(_Marmol, Descripcion General de Africa_, Granada, 1573, I. f. 30.)
The _Zorafa_ is described as a different beast, which it certainly
is!
(_Bochart, Hierozoica_, II. 852 _seqq._; _Mas’udi_, IV. 16; _Mem.
dell’Acad. dell’Instit. di Bologna_, III. 174 _seqq._, V. 112
_seqq._; _Zurla_ on _Fra Mauro_, p. 62; _Lane’s Arabian Nights_,
Notes on Sindbad; _Benj. of Tudela_, p. 117; _De Varia Fortuna
Ernesti Bavariae Ducis_, in _Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum_ of
Martene and Durand, vol. III. col. 353 _seqq._; _I. B._ IV. 305;
_Gildem._ p. 220; _Pigafetta_, p. 174; _Major’s Prince Henry_, p.
311; _Erman_, II. 88; _Garcin de Tassy, La Poésie philos. etc.,
chez les Persans_, 30 _seqq._)
[In a letter to Sir Henry Yule, dated 24th March 1887, Sir (then
Dr.) John Kirk writes: “I was speaking with the present Sultan of
Zanzibar, Seyyed Barghash, about the great bird which the natives
say exists, and in doing so I laughed at the idea. His Highness
turned serious and said that indeed he believed it to be quite true
that a great bird visited the Udoe country, and that it caused a
great shadow to fall upon the country; he added that it let fall
at times large rocks. Of course he did not pretend to know these
things from his own experience, for he has never been inland, but
he considered he had ample grounds to believe these stones from
what he had been told of those who travelled. The Udoe country lies
north of the River Wami opposite the island of Zanzibar and about
two days going inland. The people are jealous of strangers and
practise cannibalism in war. They are therefore little visited, and
although near the coast we know little of them. The only members
of their tribe I have known have been converted to Islam, and not
disposed to say much of their native customs, being ashamed of
them, while secretly still believing in them. The only thing I
noticed was an idea that the tribe came originally from the West,
from about Manyema; now the people of that part are cannibals, and
cannibalism is almost unknown except among the _Wadoe_, nearer the
east coast. It is also singular that the other story of a gigantic
bird comes from near Manyema and that the _whalebone_ that was
passed off at Zanzibar as the wing of a bird, came, they said, from
Tanganyika. As to rocks falling in East Africa, I think their idea
might easily arise from the fall of meteoric stones.”]
[M. Alfred Grandidier (_Hist. de la Géog. de Madagascar_, p. 31)
thinks that the Rukh is but an image; it is a personification of
water-spouts, cyclones, and typhoons.—H. C.]
NOTE 6.—Sir Thomas Brown says that if any man will say he desires
before belief to behold such a creature as is the _Rukh_ in
Paulus Venetus, for his own part he will not be angry with his
incredulity. But M. Pauthier is of more liberal belief; for he
considers that, after all, the dimensions which Marco assigns to
the wings and quills of the Rukh are not so extravagant that we
should refuse to admit their possibility.
Ludolf will furnish him with corroborative evidence, that of Padre
Bolivar, a Jesuit, as communicated to Thévenot; the assigned
position will suit well enough with Marco’s report: “The bird
condor differs in size in different parts of the world. The greater
species was seen by many of the Portuguese in their expedition
against the Kingdoms of Sofala and Cuama and the Land of the
Caffres from Monomotapa to the Kingdom of Angola and the Mountains
of Teroa. In some countries I have myself seen the wing-feathers
of that enormous fowl, although the bird itself I never beheld.
The feather in question, as could be deduced from its form, was
one of the middle ones, and it was 28 palms in length and three in
breadth. The quill part, from the root to the extremity, was five
palms in length, of the thickness of an average man’s arm, and of
extreme strength and hardness. [M. Alfred Grandidier (_Hist. de la
Géog. de Madagascar_, p. 25) thinks that the quill part of this
feather was one of the bamboo shoots formerly brought to Yemen to
be used as water-jars and called there _feathers of Rukh_, the
Arabs looking upon these bamboo shoots as the quill part of the
feathers of the Rukh.—H. C.] The fibres of the feather were equal
in length and closely fitted, so that they could scarcely be parted
without some exertion of force; and they were jet black, whilst
the quill part was white. Those who had seen the bird stated that
it was bigger than the bulk of a couple of elephants, and that
hitherto nobody had succeeded in killing one. It rises to the
clouds with such extraordinary swiftness that it seems scarcely
to stir its wings. _In form it is like an eagle_. But although
its size and swiftness are so extraordinary, it has much trouble
in procuring food, on account of the density of the forests with
which all that region is clothed. Its own dwelling is in cold and
desolate tracts such as the Mountains of Teroa, _i.e._ of the
Moon; and in the valleys of that range it shows itself at certain
periods. Its black feathers are held in very high estimation, and
it is with the greatest difficulty that one can be got from the
natives, for _one_ such serves to fan ten people, and to keep
off the terrible heat from them, as well as the wasps and flies”
(_Ludolf, Hist. Aethiop._ Comment. p. 164.)
Abu Mahomed, of Spain, relates that a merchant arrived in Barbary
who had lived long among the Chinese. He had with him the quill of
a chick Rukh, and this held nine skins of water. He related the
story of how he came by this,—a story nearly the same as one of
Sindbad’s about the Rukh’s egg. (_Bochart_, II. 854.)
Another story of a seaman wrecked on the coast of Africa is among
those collected by M. Marcel Devic. By a hut that stood in the
middle of a field of rice and _durra_ there was a trough. “A man
came up leading a pair of oxen, laden with 12 skins of water, and
emptied these into the trough. I drew near to drink, and found the
trough to be polished like a steel blade, quite different from
either glass or pottery. ‘It is the hollow of a quill,’ said the
man. I would not believe a word of the sort, until, after rubbing
it inside and outside, I found it to be transparent, and to retain
the traces of the barbs.” (_Comptes Rendus_, _etc._, _ut supra_;
and _Livre des Merveilles de l’Inde_, p. 99.)
Fr. Jordanus also says: “In this _India Tertia_ (Eastern Africa)
are certain birds which are called _Roc_, so big that they easily
carry an elephant up into the air. I have seen a certain person who
said that he had seen one of those birds, one wing only of which
stretched to a length of 80 palms” (p. 42).
The Japanese Encyclopædia states that in the country of the
_Tsengsz’_ (Zinjis) in the South-West Ocean, there is a bird called
_pheng_, which in its flight eclipses the sun. It can swallow a
camel; and its quills are used for water-casks. This was probably
got from the Arabs. (_J. As._, sér. 2, tom. xii. 235–236.)
I should note that the _Geog. Text_ in the first passage where
the feathers are spoken of says: “_e ce qe je en vi voz dirai en
autre leu, por ce qe il convient ensi faire à nostre livre_,”—“that
which _I have seen_ of them I will tell you elsewhere, as it suits
the arrangement of our book.” No such other detail is found in
that text, but we have in Ramusio this passage about the quill
brought to the Great Kaan, and I suspect that the phrase, “as I
have heard,” is an interpolation, and that Polo is here telling _ce
qe il en vit_. What are we to make of the story? I have sometimes
thought that possibly some vegetable production, such as a great
frond of the _Ravenala_, may have been cooked to pass as a Rukh’s
quill. [See _App._ L.]
NOTE 7.—The giraffes are an error. The _Eng. Cyc._ says that wild
asses and zebras (?) do exist in Madagascar, but I cannot trace
authority for this.
The great boar’s teeth were indubitably hippopotamus-teeth, which
form a considerable article of export from Zanzibar[8] (not
Madagascar). Burton speaks of their reaching 12 lbs in weight. And
Cosmas tells us: “The hippopotamus I have not seen indeed, but I
had some great teeth of his _that weighed thirteen pounds_, which
I sold here (in Alexandria). And I have seen many such teeth in
Ethiopia and in Egypt.” (See _J. R. G. S._ XXIX. 444; _Cathay_, p.
clxxv.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Bretschneider, _On the knowledge possessed by the Ancient Chinese
of the Arabs_, etc. London, 1871, p. 21.
[2] Mas’udi speaks of an island _Ḳanbălú_, well cultivated and
populous, one or two days from the Zinj coast, and the object
of voyages from Oman, from which it was about 500 parasangs
distant. It was conquered by the Arabs, who captured the whole
Zinj population of the island, about the beginning of the Abasside
Dynasty (_circa_ A.D. 750). Barbier de Meynard thinks this may
be Madagascar. I suspect it rather to be _Pemba_. (See _Prairies
d’Or_, I. 205, 232, and III. 31.)
[3] “_De la grandeza de una bota d’anfora_.” The lowest estimate that
I find of the Venetian anfora makes it equal to about 108 imperial
gallons, a little less than the English butt. This seems intended.
The _ancient_ amphora would be more reasonable, being only 5·66
gallons.
[4] The friend who noted this for me, omitted to name the Society.
[5] I got the indication of this poem, I think, in Bochart. But I have
since observed that its coincidences with Sindbad are briefly
noticed by Mr. Lane (ed. 1859, III. 78) from an article in the
“_Foreign Quarterly Review_.”
[6] An intelligent writer, speaking of such effects on the same sea,
says: “The boats floating on a calm sea, at a distance from the
ship, were magnified to a great size; the crew standing up in them
appeared as masts or trees, and their arms in motion as the wings
of windmills; whilst the surrounding islands (especially at their
low and tapered extremities) seemed to be suspended in the air,
some feet above the ocean’s level.” (_Bennett’s Whaling Voyage_,
II. 71–72.)
[7] An epithet of the _Garuda_ is _Gajakúrmásin_,
“elephant-cum-tortoise-devourer,” because said to have swallowed
both when engaged in a contest with each other.
[8] The name as pronounced seems to have been _Zangibár_ (hard _g_),
which polite Arabic changed into _Zanjibár_, whence the Portuguese
made _Zanzibar_.