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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/75759-0.txt b/75759-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..23c6c69 --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,20325 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75759 *** + + + + + + THE COASTS OF ILLUSION + + [Illustration] + + + [Illustration: THE BOYHOOD OF RALEIGH + + _By_ Sir John Millais] + + + + + THE + COASTS OF ILLUSION + + A Study of Travel Tales + + BY + + CLARK B. FIRESTONE + + + _With Drawings by_ + + RUTH HAMBIDGE + + + [Illustration] + + + “_Westward of Valhalla grows a plant called + The mistletoe; it seemed too young to swear._” + + --FRIGG + + + HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS + NEW YORK AND LONDON + MCMXXIV + + + + + THE COASTS OF ILLUSION + + Copyright, 1924, by Harper & Brothers + Printed in the United States of America + + _First Edition_ + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + + MARCO TALKS WITH HIS NEIGHBORS ix + + PREFACE xi + + CHAPTER + + I THE WORLD THAT WAS 1 + + II THE EARTH ITSELF 5 + + III INANIMATE NATURE 14 + + IV THE ANIMAL KINGDOM 27 + + V THE FABULOUS BEASTS 49 + + VI FABLE UPON WINGS 68 + + VII THE DRAGON 79 + + VIII DENIZENS OF THE DEEP 89 + + IX THE PEOPLES OF PRODIGY 103 + + X THE SATYRS 121 + + XI THE PYGMIES 132 + + XII THE AMAZONS OF LEGEND 151 + + XIII THE AMAZONS OF HISTORY 169 + + XIV THE FOLK OF TRADITION 190 + + XV THE HORIZON LANDS 201 + + XVI LANDS OF LEGEND 223 + + XVII ISLANDS OF ENCHANTMENT 251 + + XVIII THE TERRIBLE OCEAN 262 + + XIX THE SARGASSO SEA 274 + + XX ATLANTIS 281 + + XXI THE GILDED MAN 298 + + XXII THE DREAM QUESTS OF SPAIN 312 + + XXIII THE FABRIC OF ILLUSION 334 + + XXIV THE TRAVEL TALES OF MANKIND 348 + + XXV THE GAINS OF FABLE 371 + + BIBLIOGRAPHY 379 + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + + THE BOYHOOD OF RALEIGH. _By Sir John Millais_ _Frontispiece_ + + FACING PAGE + + A VOYAGE TO THESE STRANGELY PEOPLED COUNTRIES OF + THE WORLD’S YESTERDAYS WOULD BE A VOYAGE + ALONG THE BAYS, GULFS, AND PROMONTORIES OF THE + HUMAN MIND IN ITS STATES OF DREAM 2 + + CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AT THE COURT OF FERDINAND + THE CATHOLIC AND ISABELLA OF CASTILE. _By V. von + Brozik_ 10 + + ACCORDING TO TRADITION, A PUTRID STREAM FLOWS + FROM THE ROOTS OF THE TREE AND THE VAPORS + THEREOF KILL 24 + + IN CALDILHE THERE GROWETH A MANNER OF FRUIT, AND + MEN FIND WITHIN A LITTLE BEAST AS THOUGH IT + WERE A LAMB WITHOUT WOOL 58 + + THE FIRST PEOPLE ENGAGED IN SUCH COSMIC ADVENTURES + AS WARFARE AGAINST STONE GIANTS 116 + + A SATYR. _By Jacob Jordaens_ 122 + + MEN FEARED THEM, AS EMBODYING THE LONELINESS OF + WASTE PLACES 128 + + THE SWARTHY MEN CALLED PYGMIES 142 + + THUSNELDA AT THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY OF GERMANICUS + INTO ROME. _By C. T. von Piloty_ 172 + + THE STEEPS OVERHEAD SEEMED FIT ABODE FOR GIANTS + AND DWARFS AND GRIFFINS--FOR CITIES OF ENCHANTMENT 206 + + THE ENCHANTED WOODS OF ROMANCE WITH THEIR + GOBLIN GLOOMS AND TALKING TREES FADED FROM THE + MINDS OF MEN 216 + + “BUILD US, O DOUL-KARNAIN,” THEY BEGGED, “A RAMPART + BETWEEN US AND THEM” 236 + + IN ISLANDS MEN PLACED THEIR IDEAL STATES.... TO + REACH FELICITY ONE MUST CROSS WATER 254 + + ROARING FORTIES. _By F. J. Waugh_ 268 + + THE THINGS OF THE SPIRIT ANIMATED SPAIN IN SOME OF + THE QUESTS IT FOLLOWED BESIDE THE STILL WATERS + OF THE LAKES OF DREAM 314 + + THE GARGOYLES OF STONE WHICH KEPT WATCH DAY + AND NIGHT 338 + + + + +MARCO TALKS WITH HIS NEIGHBORS + + + THE TIME: 1295 A.D. + THE PLACE: Venice, the Rialto. + THE SPEAKER: Marco Polo. + THE CHORUS: Citizens of Venice. + + + _“I fared,” said Marco, “as far as one may---- + From Astrakhan to the ports of Cathay, + And sailed two years on the Pitch Dark Sea; + And something I learned of the ways of man. + There is a place that they call Japan, + And Russia lies where the north winds be; + The plain of Lop is haunted by dragons; + Dark are the damsels and fierce the flagons + In the Thousand Islands of Spicery.”_ + + “_Far are these lands and fair is their sheen, + But tell us, Polo, what have you seen?”_ + + _“I saw,” said Marco, “the pagans at masses + And Tibetan dogs the size of asses, + And oil from the ground, and black stones, blazing. + I saw pink pearls from an unknown strand, + And ten-pound peaches of China-land, + And bales of silk that were past appraising. + I saw the Malabar pepper farmers + And cannibal sharks subdued by charmers, + But the grunting ox was most amazing.”_ + + “_Much have you seen where the wild capes curve, + But tell us, Polo, whom did you serve?”_ + + _“I served,” said Marco, “the Khan of Khans. + His edict runs with the caravans + As far as the east is from the west. + The Turk and the Hindu hold his charters, + He sways Cathaians, Persians, and Tartars, + Yet Kublai welcomes the stranger guest. + His deeds are writ upon purple pages, + A shepherd king but a sage of sages, + And his thousand damsels are Asia’s best.”_ + + “_Him must a thousand matters perplex, + But, Polo, speak yet more of the sex.”_ + + _“The men of Gobi,” said Marco, “require + Their dames to sit by the stranger’s fire, + And make his favor the tribal boast. + Frail are the women in Pin-yang-fu, + And delicate quin-sai wenches woo + Ambassadors from the Pepper Coast. + Though maids with feet as swift as the wind + May dance, all bare, for the gods of Ind, + The women of Persia please the most.”_ + + “_Whimsical, Marco, your travel word. + Is there aught else that you saw or heard?”_ + + _“I heard,” said Marco, “but do not know, + That Tartar shamans summon the snow, + And suns shine not for the Samoyed. + In southern countries its fabled horn + Means less than its tongue to the unicorn, + Which licks its victims until they are dead. + Here is a text for songs or sermons: + When babes are born to the female Burmans, + Their foolish husbands hie them to bed.”_ + + _Rose, then, a shout from a hundred lips: + “Marco, the tar of a thousand trips, + Marco the man of a million quips, + Marco, Marco, Milioni!” + And they who would hold the East in fee, + Men of the pitiful midland sea, + Nobles and commons, laughed shamelessly. + “Which the catcher, and who the coney? + What I have seen is truly averred, + But what I have heard is--what I have heard!” + Thus to himself, with a secret mirth, + The only man who had seen the earth._ + + + + +PREFACE + + +The book gives a view of the earth and its inhabitants as seen through +the haze of distance, whether of space or of time. Its purpose is to +present those myths and half-myths of geography which are loosely and +yet significantly called travel tales. It treats of various countries +and races and animals which are, or were, or might have been. Although +their true domain is the imagination, their supposed domain is, or was, +somewhere on the earth. The Coasts of Illusion, as glimpsed here, are +nowhere the shores of the supernatural. + +Always the two tend to merge and the problem has been to keep them +apart. The travel tales of the race have grown out of, or become +entangled with, myths in which men sought to figure the creation of the +world, the journeys of the sun from dawn to darkness, the conflicts of +light with storm and night and winter, the high places of the gods and +their incarnations and agents. Yet the tales are touched with reality, +while the myths are unearthly. + +Ulysses tarried among the Phacakians, and these were a cloud people; +but he skirted the land of the lotus-eaters, and these were a mundane +folk. Who were the lotus-eaters? Achilles fought with Memnon, son of +the Dawn, but also with Penthesilea, the Amazon queen. Who were the +Amazons? Hercules was of the progeny of Olympian Zeus, but wandering on +earth he passed through the land of the pygmies. Who were the pygmies? +What reality lies back of the fabulous animals and Deformed Folk that +peopled the mountains and deserts? + +For thousands of years men accepted the realms and races of prodigy. It +was only about a century ago that these disappeared from the maps and +natural histories. The frontiers of ignorance had been pushed back so +far that the never-never countries dropped off into the sea. There was +no longer room for the phœnix to flap its wings, the dragon to hiss and +roar, the giants to stalk, the kangaroo-men to hop. + +The countries and creatures of legend passed from the scene without +the parting word that every passing merits, without even a gesture of +farewell. Is it more than a tardy courtesy to summon them back for a +word that shall be both appraisal and remembrance? + +These are the stories wanderers told in hall when the world was young; +and in out-of-the-way places still they tell them, and men believe. +These are stories the lad Raleigh heard along wharves where sailors +in outlandish garb recited the wonders of countries below the rim of +the sea. If one could recapture Raleigh’s boyish faith, and the faith +of ages of listeners before him, it might still be possible to behold +the King of Is in state beside the menacing ocean, to traverse the +streets of the lost Atlantis, to win to the cities of gold which Spain +could not find, and to repeople the waste places with their strange +inhabitants. So might one achieve the purpose of these pages and regain +a picture of things as they were supposed to be. + +This is a survey of the world through the stained glass of men’s +imaginings. + +C. B. F. + +[Illustration] + + + + +THE COASTS OF ILLUSION + +[Illustration] + + + + +Chapter I. The World That Was + + +The geography, anthropology, and natural history of this volume present +a world a little different from that which is outlined in modern +text-books and yet one that is familiar. It is the traditional world +of wonder, which until yesterday was believed to be the real world. A +map of it would show the same continents, and some of the same races of +men and species of animals that are delineated in any atlas of to-day; +but there would be changes. Asia would bear far away into the unknown +spaces of the East. A shadowy continent would stretch across the open +waters of the Indian Ocean. The clouds and darkness of supernatural +terrors, or dimly remembered fates, would shroud the Atlantic, the +Green Sea of Gloom of the Arab geographers. Looming vaguely in the +mists southwest of Gibraltar one would discern a lost continent. One +would see there, also, smaller bodies of land which on a second glance +are seen no more. + +Within the contours of continents and islands there would be countries +which seem to belong both to fable and to fact. The Incense Kingdom +would be there on both sides of the Red Sea, but its sumptuous ritual +and swooning odors would suggest little now to be found in southern +Arabia and Somaliland. The Spice Islands would be there, but wearing +the splendor of a world-desire of which no trace is left to the +Moluccas. There would be seen the haughty realm of Prester John and the +vast pastures of Gog and Magog; but on a modern map of Asia one does +not find the country of the priest king and must look under other names +for the terrifying races of Hebrew and Moslem legend. + +On the map would appear the gold port of Ophir and the golden land of +Havilah, but the Arab haven was silted up ages ago, and the abandoned +mine-workings of Rhodesia minister no more to the pride of kings. +The Arcadia that it would picture, of pastoral innocence and bucolic +song, has faded from the central uplands of the Morea, and the rugged +mountain land hears no longer the pipes of Pan. There are other regions +of enchantment--deserts where demon-voices tempted the traveler from +his track, mountains where cymbals clashed and lights gleamed at night, +countries of serene charm which were placed so far away that few people +ever reached them. Of these regions the modern maps know nothing. + +If the map of the traditional world were pictorial, as such maps ought +to be, it would show strange races of men in Asia, in Africa, in South +America, in the sea-washed islands, and in the seas themselves. There +would be Amazons sweeping down upon the Mediterranean settlements, +pygmies battling with cranes in Upper Egypt, satyrs pursuing women in +African woodlots, troglodytes of Arabia looking on with indifference +while strangers maltreated their offspring. The vistas of Asia and +Africa would disclose men taking their siestas beneath the shade of +their own gigantic feet, sleeping at night under the cover of their +elephant-like ears, supporting life by smelling flowers rather than +eating food. Sixteenth-century charts of the Spanish Americas would +reveal the unsuspected fact that these creatures dwelt also in the new +world, and that mermaids sang upon its coasts, as upon those of the old. + +A pictorial map of the traditional world would show that it was a +menagerie of strange animals as well as a museum of prodigious peoples. +The lairs and roosts of heraldry would return their tenants to its +blank spaces. The phœnix would be seen winging its way from Araby the +Blest, or mounting its own funeral pyre in the City of the Sun in Lower +Egypt. The Desert of Gobi would show the griffin, a formidable guard +for its stores of fabled gold. The unicorn would be sketched doing the +elephant to death in the jungles of Asia and Africa. The baleful glare +of the basilisk would be staged in the recesses of Libya. The dragon’s +breath would poison earth and air and water alike. The harpies and the +Stymphalian birds would raise their shrill clamor beside the brink of +sea or marsh. Among other creatures in the ocean would be depicted the +monstrous orc, the kraken of the northern deeps, and the ubiquitous, +immemorial, and enigmatic sea serpent. The familiar animals of natural +history would share with the fabled creatures the forests, pastures, +and waters of the mimic world of the map, but the text would point out +novel things about them. + +[Illustration: _A Voyage to These Strangely Peopled Countries of +the World’s Yesterdays Would Be a Voyage Along the Bays, Gulfs, and +Promontories of the Human Mind in Its States of Dream_] + +A voyage to these strangely peopled countries of the world’s yesterdays +would be a voyage along the bays, gulfs, and promontories of the human +mind in its states of dream. + +There are three chambers in the house of the mind. One of them is a +place where pleasant bedtime stories are told. Another is the art +gallery of hope and memory. The third is a museum where runs the law of +topsy-turvy. The name of the house is Illusion. + +A glance through a few of the older books of travel will show illusion +weaving its careless spells over plain records of wandering. “We fared +on,” says Sindbad, “from sea to sea and from island to island and city +to city in all delight and contentment, buying and selling wherever we +touched, and taking our solace and our pleasure.” The words prepare +the reader for enchantments. One of the Hakluyt narratives speaks of +“Zanzibar, on the backeside of Africa.” This is geography somehow +touched with magic. When Drake was cruising around South America, +his chronicler recites that on a certain day “wee had a very sweet +smell from off the land.” Simple as are the words, their quality is +dreamlike. The account of Raleigh’s third voyage to Guiana has this +passage: “There being divers whales playing about our pinnesse, one of +them crossed our stemme and going under, rubbed her backe against our +keele.” The lines unlock the frolic wonder of the sea. + +The same quality illuminates reports of other lands and peoples taken +almost at random. The ancient Cimbri, says Strabo, explained their +wandering life and piracy by the fact that once they had dwelt on a +peninsula and had been driven out by a very high tide. The ancient +Getae wept at births and laughed at funerals; and in the _Arabian +Nights_ Abdallah of the Sea broke off his friendship with Abdallah of +the Land, when he learned that his people mourned rather than rejoiced +over their dead. Purchas tells of a Livonian people, ignorant but +unashamed, that “aske who learne the Hares in the woods their prayers.” +The same writer declares that Ethiopians hold their color in such +estimation that they paint the saints and angels black, but “the Divell +and wicked persons they paint white.” Pinkerton describes a tribe of +white Indians east of the Andes, whose naked and beautiful women use +a guttural speech and emphasize every remark by striking their thighs +with great force. The Eskimos attributed the Northern Lights to the +merriment of the ghosts. A Florida tribe made a cult of the devil +because the Spaniards feared him. + +The thing these statements have in common is that perhaps none of them +is quite true, and yet one wishes to believe all of them. + +The shaping influence in the traditional world is the power of wish. +The poets may seem to use it more than other men, and children more +than grown-ups, but it is the province of mankind. + + + + +Chapter II. The Earth Itself + + +Enveloping old stories of legendary lands and peoples as with an outer +husk are beliefs which relate to the world as a whole. These concern +the shape of the earth, the texture of the heavens, the distribution of +land and water, the contours of continents, and the precise number of +islands, countries, and cities. What they disclose is the instinct of +men working through the apparent confusion of nature toward order. In +all of them is the sense of symmetry, of balance, and because they are +excursions into the unknown, the method of allegory. The true symmetry +of the universe--the great annual journey of the earth around a sun +itself in motion in a firmament so vast that through the ages the stars +seem not to have changed their places--was not grasped. The result was +errors, picturesque sometimes, sometimes more useful than truth. + +Wherever one stands, the meeting line of the sky and earth forms a +circle of which one is the center. This picture shaped the primitive +geography. The earth was a disk and each people seemed to itself to +be at the central point. In Homer it was a disk surrounded by a river +called the Ocean Stream. The farther shore of this river supported +the brazen dome of heaven, and earth and heaven were kept apart by +the pillars which Atlas bore on his shoulders. Thales taught that the +earth was a sort of drum floating upright in the wilderness of waters. +The ancient Hebrews thought that the earth was a rising plain which +floated like a lotus flower in the waters. The Tibetans believed the +earth to be cone-shaped. The Chinese thought that all other lands were +grouped as islands about their own. The Celts thought the earth rested +on columns and in the Irish sea-tales various islands are pictured +as standing on pillars. In North America the plains tribes thought +that the Rocky Mountains supported the sky, the Pacific coast tribes +conceived of the earth as an island swimming in the cosmic waters, and +the Southwestern tribes gave it as many stories as the tallest of their +public dwellings. The Shoshones said the vault of the sky was a dome of +ice against which the rainbow-snake rubbed its back, and the Haida said +that the firmament regularly rose and fell, the clouds striking the +mountains with an audible noise. According to many Western tribes the +canopy of heaven was pierced with holes at the four cardinal points, +and these were constantly opening and closing; a sky-world like the +earth was beyond, into which swans and shamans could pass. All peoples +believed that the earth was immovable, with the sun revolving around +it. Many thought it rested on the back of some animal--a buffalo, a +tortoise, a catfish. + +Sometimes more sophisticated and still more fanciful ideas were +entertained. To one school of Greek thought the world was a living +being and man himself a microcosm, a little world, as Paracelsus called +him. The sun and moon were the two eyes of the world, the earth its +body, the ether its intellect, and the sky its wings. It was held that +the movements of man and of the world were in exact correspondence; +hence astrology, which interprets the one by the other. To the +Venerable Bede the universe was an egg, the earth its yolk, the water +the white of the egg, the air its membrane, and the encircling fire the +shell or cover of all. + +Cosmas took literally the utterance of St. Paul that the tabernacle was +a figure of the world. In an amazing exercise of ingenuity he found +the oblong design, the walls, roof, and floor, the candlesticks, the +Ark of the Covenant, and the table of shewbread of this Jewish desert +booth all repeated in the shape and furnishings of the universe. His +scheme of things has been compared to a traveler’s trunk, with its body +standing for the earth, the flat tray for the firmament, and the curved +lid for the arch of upper heaven. The effects of day and night were +produced, Cosmas thought, about as they are on the stage. There was a +tall mountain in the north. When the sun went behind it darkness fell; +when the sun came out from behind it, there was light. This conception +lacks both the intelligence and the poetry of the American Indian myth +where the Sun-Carrier is pictured as hanging the sun on a peg on the +west wall of his lodge and then unrolling in succession the robe of +dawn, the robe of blue sky, the robe of golden evening light and the +robe of darkness. + +The sense of symmetry demanded that the earth should have a central +point, and each country sought it somewhere in its own borders. Homer +thought that this was on Mount Olympus, where the Greek gods dwelt. The +Hindus thought that it was on Mount Meru, where their own gods dwelt. +The Chinese fixed it on Mount Sumeru on a circle of gold and with the +sun and moon revolving around it; this was surrounded by the seven +sacred mountains, the seven seas, and the four inhabited continents. + +Christian pilgrims said that Jerusalem was in the center of the earth, +quoting the Psalm, “For God is my King of old, working salvation in the +midst of the earth.” There was a spot not far from the place of Calvary +which the Lord had signified and measured, and this was called Compas. +It was something pilgrims could see and touch. For eight centuries +the legend was current, and for three centuries, until nearly the +time of Columbus, it dominated European maps of the world, which were +wheel-shaped, with Jerusalem at the hub. + +Among the Eastern nations the sources and courses of rivers had +sometimes a cosmic significance. They flowed from the center of the +earth or from the Terrestrial Paradise. From the Cool Lake which was +in the midst of Asia, to the south of the Fragrant Mountains and to +the north of the Snowy Mountains, flowed four great rivers, according +to the Chinese. The Ganges issued from the eastern side of the lake +through the mouth of a silver ox, and found the southeastern sea. The +Indus issued from the southern side through the mouth of a golden +elephant, and found the southwestern sea. The Oxus issued from the +western side through the mouth of a horse of lapis lazuli, and found +the northwestern sea. The River of China issued from the northern side +through the mouth of a crystal lion, and found the northeastern sea. + +In the Genesis story a river goes out of Eden to water the garden and +divides into four--Pison, which compasses the golden land of Havilah; +Gihon, which compasses Ethiopia; Hiddekel, which goes toward the east +of Assyria; and Euphrates. Josephus, the Romanized Jew, assimilated +the Hebrew geography with the Greek account of an Ocean Stream that +flowed around the earth. This encircling river, he said, was the source +of the four biblical streams. The Arabs also accepted the rivers of +Eden and showed ingenuity in tracing their courses to the distant lands +where flowed the streams they had identified with them. So did John +Marignolli, the fourteenth-century Franciscan traveler. + +Paradise, he said, was in Ceylon, about forty miles distant from Adam’s +Peak, which he visited. On this latter peak was Adam’s footprint and +the garden he tilled when expelled from the abode of innocence. The +Mount of Eden overtopped it, and almost always the mists brooded there, +but one could hear the waters falling from the sacred fount out of +which the four rivers came. These flowed away from the island of Ceylon +by channels under the ocean, the Gihon becoming the Nile, the Pison +passing through India and China, and doubling back through the deserts +to die in the sands and be born again as the Caspian Sea. + +With the greater portion of the earth unknown, a curious custom +obtained of using definite figures in default of definite facts. +Dicuil, the Irish scholar, said that there were 2 seas, 72 islands, 40 +mountains, 65 provinces, 281 towns, 55 rivers, and 116 peoples; he had +read this in what he called the cosmography of Julius Cæsar and Mark +Antony. Idrisi declared that there were 27,000 islands in the Atlantic. +Mariners on the Sea of China told Marco Polo that it contained +precisely 7,440 islands, mostly inhabited. In the Indian Ocean, he +said, there were 12,700 islands. The Koreans had an old tradition that +there were fourscore and four thousand several countries upon the +earth, but themselves doubted it. The sun could not warm so many lands, +they thought. Their real belief was that there were but twelve kingdoms +or countries. When the Dutch explorers named other countries to them +they laughed; the visitors must be talking of towns and villages. + +Sometimes the sense of symmetry, sometimes poetic instinct and the +desire for graphic imagery, led men to give the habitable world the +outlines of animate or inanimate objects. Strabo likened it to a +chlamys, or soldier’s cloak. Dionysius Afer said it was like a sling. +The California Indians said it was like a mat with the long way north +and south. Massoudy likened it to a bird. The head of the bird was at +Mecca and Medina, Africa was its tail, Irak and India its right wing, +and the land of Gog and Magog its left wing. Other writers pictured +the earth in the semblance of a man, with the head in the southern +hemisphere, and the feet or under part in the northern; the right hand +was the east, whence began the movement of the _primum mobile_, and +the left the west, whither it trended. As the head was the noblest +part, governing the rest of the body, so Ptolemy thought, the southern +hemisphere was nobler than the other parts of the earth, and the stars +above it were more resplendent and of greater virtue than those of the +northern. + +The tides were the breath of the living earth, Solinus thought. A +large man on the beach of the ocean gets up and sits down twice a +day, said the Tahltan Indians of Canada; twice a day a colossal crab +comes out of and goes back to its cave at the foot of the world-tree, +said the Malays; for six hours a serpent at the rim of the world +draws in its breath and for six hours lets it out, said the Scotch +islanders--wherefore the tides ebb and flow. The Gauls endowed them +with life and attacked them with weapons. + +Ptolemy pictured Great Britain as a Z written backward. Strabo compared +Spain to an ox hide. Numantianus likened Italy to an oak leaf. India +was thought to be an exact equilateral triangle. + +There were conflicting views as to the south. Although by the beginning +of the historical period the Sabæans and Phœnicians had gone down the +eastern coast of Africa through the Indian Ocean some twenty degrees +beyond the equator to seek the gold of Havilah, these ventures into +the zone of torrid heat were not for the Atlantic and the peoples of +the west. The insidious fictions of the Semitic mariners had awakened +their fears. No man, they thought, could live in the lands of vertical +sunlight. In what lay beyond these, they had as little interest as men +have now in the possible populations of other planets. Europeans of +the early Christian era put aside the notion which enlightened Greeks +had entertained that there might be “opposite peoples of the south.” +Assuming the inhuman heat of the torrid zone, it was evident that a +tropical people could not be of the race of Adam, and heresy was in the +thought of any other lineage. + +Lactantius, the Christian Cicero of the third century, is remembered +because he gave popular error rhetorical expression and because his +words were flung at Columbus twelve centuries afterward, when he +appeared before the Council of Salamanca to justify his theory that +one might reach the east by sailing west. “Can any one be so foolish,” +asked Lactantius, “as to believe that there are men whose feet are +higher than their heads, or places where trees may be growing backward +or rain falling upward? Where is the marvel of the hanging gardens of +Babylon, if we are to allow of a hanging world at the Antipodes?” Pliny +had answered him with another question two centuries before. “If any +one,” he said, “should ask why those situated opposite to us do not +fall, we directly ask in return, whether those on the opposite side do +not wonder that we do not fall.” + +Even when the ancient world had accepted the theory that the earth was +a sphere, this seemed to it somehow half as long again from east to +west as from north to south, and the belief is preserved in the two +terms, Longitude and Latitude. The limits of the habitable earth were +Thule, or Iceland, to the north; Taprobane, or Ceylon, to the east; +the Aromatic Cape, to the south, and the Sacred Promontory in Portugal +to the west. North of Thule it was too cold, and south of the Cape of +Spices it was too hot, to support life. + +All that the ancient world knew of geography was gathered up by Ptolemy +and systematized in a scheme which among learned men was the standard +of belief for fourteen centuries afterward. This great Egyptian of the +second century eliminated errors, corrected reckonings, and brought +his science abreast of facts which traders had gathered. He made, +however, three great errors, each, as it proved, more useful than the +truth would have been. Ptolemy estimated the circumference of the earth +as one-sixth less than the fact, although Eratosthenes had already +reached the correct figure. Thus the true sailing distance from Spain +west to Asia was reduced by about 4,000 miles and the later venture of +Columbus made to seem a task less formidable. Ptolemy also gave Asia a +vast extension eastward, further reducing the apparent distance of a +westward route from Europe to the Orient. + +[Illustration: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AT THE COURT OF FERDINAND THE +CATHOLIC AND ISABELLA OF CASTILE + +_By_ V. von Brozik] + +His third error was to assume that another continental mass joined the +southern extension of Africa with a southeastern extension of Asia, +completely landlocking the Indian Ocean. This was the Terra Australis +Incognita of the older charts. It seemed to be needed to balance the +land masses of the northern hemisphere and satisfy the persistent +demand of the mind for symmetry in the arrangement of the earth. This +vast domain has disappeared from the maps, but its name and part of its +area are preserved in the island continent of Australia. Thus Ptolemy +anticipated the discoveries of the Portuguese, Dutch, and English. + +Much of what Ptolemy knew succeeding ages forgot. The mediæval +conception of the world was that of a T within an O with the east at +the top of the circle because Paradise was there and deserved the +highest place, and Jerusalem as its center. The lower half of the +circle was divided by the Mediterranean equally between Europe and +Africa, while the upper half was all assigned to Asia. The Ægean and +Red seas, branching to the left and the right from the head of the +Mediterranean, divided the upper and lower halves of the circle, and +these three seas formed the T within the O. Around all flowed the Ocean +Stream. + +Intellectually, this presentation of the habitable earth belongs in +about the ninth century B. C. rather than the fifteenth century A. D., +but the map, like the Ptolemaic geography, was a brief for discovery. +It cut off the south of Africa, and made it seem a short voyage around +it to India, and thereby it encouraged efforts to open a sea route to +the Orient. It immensely extended Asia to the east, and thereby led +Columbus to believe it might more easily be reached by sailing west. +Also, it revived the reign of fable and made a new world of wonder. +There were blank spaces on the map of Asia. The monkish map-makers +filled them in with pictures of monstrous races and animals drawn from +the classics, from Old Testament imagery, and from the Arab repertory. + +It seemed at last that all the mistakes of geography were in conspiracy +to unlock the unknown half of the world. The apocryphal book of Esdras +had said that the earth was one part water and six parts dry land. That +three-fourths of its surface was sea, nobody surmised. Marco Polo had +moved Zipangu (Japan) a thousand miles east from its real position by +giving its distance from the mainland of Asia as 1,500 miles instead +of 1,500 li--a Chinese measure of about one-third of a mile. In the +map of Toscanelli, on which Columbus counted much, the Asiatic coast +was placed where California is. The Azores were supposed to lie far +west of their true position. Columbus did not dream that 210 degrees +of longitude lay between Lisbon and Japan by the westward route. He +believed that by sailing from the Azores for about 3,100 miles he would +find Zipangu, and not unknown Florida. “_El mundo es poco_” (“the world +is small”), he exclaimed, and steered confidently toward the setting +sun. + +These great errors made the adventures of the Genoese in the New World +a gorgeous illusion--the vestibule into a past where, as he thought, +other feet had trodden, instead of the threshold of continents his +feet were first to press. To him it seemed only that he was reading +the book of Marco Polo backward. The gold and aromatics of which he +found traces were those of the Golden Chersonese and the Spice Islands +of the East. An Indian tale of a white-robed cacique aroused his hope +of an interview with Prester John. He dispatched a mission, including +a converted Jew who knew Hebrew, Chaldaic, and a little Arabic, to a +chieftain of Cuba, in the hope that thus he might establish relations +with the princely house of Kublai Khan. Presently he would sail farther +and, leaving the tropical islands behind him, would round the Malay +Peninsula, cross the Bay of Bengal and the Sea of the Arabs, and make +his way by land from Ethiopia to Jerusalem, and by ship from Joppa back +to Spain. It was a soaring dream, yet its wings beat feebly beneath the +pinions of the tremendous reality the man died without comprehending. + +Columbus added another chapter to one of the oldest beliefs--the theory +of a world summit. Aristotle had thought that the highest part of +the earth was under the antarctic pole, others that it was under the +arctic pole. Columbus held that it was under the equator. The earth, +he thought, had the shape of a pear instead of an orange. It seemed +to him he knew just when the globe began to swell toward heaven. This +was about a hundred leagues west of the Azores. There the magnetic +needle swung from northeast to northwest. The airs became more pure +and genial, the sea grew tranquil. From the climate of oppressive heat +and unwholesome air, the explorer ascended the back of the sea, as one +ascends a mountain toward heaven. The culminating point was on the +Tierra Firma of South America, which might be approached by way of the +Gulf of Paria. Thence flowed the mighty stream of the Orinoco. + +A Spanish historian, excusing this fancy of Columbus, remarks that +mathematicians have since demonstrated that he was not entirely wrong. +The diameter of the earth is twenty-seven miles greater at the equator +than at the poles, and the mountain country of Ecuador, beyond the +headwaters of Orinoco, is the true world summit, for, of all lands, it +lies nearest heaven. + + + + +Chapter III. Inanimate Nature + + +The progress of knowledge has been an advance from poetry to prose. +In part it has consisted in forgetting the things that were not so. +Through most of the story of mankind everything was fabulous. There +were no inanimate objects at the beginning. Sticks and stones had a +soul. This belief passed, but some quality of marvel remained--the +rhythm of the moon repeated in things terrestrial; the loves and +antipathies of the plants; the properties of gems to bring good fortune +or ill, to promote fecundity, to test the continence of men and women. +There was an unwieldy mass of topographical legends. Every township had +its shrine, or wonder-working well, or hill or tree that broke a law +of nature. There were strange cures for aches and pains. Illusion was +everywhere. The lumber rooms of history are stored with traditions in +which is the faint fragrance of faded wonder. + +Sea and sky had each their part in the drama of life. To the Celt the +voices of the waves carried warning, or sympathy, or prophecy. The +ninth wave was larger than those before it, and mystery was in it. +It was thought that no man or animal beside the Gallic sea died with +a rising tide. The sun sank into the ocean with a hissing sound, and +there were races on both sides of the world that heard it. The moon, +Pliny said, “is not unjustly regarded as the star of our life.” All +seas were purified when it was full, the Nile waxed and waned with it, +and sap in trees, and even men’s blood, increased or diminished with +its phases. The time of the rising of the Dog Star was a sort of zero +hour for many things in nature and husbandry. + + +_The Table of the Sun_ + +There was a Table of the Sun, where the earth itself presided as host. +Herodotus was the first to describe it. He says that when Cambyses, +the Persian king, was in Egypt, he sent spies into Ethiopia under +the pretense of bearing gifts to court, but in reality to see if the +table were a fact. The spies came back with various stories--that the +Ethiopians drank only milk and water, that they lived to be one hundred +and twenty years old, that the Fountain of Youth bubbled up in that +country, and that they had seen the Table of the Sun. This was set +by direction of the magistrates in a meadow in the outskirts of the +capital city, and the people of the land said that the earth itself +brought forth the food spread upon the table for all comers. For a full +description one may use with advantage the idiomatic paraphrase of +Purchas: + +“Of the Table of the Sunne thus writeth Friar Luys de Urreta: that the +king in a curious braverie, and sumptuous vanitie, caused there to bee +set by night in a certain field store of white bread, and the choysest +wines; hanged also on the Trees great varietie of Fowles, rost and +boyled, and set on the ground, Mutton, Lambe, Veale, Beefe, with many +other dainties ready dressed. Travellers and hungry persons which came +hither and found this abundance, seeing no bodie which prepared, or +which kept the same, ascribed it to _Jupiter Hospitalis_ his bounty +and hospitality, shewing himselfe a Protector of poore Travellers, and +called this field the _Table of the Sunne_. The report hereof passed +through the world, and brought many Pilgrims from farre Countries, +to visit the same. _Plato_ the Prince of Philosophers entred into +Aethiopia, led with desire to see this renowned _Table_ and to eate of +those delicacies. The Aethiopians, since their Christianity, in zealous +detestation of Idolatry, will not so much as name this field, and these +ancient Rites.” + +It has been suggested that the legend derives from the system of dumb +trading between civilized and savage peoples which in Africa antedates +history. If this be so, the wheat was supplied by merchants rather than +by the king, the magistrates laid down the rules for the voiceless +market, and the natives, coming after the merchants had withdrawn, left +gold in exchange for what they took away. + + +_The Mountain of Lodestone_ + +Agib, son of a sultan and by his vicissitudes become the Third Calendar +of the _Arabian Nights_, had embarked with all the royal fleet on a +tour of his provinces. A storm blew them out of their course, and then +by virtue of the iron in the ships they were drawn irresistibly toward +a black mountain or mine of adamant that loomed before them. They saw +upon it a dome of fine brass and on the dome a brazen horse, carrying +a rider who had a plate of lead on his breast, on which talismanic +characters were graven. Suddenly “all the nails and iron in the ships +flew toward the mountain, where they were fixed, by the violence of +the attraction, with a horrible noise; the ships split asunder, and +their cargoes sunk into the sea,” with all the men save Agib himself. +He gained the shore, climbed to the dome, and slept there, in his sleep +receiving good counsel. The next day he shot three arrows of lead from +a bow of brass at the brazen horse and its rider. They were toppled +over, the sea rose and engulfed the mountain, and Agib was ferried off +to fresh adventures. + +Some Bedouin or Persian story-teller of the bazaars may have added the +detail of the heaven-kissing statue and its overthrow, but the body of +the narrative is one of the oldest of legends. Men have always been +curious about the lodestone. The tale of the magnetic mountain to which +ships built with iron bolts are drawn is found in Aristotle, Pliny, +and Ptolemy, in the Arab geographies, in Chinese writings, and in the +reports of explorers clear to the close of the mediæval period. Ogier +the Dane in the Charlemagne cycle was wrecked on such a mountain and +like Agib was spared for sensuous delights. In a twelfth-century poem, +when the ship of Duke Ernst entered the Klebermeer, it was drawn to the +rock called Magnes and found itself among “many a work of keels,” over +which the masts rose like a tangled forest. + +Ptolemy is the most definite of the early writers. “There are said to +be ten islands,” he says, “forming a continuous group called Maniolai, +from which ships with iron nails are said to be unable to move away, +and hence they are built with wooden bolts. The inhabitants are reputed +to be cannibals.” Dampier, Gemelli-Careri, and many others identify +Maniolai with Manila, and assume that the magnetic islands were the +Philippines; but Gerini, a sagacious editor of Ptolemy’s eastern +geography, believes they were the Nicobars. + + +_The River Sambation_ + +Rising in a pious Jewish fable, first recited in Josephus, the River +Sambation has flowed for eighteen centuries through the geography of +legend. It separated the lost Ten Tribes from other Jews, or from the +subjects of Prester John. Some said it was in Caucasia, others in +Arabia; and from as far east as China and as far west as Ethiopia it +was reported. Josephus placed it between Raphanea and a district of +Agrippa’s kingdom; it was called the Sabbatic river because it ran only +on Saturdays, its bed being dry the other six days of the week. Pliny +had it, however, that on Saturdays the stream rested. Much was heard +of it in the Middle Ages. Eldad Hadani, a ninth-century traveler, said +it was in the land of Cush. It had little water, but sand and stones +rolled restlessly down its bed with a noise “like the waves of the sea +and a stormy wind”; on the Sabbath their tumult was stilled and flames +surrounded the river so that none could pass. + +The stream was in India, spice groves bordered it, and quantities of +precious stones went down in its billowing sand to the sea; so said +the letter of Prester John. It was fifty days’ journey inland from +Aden, said the Jewish traveler Obadiah di Bertinoro, for thus Arab +traders had told him. A Jewish geographer, Abraham Farissol, also of +the fifteenth century, identified it with the Ganges. Abraham Yazel, a +Jewish scholar of the next century, told of a bottle filled with its +sand, and save on the Sabbath the sand was in motion. A Christian whom +he quoted had seen the river in the dominions of the Grand Turk. It +was from one to four miles broad, with plenty of water, but dangerous +to navigate because of the rocks and sand that rolled along with the +current: “ships which venture on it lose their way, and indeed no ship +is yet known to have returned safely from this river.” An Arabian in +Lisbon carried an hour-glass filled with this uneasy sand on Friday +afternoons through a street of shops run by Jews who had professed +Christianity. “Ye Jews,” he exclaimed, “shut up your shops, for now the +Sabbath comes.” The last word from the Sambation was in 1847, when the +governor of Aden told a messenger seeking aid for Jews of the Holy Land +that there was a great Jewish kingdom forty stages inland, but that the +river was not there; it was in China. + + +_Magical Springs_ + +Classic mythology peopled lakes, rivers, brooks, and springs with +female divinities of a minor rank known as naiads, who were endowed +with prophetic power and were able to inspire those who drank of +these waters. The belief in the nymphs waned, but a belief in the +singular properties of the waters long persisted. Many stories relate +to the mental effects thereof. If you drink of a pool in the cave of +the Clarian Apollo at Colophon, says Pliny, you will acquire powers +of oracle; but you will not live long. Ctesias tells of an Indian +fountain the waters of which, when drawn, coagulated like a cheese; +if a little of this were triturated and the powder administered in a +potion, anybody who drank of it would become delirious, rave all that +day, and blab out whatever he had done. Therefore did the king use this +water as the modern drug, scopolamin, has been used, to detect the +guilt of persons accused. In Ethiopia, according to Diodorus, Semiramis +discovered a small lake the sweet red waters of which impelled people +who drank of them to confess their faults. Pliny recites that at the +temple of the god Trophonius in Bœotia near the river Hercynnus are two +fountains, one promoting remembrance and the other forgetfulness; one +is called Mnemosyne, the other Lethe. + + +_The Fountain of the Sun_ + +The Fountain of the Sun was rediscovered by a modern traveler, Belzoni, +in the oasis of Jupiter Ammon. He found that the ruins of the temple of +Jupiter Ammon served as a basement for nearly a whole village, in the +vicinity of which was this famous fountain in a deep well. According +to old report it was warm at midnight and cold at noon. The fact is +its temperature does not vary between night and day, and its apparent +changes are due to the greater or less heat of the surrounding air, as +the day advances or declines. + + +_The Tree of the Sun_ + +Best known of all trees was the Tree of the Sun. This grew in Persia, +and Maundeville says of it: “Within those Deserts were the Trees of the +Sun and of the Moon, that spoke to King Alexander and warned him of his +Death. And Men say that the Folk that keep those Trees, and eat of the +Fruit and of the Balm that groweth there live well four hundred Year or +five hundred Year, by virtue of the Fruit and of the Balm.” Sir John +said he would have gone toward the trees “full gladly,” but because +of the wild beasts, serpents, and dragons “I trow that one hundred +thousand Men of Arms might not pass the Deserts safely.” However, Marco +Polo passed them safely, and gives one of his terse descriptions of +the tree “called the tree of the sun and by Christians _arbo secco_, +the dry or fruitless tree.” It looked like the chestnut, but its husks +contained no fruit, and probably it was the Oriental plane tree. Here +Alexander fought Darius. + + +_Wonder-working Trees_ + +Ctesias has a characteristic traveler’s account of the parebon, an +Indian tree about the size of the olive, but with neither flowers nor +fruit. It has, however, fifteen thick roots, which, like the diviner’s +rod, will attract the precious metals. If a cubit’s length of root be +taken, says the Cnidian, “it attracts lambs and birds, and with this +root most kinds of birds are caught.” If you cast it into wine, it +solidifies the liquor so that it can be held in your hand like a piece +of wax. + +The ancients had much to say of the properties of other trees and +plants. It was thought that the laurel or bay tree was never struck +by lightning, and so the peasants of the Pyrenees hold to this day; +the Emperor Tiberius wore a laurel wreath during thunderstorms. The +oak, planted near the walnut, would perish. The shadow of the walnut +was injurious to men and productive of headache. The shadow of the elm +was refreshing. The olive, if so much as licked by a she-goat, became +barren. There was a moral feud between the vine and the cabbage, and +between the vine and the radish, so that the latter was prescribed for +drunkenness. The virtue of the mistletoe, says Pliny, was to resist +all poisons and make fruitful any that used it. The cocoanut and the +betel nut were powerful aphrodisiacs. The gum of the camphor tree bred +impotency. The smell of the basil begat scorpions in the brains of men. +Moly would neutralize sorcery. There was a plant called the eriphia +with a hollow stem, inside of which was a beetle which kept ascending +and descending its narrow home the while it bleated like a kid; this +plant was beneficial to the voice. + +The fable of the deadly upas, or poison tree of Macassar, Erasmus +Darwin’s “hydra tree of death,” is modern. According to tradition, a +putrid stream flows from the roots of the tree, which grows in Java, +and the vapors thereof kill. Foersch, a Dutch physician who published +a book in 1783, is mainly responsible for the ill repute of this tree. +He declares that “not a tree nor blade of grass is to be found in the +valley or surrounding mountains. Not a bird or beast, reptile or living +thing lives in the vicinity.” He even asserts that “on one occasion +sixteen hundred refugees encamped within fourteen miles of it, and all +but three hundred died within two months.” Investigation has disproved +all of this. The tree grows in a region where vegetation is luxuriant, +men make a garment of its fiber and walk under its branches, and there +birds roost. The venom known as Macassar poison with which Malays tip +their arrows is, however, made from its gum. + +There grows on the island of Hierro in the Canaries a remarkable tree, +if one may credit Richard Hakluyt and others of his time. Hierro is six +leagues in circuit and produces ample foodstuffs for its inhabitants +and their flocks of goats, although no rain falls and no springs gush. +There is, however, a great stone cistern standing at the foot of a tree +with leaves like the olive’s. Clouds hover over the tree “and by means +thereof,” says Hakluyt, “the leaves of the sayd tree continually drop +water, very sweet, into the sayd cisterne, which cometh to the sayd +tree from the clouds by attraction.” + +The rain tree of Peru is described as tall, rich in leaves, and +possessed of “the power of collecting the dampness of the atmosphere +and condensing it into a continuous and copious supply of rain.” “In +the dry season,” says a Spanish newspaper quoted in Walsh’s _Handy Book +of Curious Information_, “when the rivers are low and heat great, +the trees’ power of condensing seems at the highest and water falls +in abundance from the leaves and oozes from the trunks. The water +spreads around in veritable rivers. These rivers are canalized so as to +regulate the course of the water.” This singular statement closes with +an estimate that a Peruvian rain tree will yield nine gallons of water +a day, and that 10,000 trees producing daily 385,000 liters of water +can be grown on a square kilometer. + +The Weather Bureau at Washington examined (1905) the facts as to the +rain tree, and declared that such a tree never existed. The American +consul-general at Callao reported (1911) that he could find no rain +trees in Peru. Then the Department of Agriculture made a statement that +the rain-tree legend was centuries old, but had no basis. In partial +explanation thereof an English botanist said that cicada-swarms, +settling upon trees, tap their juices, which fall on the ground. + +Australia has planted many so-called rain trees. + +Ulloa, the Spanish astronomer, brought back to Europe a related story +in 1736. He found at Quito, he said, a species of cane from thirty-five +to fifty feet high and half a foot thick. Until the canes reach full +size most of the tubes contain a quantity of water, and this rises and +falls and is clear or turbid, according to the phases of the moon. + + +_The Mandrake Myth_ + +Legends of the mandrake are perhaps a legacy of the ancient dark white +race whose gloomy imaginings and orgiastic practices survived to +color the brighter religions of Greece and Rome, and emerged again in +the witch-burnings of the Middle Ages. These legends are widespread, +uniformly sinister, often obscene. Their basis may be in homeopathic +magic--the belief that like cures like, and also may kill like; or +it may be in the sea, where affinities with the pearl myth have been +noted. It is possible that the mandrake of forbidding fable is just a +stranded cowry, the shell which has been called the first deity. + +The mandrake is a member of the potato family growing in Mediterranean +countries. It is an emetic, a purgative, a narcotic poison. Usually its +flesh-colored roots are forked, so that, like a transplanted carrot or +parsnip, it resembles a miniature human figure. On this resemblance, +and on its sleep-producing properties, men have thought that the +legends were based, and in China, ginseng, which also has man-like +roots, has inherited them. The possessor of the mandrake could win good +luck for himself, bring bad luck to others, sway the passions, and even +in some measure command the elements. + +Hence the popular notions that the mandrake was an aphrodisiac, that +it relieved barrenness and promoted pregnancy, as in the triangular +episode in Genesis in which Jacob, Rachel, and Leah figured; it was +known as the love-apple, and Venus was called Mandragorotis, while +the Emperor Julian wrote Calixenes that he drank its juices as a love +potion. Hence, also, the belief that it dripped blood when pulled +from the earth and, as Homer says, emitted a deathly shriek fatal +to the man who heard it; according to Josephus it was the custom +in a certain Jewish village to use a dog to pull up the roots, the +dog being killed by the shrieks that followed. Grimm describes this +process, which consisted in Germany of loosening the soil about the +root, tying the root to the dog’s tail, retreating to a safe distance +down the wind, and then decoying the dog with a piece of bread. The +dead canine was buried on the spot with religious honors, and the root +“washed with wine, wrapped in silk, laid in a casket, bathed every +Friday, and clothed in a little new white smock every new moon. If thus +considerately treated, it acts as a familiar spirit, and every piece of +coin laid by it at night doubles in the morning.” + +Thus the mandrake legend entered its mediæval phase of devil worship. +The root was used as a charm against nightmare, and against robbers, +and to locate buried treasure. It was supposed to be a living creature +“engendered,” as Thomas Newton says, “under the earth of the seed of +some dead person put to death for murder,” or, as Grimm says, “growing +up beneath the gallows from which a thief is suspended.” Heads were +carved on the mandrakes and these elaborated images went by the names +of manikin and erdman, or earth-man. As much as twenty-five ducats +in gold was paid for them. They were often carried on the person +in bottles, and bottle imps were credited with the magic powers of +homunculi. But if a man died with one of these upon his person, the +devil owned him forthwith. Joan of Arc was charged with carrying such +an image about with her, but replied that she did not know what a +mandrake was. Margaret Bouchey was hanged near Orléans in 1603 on the +ground that she kept a living mandrake fiend, in form of a female ape. + +Mandrake manikins were counterfeited from the root of a yam-like plant, +which had been manipulated into a complete likeness of the human body. +Sir Thomas Browne describes the process: “The roots which are carried +about by imposters to deceive unfruitful women are made of the roots of +canes, briony, and other plants; for in these, yet fresh and virent, +they carve out the figures of men and women, first sticking therein +the grains of barley or millet where they intend the hair should grow; +then bury them in sand until the grains shoot forth their roots, which, +at the longest, will happen in twenty days; they afterward clip and +trim those tender strings in the fashion of beards and other hairy +teguments. All which, like other impostures, once discovered, is easily +effected, and in the root of white briony may be practiced every +spring.” + +A century ago mandrake images were still seen in French seaport towns, +but now mandragora has lost its vogue even as a medicine. In Africa and +the East, however, it is still used as a narcotic and anti-spasmodic, +while ginseng, which is a surrogate, maintains its spell in China, +where as much as four hundred dollars has been paid for an ounce of it. + + +_Precious Stones_ + +Among minerals jade held a place as distinct as that of the mandrake +among plants, but its associations were all auspicious. Its place is +the highest among the precious stones, although it is not a precious +stone at all. It is a substance to which heliolithic culture attached +magical power and which it carried quite around the world before +history began, Aryans, Kanakas, and red Indians holding it in equal +regard. Axes and hatchets of jade or jadeite have been uncovered in +the burial grounds of neolithic Europe, and there are jade celts, +cylinders, and amulets bearing Greek, Babylonian, and Egyptian +inscriptions. In a sense the civilization of China has been built up +around this stone. Eighteen centuries before the Christian era the +emperors of the Shang dynasty used it in the state ritual, paying +homage to the east with a green jade tablet, to the south with a red +tablet, to the west with a white tablet, and to the north with a black +tablet. According to Confucius, “its sound, pure and sonorous, with its +peculiarity of ceasing abruptly, is the emblem of music; its splendor +resembles the sky, and its substance, drawn from mountain and stream, +represents the earth.” An ancient caravan trade in this stone is +commemorated by a portal in the Great Wall called the Jade Gate. + +The Amazon stone which the Spaniards obtained from the South American +Indians was jadeite. By them as well as by their conquerors it was +thought to be a cure for diseases of the kidneys, hence its name of +nephrite. A revived interest in jade followed American exploration. +Historically it has been treasured as a cure for colic and for diseases +of the spleen and loins; hung against the stomach, Galen believed it +a remedy for cramps. It was a good-luck charm, and, fashioned into +drinking cups, a detector of poisons, which foamed against the brim. +It survives in art and symbolism after having passed out of magic and +medicine. + +Many of the old traditions about stones persist in popular belief, +which holds certain kinds of gems and individual jewels as lucky or +unlucky; and in fashion, which assigns to each month its appropriate +birthstone. It was supposed that the garnet preserved health, that +the ruby was a remedy for plague, that the turquoise protected from +accident, that the eagle-stone would promote childbirth, that the +emerald would prevent epilepsy, that the topaz would cure insanity, +that lapis lazuli was a purgative, and bezoar antidotal. Jasper was +a febrifuge and rock crystal quenched thirst. An amethyst would +prevent intoxication, a bloodstone would confer the gift of prophecy, +a chrysoprase would cure cupidity, a sapphire would defend against +enchantments, an agate would avert a tempest, a carbuncle would give +light in the dark, an opal would dispel despondency, an emerald would +break if worn in the commerce of the sexes, and a diamond under a +woman’s pillow would discover her incontinency. + +[Illustration: _According to Tradition, a Putrid Stream Flows from the +Roots of the Tree and the Vapors Thereof Kill_] + +In Christian symbolism, jasper signified the foundation of the +church, emerald the freshness of piety, beryl the illumination of the +divine spirit. Sapphires typified the heavenly-minded, chrysolite those +who let their light shine in word and deed, chalcedony those who fast +and pray in secret. + +However vain the pagan jewel-lore from which Christian borrowings were +made, the ideas it arrays are older than the conception of precious +stones as mere adornment. These things were sought and worn at first +as life-givers and luck-bringers, and not because they were beautiful. +Justinus Kerner is of those writers who contend that primitive man was +so attuned to nature that “even the spirit of the stone, now grown +dull and sluggish, was capable of affecting him.” Only when persons +are under the influence of magnetism, says this writer, are they +susceptible to the inherent powers of precious stones; because that +state was in a measure the normal state of early men they found greater +medicinal virtue in gems than in roots and herbs. + + +_The Wonders of Countries_ + +The travelers of yesterday found marvel awaiting them in every land. +The sun of India, Ctesias says, appears to be ten times larger than in +other countries, and for four finger-breadths downward the surrounding +seas are so hot that fish cannot come near the surface. It is so hot +in Ormuz, says Maundeville, that “the Folk lie all naked in Rivers and +Waters, Men and Women together, from nine o’clock of the Day till it +be past the Noon.” In the Persian city of Susis, says Strabo, “lizards +and serpents at midday in summer cannot cross the streets quick enough +to prevent their being burnt to death midway by the heat.” Setting one +thing against another, Diodorus says that in Scythia by the force of +cold even brazen statues are burst asunder, while “in the utmost coasts +of Egypt and the Troglodytes the sun is so scorching hot at midday that +two standing together cannot see each other by reason of the thickness +of the air.” + +Ctesias speaks of a fountain in India which swims every year with +liquid gold, and out of which are drawn a hundred earthen pitchers +filled with the metal--melted ore, suggests Lassen. There is growing +upon Mount Ida in Scandia, says Father Jerom Dandini, “a herb whose +virtue is to gild the teeth of those animals that eat of it; one may +believe, and with good reason, that this proceeds from the golden +mines which are in that ground.” Herodotus reports the Thracians as +saying that the country beyond the Ister (Danube) is possessed by +bees, wherefore travelers cannot penetrate it; these may have been +mosquitoes. At the altars of Mucius in the country of the Veii, and +about Tusculum and in the Cimmerian Forest, says Pliny, there are +places in which things that are pushed into the ground cannot be pulled +out again. + +Geographical marvel may be brought down almost to date with Humboldt’s +report on the moving “stone of the eyes” in South America, which the +natives believed to be both stone and animal; and with Irving’s account +of the extinct thunderbolts which the plains Indians told him they +sometimes used for arrow heads. So armed, a warrior was invincible, but +he vanished if a thunderstorm arose during battle. + + + + +Chapter IV. The Animal Kingdom + + +Much of the literature of marvel relates to real animals. The savage +could see no great difference between them and himself; that their +bodies were unlike his did not seem important. They could reason like +him, they could understand what he said to them, they had souls which, +like his own, lived after death. A beast could assume human shape, a +man could become a beast, and it was totemic theory that some beasts +were ancestors of some men. + +There were tribes that acted as if they were beasts, or birds. The +Bororo Indians identified themselves with gorgeous red birds that lived +in the heart of the Brazilian forest, and treated them as if they were +fellow mortals. Travelers have told of savages who ate maggots bred +in the carcasses of animals, and on ceremonial occasions thereafter +writhed, roared, barked, or grunted, in keeping with the nature of the +snake, lion, jackal, or hippopotamus whose body had been the table of +their feast. The people of an Alaskan island mistook the first Russian +party that landed there for cuttlefish, because the men had buttons on +their clothes. + +Abundant traces of a belief that animals were beings of a higher order +than men are found in early religion, magic, and medicine. Many of them +were worshiped. Out of a fear that their spirits might work harm, all +of them were propitiated even when pursued or killed. Portions of their +dead bodies were used as amulets and to work spells. Their brains, +blood, entrails, and excrements were a principal part of the Roman +pharmacopœia in the most brilliant age of the Empire; the witches’ +broth in Macbeth is an Augustan brew. Along with hundreds of like +prescriptions, Pliny recites that a mole’s right foot and the earth +thrown up by ants are remedies for scrofula, that a bat’s heart is an +antidote for ant venom, that a hen’s brains will cure snake poison and +the owlet’s a bee sting, that profuse perspiration may be checked by +rubbing the body with ashes of burnt goats’ horns mixed with oil of +myrtle, and that catarrh may be relieved by kissing a mule’s nostrils. + +Curious as these things may seem, they come naturally from the fact +that primitive man had mainly to do with animals. Outside of his tribal +group he knew other men only as enemies. But all about were furred and +feathered and not unfriendly creatures whose acts had a certainty and +finality lifting them above the doubts and fears that harassed him. He +seemed a late comer and guest in an animal world. So he did what timid +peoples are wont to do. He put himself under the protection of beings +more gifted than himself. He became a vassal of the beasts. This was +the first feudalism. + +The savage was glad to assert his kinship with the brute. In the Indian +west it was through the First People, who had the human shape but an +animal nature, and were transformed into beasts and birds; a beast or +a bird then created the second race of men. The natives of Vancouver +Island thought that when nobody was about animals laid aside their +skins and were people. In places the tradition lingers that migratory +birds become men when in other lands. A traveler far from home was +amazed when a stranger called him by name and asked about each member +of the family. The mystery was solved when he learned how this intimate +knowledge was gained; the stranger was the stork that each year built +its nest upon his roof. + +Both in skin-shifting and shape-shifting the blood relationship between +man and brute was avowed. In the one, the hero of savage epic, by +donning or doffing an animal skin, put on or put off the beast nature. +In the other, the human or animal actor strutted for a space on his +cousin’s stage. Wizards could transform themselves, as men thought, +into wolves and hyenas; the world-wide legend of the werewolf traces +from the time when metamorphosis was the alpha and omega of myth. +Its survivals strew the classics. Io became a heifer, Actæon a stag, +Antigone a stork, Arachne a spider, Itys a pheasant, Philomela a +nightingale, and Progne a swallow. + +Animals took on human form to get better acquainted with men. Indian +story tells of a man who unwittingly married a female buffalo. An +Indian woman wedded a stranger who bade her always throw the bones +in a certain place, and whenever he went out to eat she heard the +barking of a dog near the bone-heap; that was what he was. There are +stories from every continent of the union of women with reptiles that +masqueraded as men. Perhaps because they can assume the erect posture, +bears were often parties to alliances of this kind. It was thought in +Iceland that they were men bewitched and that their progeny were born +human but turned into cubs at a touch of the dam’s paw. The Votiaks +of the American northwest say the bear traces back to man and knows +his speech. When the hide is off, the California Indians aver that +bears are just like people. In a Coos Indian story a girl married +a fine-looking man whom she met while picking berries; but when he +took her to the ancestral lodge, she found herself in a bear camp. +There is a Tlingit tale of a hunter who was captured by a female +grizzly--object, matrimony. + +The mitigation of these world stories is that they are literalistic +misreadings of old totemistic custom. Yet it is pleasant enough to +learn from a Tahltan tale that caribou “like to be called people.” + +Under totemism, men chose their elder brothers, the brutes, for +guardians, took their names, deposited their own souls with them for +safekeeping, and, after death, entered their bodies. Where totemism +was unknown it was thought that the larger prowling animals might be +tenanted by demons and that their weird howls at night were incidents +of beast debates which had the destinies of men as their topic. It +was well not to affront them even by naming them; better to use +ingratiating epithets, such as “blue-foot,” “gold-foot,” “gray-beard,” +“broad-brow,” “flash-eye,” “forest-brother.” The lesser sort were rogue +heroes in the beast epics--among the Hottentots the jackal; among the +Bantus, the rabbit; among the Orientals, the fox; among the American +Indians, the turtle, coyote, and raven. + +As a memorial of the antique relation between man and beast, three out +of every hundred persons in England and America bear animal names. +There is a wealth of detail as to how that relation was carried +down through legend into history. The woodpecker directed the Aryan +migrations, the wolf suckled the founders of Rome, the nest of the +eagle determined the winter camps of the legions, the flights of birds +fixed the sites of cities, and their entrails decided for nations +the issues of war and peace. Animal forms range the entire field of +early man’s interests. Deified bulls, rams, crocodiles, hawks, and +ibises thronged the hospitable pantheon of Egypt. In the speculation +of various peoples the snake, the elephant, the whale, the boar, the +turtle, or the catfish supported the world, and when the creature moved +itself earthquake followed. The dove of Hebrew deluge story found the +earth. The larger animals were in the sky as constellations before +history began. When the moon is in eclipse there are men to believe +that it has been swallowed by a snake, a wolf, a frog, a crab. + +In their primitive judicial processes men took oath in the name of +the sacred animal. In their agriculture they conceived of the life +of the grain as residing in an animal corn spirit--a horse, a pig, a +goat, or a dog, which hid itself in the last clump of grain to be cut. +In their marriage ceremonies, the cock, duck, goat, or goose was a +fertility emblem. Totem beasts are tattooed on the bodies of savages. +Animal outlines, at first as a strong magic, were used upon pottery, +clothes, and weapons, and as decoration are still used. In animal masks +and with magical intent, dances are performed which mimic the ways of +beasts. Their feet, horns, claws, and teeth enter the medicine bag of +the shaman. When at last death comes to the savage, perhaps a turkey +buzzard or a humming bird convoys his soul to the other world, or a dog +guards the bridge over which it is to pass to a happier realm, where +the hunting of animals begins anew. + +The reverence paid to the least considered of animals may serve to +show in what regard all of them were held and to explain the marvels +told about them. Scattered through the literature and folklore of +various peoples is a copious mass of traditions as to vermin worship +and to practices just suggested by the fact that Beelzebub, the +devil of Jewish Scripture, is the Semitic god of flies. There was a +classic deity known as the mouse-Apollo and tame mice were kept in +his sanctuary. The Philistines sent to Israel, with the captured Ark, +golden images of mice. Isaiah bears witness that certain of the Jews +met secretly in gardens and ate swine’s flesh and mice for sacramental +purposes. In old stories the soul is pictured as issuing from the +mouths of dying or sleeping persons in the form of a mouse. The +Chams of Indo-China erected a pillar to the god rat. Herodotus tells +of the destruction of an Assyrian army in Egypt by the aid of mice +auxiliaries. It is still the custom in some districts of Europe for +peasants to exorcise mice from the crops by running wildly with lighted +torches around the fields on the eve of Twelfth Day; to put the milk +teeth of children in a rat runway, so that the second teeth shall be +as white and strong as the rodent’s; to treat white mice with kindness +so as to bring luck to the house, and even to post a writing with a +message of good will where rats and mice can see it. + +While domestic animals which had killed or maimed persons were +regularly tried in the criminal courts of ancient Greece and mediæval +Europe, ecclesiastical courts long exercised jurisdiction over smaller +animal offenders. The curse of the Church was relied upon to reach +vermin against which the secular law knew itself to be powerless; yet +anathema was not pronounced without judicial process. On complaint of +ravaged parishes, field mice, locusts, and beetles were summoned to +appear in court on a certain day and counsel was appointed to defend +them. In defense of accused rats in the diocese of Autun, Chassenée, +the brilliant French advocate of the sixteenth century, laid the +foundations of his fame. He cited biblical and classical writers, +interposed various technical objections, attributed the failure of his +clients to appear to the absence of safe conducts, and demanded that +the plaintiffs give bond that their cats would not molest the defendant +rodents in their journey to court. On their refusal to give bond the +case was adjourned without day. + +Many such cases were compromised by setting aside a plot of land +to which the accused creatures might repair for sanctuary. In the +suit of Franciscan friars in Brazil in 1713 against white ants which +had invaded their monastery, the compromise was influenced by the +plea of counsel that the defendants not only had prior possession +of the ground, but were more industrious than the complaining +monks. Ecclesiastical suits were brought at various times against +caterpillars, cockchafers, flies, leeches, moles, snails, slugs, +weevils, and worms. From the ninth to the nineteenth century there is +a record of 144 successful prosecutions of animals, vermin included, +and these are thought to be only a fraction of the total number of such +litigations. The age which brought them was no less sure that insects +had rights, including the right of subsistence, than that the Church +had effectual power over them. + + +_The Elephant_ + +About the larger creatures fable has been busy and the foremost figure +is naturally the hugest of the land animals; only with mediæval and +heraldic times did the lion win pre-eminence. Classic tradition +revolves around the elephant’s intelligence, morality, and social +traits. There are stories of its understanding Greek, and even writing +it. As Pliny repeats, “it is sensible alike of the pleasures of love +and glory, and, to a degree that is rare among men even, possesses +notions of honesty, prudence, and equity; it has a religious respect +also for the stars, and a veneration for the sun and the moon.” + +When surrounded by hunters, report had it that elephants placed +themselves in battle line, with the smaller-tusked animals in front, so +that the enemy might see that the spoil was unworthy the seeking. When +they perceived themselves about to be overcome, they broke off their +teeth against a tree in order to pay their ransom. While other animals +avoided fire, they resisted and fought it because they saw it destroyed +the forests. When worn out by disease, they have been seen lying on +their backs and casting grass up into the air, “as if deputing the +earth to intercede for them with its prayers.” + +John Lok, in his _Voyage to Guinea_, paraphrases an ancient belief as +to the feud between the elephant and what he calls the dragon: “They +have continual warre against Dragons, which desire their blood, because +it is very colde; and therefore the Dragon lying awaite as the Elephant +passeth by, windeth his taile, being of exceeding length, about the +hinder legs of the Elephant, & so staying him, thrusteth his head into +his tronke and exhausteth his breath, or else biteth him in the Eare, +whereunto he cannot reach with his tronke, and when the Elephant waxeth +faint, he falleth downe on the serpent, being now full of blood, and +with the poise of his body breaketh him: so that his owne blood with +the blood of the Elephant runneth out of him mingled together, which +being colde, is congealed into that substance which the Apothecaries +call Sanguis Draconis, (that is) Dragons blood, otherwise called +Cinnabaris, commonly called Cinoper or Vermilion, which the Painters +use in certaine colours.” + +The elephant is polygamous, although, as Lok says, “Plinie and Soline +write that elephants use none adulterie.” It was thought that the +intercourse of the sexes took place every second year, in a honeymoon +of five days’ length, and that the couples purified themselves in a +river before rejoining the herd. Of these nuptial journeys Buffon says, +“In their march love seems to precede and modesty to follow them, for +they observe the greatest mystery in their amours.” To this day the +East Africans think that if their wives are unfaithful while they are +on an elephant hunt, themselves will be killed or maimed by their +quarry. + +It was a Roman belief that when elephants met a man who had lost his +way in the woods they would go gently before him and bring him to a +plain path. Sindbad had a kindred experience on his seventh voyage when +a herd conducted him to their cemetery so that henceforth “I should +forbear to kill them, as now I knew where to get their teeth without +inflicting injury on them.” It is still widely believed that somewhere +in Central Africa, perhaps in a remote valley of the western Sudan, is +an elephant graveyard whither all the aged and ailing pachyderms of +the continent repair, sometimes traveling thousands of miles in order +to die in peace amid the relics of their kind. No elephants dead of +natural causes are ever found, tradition avers, and from time to time +expeditions have sought the vast riches of this storehouse of mortuary +ivory. + +To the elephant various peoples have accorded royal honors. Akbar, +the great Mogul, erected a monument to a favorite elephant, which +still stands near the deserted city of Fatephur Sikri; it is a tower +seventy-two feet high, studded with hundreds of artificial tusks. At +the court of Siam the traditional rank of the chief white elephant +has been next to the queen and before the heir-apparent. The chief of +the Burmese court herd has the residence and honors of a minister of +state. “The king of Pegu,” says one of the Hakluyt travelers, “is +called the King of the White Elephants. If any other king have one, and +will not send it him, he will make warre with him for it; for he had +rather lose a great part of his kingdome than not to conquere him.” +This was history when penned. In the sixteenth century a long war was +waged between Pegu, Siam, and Aracan, wherein five kings were killed, +in order to obtain possession of one white elephant. These albinos are +regarded as an appurtenance of royalty and lack of them is an ill omen. +Siam is the Land of the White Elephant. + + +_The Rhinoceros_ + +The ancients had less to say of the rhinoceros than of the monoceros or +unicorn, for which fabulous beast it may have provided the pattern; but +they wove legends about the virtues of its horn and its feud with the +elephant. Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote that when the rhinoceros walked +its horn shook, but that rage tightened it so that the beast was able +to uproot trees. Its skin was four fingers thick, and so hard that from +it, instead of iron, men made plowshares. In later ages the horn was +kept for the cure of diseases and detection of poison. Drinking cups +were made of it on a turner’s lathe, and the mediæval west accepted the +tradition of the east that these would sweat at the approach of poison. +Horns taken from young bull rhinoceroses which had never coupled with +females were preferred. Set in gold and silver, the goblets were an +acceptable present for kings. Thunberg was one of the first inquirers +to put the superstition to the test by bringing the horn and various +poisons together; there was no chemical reaction. + +The tongue, not the horn, of the rhinoceros was its weapon of offense, +according to old belief. Marco Polo says that this member, in the +Sumatran species, is armed with long sharp spines, wherewith, after +trampling its enemies, it licks them to death. Pliny has a like story. + + +_The Hippopotamus_ + +Of the hippopotamus two travelers’ tales may be noted. Pliny gives it +on hearsay that the river horse enters a cornfield backward, so that +there will be no one waiting to waylay it when it comes out. The +statement of Father Joano dos Santos in his history of eastern Ethiopia +(1506) may best be set down verbatim: “The hippopotamus is naturally +of a sickly constitution, and subject to gouty paines, which it cures +by scratching the stomach with the left foot; and it has further been +noticed, when it wishes to effect a perfect cure that it falls on the +horn of the hoof of the left foot; this, entering the stomach, appeases +and terminates the pain. Hence the Caffres and Moors make use of this +horn as a remedy for the gout.” + + +_The Hyena_ + +The foul countenance and abject gaze of the hyena, its misshapen body, +its slinking tread, its affinities with both the wolf and the cat +tribes, have been provocative of legend. It lurks in caves and ruins +by day, it prowls for carrion food at night, it despoils graveyards +of their dead, it roams through unlighted villages, and its howl when +excited has a weird note, as of a demon’s laughter; so antique fable +had much to work upon. “Of prodigious strength,” Ctesias called the +beast under its Indian name of Krokottas; and, indeed, no animal of +its size has jaws so powerful. He credited it with the courage of the +lion, the speed of the horse, and the strength of the bull. It imitated +the human voice, he said, and, pronouncing their names, called men out +at night, when it fell upon and devoured them. “We cannot in the least +credit this,” is however, the comment of Diodorus Siculus. + +Pliny, and Solinus after him, thought that the hyena was male one +year and female the next--an opinion challenged by Aristotle. It was +supposed to carry a stone in its eye which, placed under a man’s +tongue, would enable him to prophesy. Purchas says the beast “hath +no necke joynt, and therefore stirres not his necke but with bending +about his whole body.” Improving upon Ctesias, he says the animal draws +near to sheepcotes at night in order to learn the names of herdsmen, +whom afterward it decoys to destruction. Its eyes are “diversified +with a thousand colours” and the touch of its shadow “makes a dogge +not able to barke.” Buffon mentions, only to scout, the notion that +the hyena fascinates shepherds so that they cannot move, and renders +shepherdesses distracted in love. As a supposed hybrid, Raleigh +excludes it from the Ark. A kind of worship is still paid it in East +Africa, where the oath of the hyena is administered; it is a crime to +kill one and a misdemeanor to mimic its voice. Stories are told of +gold rings found in the ears of dead hyenas similar to those worn by +sorcerers and workers in iron. + + +_The Gnu_ + +Near the headwaters of the Nile, according to Pliny, roams the +catoblepas, an animal of moderate size and of movements made cumbersome +by a head immoderately heavy, which is always bent down toward the +earth. This is a fortunate thing, for otherwise “it would prove the +destruction of the human race,” since “all who behold its eyes fall +dead upon the spot.” In this demon-beast of dejected aspect Cuvier +recognizes the antelope-gnu, a horned creature apparently compounded of +a bison’s head, a horse’s body, and an antelope’s legs; a fantastic and +mournful silhouette of the African prairies. + + +_The Crocodile_ + +The standing of the crocodile in ancient Egypt, and among the savages +of the East Indies to this day, has been that of a sacred, or at least +a tabooed, animal. It had its own temple at Memphis, where it was +worshiped as a divinity, and tame crocodiles took part in the religious +processions. The Dyaks of Borneo and the Minangkabauers of Sumatra +never kill a crocodile unless it has killed a man. Its privileged +position among animals is due to a variety of reasons, of which only +three need be noted: it is a dangerous reptile, it flourishes mainly +where other food is plenty, and its meat is not agreeable to most +palates, having, as Sir Samuel Baker puts it, “the combined flavor of +bad fish, rotten flesh, and musk.” Such a creature it is both savage +superstition and policy to let alone, and even to flatter. + +The older explanations of crocodile worship are more fantastic. +According to Plutarch, this reptile is a symbol of deity because it +is the only aquatic animal which has its eyes covered with a thin +membrane, so that, like divinity, it sees without being seen. He adds +that the Egyptians worship God symbolically in the crocodile, that +being the only animal without a tongue, like the Divine Logos, which +is in no need of speech. One species has something more than a hundred +teeth, wherefore Achilles Tatius declares, “the number of its teeth +equals the number of days in a year.” + +In his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Ludolf saw a crocodile which the +Knights Templars, by extracting certain of its teeth, had converted +into a serviceable beast of burden. “In winter,” says Maundeville, “the +Cockodrills lie as in a dream.” Purchas provides a detail on a matter +of peculiar interest to the mediævals: one lobe of the crocodile’s +liver is poison, the other counter-poison. + +“Crocodile tears” are defined as simulated weeping, and back of this +useful metaphor is the venerable tradition set down in Hakluyt’s +collection: “His nature is ever when hee would have his prey, to cry +and sobbe like a Christian body, to provoke them to come to him, and +then hee snatcheth at them, and thereupon came this proverbe that is +applied unto women when they weepe, _Lachrmyæ Crocodili_, the meaning +whereof is, that as the Crocodile when hee crieth, goeth then about +most to deceive, so doeth a woman most commonly when shee weepeth.” + + +_Snakes_ + +Most of the numerous snake traditions have a religious significance. +The older writers, however, have left observations which belong to +natural history. Pliny recites it as “a well-known fact” that a serpent +120 feet in length was taken at the river Bagrada in the Punic Wars +by the Roman army under Regulus. The monster was besieged as if it +were a fortress, balistæ and other engines being used. Of India, known +from earliest time for its immense serpents, the most striking reptile +story Ctesias has to tell is of a snake only a fathom long, and without +fangs. It is purple with a white head and does execution by vomiting. +Flesh putrefies wherever the vomit falls. Suspended by the tail, it +yields two kinds of poison, amber-hued when the snake is living, black +when obtained from a carcass. A sesame seed’s bulk of the former brings +instant death to him who swallows it, his brains oozing from his +nostrils, while the latter brings death from consumption after about a +year. + +Out of many traditions that snakes have power to fascinate or injure +without striking, two opinions from respectable sources may be given. +Ulloa, the Spanish explorer, thinks the breath of the cobra produces “a +kind of inebriation,” in persons, as does “the urine of the fox” and +“the breath of the whale.” Lobo, the Portuguese friar, reports that +while lying on the ground in Abyssinia, he was seized with a pain which +forced him to rise, when he discovered a serpent something more than +four yards from him. He revived himself with “that sovereign remedy” a +bezoar stone. These serpents, he explains, have wide mouths and swallow +air in great quantities, which they presently eject with such force +that it kills at four yards. + + +_Grasshoppers_ + +Classic writers knew the grasshopper less as a pest than as a food, +and it has a pleasant place in myth. Tithonus, beloved of Aurora and +dowered by the gods with immortality but not with eternal youth, was +changed by her into a grasshopper after he shrank up with old age. +There is a grasshopper fable to which Strabo gives a naturalistic and +Solinus a supernatural tinge. In southern Italy, Rhegium and Locris are +divided by a river flowing through a deep ravine. The insects on the +Locrian side sing, while those on the other side are silent. + +Strabo suggests that this is because it is sunny on the Locrian side, +and densely wooded across the river. In the one case the membranes used +in stridulation are dry and horny and therefore resonant when rasped +together; in the other, they are so softened by shade and dew that they +produce no sound. Solinus has a simpler explanation. Hercules passed +by Rhegium and its grasshopper orchestra irritated him. So he bade the +insects be silent, and, resentful or forgetful, failed to lift the +embargo. + + +_The Salamander_ + +The best account of the salamander appears in the _Memoirs_ of +Benvenuto Cellini. “One day,” he said, “when I was about fifteen +years of age, my father was in a cellar where they had been scalding +some clothes for washing. He was alone, and was playing upon the viol +and singing in front of a good fire of oakwood, for the weather was +very cold. On looking at the fire accidentally, he saw a small animal +resembling a lizard, gambolling joyously in the midst of the fiercest +flames. My father instantly perceiving what it was, he called my +sister and me, pointed out the animal to us, and gave me a severe box +on the ear, which caused me to shed a perfect deluge of tears. He +gently wiped my eyes and said to me, ‘My dear boy, I did not strike you +as a punishment, but only that you should remember that that lizard +which you behold in the fire is a salamander, an animal which has never +been seen by any known person.’ He afterwards kissed me and gave me a +few quattrini.” + +That the salamander is able to live in flames, Aristotle thought, and +Ælian, and Nicander, and Pliny. The last named tells why: This lizard +is so cold that it extinguishes fire like ice. There is great danger in +its venom. Unless precautions are taken it might destroy whole nations, +for if it crawls up a tree it infects all the fruit and those who eat +thereof are killed. It will also poison water or wine in which it is +drowned. Sir Thomas Browne concedes that it may resist a flame or put +out a coal, but “thus much will many humid bodies perform.” + + +_The Spider Dance_ + +The tarantula is a large, brown mining spider which is found on both +shores of the Mediterranean, and is said to be numerous near Taranto +in southern Italy, whence its name. Its bite is painful, although not +dangerous, but in the fifteenth century the superstition arose that it +caused what is called tarantism, a nervous affection with some of the +symptoms of hydrophobia, and now classed with St. Vitus dance. Those +who were bitten, or believed themselves to be, assumed a livid color, +lost the senses of sight and hearing, and sank into a deep depression; +nausea and sexual excitement were also remarked. Only music could +arouse the sufferer; under the influence of lively strains he would +dance himself into a perspiration and the poison of the spider bite +would escape through the skin. If the dance was continued to exhaustion +the patient was cured, at any rate for a time. + +The disease soon assumed the form of a contagion communicated from one +person to another. Dancers were violently affected by bright colors. +Red was the favorite, and then green and yellow, and one man’s hue +might be another’s madness. Sufferers sought water, some plunging into +the sea, others immersing their heads in a tub or carrying globes +of water while dancing. Old and young, skeptical visitors as well as +natives, and women more than men, were the victims. Attacks lasted from +two to six days, and recovery was effectual until warm weather came the +following year, when the symptoms had again to be exorcised to music. +One woman was a tarantant for thirty summers. + +The earliest mention of the mania is in the writings of Nicolas +Perotti, a contemporary of Columbus. It broke out at the same time that +the St. Vitus dance appeared in Germany. A like superstition and a like +cure are known in a Persian province. The northern nations were first +to recover and since the seventeenth century the epidemic has slowly +waned. The lively Neapolitan folk dance, called the tarantella, is a +memorial of the madness that set the Middle Ages dancing with a spider +calling the tune. + + +_The Swallow_ + +Swallows show themselves suddenly in the northern climes in April, and +as suddenly vanish at the threshold of autumn. They are often seen +skimming the surface of water. Doctor Kalm, the Swedish traveler, +reports that in April, 1750, he saw great numbers perched upon posts, +“and they were as wet as if they had just come out of the sea.” That +the swallow comes out of the sea in the spring and returns to it in +the fall is a belief of unknown antiquity. Thus, thought Luther, it +repeated each year the process of creation recorded in Genesis, when +the water obeyed the command to bring forth “fowl that may fly above +the earth in the open firmament of heaven.” + +There is a considerable literature on the reputed hibernation of the +swallow. It has been credited with electing at will the winter economy +of the wild goose, the bear, or the batrachian. In Mediterranean +countries it is conceded that swallows migrate. In England and Germany, +according to one eighteenth-century observer, they “retire into clefts +and holes in rocks, and remain there in torpid state.” In the colder +northern countries popular opinion has been that they submerge in the +sea. Regnard, the French comic poet, who made a journey to Lapland in +1681, accepted this on the word of trustworthy Danes and Swedes. + +In the eighteenth century the secretary to the city of Dantzig obtained +sworn testimony in support of this opinion from collectors of the +revenues of the king of Prussia. The mother of the Countess Lehndorf +reported that she saw “a bundle of swallows” brought from under water +to a warm room, where they revived and fluttered about. Count Schlieben +said that while fishing on his estate he saw several swallows netted, +one of which he carried into a warm room; it lay there for an hour and +then began to stir and fly around. Collector-General Witkowski said +that in 1741 he got two swallows from the great pond at Didlacken, and +that these birds revived in a warm room, “fluttered about, and died +three hours later.” Six other witnesses made their several oaths to +similar incidents. + +A final touch of poetry is given by the statement of Doctor Wallerius, +the celebrated Swedish chemist, who deposed “that he had seen more than +once swallows assembling on a reed till they were all immersed and +went to the bottom; this being preceded by a dirge of a quarter of an +hour’s length.” Holy, luck-bringing, and inviolate, men everywhere have +thought the swallow, and the solemn descents into the sea with which +legend credited it deepened this character. + + +_Wild Geese_ + +About wild geese a still more fantastic belief obtained up to four +centuries ago, when the Dutch discovered Spitzbergen. It was thought +that goslings grew upon trees in the form of nuts. The nuts fell into +the sea and the chicks came forth. Therefore a decree at the Sorbonne +in Paris adjudged that wild geese were not birds and could be eaten +in Lent. In Spitzbergen, Barentz came upon the breeding grounds of +these migratory fowl, and, breaking open the eggs, discovered the +unhatched young in them. So the myth passed. “It is not our fault,” he +remarked, “that we have not known this before, when these birds insist +upon breeding so far northward.” Two variants of the story are found +among Norwegian writers. Jonas Ramus says that “a particular sort of +Geese found in Nordland leave their seed on old trees and stumps and +blocks lying in the sea”; a shell forms around the seed, and from the +shell, as from an egg, young geese are hatched by the sun. Pontoppidan +describes what seems to be the goose barnacle which contains “the +little creature reported to be a young wild goose.” It looks like +“little crooked feathers squeezed together” and is merely a “living +sea insect.” While the legend was credited it was used to confirm the +doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. + + +_Animal Politics_ + +Fable dowered various creatures with the political institutions and +social sense of the ant and bee. Pearl oysters were said to live in +settlements under the rule of the oldest. Cranes placed sentinels on +guard at night, each with a stone in its claw; if the bird nodded +the stone fell to the ground, betraying its neglect of duty. Cranes, +rooks and storks, even modern observers assert, hold criminal courts. +Twice a year a pair of ravens was assigned to each farm in Iceland +by a parliament of their fellows. The storks of Egypt were supposed +every winter to make the Mecca pilgrimage and were regarded as hajjis. +Because the panther’s diet was aromatic roots and herbs, its breath +was balmy and medicinal, and when it walked abroad all the other +beasts attended it. Wild beasts and apes tended a mountain shrine near +Srinagar in India, bringing daily offerings of flowers. In Ceylon “very +pious and credible persons” told Ibn Batuta that the bearded black +monkeys had their own sultan, who wore a green turban woven of leaves, +as if he wished to seem an Islamite, and maintained a council of state +and a harem. + + +_Other Animal Marvels_ + +Marvel tales about animals might be recited almost indefinitely, +and a respectable authority ancient or modern, named for each. A +few representative ones may be noted. It is a well-known fact, says +Solinus, that magpies have died because they could not master the +pronunciation of a difficult word. In South America, according to +Purchas, men make clean their teeth with the beards of seals, “because +they bee wholesome for the toothache.” The she-camel, so says Launcelot +Addison, father of the essayist, “brings forth her young in a negligent +slumber.” The toucan, says Humboldt, makes an extraordinary gesture +when preparing to drink, which the monks assert is the sign of the +cross upon the water, and so the creoles call it _diostede_ (God gives +it to thee). Bordering the country of the grasshopper-eaters in Africa, +says Diodorus, is a fair land which has been untenanted since rain bred +a multitude of venomous spiders that stung many persons to death and +drove away the remainder. Plutarch thought that the ibis became more +sacred by standing with straddled legs so as to form a triangle. Buffon +confutes the notion, based on the noisome odor of the shrewmouse, that +its bite is dangerous to cattle. Isaac Walton cites a polygamous fish +which “goes courting she-goats on the grassy shore.” Even Linnæus +thought that birds of paradise had neither wings nor feet. + + +_Pliny’s Mirabilia_ + +Pliny is authority for the fables which follow: The ant rests from +her labors at the changes of the moon. The sea remains calm while the +halcyon is hatching her young upon it. When the sun is in Cancer the +bodies of dead crabs on the seashore are transformed into serpents. +When the porcupine stretches its skin it discharges its quills like +missiles. Lions resent it if a man looks at them asquint. The breath +of the elephant will draw serpents from their retreats. Only by using +the left hand can one pull snakes from their holes. They will flee from +a naked man, but pursue one clothed. The best way to catch eels is to +put the bait in the end of a hollow fishing rod and suffocate them by +blowing through it. + +Bears crawl into their dens on their backs in order to leave no +betraying trail. Ostriches throw stones at their pursuers. Vultures +will entice a bull over a precipice by holding their wings before its +eyes. The boding raven is most so when it swallows its voice as if +choked. If a horse follows in the track of a wolf it will burst asunder +beneath its rider. If a shrewmouse crosses the rut of a wheel it will +die at once. The pastern bones of swine promote discord. Madness in +he-goats may be calmed by stroking their beards. She-goats in pasture +never look at one another at sunset. Goats breathe through their ears, +are never quite free from fever, and are therefore more lascivious than +sheep. Roebucks grow fat on poisons. + +As to birds and insects, it is doubtful if they dream; yet pigeons +“have a certain appreciation of glory.” At a certain season cuckoos +become hawks. The crow is at enmity with the weasel, the duck with +the sea-mew, but there is friendship between the peacock and the +pigeon, the turtle-dove and the parrot, the heron and the crow. Quails +sometimes settle so thickly on ships at night as to sink them. Locusts +make their whirring noise by grinding their teeth. Hornets, wasps, and +bees will not attack a person stung by a scorpion. In high winds bees +carry small stones for ballast. It is not certain whether their honey +is “the sweat of the heavens, or whether a saliva emanating from the +stars, or a juice exuding from the air while purifying itself.” + +Stranger than these classic beliefs is the early Christian tradition of +the small hole found in the forefeet of pigs when the hair is removed. +Therein of old time passed the legion of devils in the country of the +Gadarenes. The rings about the hole which seem branded in the skin are +the marks of demons’ claws as they entered their unclean habitation. +Javanese Moslems have it that the peacock was gatekeeper of Paradise +and admitted the devil by swallowing him. A third domestic creature, +the cock, could scatter ghosts and demons by his dawn cry. + + +_Browne Catalogues Vulgar Errors_ + +The treatise upon _Vulgar Errors_ which Sir Thomas Browne made in the +seventeenth century attacks many notions that had come down to his time +from a past without date. Among them are the following: Swans sing +their own death songs. The badger has the legs of one side shorter +than the other. Spermaceti is the spawn of the whale. Lampries have +nine eyes. There is antipathy between the toad and the spider. There +is a lucky-stone in the toad’s head. The pelican pierces her breast +and feeds her young with her own blood. The clicking sound made in a +wainscoting by the beetle called the death-watch presages bereavement. +Peacocks are ashamed of their legs. Storks will live only in republics +or free states. Lions are afraid of cocks. + +Each of these beliefs the great physician confutes in turn, remarking, +for example, that storks nest in kingly France and in the dominions of +the Great Turk, and that a lion, escaped from a menagerie, had robbed a +hen roost in Bavaria. + + +_Beasts of the Hermits_ + +A chapter of charming legends has for its theme not the remarkable +traits of different species of animals, but the conduct of single +creatures that came under the influence of holy men who went out into +the deserts in the early days of the Christian era. In the absence of +human society the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field formed +for the hermit the society of the waste. The crocodile, protected and +worshiped by pagan Egypt, the gross-looking hippopotamus, the venomous +serpents, and above all the hyena, with its fearful laughter, rimmed +the anchorite’s life with a horizon of supernatural terror; these were +embodied dæmons with designs upon his very soul. But sometimes he could +cast out the evil spirit that tenanted them, and there were other and +gentler beasts that became his servants and companions. In them the +unfriendly deserts were made to repeat the polity of Eden, where all +created things obeyed man. + +Wild asses, lions, stags, wolves, and fowls were the hermit’s domestic +animals. Stags, harnessed to plow, cultivated the field of St. Leonor, +and took the place of St. Colodoc’s cattle when these were driven away +because he had sheltered a hunted deer. St. Helenus rode on the back +of a crocodile. Dragons guarded the cell of Abbot Ammon. The lion from +whose foot St. Gerasimus extracted a thorn protected his ass. St. +Costinian saddled and rode a bear. St. Sulpicius tells of a she-wolf as +tame as a dog and of a lioness under a palm tree that moved modestly +aside at a hermit’s command until he had eaten his fill of dates. +Swallows sang upon the knees of St. Guthlac. + +Not all of this, it may be, is the mere poetry of pious imaginations. +After the breakdown of Roman civilization in the west, many of the +oxen, horses, and dogs returned to the wild state, and what the +hermits did in some cases was merely to recall them to their ancient +allegiance. Here and there among so many thousands of solitaries, so +Kingsley urges, were men such as become horse-tamers and bee-takers +in settled communities, whose natures won them friends in the world +of brutes. The very quietude of the hermits, their habit of silent +meditation in field and forest, would disarm the fears of wild things +and draw them toward companionship. + + +_The Invasion of the Cathedrals_ + +The church had yet another chapter to write in the story of the +beasts, and this time they became hieroglyphs on the vast scroll of +the cathedrals. The early significance of animals in the life of man +was completely revived in the mediæval fanes, but as allegory rather +than reality. Brute and fowl were created, it was thought, only to +illustrate the truth of God’s word and to convey some spiritual +message. Did not Job say, “Ask the beast and it will teach thee, and +the birds of heaven and they will tell thee”? What they taught and +told was set forth at large in the cathedral, which became in very +fact a rebus carved in stone. With effects that were indescribably +quaint, and beautiful at times, Christian symbolism wrought itself in +ecclesiastical architecture in an age when few could read other writing. + +From Egypt, where cenobites were already in communion with desert +creatures, the impulse came; and from India, where Buddhist ascetics +were taught to pattern their humility from the ass that sleeps by the +roadside, their aloofness from the rhinoceros that wanders alone. Its +immediate source was the _Physiologus_, or Naturalist, the compilation +by an Alexandrian Greek of what the ancient world reported of animals +and plants, with moral reflections added. The compendium was translated +into all of the languages of Europe and several African and Asiatic +tongues, and, being in the vernacular, may have been for a time more +widely read than the Bible itself. For the unlearned a source of +pleasant stories and forerunner of the bestiaries, for the learned +it was a theological treatise. Its subject-matter entered patristic +writings and popular sermons and was at length transferred to stone. + +The vogue of animal symbolism in Christian churches covered half a +millennium, was at its height in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, +was still alive at the Reformation, and left its marks in sacred +vessels and ecclesiastical vestments as well as in sculpture. Façades, +portals, buttresses, and gargoyles of church exteriors, and cloisters, +chancels and chapels of interiors, were decorated with animal forms. +As an emblem of priestly chastity, the elephant was embroidered on +sacerdotal vestments. Lamps, censers, and sacramental vessels repeated +the outline or carried the effigy of the griffin, the pelican, the +dolphin. Sculptured lions ramped at cathedral doors, lizards peeped +from crevices, and all about the sanctuary were the figures of foxes +and ferrets, harts and hedgehogs, panthers and partridges, the whale, +the crocodile, the tortoise, and a hundred other flying, walking, +creeping, or swimming things. + +Though St. Bernard denounced this as “the foul and tattered vesture of +pagan allegory,” every animal was a text, or was designed to be. The +lion typified majesty, the ox patience, the ram spiritual leadership, +the turtle-dove constancy, the skin-sloughing snake the repentant +believer, the salamander the righteous who extinguish the flames of +desire. The sun-staring, youth-renewing eagle was an admonition to +those grown old in sin to face the day star of revelation. Ravens +symbolized Jews who battened on the carrion of the Law. Sometimes +virtues and vices were pictured as women riding animals or bearing +animal devices--Humility on a panther, Chastity on a unicorn, Devotion +on an ibex, Patience with a swan helmet, Love with a pelican shield, +Lust with a siren-buckler. + +Animal symbolism had also its secular phases. Amorous troubadours +likened themselves to flame-walled salamanders; or, disappointed in +love, likened woman to the double-natured dragon and the hooting owl. +By degrees the secular impulse invaded the churches. Animal sculptures +were admitted as such and not as cipher characters of divine script; +and satire, inspired or tolerated by the regular body of clergy, raided +the sheepfold of allegory. This was directed against the preaching +friars and the failings of the monastic orders, all the actors in +the beast-epos of Reynard the fox entering the sanctuary as its +auxiliaries. The animals overran windows, balustrades, cornices, and +capitals; foxes were significantly depicted in palmer weeds; a stall +in the cathedral at Amiens showed Reynard preaching to a flock of +fowls and with pious gesture reaching for the nearest hen. Death, “the +sarcastic and irreverent skeleton,” capered among the creatures in the +dance macabre. At the outset an attack on religious abuses, the secular +phase became in effect a lampoon of the very rites of the church. + +Among other figures that caricatured its principal ceremonies under +its own roof, says Evans in his authoritative study of the period, +were “apes in choristers’ robes, swine in monks’ hoods, asses in +cowls chanting and playing the organ, sirens in the costume of nuns +with their faces carefully veiled and the rest of their persons +exposed, stags in chasubles ministering at the altar and wolves in the +confessional giving absolution to lambs.” The ass, which the east had +long celebrated for its devoted service and which has a high niche in +biblical story, attained a place in the churches of the west which +neither fact fully accounts for. There was thought to be some mystic +relation between its anatomy and the architecture of a cathedral. In +a catechism of the last century used in a French town it was recited +among other details that the head of the ass signified the bell of the +town cathedral, its paunch the poor-box and its tail the aspergill +for sprinkling holy water. In the one-time popular Feast of the Ass, +a living ass was led up the nave into the chancel, the chants were +sung in a braying tone, and the officiating priest dismissed the +congregation with a loud hee-haw. + +The ceremony has passed. Most of the beast figures have been removed +from the cathedrals. Animal symbolism still lives, but more in letters +than in stone. + + + + +Chapter V. The Fabulous Beasts + + +In the world that was, the fabulous animals that roved the land were +creatures of unusual interest, though of limited number. More species +were to be found in the deep. Thither, Pliny explains, fall the seeds +from the innumerable figures of beasts impressed as constellations +upon the heavens, and these seeds, being mixed together in the watery +element, produce a variety of monstrous forms. + +With animal life abounding in the thickets and fields of the earth, +and for every bird and beast a fable, there was less incentive to +invent new species of them than there was to make stories of ghosts, +dæmons and faeries, or of men with beast attributes or lineage or some +quality of caricature in their anatomy. With the coming of heraldry +the category of strange creatures is greatly enlarged, but the shapes +added by blazonry do not purport to be living things and have no place +in geography or in literature, save in massive volumes where the quaint +designs and quainter jargon of a curious erudition are preserved. + +The ancient had naïve ideas about cross-breeding. Every unusual +animal seemed a hybrid of two known species. These were produced in +hot climates. Hence, says Pliny, arose the saying, common even in +Greece, that “Africa is always producing something new.” The males and +females of various species in that singular land, he thought, coupled +promiscuously with each other, but not always with impunity. “The lion +recognizes, by the peculiar odor of the pard, when the lioness has been +unfaithful to him, and avenges himself with the greatest fury.” + +There was a belief, which lasted nearer to the present time, that the +savage dogs of India, two of which would make no scruple of attacking +the lion, had tigresses for their dams. Diodorus noted that eastern +Arabia produced beasts of double nature and mixed shape, and he deemed +it reasonable that “by the vivifying heat of the sun in southern parts +of the world many sorts of wonderful creatures are there bred.” Among +these he cites the crocodiles and river horses of Egypt. He strains +a point in support of his theory in the account of what he calls the +Struthocameli of Arabia, “who have the shape both of a camel and an +ostrich.” He describes their bodies “big as a camel, newly foaled,” +their small heads with large black eyes, their long necks, the “hairy +feathers” on their wings, their strong thighs, and “cloven hoofs.” +This creature, says the Sicilian geographer, “seems both terrestrial +and volatile, a land beast and a bird”--after all, only an inexact yet +graphic portrait of the ostrich. That this fowl is a cross between a +camel and a bird is an Arab notion; according to Aristotle it is of an +equivocal nature, part bird and part quadruped. So its Persian name +signifies, and sacred writers liken its voice to the bellowing of a +bull. + +Even the breezes take part in the creation of hybrids, so men have +thought. That there is actual generative power in the wind is a belief +older than the discovery of its function in carrying the fertilizing +pollen of plants. Pliny records the popular belief that barren eggs are +breeze-begotten; hence their name of Zephyria. The modern “wind-egg” +for an egg without a shell laid by a fat hen, but supposed by Doctor +Johnson not to contain the principle of life, comes from a similar +notion. Male sheep are conceived when the northeast wind blows, and +females when the south wind blows, according to the Romans. One of the +heroic ballads of the Tartars personifies the wind as a foal which +courses about the earth. The fable about Portuguese mares, widely +credited by the ancients and roundly asserted by Pliny, is an echo +of sailor reports on the fertility of Lusitania: “In the vicinity of +Olisipo and the river Tagus, the mares, by turning their faces toward +the west wind as it blows, become impregnated by its breezes, and the +foals thus conceived are remarkable for their fleetness; but they never +live beyond three years.” + + +_The Unicorn_ + +Best known animal of legend is the unicorn. There are two veritable +unicorns, or animals with one horn--the rhinoceros and the narwhal. +The accepted description of this animal gives it the narwhal’s straight +and spirally twisted horn but none of the parts of the rhinoceros. It +is pictured with the legs of a buck, the tail of a lion, and the head +and body of a horse. Its markings suggest the zebra’s; its head is red, +its body white, its eyes blue, while its horn is red at the tip, white +at the base and black in between. The high authority of Aristotle has +determined these points. + +The ancients mention five different animals as having one horn set in +the middle of the forehead. The most famous of these were the Egyptian +oryx and the Indian ass. Pliny says the oryx gazes at the Dog Star +when it rises, and sneezes in a sort of worship. It has the stature +of a bull, the form of a deer, and hair that sets forward instead +of backward. The Indian ass is described by Ctesias as having the +traditional shape and hues of the unicorn, solid hoofs, and a horn a +cubit in length. Filings of this horn, if taken in a potion, are an +antidote to poison. Drinking cups made from it give immunity also from +epilepsy. The Indian ass is so fleet it can be seized only when it +leads its foal to pasture. In defense of its young it uses its horn, +teeth, and feet, killing horses and men. It is sought for the horn and +huckle bones, the latter, Ctesias declares, “the most beautiful I have +ever seen”; they are as heavy as lead, he says, and of the color of +cinnabar. + +The third animal was the monoceros, on which the Orsæan Indians preyed. +It had the head of the stag, the feet of the elephant, and the tail of +the boar, while the rest of its body was horse-like. The single black +horn projecting from the middle of its forehead was two cubits long. It +lowed like a bull, was of ferocious nature, wandered alone, and could +not be taken alive. The two other unicorns of ancient story were the +single-horned horse and the single-horned ox. + +There was a second growth of the fable in the Middle Ages and the +unicorn took on new dignities. It was the only animal that would +attack the elephant, disembowelling the pachyderm with one blow of its +sharp-nailed foot; and it charged the lion at sight. The king of beasts +was constrained to kingly craft, dodging behind a tree. His assailant, +says Topsell, “in the swiftness of his course runneth against the tree, +wherein his sharp horn sticketh fast”; and the lion dispatches him at +leisure. In his _Display of Heraldry_ (1724) Guillim says the unicorn +is never taken alive because “the greatness of his mind is such rather +to die.” Mediæval intelligence at last hit upon a characteristic device +to secure this creature without slaying him, and the bestiaries of +the time record it. This was to place a young virgin near his haunts. +As soon as he saw her he would run to her and lie down at her feet, +placing his head in her bosom, when the hunters could halter him. + +It was the alexipharmic virtues of the unicorn’s horn that most engaged +the ages of faith, when the poisoning of princes was almost an article +of statecraft. As late as 1789 it was used to test food at the court of +France, and horns, usually of the narwhal, were in the royal museums. +The ancients had made little of this. The reference of Ctesias to the +horn of the Indian ass as an antidote for poison and a cure of the +falling sickness stands alone. What was later made of this reputed +power is shown in a passage from John of Herse, who pilgrimed to +Jerusalem in 1389: “Near the field Helyon in the Holy Land is the river +Mara, whose bitter waters Moses struck with his staff and made sweet, +so that the children of Israel could drink thereof. Even now evil and +unclean spirits poison it after the going down of the sun, but in the +morning after the powers of darkness have disappeared, the unicorn +comes from the sea and dips its horn into the stream, and thereby +expels and neutralizes the poison, so that the other animals can drink +of it during the day.” + +According to Guillim, it became “a general conceit that the wild beasts +of the wilderness used not to drink of the pools, for fear of venomous +serpents there breeding, until the unicorn hath stirred them with his +horn.” Thus its office was that of water-conner for the other beasts of +the forest. + +Cosmas Indicopleustes said he had seen the brazen statues of four +unicorns set upon towers in the royal palace of Ethiopia. Frobisher +found a dead “sea unicorne” on the Canadian coast with a broken horn +two yards long. Into the hollow of the horn the sailors put spiders, +where they presently died. In his second voyage (1564) Sir John Hawkins +found the Florida Indians wearing pieces of the unicorn’s horn about +their necks. + +The unicorn was celebrated in Christian symbolism before it found a +permanent niche in heraldry. When Balaam blesses Israel he says, “God +led him out of Egypt even as the glory of the unicorn.” According to +the _Bestiare Divine de Guillaume Clerc de Normandie_, the animal +represents Christ, and its horn signifies the Gospel of Truth. It +became a favorite charge in Scottish heraldry and James I of England +made it the sinister support in the arms of Great Britain, replacing +the red dragon of Wales. + +Purchas the Pilgrim was always expecting news of the unicorn, hearing +of it and doubting report. Browne avows his belief in the animal in a +sardonic dissertation. Far from doubting its existence, he says, “we +affirm there are many kinds thereof,” and he mentions the five classic +animals, several fishes, and “four kinds of nasicornous beetles.” What +he wants to know is which one possesses the alexipharmic horn. He +complains that the animal is not uniformly described: “Pliny affirmeth +it is a fierce, terrible creature; Vartomannus, a tame and mansuete +animal; those which Garcias ab Horto described about the Cape of Good +Hope were beheld with heads like horses; those which Vartomannus beheld +he described with the head of a deer: Pliny, Ælian, Solinus, and Paulus +Venetus affirmeth the feet of the unicorn are undivided and like the +elephant’s; but those two which Vartomannus beheld at Mecca were footed +like a goat. As Ælian describeth, it is in the bigness of an horse; as +Vartomannus, of a colt; that which Thevet speaketh of was not so big as +an heifer; but Paulus Venetus affirmeth that they are but little less +than elephants.” + +Browne proceeds remorselessly: The horns of the unicorn, as described +by writers or preserved in collections, are too various. Some are red, +some are black, and some have spiral markings, while “those two in the +treasure of St. Mark are plain and best accord with those of the Indian +ass.” Albertus Magnus describes one ten feet long, a narwhal’s, Browne +suggests. Others are but fossil teeth and bones and petrified tree +branches. + +Yet the tradition long survived Browne. His contemporary, the +Portuguese Jesuit Lobo, said that in Abyssinia he had seen the unicorn, +in shape like a beautiful bay horse with a black tail. He could give no +minute account, for it ran with prodigious swiftness from wood to wood, +and never fed save when surrounded by animals that protected it. “The +unicorn really exists in Tibet,” Huc affirmed after traveling there in +1846. At Kordofan, in 1848, a man, whose custom was to provide Baron +Von Mueller with animal specimens, offered to sell him an _a’nasa_, +which he described as of donkey size with a tail like a boar’s, and a +single pendulous horn which it erected when it saw an enemy. In 1876 +Prejevalski gave an account of the _orongo_, a stag-like creature with +two vertical horns, which he said was common in Tibet; according to +natives there were a few single horned individuals among the herds. + +Every feature in the unicorn legend of the west has its counterpart +in the Chinese books. Six species of unicorns are mentioned; one +figures in the crest of the Mikado of Japan; another is sculptured in +the avenue of animals that leads to the Ming tombs north of Peking. +Another, and the best known, the _ki-lin_, appeared only in the reign +of upright monarchs. It was called a spiritual beast, chief of the +360 kinds of hairy creatures. Its pace was regular, it ambled only on +selected grounds, and its voice was like a monastery bell. So softly it +trod that it left no footprints and crushed no living thing. + +All a moon myth, says one ingenious writer. But Gould declares, “I +find it impossible to believe that a creature whose existence has been +affirmed by so many authors, at so many different dates, and from so +many countries, can be the symbol of a myth.” He thinks it either a +hybrid occasionally produced by the crossing of the equine and bovine +families, or else the generic name for extinct missing links between +horses, cattle, and deer. + +Whence the world’s long belief in the unicorn? Was there such an +animal, now extinct? Cuvier returns an emphatic negative: “The nations +of modern days have only been able to drive back the noxious animals +in the deserts, but have never yet suceeded in exterminating a single +species.” He goes further: there could never have been a cloven-footed +ruminant with a single horn, because its frontal bone must have been +divided, and no horn could have been placed on the suture. + +Ctesias may have woven some rhinoceros details into his picture of the +so-called Indian ass. The Egyptian unicorn was called an oryx--a word +perhaps related to the Sanscrit and Teutonic aurochs. There is a large +African antelope the modern name of which is oryx. It is probable that +the correct name has been retained, and that the oryx, or gemsbok, of +to-day, is the unicorn of Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, Lampridius, et al. +But the real oryx has two horns, while the fabled animal had but one +because the Egyptians did not understand perspective in drawing. + + +_The Griffin_ + +Greek and Persepolitan griffins are curiously alike, and both may +have derived from the winged lion of the Assyrians, emblem of the +god Nergal. Griffin lore, however, is rich in details which have no +religious significance. Herodotus speaks of the animal as guarding the +gold of the one-eyed Arimaspians in Asia north of the Altai Mountains. +Ctesias places it in the mountain barrier of India. + +According to Ælian the griffin was a winged and feathered lion with +an eagle’s head and a color scheme that suggests the German imperial +flag--the breast plumage red, the wings white, and the dorsal plumage +black; “a mixed and dubious animal,” Browne calls it. Ctesias says it +had also blue neck feathers and red eyes. He describes the species as +a race of four-footed birds the size of wolves, but Maundeville says +they were as large and strong as eight lions and could carry to their +nests “a great Horse, or two Oxen yoked together as they go to the +Plough.” Of their talons the Indians made drinking cups. The griffins +built their nests like the eagle, but laid therein agates instead of +eggs. The Bactrians said that these birds dug gold out of the mountains +and made their nests therewith, and the Indians carried off so much of +it as falls to the ground. The Indians denied that the griffins were +watchmen for the gold of their district or had any use for it; they +said that when the birds see them coming to gather gold, they fear the +intruders are after their young and assail them. Also they attack all +other beasts and prevail over them, save only the lion and the elephant. + +Fearful of their vengeance, the natives go not out to gather gold +in the daytime, say the chroniclers, but under cover of night make +their raids into a frightful desert where griffin and gold are found +together. Companies of one thousand or even two thousand men set out, +equipped with mattocks and sacks. The expeditions take from three to +four years, for this region lies afar. If successful, the members +return wealthy; but should they be detected in the act of theft, says +Ælian, certain death would be their fate. + +There are four explanations of this four-footed bird of classic +legend and Welsh heraldry--that the winged Assyrian lion was taken +for a portrait instead of a symbol; that the Samoyeds mistook mammoth +bones in the gold-bearing district of the Ural Mountains for remains +of monster fowls; that the griffins were merely Tibetan mastiffs of +singular ferocity and reputed tigrine decent, and that they are an +early form of the dragon. The so-called griffin’s claws in the museums +of Dresden and Vienna and in the churches elsewhere are horns of the +Caffrarian buffalo. Drinking cups made of them were used in treating +epilepsy. + + +_The Hippogrif_ + +It would be vain to seek among animals the original of the hippogrif, +a creature related to the griffin, though of more involved lineage, +and like it treated sometimes as a bird, sometimes as a beast. The +hippogrif is a product of mediæval romance, and wings its way as the +courser of more than mortal knights over countries of fable, albeit +they bear such names as Brittany, Abyssinia, Circassia, and Cathay. +As the griffin was called a hybrid between the lion and the eagle, so +the hippogrif was supposed to be a hybrid between the griffin and the +horse. It had the head, wings, and fore claws of the griffin and the +body, hind hoofs and tail of the horse. Its habitat was the Riphæan +Mountains, source of the north wind. The hippogrif enters the Orlando +cycle as the mount of an enchanter with a castle on the Pyrenees, but +later serves the far adventures of the paladins of Charlemagne. + + +_The Monster Rat_ + +The Samoyeds and Chinese who found in the river banks of the north the +frozen bodies of mammoths, with skin and flesh intact as if they had +died but yesterday, reached the strange yet natural conclusion that +this was a kind of monstrous burrowing rat. It figures in Chinese books +as _fen-shu_, the “digging rat,” or _yen-men_, the “burrowing ox.” Why +was it always dead when men came upon it? Because air and sunshine were +both fatal to it; evidently in its wanderings underground it had broken +the crust above it and died in the daylight. Sometimes the Yakuts saw +the earth tremble and knew this great rat walked beneath. “There is got +from it,” says the _Chinese Encyclopedia_, “an ivory as white as that +of the elephant, but easier to work, and not liable to split. Its flesh +is very cold and excellent for refreshing the blood.” + + +_The Martikhora_ + +In the jungles of Ind roved the martikhora--a creature with unpleasant +affinities to men, the great cats, and the serpents. Its face was +like a man’s with pale blue eyes and human ears but with three rows +of teeth. Its body was as big as the lion’s and in color red like +cinnabar. It had a tail like the scorpion’s and more than a cubit long. +The martikhora, indeed, was a sort of anticipation of the machine gun, +for it had one sting at the end of its tail, two at the roots of this +member, and a fourth on the crown of its head; and these it projected +to the distance of a hundred feet. The missiles, which were about a +foot long and no thicker than fine thread, were fatal to every animal +save the elephants. The natives, says Ctesias, hunted it from the backs +of elephants. The name of the animal means man-eater, so-called because +the beast carried off men and women. Its size, also, and general +description, and the manner of hunting it all suggest the tiger as +fearful Indians might report it. To this day the Cambodians think the +whiskers of the tiger are a strong poison. The Malays call it a demon +in beast form and speak of its Village where the houses are raftered +with men’s bones and thatched with human hair. + +In heraldry the martikhora is called the montegre, manticora, or +man-tyger, and is pictured with the body of a lion, the head of an old +man, the horns of an ox, and sometimes with dragon feet. + + +_The Scythian Lamb_ + +To match the barnacle goose which came from a nut, the ages of faith +had the Scythian lamb which grew in a gourd. Maundeville has the best +account, for did he not make a meal of one? The creature is found in “a +kingdom that men call Caldilhe,” one of “the Countries and Isles that +be beyond the Land of Cathay.” In this country “there groweth a manner +of Fruit, as though it were Gourds. And when they be ripe, men cut them +in two, and Men find within a little Beast in Flesh and Bone and Blood, +as though it were a little Lamb without Wool. And men eat both the +Fruit and the Beast. And that is a great Marvel.” + +Friar Odoric makes a similar report. In other stories the Scythian +lamb is a true animal attached to the earth by its umbilical cord. The +Scythian lamb of botany is a woolly fern (_Cibotium barometz_) with a +prostrate stem turned upside down. It is also called vegetable lamb +and Tartarian lamb. In his _Travels into Muscovy and Persia_ (1636) +the ambassador from the Duke of Holstein describes it as a gourd like +unto a lamb in all its members and with the lamb’s sacrificial relation +to the wolf. It grows wild in the district of Samara, in Russia, and +its growing is a kind of destructive browsing. “It changes places in +growing, as far as the stalk will reach, and wherever it turns the +grass withers, which the Muscovites call feeding.” When all available +grass fails, it dies. The rind of the gourd is covered with a sort of +hair, which makes a good substitute for fur. The natives showed the +traveler certain skins, covered with a soft frizzled wool “not unlike +that of a lamb newly weaned”--vegetable lamb, they affirmed. Scaliger +declares that alone among animals the wolf feeds on this gourd and that +wolf traps are baited with it. + +[Illustration: _In Caldilhe There Groweth a Manner of Fruit, and Men +Find Within a Little Beast as Though It Were a Lamb Without Wool_] + +Erasmus Darwin has these lines upon the Scythian lamb in his _Botanic +Garden_: + + /* + Rooted in earth each cloven hoof descends, + And round and round her flexible neck she bends; + Crops the gray coral moss and hoary thyme; + Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime, + Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam, + And seems to bleat, a Vegetable Lamb. + +So until 1915 stood the fable--seemingly just a tale of the credulous +Middle Age, rationalized by later science and gently derided in still +later rhyme. Then the scholarship of Berthold Laufer, basing itself +mainly upon Chinese texts, gave it long backgrounds. The Scythian lamb +has been in turn a mollusk, a marine sheep, a bird, the cotton-plant, a +strange half-human creature and--this part is surmise--an allegory of +the early Christian Church, the Lamb of Revelation that “stood on the +mount Sion.” + +Unto this day fabrics are made of the undyed fleece of the true +Scythian lamb. Byssus silk is the name it bears in commerce, and +Taranto is the seat of its manufacture. The silk is derived from the +fibrous foot by which mollusks of the species called the pinna, found +in the waters about southern Italy, attach themselves to rocks. The +original Scythian lamb was this mollusk and its umbilical cord was +the byssus, or foot, which anchored it. The genesis of the legend +seems to be a statement of Aristotle that these creatures have within +them a parasite, a small crab, nicknamed the “pinna-guard” which in +gathering its own food collects fishes also for its blind, stationary, +and helpless host. Without the pinna-guard, says Aristotle, the mollusk +soon dies; and he cites the latter to illustrate his observation that +in the sea “there are certain objects concerning which one would be +at loss to determine whether they be animal or vegetable.” After +Aristotle’s time, and in the first centuries of the Christian era, +byssus fabrics, which may have been a by-product of pearl fisheries in +the Persian Gulf, appeared in the Mediterranean countries. + +Here, then, is an animal living within what passed for a vegetable +that was “rooted in earth,” and that produced a substance later known +as marine wool. But how did the Adriatic mollusk and its tenant crab +become a lamb-tenanted gourd, or a veritable sheep attached to the soil +by a fleshy stem, in the plains of Asiatic Scythia? And how did this +tiny partnership of the sea floor become in turn a phœnix-like creature +of the air and the grisly Yedua, man-monster of Talmudic legend? +The process illustrates the part that travel tale, the carrying of +confused reports from place to place, has in creating myth. Though the +fable grew up in the Roman Orient and reached China only through such +reports, the superior historical sense of the Chinese has made their +annals the key to its meaning. + +The first Chinese record in point, not later than A. D. 220, speaks +of a fine cloth in the Roman Orient “said by some to originate from +the down of a water sheep.” This may be inference from the almost +contemporary phrase of Alciphron, the Greek sophist, who calls byssus +textiles “woolen stuffs out of the sea.” In the sixth century Procopius +recites that each of the five hereditary satraps of Armenia had from +the Roman emperor a golden-hued cloak made from “wool gathered out of +the sea.” In an account by the Arab Istakhri, written about A.D. 950, +it is said that an animal runs out of the sea and rubs itself against +the rocks, “whereupon it deposes a kind of wool of silken texture and +golden color.” Robes of this, worn by the Ommiad princes at Cordova, +were valued at a thousand gold pieces each. + +By etymological error and a device of ancient trade, the mollusk, which +had already become a water sheep, got itself wings. Pinna, its name, is +also the classic Latin word for “feather,” an ambiguity which may have +confused the Arabs; and the filaments of the shellfish are rather like +the plumage of fowls. Byssus weaves were held at so high a price that +they were counterfeited in feather fabrics, and to promote their sale +the discovery of a wonderful bird was at length announced. The Arab, +Kazwini, calls it _abu baraquish_ and pictures it as like the stork; +but “every hour its plumage glitters in another color, red, yellow, +green and blue.” The fabric from its plumage is named “phœnix-feather +gold” in a Chinese work of the Mongol period. Skilled artisans, it is +related, weave a soft golden brocade from the neck feathers of the +phœnix, which in the spring drop to the foot of the mountains. These +were probably the feathered headskins of peacocks, which in China are +still made into jackets. + +When the _Annals_ of the T’ang Dynasty (618-906) were compiled, the +water sheep had become a land animal of Syria, or Fu-lin as that +country was called. Here is the Chinese account: “There are lambs +engendered in the soil. The inhabitants wait till they are going to +sprout, then build enclosures around as a preventive measure for wild +beasts that might rush in from outside and devour them. The umbilical +cord of the lambs is attached to the soil, and when forcibly cut off +they will die. The people, donning cuirasses and mounted on horseback, +beat drums to frighten them. The lambs shriek from fear and thus their +umbilical cord is ruptured. Thereupon they set out in search of water +and pasture.” + +It was part of the tradition of the marine sheep that it yielded its +fleece of its own accord, and this was carried over into the later +Chinese story that the Scythian or Syrian lamb must itself rupture the +umbilical cord, which others could not sever without killing it. The +appearance of men in armor to frighten it to this end is elucidated +by a passage from the thirteenth-century Arab traveler, Abul Abbas. +After the pinna comes ashore and lets its wool escape, he records, it +is pounced upon by large crabs. In the Chinese story, these crabs have +become men on horseback and their shells are the cuirasses worn by the +horsemen. + +A debased version of the same story appears in the Mongol period when +a thirteenth-century Chinese traveler describes the “sheep planted on +hillocks” in the countries of the western sea. The umbilical cord of a +sheep is planted and watered. At the time of the first thunder peals it +begins to grow. When matured, the creature is frightened by the sound +of wooden instruments and, breaking off the cord that attaches it to +the ground, roams about in search of herbage. This was the tale Odoric +and Maundeville heard; that the lamb was inclosed in a gourd may have +been their own invention, or the report of some early attempt to relate +it to the cotton pod, which about a generation ago was conjectured to +be the basis of the fable. + +“Creatures called Lords of the Field are regarded as beasts,” says +the Talmud. The same creature is also called the Man of the Mountain. +“It draws its food out of the soil by means of the umbilical cord; if +its navel be cut, it cannot live,” says Simeon a thirteenth-century +rabbi. In the detailed portrait by Rabbi Meir the timid vegetable lamb +undergoes a wolfish transformation: “There is an animal styled Yedua, +with the bones of which witchcraft is practiced. It issues from the +earth like the stem of a plant, just as a gourd. In all respects the +Yedua has human form in face, body, hands, and feet. No creature can +approach within the tether of the stem, for it seizes and kills all. As +far as the stem stretches, it devours the herbage all around. Whoever +is intent on capturing this animal must not approach it, but tear at +the cord until it is ruptured, whereupon the animal soon dies.” + +Laufer thinks that the Jewish legend is early Christian allegory +misunderstood; that the Man of the Mountain is “the lamb that stood on +the mount Sion,” a symbol of the Church itself the followers of which +are attached to the earth by sensual pleasures; and that the mounted +horsemen of the Chinese version, who cause the lambs to break their +connection with the earth, may be the two hundred thousand horsemen of +Revelation that symbolize the Last Judgment. + + +_Gold-guarding Ants_ + +Bits of turquoise, chips of obsidian arrow heads, and fragments of +prehistoric jewelry are found in the little heaps of earth which ants +bring up from underground on the sites of vanished cities in New +Mexico. On the Pajarito plateau ant-gold is not unknown. Ant-gold is +the theme of one of the most circumstantial and puzzling stories told +by ancient travelers. Herodotus lays its scene somewhere near Cabul. +The Indians of that district send forth men in search of gold into a +sandy desert “where live great ants in size somewhat less than dogs, +but bigger than foxes.” A number of these were caught by hunters and +sent to the Persian king. The ants live underground and, “like the +Greek ants, which they very much resemble in shape, throw up sand-heaps +as they burrow.” + +There is gold in the sand, but the ants are formidable enemies and +fleet in pursuit. So the Indians harness a female camel between two +males, and the female is one that has lately dropped a foal. The inroad +is timed so that the caravans arrive when the sun is hottest and the +ants are hiding from the heat. Herodotus continues: + +“The Indians fill their bags with the sand and ride away at full speed; +the ants, however, scenting them, as the Persians say, rush forth in +pursuit. Now these animals are so swift, they declare, that there +is nothing in the world like them; if it were not, therefore, that +the Indians get a start while the ants are mustering, not a single +gold-gatherer could escape. During the flight the male camels grow +tired and begin to drag; but the females recollect the young which they +have left behind, and never flag. Thus, say the Persians, the Indians +get most of their gold.” + +In substance the story is repeated in the letter which Prester John +sent to the Pope in the twelfth century. The “emmet valley” also +appears in the _Arabian Nights_. Megasthenes said that the plain +tenanted by the monster ants is three thousand stadiæ in circumference +and lies eastward in the mountains in the kingdom of the Dardæ. In +winter the ants dig holes and pile the auriferous earth in heaps at the +pit mouths. Pliny declares the ants are of the color of cats and the +size of Egyptian wolves; that they work in winter and are despoiled +in summer. “The horns of the Indian ant,” he remarks, “fixed up in +the temple of Hercules at Erythræ were objects of great wonderment.” +Nearchus, admiral of Alexander, reports having seen skins of these +ants as large as leopard skins. Ctesias speaks in his _Persica_ of a +horse-pismire which was fed by the magi and became of such monstrous +size that it took two pounds of meat a day to victual it. As late as +the sixteenth century there is a story by Busbequius that the Shah of +Persia sent one of the Indian ants as a present to Sultan Soliman at +Constantinople. Maundeville transfers the whole scene to Taprobane +(Ceylon) and varies the incidents: Men do not enter ant-land but send +thither mares to which empty vessels are suspended. “It is Pismire +nature that they let nothing be empty among them, but anon they fill +it, and so they fill those Vessels with Gold.” When the foals neigh in +the distance their dams return to them with a golden burden. + +What were these ants, and whence the fable? + +It will be noted that the griffins were cast in a similar rôle in +another Indian gold quest. It may be accepted that good-sized animals, +or the skins of animals, were seen in menageries, museums, and temples, +and identified with the ant custodians of the Scythian metal. It +has been suggested that these were some other burrowing animal--the +anteater, or the marmot; but neither is fleet of foot. M. de Weltheim +thought the Herodotoan ant might be the corsac, a small Asiatic fox. + +Philology has a word to offer. The gold collected on the plains of +Little Tibet is popularly known as _pippilika_, or “ant gold,” from +the belief that ants bring it up, or bare the veins which carry it. +McCrindle asserts that the gold-diggers were neither ants nor other +animals, but “Tibetan miners, who, like their descendants of the +present day, preferred working their mines in winter when the frozen +ground stands well and is not likely to trouble them by falling +in.” Thus the raid and retreat would be accomplished with the same +expedition with which any tribe would make a sudden foray on another +tribe equipped with equal ordnance and cavalry. Metaphor still speaks +of the miner as a mole or a human ant. + + +_The Questing Beast_ + +In _Le Morte d’Arthur_, Malory describes a singular animal with an +economy of phrase that whets curiosity. Arthur had had a heavy dream +of griffins and serpents that devoured his land, and to put it out of +his mind he went a-hunting. And he followed a white hart until his +horse fell dead under him and his quarry was embushed. “He set him down +by a fountain, and there he fell in great thoughts. And as he sat him +so, him thought he heard a noise of hounds, to the sum of thirty. And +with that the king saw coming toward him the strangest beast that ever +he saw or heard of; so the beast went to the well and drank, and the +noise was in the beast’s belly like unto the questyng of thirty couple +hounds; but all the while the beast drank there was no noise in the +beast’s belly; and therewith the beast departed with a great noise, +whereof the king had great marvel.” + +Followed a knight hight Pellinore, and sought to borrow the king’s +horse to pursue this animal, and the king would have taken over his +quest for a twelvemonth, but he would not. After Pellinore’s death it +is Palomides that rides across the pages of romance, well in the rear +of the questing beast. + + +_The Beasts of Revelation_ + +The beasts of Revelation were but symbols; yet they moved like +realities through the imagery of the Church, and, undergoing a sea +change, appeared alive in the distant Atlantic Islands of Irish epic. +St. John beheld the shapes of locusts like unto horses prepared for +battle; “and their faces were as the faces of men, and they had hair as +the hair of women, and they had tails like unto scorpions.” He saw also +a beast coming up out of the earth; “and he had two horns like a lamb, +and he spake as a dragon.” Above all, John saw the beast that came up +out of the sea, a leopard with the feet of a bear and the mouth of a +lion, and with the dragon’s authority; and the beast had seven heads +and ten horns, “and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.” The Whore of +Babylon rode this beast--composite of seven mountains and ten kings, +the text explains--to world power and to downfall; and rode on into +literature, and an unending controversy. + + +_American Contributions_ + +Animal elders are America’s main contribution to the collection +of fabulous beasts. The Indian believed that every species had a +giant ancestor like itself in form, but with supernatural powers to +protect it. Hunters who killed more animals than they needed for food +felt the vengeance of the elder beasts. The latter gave a tribe its +medicine, and themselves became totems. They are sometimes represented +as in human form and living in stately lodges. The Pacific coast of +South America has also stories of a house-haunting ram, a repulsive +tree-dweller, a water-monster resembling a distended cowskin, and a +creature with the head of a heifer and the body of a sheep. + +According to members of the Forest Service, American lumberjacks have +their own mythology. Product of camp-fire chaff and a whimsical humor, +the creatures that people it are noted here only because, both in name +and in nature, they illustrate the traditional instinct for composites +that elsewhere has wrought to more serious ends. They include the +tote-road shagamaw, with the head of a lion, the forepaws of a bear +and the hind legs of a moose; the splinter cat, which crushes hollow +trees in search of raccoons; the hugag, with buffalo body and jointless +legs, which sleeps leaning against a tree; the sausage-like wapaloosie, +which lives on fungi; the billdad, which kills fish with its tail; the +gumberoo, which explodes when it gets too near a fire; the snoligoster, +a spiked and legless crocodile, and the lachrymose squonk. A common +human figure in these tales is the grotesque giant, Paul Bunyan. + + +_The Prodigies of Heraldry_ + +In the later totemism, which is called heraldry, the following fabulous +creatures with human, animal, or bird attributes, or an admixture of +all of these, were represented on crests and coats of arms: allerion, +chimera, cockatrice, dragon, griffin, harpy, hydra, lyon-dragon, +lyon-poisson, mermaid, montygre, martlet, opinicus, pegasus, sphinx, +sagittary, satyr, tarask, tityrus, unicorn, wyvern, winged lyon, winged +bull. + +Several of these are noted elsewhere in this study, and a word will +serve for the rest. The allerion is an eagle without beak or claws. The +chimera, says Bossewell, is “a beast or monstre having thre heades, +one like a Lyon, an other like a Goate, the third like a Dragon.” The +hydra is a seven- or nine-headed water serpent. The lyon-dragon is +a composite of a lion and a dragon, and the lyon-poisson of a lion +and a fish. The martlet is a swallow without feet. The opinicus is a +composite of camel, dragon, and lion. The pegasus is a winged horse. +The sphinx is a figure with a woman’s head and breasts, a lion’s body, +and usually eagle’s wings. The sagittary is the centaur of antiquity +with the head, arms, and body of a man from the waist up, united to +the body and legs of a horse. The heraldic satyr has a human face, a +leonine body, and the horns and tail of an antelope. The tarask is a +dragon-basilisk on the shield of Tarascon. “The tityrus is ingendred +between a sheep and a buck-goat,” says Guillim. The wyvern is a +serpentine dragon with a long tail and only two legs. The winged lyon +is an achievement of Venice, the winged bull a memory of Assyria. + +Other heraldic creatures, not so well authenticated, are mentioned +by Randle Holme in his _Academy of Armory_. These include the +ass-bittern, the cat-fish, the devil-fish, the dragon-tyger, the +dragon-wolf, the falcon-fish with a hound’s ear, the friar-fish, the +lamya, compounded of a woman, a dragon, a lion, a goat, a dog, and a +horse; the lyon-wyvern, the minocane or homocane, half child and half +spaniel dog; the ram-eagle, the winged satyr-fish, and the wonderful +pig of the ocean. + +The menagerie of blazonry has been enlarged by representing nearly +all of the animals at times with fish-tails, when they are said to be +marined. The zodiacal sign of the capricorn, shown as half goat and +half fish, is a familiar example. Sometimes the sea-horse is drawn as +an enlarged hippocampus, sometimes with the forequarters of a horse and +a fish tail. Griffins and unicorns are marined in German heraldry. + + + + +Chapter VI. Fable upon Wings + + +For the most part the winged creatures of fable are exiles from +mythologies broken down or forgotten. They are imperfect and confused +embodiments of the phenomena of the heavens. In them one sees, what the +men who repeated stories about them did not see, the diurnal journeys +of the sun into the west, the shadowing storm-cloud, the lightning +flash, the fury of evil winds, the hail, and the snow. But the poetry +of the air, of which these creatures are the flying shreds, is weighted +with terrestrial prose. Extinct birds of colossal size, prehistoric +winged reptiles, and the bones of fossil mammals are reflected in +the shapes of cloudland. Few of the creatures that hover there can +be called fowls at all; their wings carry bodies that belong upon +the earth. Thus Pliny, in one of the most flagrant of his carelessly +credulous passages, makes the casual statement that Ethiopia produces +“horses with wings, and armed with horns, which are called pegasi.” +Because of its human affinities the dragon must be considered by itself. + + +_The Phœnix_ + +Of the phœnix, a true fowl of legend and its most renowned, Maundeville +has a vivacious picture. This bird, he says, “is not much more big than +an Eagle, but he hath a Crest of Feathers upon his Head more great than +the Peacock hath; and his Neck is yellow after the Colour of an Oriel +that is a fine shining Stone; and his Beak is coloured blue as Azure; +and his wings be of purple Colour, and the Tail is yellow and red, cast +in streaks across his Tail. And he is a full fair Bird to look upon, +against the Sun, for he shineth full gloriously and nobly.” + +Other men were not so sure about the phœnix. Herodotus said he had +never seen it and Pliny declared he was “not quite certain that its +existence is not all a fable.” Herodotus, however, had seen its +picture, and the Maundeville account is copied from him. + +The bird was Arabian, its legend Egyptian. It was said that there +was only one phœnix in the world, and that it appeared at very long +intervals. The Roman Senator, Manlius, wrote that no person had seen +it eat since its food was air, that in Arabia it was sacred to the +sun, and that its lifetime was five hundred and forty years. When +stricken with age it built a nest of cassia and sprigs of frankincense +and lay down to die; from its bones and marrow issued a worm which in +time changed into a small bird. The first duty of the new bird was to +perform the obsequies of its predecessor, and carry the nest containing +its myrrh-swathed remains to the City of the Sun in Egypt, placing it +upon the altar of that divinity. + +According to the more familiar account, when the phœnix is full of +years it flies to Heliopolis, sings its own dirge there, flaps its +wings to fan the funeral pyre, and presently is utterly consumed; the +next day emerges the new bird, fully feathered; and on the third day, +its wings well grown, it salutes the priest and returns to the East. +Still another account has it that in its old age the bird casts itself +on the ground, receiving a mortal wound, and the new bird issues from +the ichor. + +In the censorship of the Emperor Claudius what purported to be a phœnix +was brought to Rome and exhibited in the Comitium, but it was adjudged +an imposture. Plutarch ventures the daring statement that “the brain of +the phœnix is a pleasant bit, but that it causeth the headache.” He may +have meant the golden pheasant, or even wine from cocoanuts, but it is +said that Heliogabalus made a fruitless attempt to secure this unique +tidbit for his table. + +Popular art reflects the phœnix legend, metaphor still more. It is +the favorite symbol of self-regeneration. The burned city, the ruined +country or cause, “rises like the phœnix from its own ashes.” Jesus, +whose death coincided with one of the reported flights of the fowl to +Egypt, was called the Phœnix by monastic writers, and St. Clement of +Alexandria cites the fowl as proof that the dead will rise again. Its +effigy was taken over from the pagan urn by the Christian sarcophagus. +Browne, however, thought that the notion of a solitary phœnix was +repugnant to Scripture, “because it infringeth the benediction of +God concerning multiplication.” At one time its image hung before +chemists’ shops because of its association with alchemy. Sometimes the +Arabs confused it with the salamander and pictured the latter as a bird. + +The relation of the phœnix to astronomical reckoning gives a clue to +the legend. It reappeared, according to some authors, at intervals of +250, 500, 654, 1,000, 1,461 or even of 7,006 years, but the accepted +Phœnix Period or Cycle was 540 years, and Egypt reports having seen the +fowl five times, the first in the reign of Sesostris, and the last time +in A.D. 334. This relates the appearances of the phœnix to the Great +Year, which Hardouin says is 532 years. + +It was an ancient belief that the same aspect of heaven and order +of the stars that had prevailed when the world began recurred +every 532 years, and that at one of these periods, with all the +planets in conjunction or all the stars returned to the same point +in the ecliptic, the world would be destroyed; or else that it +would perish and revive again to go through the same sequence of +celestial phenomena. The phœnix, self-regenerating, sun-dedicated, +westward-winging, arrayed in the gold and purple of dawn and twilight, +seems to be an obscure form of the sun myth; and this inference is +strengthened by the fact that at Heliopolis a bird called the bennu +was a symbol of the Egyptians for the rising sun. It was a heron which +“created itself” and rose in a “fragrant flame” over a sacred tree. +Bennu in Egyptian and phœnix in Greek are the same word, and signify +the palm tree. + + +_The Fung-wang_ + +There was a Chinese phœnix called the fung-wang which at long intervals +and only in the reigns of upright monarchs emerged from the deserts. +Six feet high, with plumage reflecting the five colors that the Chinese +recognized--red, white, yellow, azure, and black--it was something +like an immense bird of paradise. It was called the chief of the three +hundred and sixty kinds of birds, and classed with the dragon and the +unicorn as a spiritual creature. On its poll appeared the Chinese +character for uprightness, on its back that for humanity, while its +wings enfolded the character for integrity. Its low notes were bell +tones, and its high like those of a drum. When you play the flute, +in nine cases out of ten the fung-wang comes to hear, says the _Shu +King_. It frequented only groves and gardens and would not peck living +grass. The _Bamboo Books_ record its visits as far back as 2647 B.C. +The emperor in whose reign it first showed itself recast his cabinet so +that officers bore the names of birds, and the Minister of the Calendar +was called the Phœnix. “Another example of an interesting and beautiful +species of bird which has become extinct within historic times,” rashly +concludes Gould. + + +_Flying Serpents of Araby_ + +Another winged creature besides the phœnix sought to go out of Arabia +into Egypt, but its passage was opposed. This was the flying serpent. +Herodotus says he went to “a certain place in Arabia” to ask about +it. He saw the backbones and ribs of these reptiles in inconceivable +number, piled in a gorge, and learned why they got no further. They +are met in this place by “the birds called ibises, who forbid their +entrance and destroy them all.” Hence the Egyptians hold the ibis in +reverence. + +Josephus uses the incident as basis of a story about Moses that is not +in the Pentateuch. The Ethiopians had successfully invaded the land of +Egypt, and an oracle advised the defenders to choose for their general +Moses the Hebrew. His choice pleased the scribes of both nations--the +Egyptian because they apprehended that Moses would be slain, and the +Jewish because they expected that he would be the instrument of their +deliverance. The line of march lay through the country of winged +serpents, powerful and mischievous creatures that came out of the +ground unseen or fell upon men from the air. But Moses “made baskets +like unto arks of sedges, and filled them with ibes, and carried them +along with him, which animals are the greatest enemies to serpents +imaginable, for these fly from them when they come near them, and as +they fly they are caught and devoured.” So Moses passed on unscathed, +and into the heart of an Ethiopian princess through whose aid her +father’s forces were routed. + +After centuries of discussion the sacred ibis of the Egyptians was +finally identified by the traveler Bruce with the bird the Abyssinians +call Father John; but the winged serpents have not been satisfactorily +explained. It has been suggested that what Herodotus saw in the Arabian +gorge was the remains of a locust invasion--a difficult surmise, +although Pliny reports that the legs and wings of grasshoppers three +feet long were dried in the sun and used by the Indians for saws. + + +_The Roc_ + +The case for the roc--a creature unknown to either Greek or Roman +legend--rests mainly upon three beguiling names of travel tale. These +are Aladdin and Sindbad of the _Arabian Nights_, and Marco Polo of the +_Diversities_. By the magic of his lamp Aladdin, the wayward gamin of a +Chinese city, had won a princess and a palace; and he had poisoned the +African magician who sought to use him as a tool and then to take the +lamp from him. Bent on vengeance, the magician’s brother stabbed a holy +woman with the very un-Chinese name of Fatima, disguised himself in her +habiliments and won entrance into the palace of Aladdin and into the +confidence of his princess. The latter asked the false Fatima what she +thought of her residence, and this was the reply. + +“My opinion is that if a roc’s egg were hung up in the middle of the +dome, this hall would have no parallel in the four quarters of the +world, and your palace would be the wonder of the universe.” + +“My good mother,” said the princess, “what is a roc, and where may one +get an egg?” + +“Princess,” replied the pretended Fatima, “it is a bird of prodigious +size, which inhabits the summit of Mount Caucasus; the architect who +built your palace can get you one.” + +The princess consulted Aladdin, and, retiring to his apartment, he +rubbed the lamp; when a genie appeared, he bade him procure the roc’s +egg. Whereupon the hall shook as if about to fall, and the genie +exclaimed in a loud and terrible voice, “Is it not enough that I and +the other slaves of the lamp have done everything for you, but you, by +an unheard-of ingratitude, must command me to bring my master and hang +him up in the midst of this dome? The attempt deserves that you, the +princess, and the palace should be immediately reduced to ashes; but +you are spared because this request does not come from yourself.” Then +he told of the presence of a conspirator in the household. Aladdin’s +killing of the latter is the final episode of the tale, the fortunate +adventurer and his spouse soon mounting the throne of China. + +Sindbad encountered the parent bird on his second voyage, after he +had been abandoned on an island; and first he saw its egg. He mistook +the egg for a white dome of prodigious height and extent and found it +fifty paces around and too smooth to climb to the top. All of a sudden +the sky became dark as by a thick cloud and a huge bird came flying +toward him. It alighted on the egg, and Sindbad, creeping close to the +shell, tied himself by his turban to one of its legs, which was as big +as the trunk of a tree. The next morning he hoped the roc would carry +him away. Nor was his hope disappointed, and after an immense journey +in the air--quite from Madagascar to India--the bird alighted in the +Valley of Diamonds. There Sindbad disengaged himself, only to fall into +other adventures. + +Marco Polo was the first veracious traveler to bring to the west a +report of the roc, and he was careful to state that he did not see +the bird; he only heard of it. The roc, he said, comes to Madagascar +from the south. It resembles the eagle, but is so much larger that +it can carry away an elephant. “Persons who have seen the bird,” he +continues, “assert that when the wings are spread they measure sixteen +paces [forty feet] from point to point, and that the feathers are eight +paces [twenty feet] long and thick in proportion.” Messer Marco guessed +that these creatures might be griffins, half birds and half lions, and +particularly questioned those who claimed to have seen them. No, was +the reply, they were fowls altogether. Kublai Khan sent messengers to +Madagascar to confirm the story. They brought back, as Marco heard, +“a feather of the roc positively affirmed to have measured ninety +spans, and the quill part to have been two palms in circumference.” The +delighted khan sent valuable gifts. + +Two centuries afterward the roc reappears in the narrative of Father +Joano dos Santos, a Portuguese Dominican friar traveling in eastern +Ethiopia. He tells of a fellow Portuguese faring inland in Madagascar +to purchase ivory, and leading a large monkey on a chain. This he +fastened to the trunk of a tree and lay down to rest; a monstrous bird +snatched up both the monkey and the tree and flew away. The Shoshones +have a story of an owl which carries men away to its island larder. +Mewan legend speaks of the cannibal bird Yel-lo-kin with wings like +pine trees which snatched children by the top of the head and bore them +through the hole in the middle of the sky to its nest on the other side. + +While the roc belongs to nature myth, matter-of-fact has a word to +say. The extinct dodo is recalled, which, however, could not fly. The +feather brought to Kublai, and the monstrous stump of a roc’s quill +which it is said was brought to Spain by a merchant from the China +seas, may have been taken from a species of palm growing in Madagascar +which has quill-like fronds. Southern Madagascar is frequented by very +large birds--the albatross with a wing-spread of fifteen feet, and the +condor, which may measure more than ten from tip to tip. + +Everybody in the east believed that the roc, or more correctly the +rukh, really existed. When the utmost depths of Arabic credulity +are sounded, one reaches the probable basis of a legend into the +superstructure of which exaggerated details of natural history have +been built. One Arab writer says the length of the roc’s wings is ten +thousand fathoms, or nearly twelve miles, and these dimensions would +make a fair-sized storm cloud. A Chinese tale describes the bird as +a fowl which in its flight obscures the sun, and of whose quills +“water-tuns” are made. One of the riders of the roc in another tale +from the _Thousand and One Nights_ is admonished to stop his ears from +the wind, “lest thou be dazed by the noise of the revolving sphere and +the roaring of the seas.” It is shrewdly surmised that the roc is the +storm cloud and the egg it covers is the sun--true master of the slaves +of Aladdin’s lamp. + + +_The Rhinoceros of the Air_ + +Another monstrous fowl, the rhinoceros of the air, was reported in +mediæval travel and still commands the faith of the Samoyeds. Purchas +abstracts the description given by Andrea Corsali in his Abyssinian +travels. The bird is much bigger than an eagle and has a bow-fashioned +bill or beak four feet long, with a horn between the eyes streaked +with black. “It is a cruel fowle and attends on battels and campes.” +The Siberian myth gives this winged rhinoceros gigantic dimensions. +The tusks and bones of the great pachyderms, found in the tundras, are +thought by native hunters to be the beaks and talons of monster birds. +The nearest approach of fact to the Abyssinian prodigy is perhaps the +horned screamer, or unicorn bird, whose cries “resembling the bray of a +jackass, but shriller,” unpleasantly disturbed for the naturalist Bates +the solitude of the Brazilian forest. + + +_The Harpies_ + +Those forbidding sister groups, the gorgons, the sirens, and the +harpies, are perhaps different aspects of the storm clouds and the +storm wind--the baleful lightning, the shrieking sea gales, the violent +gusts that snatch (_harpazo_) away soul and body. Of the three, the +gorgons and sirens will be left within the domain of nature myths. +The harpies may be migrants from the religions of Egypt, in which +Nekhbet, the vulture-goddess, is sometimes represented as a woman with +a vulture’s head, and the soul is depicted as a human-headed bird +fluttering from the mouths of the dying. Yet they have that savor +of the soil, that touch of the grotesque, that suggestion of coarse +reality that belong rather to travel tale. Though with woman faces, +their attributes are animal. + +Hesiod describes them as maidens, winged and golden-haired, who +harassed the blind King Phineus at his banquets. The myth is retold +in grosser form in the story of the Argonauts, whence these sisters, +driven away by the comrades of Jason, make their flight to the Æneid +and find roost in an isle where the Trojans cast anchor. The picture +Virgil drew of them superseded the more flattering accounts of poets +before him, and the immense vogue of this poet in later ages led +the romancers of the Charlemagne cycle to adopt his report without +abatement. + +The harpies of Virgil are, as the poet Morris pictures them, “dreadful +snatchers,” like women down to the breast, with scanty, coarse black +hair, dim eyes ringed with red, bestial mouths, gnarled necks, and +birds’ claws. Their faces are pale with hunger. When the Trojans slay +the island cattle and prepare meat for a feast, the birds swoop down +with a horrible clamor, seize part of the meat, and defile the rest. +Nimbly they dodge the Trojan swords, and their feathers are like +steel mail. From a cliff they reproach the visitors for slaying their +cattle and warring upon them, and as Æneas departs they shriek direful +predictions after him. + +In the legends of Charlemagne the bird-sisters reappear when Astolpho, +cousin of Orlando, reaches Abyssinia riding the hippogrif. Here is +another blind king, like Phineus, “prey to a flock of obscene birds +called harpies, which attacked him whenever he sat at meat, and with +their claws snatched, tore, and scattered everything, overturning the +vessels, devouring the food, and infecting what they left with their +filthy touch.” They are put to flight with one blast of Astolpho’s horn +and driven by him and his hippogrif into a cavern, the entrance of +which he blocked up so that they are seen no more. + +That is, so far as the romancer of that time knew. They reappeared in +the New World on the Isthmus of Darien, where Balboa was pursuing, +amid the fens of a haunted land, the adventure of the mines of Dobayba +and the elusive golden temple. The Indians told him there had been +a horrible tempest, and when they ventured forth again they found +that two monstrous creatures had come in with the storm. They were +apparently a mother and her daughter. They had woman faces and eagle +claws and wings; the branches of the trees where they perched broke +with their weight. Swooping down, they would seize a man and carry him +away to the hilltops to devour him. At last the natives killed the +older bird by a stratagem, and, suspending her body from their spears, +bore it from town to town to appease the alarm of their people. The +younger harpy disappeared. + +Natural history has given the name of harpy to a buzzard, an eagle, +a fly, and two species of bats. Neither of the last named, however, +is the vampire bat of which Bates has left a portentous portrait. +Its spread of wing is nearly two and a half feet. “Nothing in animal +physiognomy can be more hideous than the countenance of this creature +when viewed from the front; the large, leathery ears standing out from +the sides and top of the head, the erect, spear-shaped appendage on the +top of the nose, the grin and the glistening black eye, all combining +to make up a figure that reminds one of some mocking imp of fable.” It +seems to be fact that villages in Central America have been abandoned +because of the nocturnal attacks of this animal. Dampier professes to +have seen on an island near Sebo bats “with bodies as big as ducks and +with a wing spread of eight feet.” The custom of nailing up dead bats +as witch-or-devil forms is common. “An animal,” says Buffon, “which, +like the bat, is half quadruped and half bird, and which, in fact, is +neither the one nor the other, is a kind of monster.” He suggests that +“the wings, the teeth, the claws, the voracity; the nastiness, and all +the destructive qualities and noxious faculties of the harpies bear no +small resemblance to those of the Ternat bat.” + + +_The Stymphalian Birds_ + +The Stymphalian birds, according to Greek legend, frequented a lake +in the northeast of Arcadia, which lay on the main route from Argolis +and Corinth westward. To disperse or destroy them was the sixth labor +of Hercules. These birds were anthropophagous, used their feathers as +arrows, and were equipped with brazen claws, wings, and feet. Diodorus +has a milder account in which they figure merely as voracious poachers +of the fruits of the neighborhood. With a brazen pan the hero made such +an uproar that they flew away, appearing again, in the story of the +Argonauts, as tenants of the island of Aretias. + +Pausanias visited the township of Stymphalus in his tour of Greece. +He describes a temple to Artemis Stymphalia standing there, and the +figures of the birds Stymphalides under its roof; behind the temple +were marble statues of young women with the legs of fowls. The birds, +he says, are as large as cranes, but resemble the ibis save that they +have stronger beaks and less curved; so, indeed, they are represented +on coins of Stymphalus. Herodotus rationalizes the legend by intimating +that their feathery arrows were, in truth, hail or snow. + + +_The Cockatrice_ + +“The weaned child,” said Isaiah, prophesying the good time coming, +“shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den.” The cockatrice was a +monster with the head and plumage of a cock and a barbed serpent’s +tail, and so it is represented in heraldry. The word is an old French +corruption of the Latin for crocodile, but popular etymology attributed +the name to the fact that the prodigy was hatched from an aged cock’s +egg by a serpent. Because of the crest crowning its head it is also +called a basilisk, from the Greek _basilikos_, or “little king.” + +Its habitat was Africa. It was horrid to look upon and its glance +and breath were alike fatal, while its voice struck terror to other +serpents. Its own image, reflected in a mirror, would kill it. The +basilisk of Cyrene, Pliny said, was not more than twelve fingers in +length, but it destroyed all shrubs save the rue, and consumed grasses +and shattered stones merely by breathing upon them. “He infecteth the +water that he cometh neare,” according to Leigh. It was believed that +if a horseman killed a basilisk with a spear-thrust, its poison would +ascend the weapon and destroy not only the rider, but his mount. Even +its dead body hung in a temple kept swallows from building and spiders +from spinning there. However, if a man saw the basilisk first, he went +scatheless and the creature itself might die, while women could seize +it without suffering harm. The effluvium of the weasel and the crow +of the cock were alike fatal to it. Travelers passing near its haunts +sometimes took a cock along. + +While its deadly nature has persisted, the shape of the cockatrice has +changed. To the ancients it was merely a baleful lizard. Its confusion +in the Middle Ages with the cock gave it feathers and a beak. As soon +as hatched by a toad or snake from a cock’s egg laid in a stable it +hid itself in crevice, cistern, or rafter, for to be seen was to die. +Later the heralds and painters represented it with the head of a hawk, +sometimes even with the head of a man. Its ashes would turn base metals +into gold. People thought that cock’s eggs were used in the devil’s +chrism whereby his anointed hags could assume beast form or ride the +clouds. In Browne’s time there was traffic in counterfeited cockatrices +made by joining the dead bodies of pheasants and serpents, or out of +the skins of thornbacks. The basilisk of natural history, which may +have been the original of the fable, is a harmless creature, although +of frightful aspect. + + + + +Chapter VII. The Dragon + + +The dragon of pagan and early Christian legend was a winged crocodile +with a serpent’s tail. As the word is used by travelers, often a +crocodile or a snake rather than a fabulous composite animal is +intended. There are three animals listed in natural history which +somewhat resemble this creature. The dragon-fly is a frightful-looking +but entirely harmless insect; how the supersession of myth by science +has shifted values is illustrated by the fact that the ninth edition +of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ gives nearly four pages to the insect +and only a dozen lines to the fabulous monster, the destruction of +which in another age was the crowning exploit of gods and men. There is +also a small flying lizard, native to the East Indies, which is called +a dragon and which in miniature is a fair copy of fable. The primeval +world knew a veritable dragon in the pterodactyl, a flying lizard with +a wing span of seventeen feet. + +In the Far East the dragon was a four-legged serpent with rugged head +and spiked ears, and, though without wings, it flew. There was more of +the crocodile in the dragon of the Near East. It had four short paws, a +forked tongue, and bat wings, and fire came from its mouth. The dragon +of heraldry had a squat, scaly body, a head with horny projections, +long clawed legs, a barbed tongue, and bat wings. + +There were four noteworthy things about the dragon. It was watchful, it +spat fire and smoke, it ejected poison, and it had control of water. +The dragon watched the golden apples in the garden of Hesperides where +Hercules found and slew it. It guarded the Valkyrie Brynhild in a +castle on the Glistening Heath. Although ecclesiastics of the Middle +Ages used the word to symbolize sin and particularly pagan worship, +yet until very recent times the world accepted the dragon. The elder +naturalists, such as Gesner and Aldrovandi, picture it in their +works. A mediæval writer says that at the midsummer celebration lads +burned bones and filth to generate a noxious smoke, and so to drive +away dragons, which, excited by the summer heat, copulated in midair, +poisoning the wells and springs by dropping their seed in them. + +For what it is worth there is documentary evidence of dragons in the +Alps, all of it attested by oath. The depositions were gathered early +in the eighteenth century by Prof. Johann Jacob Scheuchzer and are +thus summarized in Francis Gribble’s _Early Mountaineers_: “There are +dragons with and without wings, with and without legs, with and without +crests; dragons with cat faces, with human faces, and with nondescript +faces; dragons that breathe fire and dragons that do not breathe fire.” + +Scheuchzer was impelled to this inquiry when he found there were graven +images of dragons on Swiss public buildings and a “dragon-stone” in +a Lucerne museum. The latter item he says is a jewel cut out of a +dragon’s head in its sleep. If the monster awakes before the operation +is complete, it will die and the stone will vanish. To forestall +awakening, drowsy herbs are scattered about, and sometimes incantations +are muttered. The dragon-stone is a remedy against plague, poison, +dysentery, and nosebleed. Scheuchzer concludes that the Lucerne +dragon-stone is no imposture because it does effect cures, because the +Alps afford many caves for dragon haunts and because of the testimony +of eye-witnesses as above. + +In June, 1673, Joliet and Marquette saw two dragon forms carved +and painted along a bluff that overlooks the Mississippi at Alton, +Illinois. Says Père Marquette: “As we coasted along rocks, frightful +for their height and length, we saw two monsters painted on one of +these rocks, which startled us at first, and on which the boldest +Indian dare not gaze long. They are as large as a calf, with horns on +the head like a deer, a fearful look, red eyes, bearded like a tiger, +the face somewhat like a man’s, the body covered with scales, and the +tail so long that it twice makes a turn of the body, passing over the +head and down between the legs, and ending at last in a fish’s tail. +Green, red, and a kind of black are the colors employed.” + +These outlines, which have been called the highest attainment of early +Indian pictorial art, and which Marquette said the best painters of +France could scarcely equal, became known as the Piasa petroglyph. +Quarrymen destroyed them shortly before the Civil War, but drawings +were made of them by artists who followed descriptions. One surmise is +that they represented the Algonquin thunder bird. + +A copious and curious literature treats of the dragon as a veritable +creature of natural history. According to Ælian, although the +Ethiopians call it the slayer of elephants, it conceals itself when it +hears the noise of the eagle’s wings. When it lies in wait for man or +beast, it consumes deadly roots and herbs. At Lanuvium naked virgins +paid it the annual tribute of a barley cake to insure a fruitful year. +Passing the cave of a sacred Indian dragon, the army of Alexander was +affrighted by hissing and blowing and the apparition of a head with +eyes “of the size of a Macedonian shield.” Artemidorus adds the detail +that the Indian and African dragons have grass growing on their backs. +“You burst asunder vast bulls” is Lucan’s apostrophe. Ignatius reports +that the library of Constantinople had the intestine of a dragon 120 +feet long on which the Iliad and Odyssey were inscribed. + +Chinese reports are very detailed. In the great Materia Medica of +the early seventeenth century it is said that the dragon has nine +resemblances--its head like a camel’s, its horns like a deer’s, its +eyes like a hare’s, its ears like a bull’s, its neck like a snake’s, +its belly like an iguanodon’s, its scales like a carp’s, its claws +like an eagle’s and its paws like a tiger’s. It is whiskered and its +voice resembles the beating of a gong. The dragon, however, cannot hear +itself, for it is deaf. It is fond of gems and jade and excessively +fond of swallow’s flesh; but it dreads iron, beeswax, the mong plant, +the centipede, the leaves of the Pride of India, and silk dyed in the +five colors. It passes the winter in muddy water contemned by the fish +and turtle, and in summer the moles, crickets, and ants annoy it. At +five hundred years it grows horns. “If you do not ride on a dragon,” +says one writer, “you cannot reach the weak waters of Kwan-lun hill.” +Another suggests that if you eat dragon’s flesh soaked in acid “you can +write essays.” + +It was a belief among Chinese that dragons did not die, but merely +sloughed off their bones as a snake its skin. These were used to cure +a variety of diseases and are still sold in apothecaries’ shops. The +records speak of a bone-covered dragon plain east of the hills of +Fang-chang, and of isles where the dragons shed their bodies; “teeth, +horns, spines, feet, it seems as though they are everywhere.” The +identification is perhaps with those deposits of dinosaur and other +paleontological remains which modern exploration has uncovered. + +The naturalistic side of Chinese dragon lore is not far removed +from the position taken by Charles Gould, the stoutest defender of +the literal basis of wonder stories (_Mythical Monsters_, 1886). He +finds nothing impossible in the dragon of tradition and thinks it +more likely that it once lived than that fancy engendered it: “It +was a long, terrestrial lizard, hibernating and carnivorous, which +dragged its ponderous coils and perhaps flew; which devastated herds +and on occasions swallowed their shepherd; which, establishing its +lair in some cavern overlooking the fertile plain, spread terror +and destruction around, and, protected from assault by dread +or superstitious feeling, may even have been subsidized by the +terror-stricken peasantry, who, failing the power to destroy it, may +have preferred tethered offerings of cattle adjacent to its cavern, to +having it come down to seek supplies.” + +But the dragon reached a place in the political and spiritual life of +China such as a mere saurian hardly could attain. The empire was called +“the dragon empire”; the imperial throne, “the dragon throne”; the +emperor’s countenance, “the dragon’s face”; his beard, “the dragon’s +beard.” In pictured effigy, the dragon rears itself upon house fronts +and draws its scaly folds over garments and utensils as well as across +the imperial flag; and there are annual processions of dragon images, +regattas of dragon boats, and sacrificial ceremonies in dragon temples. +To a third of mankind, for five thousand years or more, the dragon has +been the bestower of rain and the great giver of good, and the emperor +its earthly representative. + +As in other matters, China has merely preserved and exaggerated beliefs +which were world-wide. Nearly all of the thrones of earth were once +dragon thrones. On the shield of Agamemnon, king of kings, was “the +unspeakable horror of a dragon glancing backward.” Persians, Parthians +and Scythians had dragon flags and Rome borrowed them for its cohorts. +The dragon flew on the battle standards of German, Celt, and Saxon, +and breasted the foam of the seas as the figurehead of Norse longboats. +In the older Europe, as in the China of to-day, it was carved on house +gables, bells, musical instruments, goblets, weapons, chairs, and +tables. + +Under these world-wide customs, was there only a giant reptile not long +extinct, an inference from fossil remains, some frightful-seeming but +diminutive lizard contemporary with man and magnified a thousand times +by the aberrations of fancy? All of these things there may have been, +for the myth is so complex that its development has been called the +history of civilization. But inevitably speculation had to rise higher +than a saurian to account for phenomena of such consequence; it was +conceived that the dragon was the storm-cloud and he who slew it the +sun. So, it may be, ingenious minds surmised thousands of years before +modern conjecture first spoke of solar myths and found in forgotten +texts not the heart of the thing, but allegories in which ancient solar +mythologists had wrapped it. Or, it was guessed, the dragon typified +the spirit of evil, a power to be placated by sacrifice and politic +devil-worship, but destroyed as opportunity offered. So the world long +thought, and so far as it thinks at all of the dragon, that is what it +thinks now. + +To assume that the myth is an allegory of satanic forces is to explain +much, but does it explain all? Powerful as is the motive of fear, +it is negative. Was it potent enough to coil a dragon at the roots +of all the world’s religions; and when these arose, were men able +to speculate on so abstract a thing as evil and symbolize it as a +composite beast? The Bible narrative begins with the dragon of Genesis +in the Garden of Eden and ends with the dragon of Revelation, “that +old serpent which is the Devil and Satan,” in the bottomless pit. The +slaying of the dragon is the central point of Norse and Saxon epic, +the great deed of the heroes. The water monster of Navaho legend is a +dragon; the elephant-headed thunder god of the Mayan inscriptions is +a dragon deity; the legendary founders of both Athens and Mexico were +dragon-tailed. Snake worship is dragon worship and, like the Midgard +serpent, it encircles the earth. Everywhere the myth is a thing of +thrones and temples. + +Perhaps its secret is to be found, as later in this study it will be +seen that the secret of the Amazon myth is to be found, in the time +when thrones and temples were one. Clues that lead to it are: (1) the +world has still a dragon throne, or rather a recent memory of one; (2) +always in the lore of dragon or serpent, whether as victim, votary, or +mate, appears the figure of a daughter of Eve; (3) the snake is the +badge of Æsculapius and the symbol of healing; (4) the dragon, whether +haunting cloud or pool, is associated with water. + +Woman is the physical source of human life. Water is healing, +fertilizing, and regenerating. Use the Scriptural figure, “the water +of life,” and it relates itself to woman and to the serpent symbol of +the art that lengthens life. When the throne and temple were one, the +creation and continuation of life was the function of the priest-king, +though only in China has his tradition come down to the modern time. +The Chinese emperor was himself the dragon. In the spring festivals of +his people he supplicated heaven for rains that would revive the land, +and in the autumn festivals he rendered thanks for nature’s bounty or +took upon himself the blame for dearth. + +The dragon myth is not a myth of fear, nor was the dragon in the +beginning a personification of evil. It was an expression of the +deepest desire of man, the desire to defeat chance and change, to +repeal “the sad laws of time” and to live forever. Of all myths, that +of the dragon is the fundamental, for the forces with which it deals +are the forces which have impelled man, in a long grapple with destiny, +to construct societies, build religions, and create an art and a +literature. In China both the significance and the origin of the legend +lie almost on the surface. In most other places and at most other times +its meaning has been distorted, inverted, weighted down with fancies +and guesses. As it stands, it is like the fabric of a vision in which +tatters of experience are woven on the looms of sleep by the master +weavers of hope and fear; and in this faded grotesque one may decipher +the eternal dream of mankind. + +The theory which will be interpreted here is that of Grafton Elliot +Smith (_The Evolution of the Dragon_: 1919). It is too sweeping in its +implications and too revolutionary yet to have received the general +sanction of writers upon mythology; but among all dragon theories +it must take precedence because alone it has the elemental breadth +demanded by the phenomena to be accounted for. A difficult thing about +it is that the author rejects the doctrine accepted of the time, that +the same beliefs and practices can arise independently in two or more +places. Unless there is in any case definite evidence to the contrary, +he assumes that “no ethnologically significant innovation in customs or +beliefs has ever been made twice.” It is his contention that the dragon +myth was born in Egypt, developed in Babylonia, and in a time remote +carried to China, India, and the Americas, and to all other parts of +the earth. Granting this, it becomes not merely the one world-epic, but +the proof that, before history began even as now, all races of men were +in effectual contact. + +The primitive custom at the basis of the myth is well established. The +post of priest-king was enviable but dangerous. With each recurring +spring he was expected to bring fertility to his land; but sometimes +he was killed and a successor appointed each year, in imitation of +the death of vegetation that preceded the resurrection of spring; and +always when age overtook him he was slain, for what vital magic over +nature was there left in his aging frame? To avoid this fate a mock +king was erected to suffer in his stead; or a virgin was sacrificed; or +in elaborate mummery a ritual murder was merely simulated. + +Here in their simplest form appear all the elements of the dragon +myth--a king who was thought to control the sources of water and the +fertility of which it was the symbol; a slaying to be accomplished, and +a woman who was at once a fertility symbol and a vicarious sacrifice. +The king himself was the dragon, in its original form just a serpent +symbol of his reputed control over water. + +Thus stated the story is understandable, but it becomes confused and +infinitely complex when it is dramatized in the mythology of ancient +Egypt. A king who through his beneficent irrigation works is identified +with the river Nile is translated by legend into the skies and becomes +the water god Osiris, a member of the earliest Trinity. The second +member of the Trinity, but the first in point of time, is Hathor, +the Great Mother,--at one time identified with the cowry shell, the +earliest form of fertility emblem, and then identified with the moon +and translated into the sky when primitive minds saw the lunar rhythm +repeated in the sex life of woman. The third member of the Trinity is +Horus, the Warrior Sun God, a son of Osiris. How an aging king, not yet +a god, resolved that he would not be slain to make way for a younger +man and called upon the Great Mother, already a goddess, to provide +him with an elixir of life, which was blood, and how, in compliance +with his entreaty, she nearly wiped out mankind before a substitute +was provided--in reality the red waters of the Nile inundation--is +allegorically recited in the ancient Egyptian narrative called the +Destruction of Mankind. + +In this and its companion legends, the Story of the Winged Disk and +the Conflict between Horus and Set, are all the elements of the dragon +saga. It would be futile to recite them in detail, for the thing has +become so confused that in the words of Doctor Smith it amounts to +this: “The early Trinity as the hero, armed with the Trinity as a +weapon, slays the dragon, which is the same Trinity.” But the confusion +has produced a concrete and comprehensible result, a composite +wonder-beast in which are blended parts of real animals that symbolize +both regeneration and destruction and that are the attributes of the +several members of the early Trinity, and of Set, enemy of Horus and +lord of chaos. + +An archaic conception this may seem now, but what is there of the human +or the cosmic that does not lie in it? The desire for unfading youth +and continuing life on one side of the grave or the other is in it, and +that is the heart history of humanity. The conflict between order and +chaos is in it, and that is the story of nature. The theme of vicarious +sacrifice is in it, and that is the deep mystery of religion. There is +that in the tale which impelled the story-tellers of five millenniums +to repeat it, to enrich its incidents and to weave the tissues of new +meanings through it until it was at once a treatise on astronomy, a +theory of meteorology and a philosophy of destiny; a record of the +strife between winter and summer, night and day, justice and injustice, +and good and evil fates, which is the world as men have found it. + +Unquestionably the dragon of classic story and mediæval blazonry is +the devil of Scripture; the biblical identification is complete, +and the bird-like features, leathern wings, and forked tail of this +elemental creature of fable all are reproduced in familiar portraits +of the enemy of mankind. This and the inner meaning of the dragon myth +may be accepted, while its origin in Egypt and dissemination from one +place throughout the world is probable. Doctor Smith, whose contentions +are all-embracing, makes other inferences which here will be outlined +without comment: + +The serpent in the Garden of Eden, the tree of life and Eve herself +are all one. The deluge of Sumerian, Babylonian, and Hebrew legend +is a disastrous Nile inundation dramatized. The ark is the moon-boat +of Hathor. The pig owes its evil name to its identification with +Set, who represents the evil side of the dragon’s nature. The cowry +shell, suspended from the girdle as a fertility emblem and not from +any motives of modesty, became the origin of all clothing. Inland +tribes which had no access to the shore copied the cowry in a plastic +yellow metal, and this was the origin of the world-old quest for gold +and the occasion of its use as money. The object of mummification +was the continuance of life beyond the grave, the purpose in burning +gums and spices was to restore to the mummy the odor and warmth of +life; and these customs, related to each other and to the theme of the +dragon saga, are also related to the development of architecture, sea +trade, and medicine. Jade reached its mystic estate in China and other +lands, because the men who sought gold for cowry amulets in Turkestan +sought jade at the same time for seals, and in popular thought the +two substances became confused. Through a similar confusion, diamonds +attained in India the value they have since had everywhere. Pearls +ranked beside both because they were thought to be particles of moon +substances, emanations of the moon goddess herself. The precious metals +and precious stones became so not because of their rarity or beauty, +but because of their magical power as symbols of the divine actors in +the dragon story. The griffin of legend is merely a tentative dragon. +The mandrake of legend is merely a stranded pearl shell, and the dog +used to extract it from the earth is a terrestrial version of the +Mediterranean dogfish to which had been transferred the demoniac powers +of the sharks that guarded the pearl treasures of the east. With the +dragon began the unending search for the elixir of life. + +These conclusions, some of which offer novel explanations for +enigmatical things noted in this study, are at least a testimony that +the dragon myth has traveled far, and in its travels has become related +to many things. It is the most vital of all growths that have found +root in the fecund soil of the imagination. It is a richly pictorial +history of the groping sublimities of human thought. The dragon is one +of two portraits which man has painted of himself. + + + + +Chapter VIII. Denizens of the Deep + + +Belief that the sea was in every respect like the land, and that its +very waves were only a thicker atmosphere, was the main source of +marine fable. In Celtic story, for example, Manannan sings to Bran that +what he is sailing across is not the sea but a flowery plain, and the +speckled salmon are lambs and calves. Mældune, voyaging over the ocean, +descries beneath him a country with castles, people, and cattle. In +the _Pih T’an_ it is said that in the midst of the waters off Shantung +there is sometimes the misty semblance of a palace, with towered walls +about it, and the appearance of men and carriages and horses busily +engaged; and this is called the Market of the Sea. + +It was long held that every land animal had its counterpart in the +ocean. So there had to be mermen to match the men of the land. Such +names as sea-mice, sea-spiders, sea-kites, sea-hares, sea-dragons, +sea-lions, sea-oxen, and sea-horses, “the grisly wasserman” and “the +horrible sea-satyr,” are the records of old belief. Pliny tells of +a number of strange marine creatures, including elephants and rams, +stranded on a Mediterranean beach, and of others with the heads of +horses, asses, and bulls, which despoiled grain fields beside the +Indian Ocean. The Chinese believed that all domestic animals in the +Roman Orient came out of the sea. Proclaiming that the atmosphere was +only diluted water, De Maillet, a French naturalist of the eighteenth +century, contended that in the ocean was the original type of +everything; that dogs descended from seals and men from tritons, while +parroquets had their brilliant colors from gold, green, and violet +fishes in the sea. There were fierce tribes of men in the north who +seemed to him only lately emerged. + +In classic legend, danger and marvel met mariners upon the strands +along which they sailed in coasting voyages, and there was no need to +go inland for adventure. The sirens sang their shrieking songs by +the water’s edge, the Polyphemus-folk flung masses of rock into the +breakers, and from their island palaces enchantresses kept watch for +passing ships. The voyages of fable were thus a sort of parade between +shores thronged with perilous romance. A writing on the Catalan map of +1375 is in this spirit. In the Spice Islands, it recites, are “three +kinds of sirens--one is half woman, half fish; another is half woman, +half bird; and the third is half woman, half horse.” + +Elder fancy peopled the deep itself with tritons riding sea-horses and +stilling the waves with blasts from their shell trumpets, and with +divine nymphs of great beauty and often of engaging nature, as well as +with singular animals. The legate of Gaul wrote Augustus that a number +of nereids had been found dead on its shore, and men from Olisipo +(Lisbon) brought word to Tiberius that a triton had been heard blowing +a conch shell in a cavern retreat. Sea marvels multiply, but somehow +take on a coarser texture, in the mediæval time. + + +_The Sailors’ Favorite_ + +Among the marine populations the dolphin has always been a favorite +with sailors, as Greek and Roman bas-reliefs and the coins, medals, and +coats of arms of Mediterranean countries bear witness. It was supposed +to be the swiftest of animals; it was fond of men and of music, +particularly that of the water organ; it had a turned-up nose, and +according to Pliny recognized in a surprising manner the name of Simo +(flat-nose) and “preferred to be called by that name rather than any +other.” Ajasson thought it was attracted merely by the hissing sound of +the word. Pliny has a tale of its friendship with mankind which should +have a better ending: + +“A dolphin at Hippo Diarrhytus on the coast of Africa used to receive +his food from the hands of various persons, present himself for their +caresses, sport about among the swimmers, and carry them on his back. +Proconsul Flavianus rubbed him with unguents whose odor rendered him as +if dead, and he kept aloof for months afterward, as though affronted. +But he returned to familiar intercourse later. At last the vexations +that were caused them by having to entertain so many influential men +who came to see this sight, compelled the people of Hippo to put the +animal to death.” + + +_Monster Whales_ + +The ancients held the great cetaceans in terror. The Talmud declares +that it would take a ship three days to sail from the head to the +tail of Leviathan. Pliny speaks of whales in the Indian Ocean nine +hundred feet long, and of others which would cover two acres of +ground. The traditional fear of them is in the account by Nearchus of +his battle--his own word--with a school of whales when he was taking +Alexander’s fleet back from the mouth of the Indus to the Persian Gulf. +The sailors saw columns of foam shooting up from the sea and at first +mistook them for waterspouts. When they learned that these came from +whales, “they were so terrified that the oars fell from their hands.” +But Nearchus rallied them, drew up his ships in order of battle, and at +a given signal dashed toward the monsters. Oars splashed loudly, rowers +shouted, trumpets sang defiance. The astonished whales plunged out of +sight, and his men hailed Nearchus as savior of the fleet. + +Sailors in the Indian Ocean of a later time told of the head of a fish +“that might be compared to a hill; its eyes were like two doors, so +that people could go in at one eye and out at the other.” In these +waters Sindbad’s companions mistook a whale for a green meadow. The +whales of Norse lore carry witches, while the monster that bore +Glooskap, the Algonquin culture hero, could hear the song of clams as +they lay under the sand. + +St. Brendan and his seventeen monkish brethren repeated the Sindbad +adventure when they sailed into the western seas in search of the Isle +of the Blessed. Bearing a lamb without blemish, they landed on a low +island to celebrate the Easter festival. But when a fire was lighted +and the pot set over it, the island began to move, and they fled to +their osier ship. What they had taken for an islet was “the beast +Jasconius, greatest of things that swim, which laboureth night and day +to put his tail in his mouth, but for greatness he may not.” In stories +of this kind in the _Physiologus_ the whale was supposed to represent +the devil, the sea the world, and the ship the human race. + + +_The Kraken_ + +“Oh, silly mariners,” exclaimed Arngrim, “that in digging cannot +discern whale’s flesh from earth!” Bishop Pontoppidan pondered these +accounts and in his _Natural History of Norway_, published in 1752, he +concluded that the whale, large as it was--and science knows no extinct +monster of equal bulk--was not large enough to explain them. These are +not floating islands, but a vast sea-monster called kraken, kraxen, or +krabben. “What the credulous Olaus Magnus writes,” says he, “of the +whale being so large that his back is looked upon as an island, and +that people might land, light fires, and do various kinds of work upon +it, is a notoriously fabulous and ridiculous romance.” No, this is the +kraken, the back of which “seems to be about an English mile and a half +in circumference.” + +People, thinks the bishop, had some imperfect idea of the kraken for +ages back. Pliny heard an obscure account of it in the Gaditanian sea; +he likens it both to a wheel with spokes and to a tree with such large +branches that it could not get through a ship channel. The Kors Trold +or Soe-Drawl which sailors deemed an evil spirit, and which they said +could stop a ship under full sail, must be the kraken, concludes the +Norwegian. + +Pontoppidan draws a spirited picture of this prodigious creature +showing itself among a fleet of fishermen. They are several miles out +at sea on a hot summer day. Their lines should show from eighty to one +hundred fathoms of water under them, but show only twenty or thirty. +Fish are plentiful, above all cod and ling. As fast as the sailors cast +in they draw out their finny prey. They are angling right over the +monster, and his back is the bottom the lines have sounded. Then they +see the water shallowing still further; the kraken is raising himself. +So they hasten out of danger and lie on their oars. + +“In a few minutes,” says the historian, “they see this enormous +monster come up to the surface of the water; he there shows himself +sufficiently, though his whole body does not appear, which in all +likelihood no human eye ever beheld. His back looks at first like a +number of small islands, surrounded with something that floats and +fluctuates like seaweeds; and several bright points or horns appear, +which grow thicker and thicker the higher they rise above the +water. Sometimes they stand up as high and as large as the masts of +middle-sized vessels. These are the creature’s arms, and it is said if +they were to lay hold of the largest man-of-war, they would pull it +down to the bottom. After this monster has been on the surface a short +time, it begins slowly to sink again, causing a whirlpool that draws +down everything with it.” + +Pontoppidan believes the kraken is a polypus, one of the starfish kind. +It has a strong and peculiar scent by means of which it attracts other +fish. Those islands, among the Faroes, that suddenly appear and as +suddenly disappear and that people deem inhabited by evil spirits are +krakens. + +All of which is set down in the famous eighth chapter of the _Natural +History_ which, as its author says, “treats of the Norwegian +Sea-Monsters, or those animals of enormous size and uncommon form +which are sometimes seen in the ocean.” In this chapter the Norse +cleric seeks seemingly to outmatch in the colder seas of Scandinavia +the marvels of the Mediterranean. He makes himself chief sponsor for +the sea-serpent. He describes the trold-fish, or unlucky-fish, that +sailors hasten to throw overboard. He has much to say of mermaids. He +tells of the Maelstrom in the Lofoden district of Nordland--an abyss +which penetrates the globe and issues in the Gulf of Bothnia; “within +a Norway mile of it, boats, ships, and yachts have been carried away.” +Whales are sometimes swept into it, “and then it is impossible to +describe their howlings and bellowings.” + + +_The Sea Serpent_ + +The sea serpent of Pontoppidan has a venerable past and a present of +conjecture and recurrent report. Insensibly a legend has been built up +in the modern time as strange as any in the whole range of fable. Men +say, not “a sea serpent,” but “the sea serpent.” It is assumed that +there is but one, and that for ages it has haunted the deep, appearing +sometimes in the Atlantic, sometimes in the Indian Ocean, sometimes in +the South Pacific--a plesiosaurus, perhaps, wandering the seas, the +lonely survivor of a vanished age. + +Olaus Magnus described the great marine snake--the Soe-Ormen of old +lays--as two hundred feet long and twenty feet around, and as rising up +like a mast before ships and snapping men off their decks. Hans Egede, +the Greenland missionary, saw it in July, 1734. When it reared itself, +its head was higher than the ship’s maintop. When it flattened itself +upon the water, its tail was a ship’s length behind its head. “The +following evening,” says Mr. Egede, “we had very bad weather.” + +From all accounts, Pontoppidan concludes that this monster is of about +the length of a cable, or six hundred English feet. The body is as big +around as two hogsheads. “The head has a high and broad forehead, but +in some a pointed snout, though in others that is flat, like that of +a cow or horse; with large blue eyes like a couple of bright pewter +plates, large nostrils, and several stiff hairs standing out on each +side like whiskers.” Its skin is smooth, except for a mane, like +seaweed. + +These great snakes, the Norse writer declares, haunt the floor of the +North Sea, rising in July and August, their spawning time. The wind is +destructive to them, and they appear only in calms. They cannot face +the sun, and the fisherman may escape them by rowing toward it. Nor can +they endure the smell of castor or asafœtida, and anglers who go out +on Stor Eggen in the summer provide themselves with one or the other. +Sometimes, however, the monster rises under small boats and upsets +them, or throws its heavy folds across vessels even of some hundred +tons burthen, and sinks them. + +The appearances of the sea serpent are well enough documented. It was +reported off the Norway coast in 1819, 1822 and 1837, off the New +England coast in 1815, 1817, 1819, 1833, and 1869, and off the American +coast farther south in 1895. It was seen in the South Atlantic in 1841 +by the frigate _Dœdalus_, and in 1875 by the bark _Pauline_, when +seemingly it was dragging under a large whale. A few years ago it was +seen by the bark _Harvard_ near Borneo. In the nineteenth century it +was sighted so often near Boston that it became known as the American +sea serpent. The accounts were circumstantial and so well vouched +for that there could be no reasonable doubt that a strange marine +monster was abroad. A committee of the Boston Linnaean Society, for +example, drew up a report signed by eye-witnesses in 1819. The serpent, +they said, was from eighty to ninety feet long, with buoy-like +protuberances on its back and was swimming at twenty miles or more an +hour, and driving frightened mackerel before it. + +These reports have been variously explained--that a low-ranging flight +of sea fowl could produce the semblance of a snake upon the water; that +a mass of seaweed had created this effect; that a pair of gigantic +basking sharks, swimming in a line, had seemed to be one creature; +that twenty-foot ribbon fish were the basis of the legend, and that +a monster squid had been mistaken for a snake. The preponderance of +scientific opinion inclines to the last named view. Cephalopods more +than sixty feet long have been seen off Newfoundland and the coasts of +northern Europe, and it may be that what the _Pauline_ saw was not a +serpent crushing a whale, but a whale killing a giant cuttle fish. But +it is not at all certain that a monster of some species unknown, or +too hastily assumed to be extinct, a stray from the Mesozoic or Eocene +seas, does not haunt the ocean. + +Cousins of this prodigy, of vaguer outline, rove the deeps of myth and +romance. The sea serpent of Arab story is the waterspout. The spotted +snake of Navajo story caused the flood. The bunyip of Van Diemen’s +Land carried off women to his water abode. The yacu-mama, or mother +of waters, of Brazilian story--fifty paces long and twelve yards in +girth--drew anything within a hundred yards into its jaws, but could +be placated by bugle music. The orc of the Charlemagne cycle, a +horrible mass of tossing and twisting body with nothing of the animal +but head, eyes, and tusked mouth, haunted an island off the Irish +coast and menaced the manacled and beauteous Angelica. Rogero with +his hippogrif and magic buckler released her, and Orlando slew the +monster afterward. The killing by a Moslem of a like creature that had +been devouring beautiful virgins led to the conversion of the Maldive +islanders, according to Ibn Batuta; at times it reappears in the offing +in the seeming of a ship with lighted candles. The orc of science is +no serpent, but a large dolphin, and when it pursues the whale, says +an old writer, the latter makes “a hideous bellowing, like a bull when +bitten by a dog.” + + +_Tortoises_ + +A quaint humor animates much of tortoise tradition. By stringing cords +across a tortoise shell the infant Hermes invented the lyre. According +to the Sicilians a tortoise executed the decree of fate that Æschylus +should die of a blow from heaven; an eagle mistook the tragic poet’s +bald head for a stone and dropped a tortoise upon it to break the +shell. Pliny says that tortoises betray themselves to fishermen by +overeating at night on land and snoring loudly after they return to +the water. “Some persons are of opinion,” he reports, “that the female +refuses to have any intercourse with the male until he has placed a +wisp of straw on her back, and that she hatches her eggs merely by +looking at them.” From the tortoise the Romans obtained no less than +sixty-six remedies for bodily ills. + +Sea turtles may attain a weight of a thousand pounds, and legend has +enlarged this figure. In their shells, says Diodorus, the Chelonophagi +(turtle-eaters) of the East African islands, sailed to the mainland for +fresh water. They used them also as roofs, nature’s bounty providing +them “by one gift food, vessels, shipping, and habitations.” Ælian +speaks of tortoise shell houses fifteen cubits long: “nor does the rain +beating against them sound otherwise than if it were falling on tiles.” +Odoric overtops this. In Cochin-China he saw a tortoise “bigger in +compass than the dome of St. Anthony’s Church in Padua.” + + +_Eels_ + +The Romans thought that the murænas, or sea eels, had a language +of their own, and that their voices were “low and sweet, with an +intimation so fascinating that few could resist its influence.” The +Emperor Augustus, it was believed, could understand the language. How +eels were generated was long a puzzle, their origin being imputed +to May dew, horse hairs, rocks, mud, the carcasses of animals, and +even to Jove and the goddess Anguilla; hence their scientific name of +_Anguillina_. A cod of the German coast and a Sardinian water beetle +have each been called the “eel-mother.” It has lately been ascertained +that the eggs are spawned in Bermuda waters, and the young reach Europe +after a two years’ journey. + + +_Three Traditions_ + +A German folk-tale has it that when Christ was crucified all the fishes +were terror-stricken and dived under water, save the pike, which thrust +forth its head and witnessed the scene. Hence the pike’s head shows +some of the parts of the crucifixion--the cross, three nails, and a +sword. Another fish, the remora, decided the fate of the world by +attaching itself to Antony’s galley and keeping it out of the battle +line at Actium; or so says Pliny. There are monstrous crabs on the +beaches of Japan, some of them seven feet across, which bear what seems +to be a human mask on their backs. The natives say they appeared after +a pirate fleet had been destroyed and its leaders beheaded on the shore. + + +_Water Horses_ + +The water gods of northern Europe usually had the horse form, and their +memory survives in Shetlandic tales of the njogel and tangi. The former +appeared as a sleek pony or decrepit gray horse; its hair grew forward +instead of backward; its fetlocks pointed upward instead of downward; +its hoofs were reversed. At dusk it would stand beside a trail, and +seemed to invite the benighted traveler to mount it. Then it galloped +over a waterfall, or dashed into a lake, leaving him to drown while it +vanished on the other bank in a blue light. The tangi was like it, but +had its ranging ground on the seashore. People became insensible for +days when it ran around them. + + +_Sharks_ + +Human attributes among the sea’s inhabitants are divided between +sharks and the merfolk. The latter are the graceful creatures of an +imagination at play with itself. The former are always things of +terror, not only because they attack man, but because they seem to have +some special and sinister relation to him. They have been thought to +be enchanted men. Savages tell of their taking human form and human +mates. The West African sacrificed children to a shark god. In the +shark temples of the Sandwich Islands priests rubbed their own bodies +with salt water so as to seem to have scaly skins. Offerings of coins +were made to the basking shark in northern Europe. In New Calabar it +was a capital offense to kill a shark. Sailors still think that this +fish will follow vessels on which some one is to die, and in the days +of the slave ships it was said to have a special fondness for the flesh +of blacks. In former times its teeth, set in gold, were used as amulets +and its powdered brains had a place in medicine; shark’s oil is still +in the pharmacopœias, shark fins are a Chinese dainty, and shark skins +an article of commerce. The source of these beliefs and practices may +be in the world-wide dragon myth, wherein pearls were thought to be +emanations of the moon goddess and were sought as givers of life. The +sharks that harassed the pearl fisheries came to be looked upon as +demons guarding the treasure houses of the sea floor, and embodiments +of evil like the dragon itself. + + +_Merfolk_ + +Under mermaid legend is the old notion that because there are men and +women on the land there must be men and women in the sea. The texture +of the legend has become about as complex as human nature itself, and, +like it, shows the divine, the semi-divine and the coarsely animal +subsisting together. In turn the mermaid has been goddess, enchantress, +and fresh meat at sea. + +The oldest known form of the myth may be glimpsed on tavern signs, +where the mermaid is depicted with a circular mirror in her hand and a +fish tail. She is Chaldean and Phœnician. Derceto, the moon goddess, +was represented as half woman and half fish because it was conceived +that she divided her time between the earth and the waters under the +earth, plunging into the sea with every moonset. Baring Gould thinks +that the mirror she holds may be the moon disk. + +Other shapes of poetry were merged in the legend before it entered the +prose period of maritime discovery. Among them were the tritons and the +nereids, “half-naked, natural, loving, and antique”--lesser divinities +of classic fable. At some time the sirens, who had been pictured as +half human and half bird, were immersed, and thereafter were pictured +as half human and half fish. Browne protests this representation, but +the mermaid myth does carry siren features, song included. The song of +the Rhine maidens is mermaid song, their prophecy mermaid prophecy. Of +the same family are the nixies who love music and foretell the future. + +The legend has become further entangled--with tales of banshees whose +wailing portends death, of gull-befriended seal people who could take +human form, of swan maidens who wed mortals, of forward sea fairies +who leave their red caps on the shore of Ireland for young men to pick +up, even of the female demon or nightmare. There are both foam and +cloud-flock in mermaid story, and they meet in the gentle Phæacian, +Nausicaa, whom Ulysses discovers bathing on the shore. + +In Fouqué’s _Undine_ the legend achieves its purest poetry. It is the +story of a nymph who lives with her foster parents on the edge of an +enchanted forest where a knight of the old German Empire finds and woos +her. Riding thither through the wood, a bear mocks him with human voice +from the branches of an oak, a troll shows him the goblins at play with +their gold beneath the earth, and what seems at one moment a tall white +man and at the next a foaming brook guides him to the cottage. These +were Undine’s familiars, and when the knight meets the water maiden the +brook rises and for days roars about the cottage, secluding him there +until he has won the nymph’s heart, and she his hand and with it an +immortal soul. Through the remainder of the story until its inevitable +disaster in the unwitting breaking of a vow--the end of all unions +between nymphs and mortals--water foams and flashes and strange shapes +dissolve in spray. + +This is the type of a hundred mediæval tales, of which the best known +is that of Melusina, a fountain nymph wedded to the head of the house +of Lusignan, but lost to him because he did not keep his pledge to +respect her Saturday privacy. He discovered her in the bath, a serpent +from the waist downward. According to report her blood flowed in the +veins of the Luxembourg and Rohan families and in Henry VII, sovereign +of the Holy Roman Empire. Her spirit was seen whenever the death of a +Lusignan impended. The tale has an extensive bibliography. + +Other accounts of water maidens are of a wilder cast. The judy of +Slavic folk tales lived in the lakes and rivers of the Rhodope +Mountains and danced in meadows, and him whom they coaxed to dance with +them they destroyed. When they saw a man in the water they entangled +him in their long hair and drowned him. The pariks of Armenian story +are erotic female demons of the river banks. In a Celtic tale Rath saw +mermaids as “grown-up girls, the fairest of shape and make above the +waters; but huger than one of the hills was the hairy-clawed, bestial +lower part which they had beneath.” They sang the hero to sleep and +tore him to pieces. The ships of another Celtic adventurer, Ruad, were +stopped, and when he went over the side he saw “three of the loveliest +of the world’s women” holding to the keels; the rest of the story is +dalliance. Pacific coast Indians have legends of beautiful, long-haired +women who lived in a round house under the ocean and made trouble for +people above. An Arab traveler tells of joyous water maidens caught and +caressed by sailors in the bright straits of Greece, and then returned +to the sea. + +The prose of the legend was reached when men began to capture what +they conceived to be mermaids and mermen, and failed in most cases to +find kindred beings. There is a considerable list of these creatures +captured or sighted on the beaches of the Old and the New World. +Only one of these talked, and Pontoppidan mentions the story but to +discredit it. Two senators of Norway caught a merman, but let him go +on his threatening them in Danish to sink the ship with all its crew. +Of the so-called bishop-fish or sea bishop, said to have been netted +for the King of Poland in the Baltic in 1453, a similar tale is told. +It wore a dalmatic and mitre and carried a crosier. With gestures of +entreaty it besought the intercession of its brother prelates of the +court. When it was released into the sea the grateful creature made +the sign of the cross and gave the episcopal benediction with its fin +before it submerged. In one other instance there were points of human +contact. Milkmaids of Edam in West Friesland in 1430 found a mermaid +which had been swept over the dykes by a storm. They brought it home, +as the story goes, and dressed it in female attire; it learned how to +spin, to eat with them, to adore the crucifix, but it never spoke. + +Through many other accounts runs the belief that merfolk were +weather-breeders. The _Speculum Regale_, an Icelandic work of the +twelfth century, describes a mermaid with a “very horrible face” that +haunts the deep near Greenland and before heavy storms is seen with +fish in its hands. If it casts the fish toward the ship, it is an omen +of death in the coming storm; if it casts the fish away from the ship +it is a good omen. Hakluyt’s _Voyages_ tell of a monster, from the +middle upward proportioned like a man and with a tawny skin, which was +discovered near Bermuda in the sixteenth century. The clerks of the +expedition put the account in writing, to be certified to the English +king. “Presently after this,” it is recited, “for the space of sixteen +days we had wonderful foule weather.” Knud Leems in his account of +Danish Lapland asserted that horrible tempests followed the appearance +of a merman and merwoman in those seas. The male, or hav-manden, was +like a robust man with brown skin and long hair and beard; the female, +or hav-fruen, had the human shape and hair and a ghastly visage. + +It appears that a merman, captured in the Baltic in 1531, lived for +three days at the court of Sigismund, King of Poland, and there is a +story that to determine ownership of another the King of Portugal and +the Grand Master of the Order of St. James had a suit at law. + +Merolla tells of a ship’s crew in a South African port who saw at a +distance “a sort of sea monsters like unto men” gathering herbs, with +which they plunged into the sea. The sailors gathered herbs for them, +and the grateful creatures “forthwith drew from the bottom of the sea a +quantity of coral” and laid it in the place where the sailors had piled +the herbs. Human perfidy ends a pretty story. The sailors spread a net +to catch the mermen, who lifted it and fled. + +The purely animal quality predominates in other of the circumstantial +accounts repeated of the mer people. A merman was captured off the +coast of Suffolk in 1187, but escaped. Hendryk Hudson reports that his +crew saw a mermaid near Nova Zembla, and “from the navel upward her +back and breasts were like a woman’s,” while the tail was like the tail +of a porpoise. In 1560 fishermen netted seven mermen and mermaids in +the seas west of Ceylon; several Jesuit priests were witness thereto. +Captain Weddell, the Antarctic explorer, records the sworn testimony +of one of his crew that he had seen a creature with human form and the +tail of a seal, and with red face and green hair. In the sea of Angola, +says Pontoppidan, mermaids are heard to shriek and cry like women; +negroes net and eat them, and their flesh is considered much like pork. +Sigismundus ab Herbenstein had it from Muscovite sources that in the +river Tachnin there was “a certain fish with head, eyes, nose, mouth, +hands, feete and other members utterly of humane shape, and yet without +any voyce, and pleasant to be eaten.” In Pinkerton’s _Voyages_ there +is an account of the woman fish found “among the islands Boccias,” the +flesh of which is “of excellent savour when eaten boiled like other +meat, and which also serves to make highly savoury sausages.” + +The dugong, manatee, or sea cow has been called the Old Man of the +Sea as well as the mermaid. It has figured in legends with a biblical +background; the people about the Red Sea took these creatures for +survivors or descendants of the army of Pharaoh that was drowned in +pursuing the Israelitish host. The three mermaids that Columbus saw on +his first voyage to the New World are supposed to have been of this +species. When white men first came to America the manatees thronged the +waters of Florida, but have since become nearly extinct there, although +there is a protected herd in the Miami River. + +Reports of actual captures present the rationalization and degradation +of the mermaid legend. The divine daughters of the deep with their +lovely bodies and flowing hair become strange animals of the seal or +cetacean species with ugly faces and bodies that may be converted into +pork--sea apes, as the credulous and yet cautious Pontoppidan calls +them. They grow so common that the _Aberdeen Almanac_ of 1688 predicts +the periods when mermaids may be expected near the mouth of the Dee. + +Sir Humphrey Davy argued that if God had created the mermaid, her +deficient means of locomotion and of self-defense would have left her +a prey to the fish. Yet the seas would have been poorer of romance if +the logic and poetry of men had not led them to correct, in ages more +naïve, what seemed to them an oversight of their Maker. + + + + +Chapter IX. The Peoples of Prodigy + + +In his _True History_ Lucian relates what he is at pains to point out +is a fictitious voyage to the moon and to various isles of the outer +seas. Grotesque half-human beings people his narrative. There are grape +vines, the upper parts of which have the shape of women, and these +entwine themselves about his men. There are Hippogypi, or men carried +upon vultures; Onoscileas, or ass-legged women, with long robes and a +free manner of harlotry; Bucephali, or men with bulls’ heads and horns +and lowing voices; Schorodomachi, or garlic-fighters; Psyllotoxotæ, or +flea-archers; Acroconopes, or gnat-riders; cloud-centaurs, nut-eaters, +pirates riding dolphins that neigh like horses, and a variety of other +fantastic creatures. The Samosatan wrote, he says, “about such things +as neither are nor ever can be.” + +Yet races of men very much like these were long supposed to live +upon earth. Their descriptions are in the ancient histories, their +habitats are defined in the classic geographies, their effigies are +upon mediæval maps. As late as the century after Columbus, travelers +were still coming upon them, and repeating the interrogatory of _The +Tempest_, “What have we here, a man or a fish?” Perhaps twoscore of +these imaginary tribes are better documented, and not so long ago were +better known, than most of the tribes of real men and women upon the +earth; the documents are on dusty shelves of the larger libraries. + +Some of the singular folk entered literature by the double gates of +mistaken etymology and literal acceptance of figurative language. +In the lineaments of others one discerns races that are still upon +earth, but divested of the masks of fable. In the rest one sees the +creative fancy of man following its natural bent--cartooning humanity +by exaggerating a limb or feature or by eliminating it; borrowing +something from the brute; making men taller or shorter, or longer-lived +or shorter-lived, than reality; fashioning the moon calves, the +Calibans; setting up a realm in which paradox is law. Thus mankind gave +itself new and interesting neighbors. + + +_Singular Speech_ + +Men judge one another by the testimony of the ear as well as of the +eye; and the speech of all these peoples, no less than their anatomy, +proclaimed the law of paradox. Sometimes the surprise was in hearing +Indian or Greek or Arab words from lips that seemed bestial rather +than human. Often no words came at all, but only unintelligible animal +sounds. This, indeed, was to be expected from races whose bodies varied +from the normal; but the list of prodigious folk is lengthened by the +addition of other men who, while looking like ordinary mortals, were +not quite human in their speech. + +There were nations which used dumb-barter because they had no +language. There were tribes in Ethiopia which, as Pliny says, “have +to employ gesture by nodding the head and moving the limbs instead +of speech.” On the Atlantic seaboard were troglodytes that “have no +articulate voice, but only utter a kind of squeaking noise.” “Like the +screeching of bats,” says Herodotus of the same people. Another tribe +of troglodytes, according to John Lok, “have no speech, but rather a +grinning and chattering.” The Arabians dwell in caves and have shrill, +boyish voices, declares Jordanus. In the eastern mountains of Ind, says +Tauron, are the Choromandæ, a forest folk with hairy bodies, canine +teeth, and sea-green eyes who “screech in a frightful manner.” Kazwini +speaks of hairy little men in Ramni with a speech like the chirping +of birds. Carpini names among the peoples of Ind the dog-faced men +who speak two words in human wise and bark for the third. There were +people with a small hole in place of the mouth, whose conversation was +a whistling. Among the isles of Maundeville is one “clept Traconda, +where the Folk be as Beasts and unreasonable, and dwell in Caves; and +they eat Flesh of Serpents, and they eat but little; and they speak +Nought, but they hiss as Serpents do.” In a desert beyond paradise this +authority says there are wild men “that be hideous to look on, for they +be horned and they speak Nought, but they grunt as Pigs.” However, +there was speech in that country, for “Popinjays speak of their own +Nature and say ‘Salve’ to Men that go through the Deserts.” + +Neither classical nor mediæval relators mention the device which has +given a South African tribe its name, and rumors of which may have +provided a basis for fable. Merolla, who went to the Congo in 1682, +heard that the Hottentots “have not the gift of human voice, but +understand each other by a sort of hissing tone and motion of the +lips.” This is the Hottentot “click” which the Portuguese called a kind +of stammering and the Dutch likened to the turkey’s gobble. It is made +by applying the tongue to the roof of the mouth, the teeth, or the +gums, and suddenly drawing it back. There are four of these clicks--the +dental, like the smack of a kiss; the palatal, like the tap of a +woodpecker; the cerebral, like the pop of a cork; and the lateral, like +the quack of a duck. + + +_The Dog-headed People_ + +The Amazon and pygmy, and certain tribes of the satyrs, had speech +entirely human. Because in them credulity has won unlooked-for triumphs +over skepticism, these three peoples, best known of the races of +legend, are reserved for separate treatment later. The men of another +race vie with the Amazons as figures in plastic art, although only +in its more grotesque manifestations. The Cynocephali, or dog-headed +people, writes Ctesias, are a swarthy and extremely just people living +in the mountains of northern India at the sources of the Hyparkhos. The +tribe numbers about one hundred and twenty thousand persons and pays +tribute to the King of the Indians. + +These people have the heads of dogs, but with larger teeth, and the +bodies of men; and they have dog claws. They cannot use human speech, +although they understand it. They converse with one another by barking, +and with other people by barking and the sign language. They practice +no arts but live by the chase, using the bow and spear; and they can +outrun wild animals. Their staple food is raw flesh, which, however, +they roast in the sun. They rear numbers of sheep, goats, and asses +and drink the milk and whey of the ewes. They are fond of the fruit of +the siptakhora, the tree that produces amber. The surplus fruit they +dry and pack in hampers as the Greeks pack raisins. Every year they +freight rafts with the hampers and with two hundred and sixty talents +weight of amber, and a like weight of a pigment which they make from +a purple flower. This they convey as tribute to the Indian king. They +ship other raft-loads of the same commodities to their neighbors, +receiving bread and flour in return and a cloth made from a stuff grown +on trees (cotton). They also sell arms to other peoples. + +The dog-headed people are troglodytes, sleeping on a litter of straw +or leaves spread in caves. The women bathe once a month, the men not +at all, merely washing their hands; but thrice a month they anoint +themselves with butter. They are clad in skins and the richest have +cotton raiment. Some of them live to be two hundred years old. + +The inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, says Marco Polo, are a +savage race “having heads, eyes and teeth resembling those of the +canine species”; and they kill and eat strangers. Odoric is equally +uncomplimentary, but Ibn Batuta, always sensitive to female charm, says +their naked wives are of exquisite beauty. Carpini speaks of India’s +dog-faced men. Even Greenland has a similar legend as to an older race +of barbarians who had magic, but not the bow and arrow. These were men +with dog paws. They disappeared in battle with the Eskimos, or from +natural causes, since “the world was too small to hold both races.” +Myths of dog descent are found among the Aleuts, Dog-ribs, and Ojibwas +in North America, as well as in Madagascar, Java, the Nicobars, New +Guinea, Indo-China, and even Europe. In North America the wild dog +(coyote) frequently figures as the creator of mankind. + +Sunamukha is the Indian name of the Cynocephali, and a manuscript of +the Prabhâsakhanda recites that this people lives on the Indus. What +Ctesias has set down seems to be an account of an actual race, a tribe +of black aborigines. + +When Hayton, the intrepid traveler-king of Armenia, paid a visit in +the thirteenth century to Batu, the Mongol prince, he brought back a +related and still stranger story. Beyond Cathay, a journey of two years +and two months from Nakin, was a country where the women had the human +shape and speech, but the men were like hairy dogs and had no speech. +These dog-men repelled all strangers from their land, and supported +themselves and their wives by the chase, the men eating flesh raw, the +women cooking it. When children were born, the males had the shape of +dogs, the females that of women. The _Chinese Encyclopedia_ also has a +tale of the Kingdom of Dogs, and it was a Chinese traveler who broke up +this curious commonwealth. The women wished to escape from it and gave +him little sticks, asking him, when he went back to his native land, to +drop one of these every ten li. They got away by the trail he marked. + + +_The One-Eyed Arimaspians_ + +Lying between the gold-guarding griffins and the cannibal Issedones was +the country of the one-eyed Arimaspians. They first appear in a poem +of Aristeas of Proconesus, a semi-mythical person who made a northward +journey, as his verses declare, in a mood of “bacchic fury.” Herodotus +bases his account on these, but cannot persuade himself that there is +a race of men born with one eye who in all else resemble the rest of +mankind. Arimaspi, he says, is a word of Scythic origin, a compound of +_arima_ (one) and _spou_ (eye). + +There Herodotus drops the legend, and after it has thriven in the tales +of the fabulists for some thousands of years, modern criticism takes +it up again from the same angle. It is suggested that, after all, +Arimaspi never meant one-eyed, and that the race, the tradition of +whose deformed aspect arose from a mistaken translation of its name, is +still in existence in the Russian tribe known as the Tsheremis, which +occupies the left bank of the Middle Volga. This is near enough to the +Ural gold districts to meet the general topography of the legend. + +Strabo also describes a one-eyed nation, the Monomatti, with the ears +of dogs, bristling hair, and shaggy breasts. + + +_Folk That Live on Odors_ + +The folk that live on odors dwell, says Megasthenes, near the sources +of the Ganges. They have no mouths, hence their name of Astomi. Their +bodies are rough and hairy and they clothe themselves with a down +plucked from trees--silk or cotton. They use neither meat nor drink and +subsist only by breathing and by inhaling scents. When they start on a +long journey they lay in a supply of odoriferous roots, flowers, and +apples. But, says Pliny, “an odor which is a little more powerful than +usual easily destroys them.” Pope’s “die of a rose in aromatic pain” +may define such a fate. + +According to other ancient writers the Astomi also supported life by +sniffing at raw meat, and their susceptibility to rank smells made it +hard to keep them alive in camp. In Ethiopia Pliny places a people +that “have the mouth grown together, and being destitute of nostrils, +breathe through one passage only, imbibing their drink through it by +means of a hollow stalk of the oat, which there grows spontaneously and +supplies them with its grain for food.” Maundeville removes the Astomi +to an island and gives them the stature of pygmies and a hissing speech. + + +_The Noseless Nations_ + +There were several noseless nations. The flexible-footed Scyritae, says +Megasthenes, had only two breathing orifices above the mouth; and he +sketches pygmies similarly made. Maundeville improves on the sketch: +“And in another Ile be Folk that have the Face all flat, all plain, +without Nose and without Mouth.” In contrast still another island had +“Folk of foul Fashion and Shape that have the lip above the Mouth so +great that when they sleep in the Sun they cover all the Face with that +lip.” Megasthenes had named and described these seventeen centuries +before. They were the Amycteres, with upper lips projecting far beyond +the lower--an omnivorous people, fond of raw meat, and short lived. +Tudela tells of desert-ranging, infidel Turks who worship the wind, +eschew bread and cooked meats, and, lacking noses, breathe through two +small holes. The Noseless People of the Eskimo shore are evil spirits +that drag fishermen to gloomy abodes under the sea. + +To men with the bold Roman profile, the Levantine contour, or the +scimitar-shaped visage of the Sephardic Jew, Tartary’s small-nosed, +flat-faced peoples would indeed present a countenance very like a plane +surface. The scanty hair of the same peoples may be responsible for the +ancient notion of bald northern nations. The Eskimo legend suggests a +skeleton tenanted by a demon. + + +_Large-eared Races_ + +An Indian race called the Enotocoitæ had ears hanging down to their +feet--“great Ears and long that hang down to their Knees” is for once +the more restrained phrase of Maundeville. The philosophers who had +told Megasthenes of so many interesting folk told him also of these. +They could sleep upon their ears as upon a rug, or under them as under +a canopy, or inside them as in a sleeping bag. These appendages were +like winnowing fans, Tzetzes puts it. Their owners were so strong they +could pluck up trees. So could the elephant, which also has flapping +ears and a prolonged upper lip--the pattern, it would seem, for at +least two fables. + +Ctesias describes a people who could blanket the upper parts of their +bodies with their ears. These were the Pandore, a mountain race who +lived to be two hundred years old, yet were destined evidently to +become extinct, for they numbered only thirty thousand persons and the +women bore children but once. The infants were hoary-headed at birth, +but at thirty the hair began to turn black, and at sixty no white hairs +were left. Five thousand bowmen and spearmen of the tribe followed the +Indian king. There was even a Scandinavian tribe with all-enveloping +ears, if Pliny had it right. + + +_Headless Peoples_ + + The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads + Do grow beneath their shoulders. + --SHAKESPEARE: _Othello_. + +To the west of the Troglodytes in distant mountains of Ind, says +Ctesias, live tribesmen who are without necks and have eyes in their +shoulders. In the north of Africa, says Pliny, are the Blemmyes who +“are said to have no heads, their mouths and eyes being seated in their +breasts.” These were also called the Acephalites. Maundeville shifts +their habitat. They occupy one of fifty-four great isles under the +jurisdiction of the king of Dondun. This island is somewhere toward the +south of Asia. In it dwell “Folk of foul Stature and of cursed Nature +that have no Heads. And their Eyes be in their Shoulders, and their +Mouths be round shapen, like an Horse-shoe amidst their Breasts.” The +_Arabian Nights_ locates these same people in the City of Brass. Abu +Mohammed, hight Lazybones, in quest of his wife, who has been carried +thither by a Marid, “heard a noise of cries and found himself in the +midst of a multitude of folk whose eyes were in their breasts.” They +gave him the news he sought and volunteered, “Now we be brethren of the +white serpent.” The Eskimos speak of a headless people living in the +moon and in remote regions of the earth. + +Here is a story of a curious race domiciled by various writers in +various parts of the Old World, and yet lacking details to give it +verisimilitude. These are supplied by Sir Walter Raleigh in his report +on the wonders of Guiana. The headless people are Indians of the tribe +of Ewaipanoma living in a district near the Orinoco. He has seen none +of them, but “every childe in the provinces” affirms the story. Their +eyes are in their shoulders, their mouths in the middle of their +breasts, “and a long traine of haire groweth backward between their +shoulders.” A chief’s son whom they had made a prisoner told Raleigh +they were “the most mighty men of all the land, and use bowes, arrowes, +and clubbes thrice as big as any of Guiana.” This confirms, concludes +Raleigh, what was written of them by “Mandevile, whose reports were +holden for fables many yeeres.” + +In the interior of Guiana Sir Walter had a trading transaction with +a nation of kindred appearance. He bartered jew’s-harps for fowls at +a town of five hundred houses, where he found Indians plentifully +provisioned with venison, fowls, and wine. He asked their chief “whence +hee had those Hennes.” The answer was that they were brought from a +mountain less than a mile away, “where were many Indians, yea so many +as grasse on the ground, and that these men had the points of their +shoulders higher than the Crownes of their heads, and had so many +Hennes as was wonderful; and if wee would have any wee should send them +Jewes harpes, for they would give for every one two Hennes. Wee tooke +an Indian, and gave him five hundred Harpes; the Hennes were so many +that hee brought us, as were not to be numbered.” Raleigh wanted to +visit these mountain Acephali, but was warned that they were in their +drunken feasts and would kill him. + +One may explain the headless peoples about as one will. The Tartar +tribes north of India certainly have short necks. Thus Pliny on the +African Acephalites: “On the invasion of the Persians the Blemmyes were +in the habit of falling on one knee and bowing the head to the breast, +by which means, without injury to themselves, they afforded a passage +to the horses of the enemy.” Buffon accepts and interprets the Raleigh +tale. “This monstrous deformity cannot be natural,” he says. “It is +probable that savages, who are so pleased in disfiguring nature by +flattening, rounding, and lengthening the head, might likewise contrive +to sink it into the shoulders. These fantasies might arise from an idea +that, by rendering themselves deformed, they became more dreadful to +their enemies.” This passage would have interested Sir Walter. + + +_Half-men_ + +There were people in the Philippines whose bodies suffered temporary +subtraction at the other extremity. These were the asuangs--men who had +acquired powers of sorcery by eating human livers. When they willed +it their persons divided at the waist line, the lower part remaining +behind and the upper growing wings and long nails and a horrible black +tongue, and flying away on vampire errands. An orifice in the armpit +contained an oil which rendered this human bat invisible. If salt was +cast on his abandoned half he could not assemble himself on his return. +Wak-wak was one of his names. The reality behind this grim fiction was +the learned counselor, called the asuang, whom each datto had at his +court before the Spaniards came. His evil repute is a Spanish slander. + +If there were men whose stature had been reduced as by a transverse +sweep of the knife, there were others whose appearance was as if they +had been sliced. These were the half-men of Moslem legend called the +Shikh and the Nesnas, each with a single arm, leg, and eye, as though +one man had been split in twain. The Zulus had the same story, perhaps +from Moslem sources. They tell of half-men discovering a Zulu girl in +a cave and thinking her two persons. When they discovered their error +they exclaimed: “The thing is pretty! But, oh, the two legs!” The fable +may have sprung from figurative speech, in which men of backward +culture are described as only half-men. + + +_Diminutive Husbands_ + +American Eskimo legends tell of a tribe called Ardnainiq living far +to the northwest, whereof the men, small as children and covered with +hair, were carried around in the hoods of their wives, who were of +normal size. The detail oddly parallels Darwin’s statement that he had +found a female crustacean of the common cirripedial character, “and in +two valves of her shell she had two little pockets, in each of which +she kept a little husband.” + + +_Eel-like Men_ + +A race of eel-like men, says Julius Scaliger, dwell in Malabar. They +have the serpent’s form, are eight feet long, and, while of horrible +aspect, are harmless unless provoked. They will “stand bolt upright for +hours together, gazing on the boyes at their sportes, never offring to +hurte any of them.” In the upright posture they lose the likeness of +serpents and “spread themselves into such a corpulent breadthe, that +had they feet they would seeme to be men.” This is a tale brought to +Europe by the Portuguese; and at a time when it was debated whether the +serpent assumed a human form in tempting Eve, it was thought this might +be the creature whose body Satan borrowed. + +The tale is based in part on the cobra’s power to dilate its neck +into a broad hood. Back of it are Buddhist traditions of the Nagas, a +race of serpents that lived in dragon palaces under the earth. There +were naga-kings, and naga-maidens who assumed human form, had their +mortal lovers, and became the founders of dynasties. The original +inhabitants of the Andamans were reputed to have been of this race, and +according to a popular belief their descendants were oviparous. The +interpretation of this legend is complicated by the surmise that the +Nagas were actually an ancient, non-Aryan people whose emblem was the +cobra. + + +_Strangely Footed Folk_ + +Certain races the ancients classified and named according to their +means of getting over the ground. With his instinct for balanced +statement Pliny unearths a passage from Eudoxus which says that “in +the southern parts of India” the men have feet a cubit in length, +“while those of the women are so remarkably small that they are +called Struthopodes.” The word may mean either “sparrow-footed” or +“ostrich-footed.” In the context it probably means the former; the +dames with diminutive feet hopped around as sparrows do. It may be they +were Chinese women. + +Near the Indian troglodytes, according to Ctesias, dwelt the Monocoli, +who had only one leg, but were able to leap with surprising agility. +These people were also called the Sciapodes, which means “making a +shadow with the foot.” It was their custom in the time of extreme heat +to lie on their backs and shield themselves from the sun, each under +the shade of his own foot. A later century knew the shadow-footed folk +as the men with parasol feet. Maundeville places them in Ethiopia. In +Armenia, or bordering upon it, the Mongols found another one-legged +nation, but with different structure. Its citizens had only one arm +also, which was attached to the middle of the breast, but they had +two gaits. Hopping, they covered ground with remarkable speed, and +when tired of hopping the men and women whirled themselves around like +cartwheels. + +When the Norsemen were exploring America, they encountered a Uniped, +or one-legged man, who launched a lethal arrow at Thorwald Ericson, as +he sat at the boat helm. The dying leader drew it out and exclaimed, +“There is fat around my paunch; we have hit upon a faithful country, +and yet we are not like to get much profit by it.” + +The stiff-legged men, Carpini heard, lived south of the country of the +Kara-Khitai, upon a great desert. They had no speech and no joints in +their limbs, and when they fell down somebody had to help them up. They +wore felt of camel’s hair and made wind shelters thereof. When wounded +in battle they stanched the blood with grass and fled swiftly away. + +A related tale is told by Rubruquis, who had it from “a certain priest +of Cathaya who sat with me clothed in a red-coloured cloth.” When the +friar asked him whence he had such a color, “he told me that in the +east part of Cathaya there were high craggy rocks, wherein certain +creatures dwell, having in all parts the shape of men, but that they +bow not the knees, but leap instead of walking; which are not above one +cubit long, and their whole body is covered with hair, who have their +abode in caves, which no man can come unto; and they who hunt them, go +to them, and carry strong drink with them, and make pits in the rocks +like wells, which they fill with that strong drink. The hunters hide +themselves, and then these creatures come out of their holes and taste +the drink, and cry ‘chin-chin’ and drink till they are made drunk, so +that they sleep there. Then the hunters come and bind them hand and +foot, while they are sleeping, and afterwards open the veins in their +neck and draw forth three or four drops of blood from every one, and +let them go free; and that blood, as he told me, is the most precious +purple.” + +Megasthenes describes a race of Indians living upon a mountain called +Nulo, who had their feet turned backward with the heel in front and +with eight toes on each foot. Pliny places this race “beyond the +other Scythian Anthropophagi in a country called Abarimon situate in +a certain great valley of Mount Imaus” (Himalayas). They had great +rapidity of movement and wandered about indiscriminately with the wild +beasts. The fable may have originated in the Caucasus, where there is +still a tradition that dæmons take the shapes of armed men, and have +their feet reverted. Farther north dwelt an ox-footed race. + +Classic note is made of two writhing nations. The Scyritæ of India who +“have merely holes in their faces instead of nostrils” have “flexible +feet like the body of the serpent,” says Megasthenes. There was also +the thong-footed people or Himantopodes, residents of northern Africa, +who moved with a serpentine, crawling gait. This may be a traveler’s +impression of some sinuous dance of the desert. + +Under the hand of Maundeville the centaurs pass out of mythology into +history. The “Folk that have Horses’ Feet” are in his collection of +marvelous islanders: “And they be strong and mighty and swift Runners, +for they take wild Beasts with Running and eat them.” These are the +Hippopodes of Pliny, tenants of a Baltic island. A related folk are +the islanders permanently mounted on ostriches, with which they seem +to form one body. Kazwini, who records this Arab legend, says they +devour the bodies of drowned persons cast up by the sea. On another +isle Sir John seems for the once to have invented a people rather than +revived a legend. Here be “Folk that go always upon their Knees full +marvellously. And at every Pace that they go, it seemeth that they +would fall.” + +In Ethiopia, “on that side of the Nile which extends along the borders +of the Southern Ocean,” Pliny domiciles the Artabatitæ, who have four +feet and wander about after the manner of wild beasts. Maundeville is +more detailed: “And they be all skinned and feathered, and they would +leap lightly from Tree to Tree.” Farther south were the Aigamuxa, theme +of a Hottentot story cycle, whose eyes were in the back of their feet. +Regarding human beings as zebras, they hunted them down and tore them +to pieces. + +Chinese marvel tales describe a race of people living somewhere in the +west. They have a hole right through their bodies at the breast. When +their mandarins would take the air, they thrust a stick through the +aperture, and two domestics carry them so. “If the bearers are strong +enough,” says Huc, “they often string on several gentlemen at once.” + + +_In the Russian East_ + +There was an east other than the sun-bathed lands whose fabulous +peoples are in literature. It lay just beyond northern Europe, on the +farther flanks of the Urals and beside the Obi. To the Russians of the +Middle Ages it was a land of strange races and weird happenings. About +these a body of legends grew up which in a measure parallel the classic +stories, but give them backgrounds of ice and snow and add new actors +and enriching details. A Russian manuscript of the fifteenth century, +found at Novgorod a few years ago and entitled “The Unknown Peoples of +the East,” pictures these forgotten folk. Nine different races, all +called Samoyeds, are described, and six are races of marvel. + +There were Samoyeds who shed their skins like snakes. For a month each +year they stayed in the water, avoiding dry land, lest their bodies +crack open. The Russian anthropologist, Professor Anutschin, whose +interpretation of the narrative is followed here, says that these +are natives who fish and hunt in the watery domain of the tundras, +where the summer attacks of mosquitoes and horse flies give their +skins a rough and bloody aspect, as if cracking before sloughing off. +There were also Samoyeds like other people from the navel up, but all +shaggy-haired from the navel down--in reality wearing trousers of +reindeer skins with the hair outside. There were other and speechless +Samoyeds with their mouths on the top of their heads. When they would +eat, says the Novgorod manuscript, “they crumble the meat or fish, +stick it under their fur caps and then move their shoulders up and +down.” This is the account of a people whose speech the Russians did +not understand, who wore the head skin of the reindeer, ears and all, +for a cap, and whose sack-like garments had collars so high as to +conceal their mouths. + +There were also headless Samoyeds with eyes in their breasts and the +mouth between the shoulders, and their diet was raw reindeer heads and +bones; in warfare and the chase their weapon was an iron tube through +which they drove an iron arrow by hitting it with a hammer. This, it +is thought, was an early race of ironworkers who wore peaked head-caps +which concealed the shoulder line and made the face of the wearer seem +to be in the breast. Another explanation is that several Siberian +tribes had faces painted on the leathern fronts of their garments. +The descriptive phrase, “with the face upon the breast,” might easily +become “headless” when translated into Russian. + +Then there was a strange Samoyed race--an independent creation of +Russian fantasy--the members of which died every winter and revived +two months afterward, if let alone. When the fatal hour had come, they +sat down and a stream of water gushed from their nostrils and froze to +the ground. If a stranger came from another land and broke this icicle +or removed it, the Samoyed never woke up. If he merely jarred it, the +refrigerated native would open his eyes and ask, “Why, little friend, +have you disfigured me?” Others were brought to life by the warmth +of the spring sun. According to a German writer the day of death was +November twenty-seven and revival came on the twenty-third day of the +following April. It is supposed that the wooden idols scattered over +the Obi country, three hundred of them on a single river island, were +the basis of this curious story. Covered with ice and drifted snow, +they looked human enough, and there were native reports that these were +ancestral Samoyeds. + +[Illustration: _The First People Engaged in Such Cosmic Adventures as +Warfare Against Stone Giants_] + +One race of Samoyeds, says the Novgorod manuscript, travels day and +night with torches by underground ways and comes out upon a sea over +which a strange light falls and beside which is a great fortress and +a deserted city. When the stranger approaches he hears a tumult in +the streets, but, entering, he sees no one and the clamor dies away. +In each house, however, there are things for him to eat and drink, +and other commodities. He takes what he needs, lays down money in its +stead, and goes his way. Should he fail to make payment, the wares +he takes with him vanish and return to the silent town. And when the +stranger leaves, “then he hears again a tumult as in other inhabited +cities.” + +This story has the Celtic magic and might be a chapter from Malory. +It is thought that the mysterious sea is Lake Koliwan in the western +Altais. Granite rocks in the semblance of towers, terraces, and +dismantled fortifications rise from its shores, and in the hills are +the pits and galleries of a copper camp long abandoned by the Tchudi. +These are the underground Samoyed ways of legend. Perhaps dumb barter +was once carried on here. The radiance across the lake, if not the +northern lights, may have glanced from some Russian tale, like that in +which Bishop Theodor saw the earthly paradise on a mountain side with +an azure light upon it. + + +_New World Prodigies_ + +The New World, it has been seen, had its own prodigious peoples. In +Spanish America their legends are overlaid with imported material, but +elsewhere there is little alien alloy. North America has traditions +of stone giants, pygmies, one-eyed cannibals, hermaphrodites, +flint-armored warriors, double-headed men, dog-headed tribes. There are +also storm-raising mermen, phantom boatmen, underwater folk, otter-men, +seal-men, pug-nosed people, skeletons that resume human shape at night, +talking skulls. Many stories tell of the marriage of mortals with +unearthly beings, of the living with the dead, and of the union of +women with animals. The best known Indian myth has two versions, in +one of which the people of the First Age had human forms but an animal +nature, and took the animal guise before the real men appeared; in the +other, which is of the southwest, the first people had bestial forms +but a human nature, and presently laid aside their animal masks. In +the latter version there was an Amazonian phase in the ascent of the +primitive people. Their women seceded from society and lived with a +water monster. Hunger drove them back, but they brought into the world +a number of prodigious beings whom their lords had to destroy. + +In the First People who had the human form but became animals the +Eastern Algonquins and the Pacific tribes have a myth which ranks +beside the Greek myth of the Titans that were before Zeus, and +the myths of the Golden Age. Its quality is at once haunting and +challenging, the more so because these dawn-folk are nowhere described. +“In old times,” a Micmac Indian told Leland, “men were as animals and +animals as men; how this was no one knows. But it is told that all were +at first men, and as they gave themselves up to this and that desire, +and to naught else, they became beasts. But before this came to pass, +they could change to one or the other form; yet even as men there was +always something which showed what they were.” + +The story cycle of the Mewan Indians of California pictured the First +People as living in great ceremonial houses and engaging in such cosmic +adventures as sun-capture, fire-theft, and warfare against stone +giants. How nearly human and how much animal they were the Western +Indians left in doubt. When they became animals and went forth from +the ceremonial house, they carried to their future haunts not only +their old names, but their distinctive traits, such as Grizzly Bear’s +appetite for acorns, Frog’s aptitude at water jumps and the clamorous +voice of Sandhill Crane. After the transformation was effected--and +only casual reasons for it are suggested--man was created. Coyote made +him out of feathers, or sticks, or clay, and Lizard gave him five +fingers because he had five himself and knew their value. In Popol +Vuh, the Guatemalan saga, the First People were manikins that the +gods carved out of wood and endowed with life; but so frivolous and +irreverent were these that a flood was invoked to destroy them; “the +little monkeys that live in the woods” are descended from survivors. + +All over North America were stories of stone giants, and crudely +archaic as are these stalking figures of legend, the myth has the +elemental vigor of Norse epic. According to the Iroquois, a cannibal +race--“stonish giants,” Schoolcraft calls them--who made their bodies +hard by rolling in sand, overran America seventeen centuries ago, and +nearly exterminated the natives. The Holder of the Heavens took giant +form in order to destroy them. These are the icy-hearted Chenoos of +Algonquin story who lived in northern Canada; in summer they rubbed +themselves with fir balsam and rolled on the ground so that moss, +leaves, and twigs adhered to them. The California Indians have tales of +a cannibal rock-giant who went abroad with a rock basket on his back +into which he tossed people. There was another stony Titan, tall as a +pine tree but vulnerable under the heel. Only after the First People +had killed him by planting sharp sticks in his path did they elect to +become animals. The theory that these clanking folk typify mountains is +not convincing. + +Maundeville has a tale of a bodiless head, but North America is the +true home of this weird legend. Glooskap, culture hero of the Eastern +Algonquins, played at ball with a snapping skull. There were Indians +who went all to pieces leaving only the head, which ate the other +members. Everywhere stories were told of heads that pursued people and +devoured them. The skull of a mother chased her children over hill and +plain. In nightmare flight the heroes of Indian epic cast obstacles or +attractive things behind them to delay or divert the rolling skull. +Reading a new meaning into the legend, the Arapahoes used it to explain +the railroad. + +A Sioux story describes a duel between the Monster and the Bladder, +twin sons of the Turtle. They kept striking off each other’s heads, +and these flew into the sky and, falling back, adhered again to their +necks. But at length Bladder pushed Monster’s body aside, and the head +rebounded, and to this day it rebounds, for it is the sun, and Bladder +is the sky; but only to old men or wise is this part of the story told. +It may be that these tales derive from the conception of the sun and +moon as traveling heads, or from the use of a skull as tribal medicine, +or from the war custom of decapitation later supplanted by scalping, +or even from the appearance of the tumbleweed of the western prairies, +which wanders like a ball before the autumn wind. + + + + +Chapter X. The Satyrs + + +The tail is a symbol of the animal nature. Stories of tailed humans are +found all over the world. They signify a belief that certain races of +men are descended from the apes, or that the apes are descended from +certain races of men. Both beliefs have been stressed in the modern +debate on evolution; yet neither is new. They are almost the oldest of +the philosophical myths. They trace back to primitive animism--to the +notion that animals are endowed with human intelligence, can understand +the speech of men, and may well be propitiated with worship. Early +man accepted them as cousins. He could change natures with them, and +sometimes it seemed to him he did. Père Lafitau said of his American +flock, “These men are living in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.” + +Sometimes men were content enough with this kinship, erecting it into +totemism, wearing the tail of the buffalo or horse as an emblem of +power. Sometimes they were ashamed of it. They plucked off all hair +from their bodies, because animals were hairy, and resented it when +their women bore them twins, because the young of animals came in +litters instead of singly. Constantly they confused brute and human +nature, using identical terms of neighbor folk, whether these were +apes or men. The confusion was carried over into literature. One +African tribe was said to have an ape king. There are passages in which +travelers seem to themselves to be speaking of men while to their +readers it is evident they are speaking of monkeys. There are other +passages in which they set out to describe monkeys, yet draw pictures +of men like themselves, but of more primitive cast. The creatures +called satyrs embody this confusion and the sense of kinship behind it. + +According to Isidore, the satyrs have done something to make their own +nature clear. One of them, he says, appearing to St. Anthony in the +desert, explained, “I am mortal, one of the inhabitants of the waste, +whom the heathen, misled by error, worship as the Fauns and Satyrs.” +He pictures them as manikins with upturned noses, horns on their +foreheads, and goat feet. + +The heathen world, however, never was quite sure what it meant by +the satyrs. If it be true that the fable began with ritual mummers +who donned the nature of fertility dæmons when they put on the heads +of asses, horses, or goats, and danced in them--as men still do--the +memory of this was forgotten. The satyrs were supposed to be spirits, +half human, half bestial, that haunted woodland and mountain side +and fellowshipped with Pan and Dionysus. They had bristly hair, flat +noses, and pointed ears, with two small horns, and a tail like that of +a horse or goat. Earlier Greek art represented them as ugly, withered, +and ape-like. But Attic sculpture in the time of Praxiteles shows them +with the beast nature well-nigh submerged--graceful figures instinct +with poetry. They took over the attributes of the kindred sileni, and +as Roman influence grew they were confounded with the fauns and were +depicted as half men and half goats. In Scripture they are the “hairy +ones” of Hebrew folklore, a sort of demon of waste places. So is the +word intended in the prophecy of Isaiah as to Babylon: “Wild beasts of +the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful +creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.” + +Satyrs, as the ancients conceived them, were a wanton, music-loving, +merry-hearted and yet timid folk, their symbol the hare. They roved +about, drinking, dancing to the pipe and cymbal, pursuing the nymphs, +killing the cattle of men and making love to their women. Men feared +them, as embodying the loneliness of waste places, feared them with the +sudden panic fear, which the apparition of their leader, the leering +goat-god, always excited. Equally, the shy creatures feared men, but +not women. Gradually these timid spirits moved out of mythology into +geography. There were satyr isles, and there were satyr tribes in +distant mountains and deserts, alike in Africa, India, and the spaces +of the sea. Always they were described as avoiding contact with men, +screening themselves in the thickets and seen only from afar. The +satyrs of western Africa, says Pliny, “beyond their figure have +nothing in common with the manners of the human race.” Ælian speaks of +Indian satyrs that have human features, that go sometimes on four feet +and sometimes on two and are too swift to be caught. + +[Illustration: A SATYR _By_ Jacob Jordaens] + +Thus the classic conception of this creature passes from spirits of +the waste to tailed men, to apes, retracing the path which Greek art +followed from simian beings to spirits of the waste. These were the +wild men and wild women whom Herodotus locates in western Africa. +Hanno, the Carthaginian explorer, had been before him. His narrative +tells of finding an island full of wild people on the west coast of +Africa: “For the greater proportion were women, whose bodies were +covered with hair, and whom our interpreters called Gorillæ. Though we +pursued the men, we could not catch any of them, since all fled from +us, escaping over the precipices and defending themselves with stones. +However, we took three women, but they attacked their conductors with +their hands and teeth, and could not be prevailed on to accompany us. +We therefore killed and flayed them and brought their skins with us to +Carthage,” where they were hung up in the temple of Juno. + +This narrative betrays the ancient confusion as to the satyrs’ real +nature. They are described as wild men and women, and it would even +seem that the Carthaginians undertook to reason with their captives; +but their captors killed and skinned them, as they certainly would not +have done to creatures they deemed to be of their species. The terms +gorilla and orang-utan both mean men-of-the-woods. They are borne by +large apes, but when the Malays speak of the orang-utan they mean a +savage and not a simian. + +The Hindu term for man-of-the-woods is bunmanus, and here is a Hindu +sketch of him. “The bunmanus is an animal of the monkey kind. His face +has a near resemblance to the human; he has no tail and walks erect. +The skin of his body is black, and slightly covered with hair.” Then +the account proceeds to enumerate the dialects of the peninsula and +includes among them “the jargon of the bunmanus.” These animals of the +monkey kind are really the dark-skinned, non-Aryan aborigines. + +A Portuguese manuscript cited by Tylor tells of an Indian tribe in +Brazil called the Cuatas. “This populous nation,” it says, “dwells +east of the Juruena, in the neighborhood of the rivers San Joao and +San Thome. It is a very remarkable fact that the Indians composing it +walk naturally like the quadrupeds, with their hands on the ground; +they have the belly, breast, arms, and legs covered with hair, and are +of small stature; they are fierce, and use their teeth as weapons; +they sleep on the ground, or among the branches of trees; they have no +industry, nor agriculture, and live only on fruits, wild roots, and +fish.” The author of this account seemed not to know that the coata he +was describing was an ape and not a man. + +Customs of speech and sometimes motives of self-interest have shaded +the differences between the two species. The belief is widely held, +both in Africa and in South America, that apes know how to talk, but +hold their peace lest they be put to work, as it seems they were put +to work in gathering the fig harvest in ancient Egypt and perhaps in +ceremonial processions as torch-bearers. On the other hand, sailors, +pioneer colonists, and slave dealers betray a tendency to rate the +savages among whom they are thrown, and whom they may wish to exploit, +as little, if any, above the brutes. + +It has become almost a principle of ethnology, wherever a story of +a neighboring race of tailed men is current, to look for a tribe of +aborigines who have been dispossessed by men of a higher culture. Thus +the conqueror asserts his contempt, and justifies his treatment, of the +conquered. The latter may accept it in good part and admit a monkey +descent. The Marawars of South India trace their lineage back to Rama’s +monkeys, and the Kathkuri avow an ape ancestry. Even the Jaitwas of +Rajputana, although classed as Rajputs, derive, they say, from the +monkey-god, Hanuman, and allege that their princes have still a vestige +of tails. There are tribes in Tibet and in the mountains of the Malay +peninsula whose traditions tell of ape progenitors. + +By a sort of poetic justice, savages sometimes tell a like story about +civilized men. Why should these wear so much clothing if there were +not something they wanted to conceal? In the Land of Lamary, says +Maundeville, men and women go all naked, “and they scorn when they see +any strange Folk going clothed,” hinting that these are not formed +as are other men. Captain Cook was not the only explorer to tell of +natives demanding that the white men strip so that it might be seen if +they were everywhere of the human kind. Buchanan gives this account in +his Indian travels: + +“When I passed through among the gardens near houses, I have observed +the women squatting down behind the mud walls, in order to satisfy +their curiosity by viewing a stranger. When they thought that I +observed them, they ran away in a fright. This does not arise from the +rules of caste in Malabar requiring the Hindu women to be confined, +for that is by no means the case; but in the interior parts of North +Malabar the Nairs, being at enmity with Europeans, have persuaded the +women that we are a kind of hobgoblins who have long tails, in order to +conceal which we wear breeches. The women and children are therefore +afraid of Europeans.” + +Stories of man’s descent to the ape match stories of the ape’s ascent +into man. One of these is recited in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, where +for their treachery Jove degrades the Cercopes. A Moslem legend tells +of Solomon passing through the Valley of Apes, between Jerusalem and +Mareb, and finding monkeys dwelling in the houses, wearing the clothes, +and using the speech of men. The river which flowed by their city +had been full of fish, they said, and these showed themselves freely +on the Sabbath day, trusting to the Jewish fishermen to keep the +Commandments. The temptation proved too strong, and for their offense +of Sabbath-breaking Jehovah turned all the citizens into apes. + +There is a Zulu story of a lazy tribe of negroes who would not dig the +soil. Their chief led them into the wilderness, where the pick handles +which had hung useless at their backs became tails, and they themselves +baboons. + +In both hemispheres there are legends of cross-breeding between the +human and the simian species. The Quoyas Morrov, or wood-man of Angola, +which was sent to Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, was supposed by +his age to have an ape father or an ape mother. The First People of +Central American myth were manikins who became monkeys, and Count +Castelnau repeats a story by Father Ribeiro, a Carmelite missionary, +of a tribe of tailed Indians in the Amazonian region, whose descent +was from both apes and men. In British Central Africa, says Sir Harry +H. Johnston, the negro women profess to go in terror of the large male +baboons, and it is a fact that these animals will descend upon parties +of unarmed women, but only if they are carrying well-filled market +baskets. + +The forests of South America are haunted by two legendary creatures of +related natures, in whom the myths of tailed men return to their Greek +originals. One of these is the salvaje, or hairy man-of-the-woods, +of whom Humboldt first heard among the cataracts of the Amazon. This +creature, the natives, planters, and missionaries were agreed, carried +off women, constructed huts, and sometimes ate human flesh. For five +years, everywhere the explorer traveled in the Americas, the story +followed him, and he was censured for doubting it. He surmises that the +legend is decked out with features taken from African ape-lore, but +adds that it may be that the man-of-the-woods, if not some rare ape, is +one of the large bears, the footsteps of which resemble a man’s, and +which are believed in every country to attack women. + +“Father Gili,” says Humboldt, “gravely relates the history of a lady +in the Llanos of Venezuela, who so much praised the gentle character +and attentions of the man-of-the-woods. She is stated to have lived +several years with one in great domestic harmony, and only requested +some hunters to take her back because she and her children (a little +hairy, also) were weary of living far from the church and sacraments.” +A Spanish author wonders, however, if the fable of the man-of-the-woods +has not sprung from the artifice of Indian women who pretended to have +been carried off in default of a better excuse for long absences from +their husbands. + +The other legendary creature is the Curupira, or Diable Boiteux. Among +the noises of the Brazilian forest that used to startle Bates was “a +sound like the clang of an iron bar against a hard, hollow tree, or a +piercing cry.” This was never repeated, and the silence that followed +tended to deepen the unpleasant impression. With the natives it was +always the Curupira, the wild man or spirit of the forest, that made +these inexplicable sounds. “Sometimes,” says Bates, “he is described as +a kind of orang-otang, covered with long, shaggy hair, and living in +trees. At others he is said to have cloven feet and a bright red face. +He has a wife and children, and sometimes comes down to the rocas to +steal the mandioca.” + +All accounts agree that the Curupira is not footed like normal men. He +is lame, with one foot larger than the other, or his feet turn backward +so that his trail deceives. He is bald and dwarfish, with hairy person, +huge ears, and blue-green teeth, and he rides a deer, a rabbit, or a +pig. The spirit of the wood, the guardian of all wild things, he is +beneficent or mischievous, as occasion or mood offers. He insists that +game shall be killed, not maimed, merely, and for a gift of tobacco he +will return lost cattle. Where the forest is darkest, sometimes he will +appear in friendly but treacherous human guise, luring hunters from the +path and at last vanishing in mocking laughter. When the hunter sees +footprints of unequal size on the woodland trail ahead, if he is well +advised he will hasten back, and avoid the forest for weeks afterward. + +Farther north one finds again the tracks of this strange old man, +or of beings like him. The Maidu Indians of California tell of the +Chamlakhu, a bearded ancient with clawlike hands and feet who lived +in trees; running on the ground, his gait was shambling and his arms +fanned the air like wings. The Indians of Costa Rica tell of a king of +the tapirs, a man of stately bearing, who rebukes hunters that kill +out of wantonness. Among the Indians of Guatemala there are stories +of a forest sovereign and protector of game whom the ladinos call the +Sombreron, from the enormous hat which he wears. Short and sturdy of +figure, he rides his domain astride a deer. He has a rustic stronghold, +and a hunter following a wounded deer once came upon it. The Sombreron +was swinging in a hammock in the courtyard. He led the hunter to an +inclosure in which were many deer. Pointing out the wounded animal, he +said, “Kill it, but another time shoot better and do not torture my +subjects.” + +This creature is Arcadian Pan, master of the satyrs, generative dæmon +of the flocks and herds, somehow an emigrant to the New World. The +Filipinos call him the Tig-balang, picture him with long ears, legs of +grasshopper slenderness, and goat hoofs, and know him for a treacherous +jungle guide. The Russians call him the Lesiy. He guards their forests, +misleads wanderers, removes boundary stones and sign-posts. It is he +that makes the echo. Shouting and whistling in his domain he cannot +abide. A bearded, shaggy, green-eyed old man, he yet entices girls into +his thickets, whence after a long time they may escape, but with honor +forfeited; and he substitutes his stupid changelings for the children +of men. The same or a like figure is Tapio, “the golden king of the +forest” in Finnish magic songs. Wild animals are his flocks and herds, +his queen is the charcoal wife, the bear is his bastard son, and he +lives in Brushwood Town. + +Satyr geography covers a good many countries and centuries and +specifically includes at least one civilized race. It was long the +vulgar belief upon the Continent that Englishmen had tails. This was +first the story that the people of one shire told about another, and +its birthplace was Kent. Kentishmen, according to their neighbors, +were tailed, as a punishment for one or the other of two acts of +sacrilege. Their first offense was committed, says Bailey, when they +were still pagans. They abused “Austin the monk and his associates, by +beating them and opprobriously tying fish tails to their backsides; in +revenge of which such appendants grew to the hind parts of all that +generation.” The second offense was against Thomas À Becket when it was +noised abroad that he was out of favor with Henry II. The inhabitants +of Strood cut off the tail of his horse, and by the will of God, says +Polydore Vergil, “all their offspring were born with tails like brute +animals”; not until their race was extinct did tailed men pass from +Kent. + +Pliny numbers among the nations of India “men born with long hairy +tails, and of remarkable swiftness of foot. In Indo-China, southwest +of Yunnan, were the Tailed Pu mentioned in the _Sung Geography_. Ma +Tuan-Lin allows them tails from three to four inches long and classes +them among anthropophagi who eat their aged relatives. The Yao, a +subtribe of the Miaotze, have tails like monkeys, their neighbors say. +They live in leaf lodges or caves in the Lipo district south of the +Nanling range, and access to their habitations is by bamboo ladders. +Yet they are skillful weavers and musicians. + +[Illustration: _Men Feared Them, as Embodying the Loneliness of Waste +Places_] + +There are numerous reports of tailed tribes in the large islands of +the East. Marco Polo speaks of “a kind of wild men” in Sumatra, in +the kingdom of Lambri, with hairless tails a palm in length. The +_Merveilles de L’Inde_ tells of tailed cannibals on the west coast +of Sumatra, and Galvano has an account of Sumatrans with tails like a +sheep’s. The fifteenth century _History of the Ming Dynasty_ pictures +the Borneo village of Wu-lung-li-tan and its tailed citizens. When +they see other men approaching they flee with their hands over their +faces. The resemblance of the name to orang-utan, or “wild men,” will +not escape notice. Colonel Yule tells of a trader who had examined the +tails of a tribe on the northeast coast of Borneo. These appendages +were long and so stiff that the natives had to use perforated seats; +Arab, Malay, and native travelers report having seen them squatting +on these little stools. John Struys, a Dutch traveler in Formosa, saw +there in 1677 a man with a tail “more than a foot long, covered with +red hair, and very like a cow’s.” The man said the tail was the effect +of climate and all the natives on the southern side of the island had +them. + +There were two archipelagoes known as the Satyr Islands. Ptolemy +mentions one of them, and Gerini identifies it with the Northern +Anambas lying off the Indo-Chinese mainland. Hsi-tung, supposed to +be a transcript of Syatan, was their name of old; the resemblance of +Syatan to the Greek Satyron may have led Levantine sailors to make this +jest at the expense of ill-favored little people living then in the +Anamba group. To reach the other archipelago one must steer through +the Pillars of Hercules in company with a Carian sailor of the second +century. Him Pausanias asked what he knew about the satyrs. The Carian +replied that in a voyage to Italy he was driven from his course to +a distant sea whither people no longer sail. Here were many islands +which the crew did not care to touch, and these they called the Satyr +Islands. Their inhabitants were red-haired and had tails not much +smaller than a horse’s. + +Many African tribes wore animal tails for ornament, and explorers were +sometimes misled by the custom. The Duir of the northeast attached two +antelope tails to their girdles. The Wa-Kavorondo, east of the Nyanza, +go naked or wear only a waist-cloth, and the women attach to it a tail +of bark. In the same quarter of Africa the Bongo women, with their +large hips and lubricious gait, have had a share in propagating fable, +for they, too, ornament themselves with tails; and as they stride along +they swing these about in conscious emulation of the flocks and herds. +Schweinfurth likens them to “dancing baboons.” + +Other African satyr stories do not yield their secret so easily. +The Ba-Kwambas of the northwest, report said, had tails which they +inserted in holes in the ground when they sat down. In his _Travels and +Adventures_ (1861) Doctor Wolf asserted that in Abyssinia were men and +women “with tails like dogs and horses,” some of these so large that +they were able to knock down a horse with them. About the Niam-Niams, a +cannibal people with filed teeth that live in French Equatorial Africa, +legends have multiplied, and these Baring Gould has assembled. + +Horneman was the first to describe them as tailed anthropophagi. In +1849 M. Descouret reported that this was the common belief among the +Arabs. In 1851 M. de Castelnau told of a Houssa expedition in which +a band of Niam-Niams was slaughtered to a man. All, including the +women, had hairless tails about fifteen inches long. These people were +otherwise a handsome race, of a deep black, using clubs and javelins +in war, and in peace cultivating rice, maize, and other grains. An +Abyssinian priest, seemingly speaking of the same tribe, told M. +d’Abbadie in 1852 that only the men had tails, and these were covered +with hair and the length of a palm. Doctor Hubsch, physician to the +hospitals of Constantinople, examined in 1852 a tailed negress of the +Niam-Niams who was offered for sale in the slave market. She was black +as ebony, with frizzled hair, bloodshot eyes, large white teeth, and a +smooth, hairless, pointed tail two inches long. Her clothes fidgeted +her, she ate meat raw, and was an avowed cannibal. The slave dealer +said all her tribe was as herself. + +In Cuba Columbus heard of a province called Mangou, lying farther west, +and it sounded like Mangi, the rich maritime province of the Grand +Khan. Its inhabitants had tails, and wore garments to conceal them. +Columbus recalled the Maundeville story, related above, of the scorn of +certain naked Asiatics for clothing, and their belief that garments hid +bodily defects. So he pressed onward in the thought that Mangi and the +robed peoples of Tartary lay just below the horizon. + +Despite witness from Asia, Africa, and the eastern and western +Indies, there are no tailed races of men. But there have been tailed +individuals. Hottentot women come nearest meeting the requirements of +legend. Without a tail, they yet have a development of the posteriors +that amounts to a natural shelf, on which, as on a pillion, their +infants may ride. The mandril and certain other monkeys living in the +same latitudes show a like enlargement. + + + + +Chapter XI. The Pygmies + + +It was left to the pygmy to revenge all of the creatures of fable upon +incredulous mankind. He was doubted, yet he is. Not until some fifty +years ago would the learned doubters admit that Homer and Herodotus +were right, and themselves wrong. Now it is in the books that half a +hundred groups of pygmies are living on the earth, to say nothing of +others that have become extinct. Every race has had such groups, and +every continent has known their tread. + +There is palliation for ancient and modern doubts as to these dwarfish +nations. The pygmies of reality are not so small as the pygmies of +tradition. Their name is from the Greek word for fist, or the distance +between the elbow joint and the knuckles of the average man--a little +more than thirteen inches. The ancient geographers, however, allowed +the smallest pygmies at least double that stature. There were two +species of little men--the one averaging three spans, or two feet three +inches high, the other averaging five spans, or three feet nine inches. +These measurements recur again and again for fifteen centuries in the +writings of the east and west. + +No race has a mean stature as short even as the pygmies of five spans, +but among the dwarf tribes there are many women who do not greatly +exceed it; and there are women, not so small according to the standards +of their brothers as to be accounted deformed, who do not equal it. +Stanley saw among the Akkas of the West African Rain Forest a grown +girl of seventeen who was half an inch short of three feet. + +Poetic license of the old time took liberties with the estimates of +geographers, but these liberties were understood as such. The dwarf +nation on the Upper Nile that was reputed to war with the cranes used +the ax, it was said, to cut down ears of wheat. When Hercules passed +through their country they set up ladders to climb to the rim of his +goblet for a drink. In his slumber two armies swooped down upon his +right hand and two on his left; but, awaking, the hero laughingly +gathered them all in his lion skin. + +The myth of their warfare with the cranes became a theme of literature +and art, but cast doubt over the whole pygmy tradition. It first +appears in Homer. The _Iliad_ likens the shouts of the onrushing +Trojans to the cries of cranes as they fly southward “with noise and +order through the sky,” bringing “wounds and death to pygmy nations.” +Megasthenes elaborates the theme. It is the three-span pygmies, he +says, that war upon the cranes, as well as on the partridges, which are +as large as geese. The small folk collect and destroy the eggs of the +cranes, which breed in India and nowhere else. Pliny adds that every +spring the little men go in a body to the seashore, astride of rams and +goats, and there destroy the eggs and young of the birds; “otherwise, +it would be impossible for them to withstand the increasing multitude +of the cranes.” The shore booths which they occupy they build of mud +mixed with feathers and egg shells. + +So the story moves from Africa to India, and towards modern times. +Maundeville declares that in the Land of Pygmies, which he seems to +place to the west of, and tributary to, China, the inhabitants “have +oftentimes war with the Birds of that Country that they take and eat.” +There is even a reference to this warfare in the writing (1563) of a +traveler in Greenland. There Dithmar Blefkens of Hamburg met a blind +monk who said that the pygmies represented the most perfect shape of +man, but were “hairy to the uttermost Joynts of the Fingers,” had no +proper speech, and were “unreasonable Creatures that live in Perpetual +Darkness.” + +India appears to be the home of the tradition that the dwarfish peoples +warred with the cranes. Just a hint of its origin is afforded by +Ctesias. The “swarthy men called Pygmies,” he said, “hunt hares and +foxes not with dogs, but with ravens and kites and crows and vultures.” +Falconry is known to have been practiced in India as early as B.C. 600 +and may be a thousand years older there. From a people’s using birds of +prey in hunting to themselves fighting against birds of prey is a step +of inference easy to take. + +There is, however, a more direct explanation. According to a tradition +of the Indians, the Garuda, the bird of Vishnu, was hostile to the +people of the Kirata, and the name of this people means “dwarfish.” +While the sacred bird as pictured by the poets does not look like the +crane, or any other known species, it may be near enough to account for +the legend. + +Herodotus was the first to give the pygmy tradition a historical +quality. He heard of the little people while he was collecting +materials for his books in Africa. His informants were natives of +Cyrene who had been to the shrine of Ammon and talked with Etearchus +the Ammonian king. The latter tells the story of the adventure of +the five Nasamonian youths, which he had received from their Libyan +countrymen and which Herodotus, therefore transcribes at third hand: + +“The Nasamonians said there had grown up among them some wild young +men, the sons of certain chiefs, who, when they came to man’s estate, +indulged in all manner of extravagances, and among other things drew +lots for five of their number to go and explore the desert parts of +Libya, and try if they could not penetrate further than any had done +previously. The young men, therefore, dispatched on this errand by +their comrades with a plentiful supply of water and provision, traveled +at first through the inhabited region, passing which they came to the +wild beast tract, whence they finally entered upon the desert, which +they proceeded to cross from east to west. After journeying for many +days over a wide extent of sand, they came at last to a plain where +they observed trees growing; approaching them, and seeing fruit on +them, they proceeded to gather it. + +“While they were thus engaged there came upon them some dwarfish men, +under the middle height, who seized them and carried them off. The +Nasamonians could not understand a word of their language, nor had they +any acquaintance with the language of the Nasamonians. They were led +across extensive marshes, and finally came to a town where all the men +were of the height of their conductors, and black complexioned. A great +river flowed by the town, running from west to east, and containing +crocodiles. + +“Here let me dismiss Etearchus, the Ammonian, and his story, only +adding that he declared that the Nasamonians got safely back to their +country and that the men whose city they had reached were a nation of +sorcerers. With respect to the river which ran by their town, Etearchus +conjectured it to be the Nile, and reason favors that view.” + +Thus ends one of the most valuable records which have come down from +ancient times. The river referred to is now believed to be the Niger, +or perhaps an affluent of Lake Tchad. Herodotus has another story of +a dwarfish people found in the west when Sataspes, the Carthaginian, +undertook to sail around Libya. + +Although Strabo doubted the existence of pygmy races, yet his keen mind +brought him within reach of the truth. He finds in the wretched mode +of life of the people he called the Ethiopians, an explanation of the +reports of their dwarfish stature. They were naked and wandered from +place to place, and their sheep, goats, oxen, and dogs were undersized +like themselves. “It was perhaps from the diminutive size of these +people,” he concludes, “that the story of the pygmies originated, +whom no person worthy of credit has asserted that he himself has +seen.” The Greek geographer seems to have had reliable information as +to a fact that on its face is as hard to believe as the legends he +discredits--that there was dwarfish live stock as well as a dwarfish +people. Sir Samuel Baker found that the cows and ewes of the Bari, +a tribe living in the same district with the forest pygmies, “have +dimensions truly liliputian.” + +Aristotle speaks with authority of the pygmies of Africa. “The storks,” +he said, “pass from the plains of Scythia to the marsh of upper Egypt, +toward the sources of the Nile. This is the district which the pygmies +inhabit, whose existence is not a fable. There is really, as men say, +a species of men of little stature, and their horses are little also. +They pass their life in caverns.” Pliny speaks of the pygmies as +dwelling in Thrace near the Black Sea, in the Carian district of Asia +Minor, in India under the shadow of the Himalayas, and at the sources +of the Nile. There is a valuable fact behind this apparently confused +geography: the Roman was right in assuming there were several such +races. + +The pygmy races of Asia and Indonesia are cited in classic, Arabic, and +Chinese geography, and in mediæval travel. “In the middle of India,” +Ctesias says, “are found the swarthy men called pygmies, who speak the +same language as the other Indians. They are very diminutive, the +tallest but two cubits high, the majority only one and one-half. They +let their hair grow very long--down to their knees and even lower. +They have the largest beards anywhere to be seen, and when these have +grown sufficiently long and copious, they no longer wear clothing, but +let the hair of the head fall down their backs far below the knee, +while in front are their beards trailing down to their very feet. When +their hair has thus thickly enveloped their whole body they bind it +round them with a zone and so make it serve for a garment. They are +snub-nosed and otherwise ill-favored. Their sheep are of the size of +our lambs, and their oxen and asses rather smaller than our rams. Three +thousand men attend the king of the Indians on account of their great +skill in archery. They are eminently just and have the same laws as the +other Indians.” + +This may be a description of the Kiratas, whose district is east of +Bengal in the Himalaya foothills. + +There were vague reports in the classic world of other pygmy peoples +far to the southeast in Asia. The Chinese records make these more +definite. The _Hill and Sea Classic_ describes the Chiau Yau, a tribe +of cap-wearing pygmies three cubits (3 feet 3 inches) high whose +country was east of the country of the Three-headed Men. This is +perhaps the country now inhabited by the Yau tribes, who are short +of stature and may be this long-sought-for pygmy race. Individuals +of the Chiau Yau tribe, “diminutive black slaves,” were sent to the +Chinese court from the coasts of Indo-China in the reign of Ming Tu +(A.D. 58-76). There was also a pygmy people whom the Annamese called +the Phong. They were only two cubits, or twenty-six inches, high, +and although they were cave dwellers a fragrant perfume emanated +from their skins. As hunters they paid their dues to the state in +camphor, rhinoceros horns, and elephant tusks. Both of these races +Gerini locates in “the mysterious country of the pygmies” in French +Indo-China, between the Mekong and the Black rivers, under the +twenty-first parallel of north latitude. North of this district on the +Red River dwell the dark, dwarfish Pu-lu tribes which seem to be the +remnants of a once widely spread pygmy race. The Santom aborigines of +Yun-nan and Laos are also of inferior stature, with flat faces and +black skins. In China itself ancient writings speak of the black dwarfs +of Shantung province as early as the twenty-third century B.C. + +Perhaps the first record of the Aetas, or Philippine negritos, appears +in Chao Fu-Kua, a Chinese author of the early thirteenth century, who +told of a tribe of small black men with frizzly hair, round yellow +eyes, and teeth that showed through their lips, who lived in remote +valleys of the archipelago. A Chinese work on novelties, published +in 1636, has several passages on the black dwarfs of Cochin-China. +Anywhere from Annam to Siam, it says, “there are pygmies whose stature +is not over three feet seven inches, who are regarded as of animal +origin, who sell themselves for longer or shorter periods to dealers in +aloes. When engaged they are provisioned, supplied with hatchets and +saws, and sent into the mountains. These dwarfs are very submissive and +servile.” + +Ibn Khordadbeh and Idrisi tell of the Rami, a pygmy race of Sumatra, +who go naked, find shelter in thickets, avoid intercourse with other +people, and use a hissing speech. They are swift runners and adept tree +climbers. They have red frizzly hair and a stature of but three feet. +Curled hair of this color had been ascribed from the seventh century +A.D. to the clawed negrito savages on the east coast of the Malay +Peninsula, and a traveler of the last generation reports hairy dwarfs +on the southwest coast of Sumatra. Dunashki (about A.D. 1300) has this +note: “When ships approach Volcano Island at the beginning of a squall, +tiny black dwarfs, five spans (nearly four feet) or less in stature, +resembling negroes, appear and climb aboard, without harming anyone.” +All three of these travel notes may be reflected in the incident in the +third voyage of Sindbad, when his ship, driven by a storm amid strange +islands, is boarded by “an innumerable multitude of frightful savages +about two feet high, covered all over with red hair,” who compel the +crew to follow them to the palace of a giant cannibal. + +Accounts of several other travelers bring the pygmy tradition down +to the era of modern disbelief. Odoric, the fourteenth-century +missionary monk, reports that the Yangste Kiang waters the Country of +the Pygmies, whom he describes as an innumerable folk, three spans +high, and foremost of all cotton workers. Their city of Chatan is one +of the fairest of places. Æthicus of Istria declares that he sailed +northwest from Ceylon and passed, among other islands in the Northern +Sea, Bridinno, the land of dwarfs. Marco Polo tells how pygmies were +fabricated from monkeys in Sumatra and sold to curio collectors. + +Maundeville makes the pygmies subject to “the great Chan.” “The River +Dalay,” he says, “goeth through the land of Pygmies, where that the +Folk be of little Stature, and be but three Span long, and they be +right fair and gentle. And they marry them when they be half a Year of +Age and get Children. And they live not but six Year or seven at the +most; and he that liveth eight Year, Men hold him there right passing +old. These Men be workers of Gold, Silver, Cotton, Silk and of all such +Things, the best of any other that be in the World.” Men of larger size +work their lands and mines for them. + +In another passage Sir John populates an isle with “Little Folk,” who +have no mouths and only an adder speech. Pigafetta, who went with the +Magellan expedition around the world and wrote its story, reports two +races of dwarfs in the Philippines, one with gigantic ears. The latter +were shaven, naked, shrill-voiced troglodytes, whose food was the sago +tree. + +Ludovico Varthema, an Italian Mohammedan, a contemporary of Columbus +and a wide-ranging traveler, tells an incident of his pilgrimage to +Mecca, which may or may not shed light on the moot question of the +Middle Ages and since, as to what became of the lost Ten Tribes. There +was a mountain in the Hedjaz, he said, inhabited by pygmy Jews, color +black, who skipped from crag to crag like goats--he watched them from a +distance--and when they caught a Moslem skinned him alive. + +In Madagascar in 1770 the French naturalist Commerson, who accompanied +Bougainville in his voyage around the world, found evidences of a +pygmy tribe with an average stature of three and a half feet, all +traces of which vanished in the following century. His report was +corroborated by Count de Modave, governor of Fort Dauphin. The men of +this tribe wore long beards and were workers in iron and steel, of +which they made lances and assagais. They were brave pacifists. When +from their mountain homes they saw a formidable force approaching on +the plains below, they drove down such cattle as they could spare to +the entrances of their defiles to purchase immunity from invasion. If, +however, the enemy entered these defiles, the little folk savagely +attacked them. + +Near to the country of the warrior women in South America, said the +Spaniards, was pygmy land. Peru has traditions of a race not over two +cubits high. California Indians tell of a witch-like little people in +the redwood forest. The Arapahoes tell of dark-skinned, pot-bellied, +cannibal dwarfs who were only three feet high but strongly made, and +skillful trackers. They could carry buffaloes on their backs, so the +Crows said of the small folk that once roved Montana. In the Gila +Canyon in New Mexico there have been exhumed the mummies of a true +pygmy people, some of them scarcely three feet long, with cerements +of woven cloth, sandals of yucca fiber and ornaments of hummingbird +feathers; legend speaks of thievish dwarfs who lived in underground +houses and sometimes came to the cities for supplies. D’Orbigny +described, in 1831, the so-called Chiquitos, or Little Folk, who +inhabit the heights on the divide between the Mamore and Paraguay +rivers. The men he measured averaged only four feet ten inches, which +brings them within strict pygmy requirements--not over four feet eleven +inches. They are a broad-shouldered, robust Indian people, hospitable, +sociable, musical. D’Orbigny estimated their number at about twenty +thousand. No recent traces have been found of the Ayamanes whom +Friedemann met in the northern Andes regions and who, he said, were no +more than “five empans,” or three feet four inches, high. + +There is a Chinese legend that in the remote northern mountains of the +old empire there has lived for seventeen centuries a race of hairy +dwarfs. Inscriptions on the Great Wall are said to recite that whenever +one of the millions of laborers who were building it was found to have +made a mistake in his work, he was imbedded alive in the wall at the +place of his error. About A.D. 210, the story continues, a body of +workmen rebelled at the custom, and with their families fled to distant +forests where their descendants still live. The hardships of their +journey and their rude surroundings brought these people down to the +pygmy level. + +It is asserted that there is a race of dwarfs in Morocco in the Atlas +Mountains whose existence the Moors have kept secret for three thousand +years because they are regarded as holy men, and great saints who bring +good luck to towns. “Our Blessed Lord,” the people call a dwarf. “It +is a sin to speak about them to you,” one Moor said to a traveler. The +Moorish silence is declared to be the remnant of a superstition older +than the Mohammedan religion. + +These pygmy stories, of perhaps twenty-seven centuries so far as the +record goes, of at least double that period if unwritten tradition +be included, have been brought together here in order to assess the +scientific reaction to them. Some of them on their face are completely +fabulous, some have an admixture of truth, some are good enough +history. To all except the very latest of them the scientific reaction +was unfavorable until a deluge of facts made this attitude impossible. + +Strabo among the ancients was in his rights when he complained that +nobody had seen any pygmies, but his facts were incomplete, for long +before his day civilized peoples had seen them. Browne summarizes +in his stiff but elegant English the unbelief of the scholars of +the Renaissance: “Julius Scaliger, a diligent enquirer, accounts +thereof, but as a poetical fiction. Ulysses Aldrovandus, a most exact +geographer, in an express discourse hereon, concludes the story +fabulous and a poetical account of Homer. Albertus Magnus, a man +ofttimes too credulous, herein was more than dubious; for he affirmeth +if any such dwarfs were ever extant, they were surely some kind of +apes; which is a conceit allowed by Cardan and not esteemed improbable +by many others.” “There is as much reality,” concludes Browne, “in the +pygmies of Paracelsus, that is, his non-adamical men, or middle natures +betwixt men and spirits.” + +Two towering names in natural history, Buffon and Cuvier, are ranged +against the pygmy tradition. Here is Buffon’s conclusion: “Deceived by +some optical illusion, the ancient historians gravely mention whole +nations of pygmies as existing in remote quarters of the world. The +more accurate observation of the moderns, however, convinces us that +these accounts are entirely fabulous. The existence, therefore, of +a pygmy race of mankind, being founded in error or in fable, we can +expect to find men of diminutive stature only by accident, among men +of the ordinary size.” + +Buffon’s explanation of the fable that the pygmies war with the cranes +is so plausible that men would accept it, as his own generation did, +if they did not know that these little folk are human and not simian. +Even so, there may be truth in the theory advanced. “One knows,” says +Buffon, “that the monkeys, which go in large bands in Africa and India, +carry on continual warfare against birds; they seek to surprise their +nests, and without ceasing prepare ambushes for them. The storks defend +themselves vigorously. But the monkeys, anxious to carry off the eggs +and the young birds, return constantly, and in bands, to the combat; +and as by their tricks, their feints and movements they seem to imitate +human actions, they would appear to ignorant people to be a band of +little men. Behold the origin and the history of these fables!” + +Roulin was equally ingenious in his explanation of the pygmy +populations and their campaigns against the birds. He noted the squat +frames of the Lapps and Eskimos who dwell within, or not far from, the +Arctic Circle. The pygmies, he decided, were a circumpolar population. +Homer placed their home and their battles at the southern end of the +crane path; Roulin placed them at the northern terminus, in that +Scythia of misty boundaries one of which was supposed to be the boreal +ocean. Pliny had told that every year the pygmies rode down to the +seashore to destroy the eggs and young of the cranes. Very well, here +was the story explained, for every year the Lapps and Eskimos come down +to the sea and return to the interior, and these people partly subsist +on the eggs of aquatic birds. + +Cuvier is reproachful of Pliny. “I am not surprised,” he says, “at +finding the pygmies in the works of Homer; but to find them in Pliny +I am surprised indeed.” The great French naturalist has contributed +more, perhaps, than any other man to find the basis of truth or the +source of error in classic fables. His explanation of the pygmy legend, +like that of Buffon, is more convincing almost than truth itself, but +its teaching is error. He finds the source of a fable in a flattering +convention of ancient sculpture: “The custom of exhibiting in the same +sculpture, in bas-relief, men of very different heights--of making +kings and conquerors gigantic while their subjects and vassals are +represented as only one-fourth or one-fifth of their size--must have +given rise to the fable of the pygmies.” + +Cuvier died in 1832. Chambers’ _Journal_ in 1844 voiced with less +reserve the unbelief of that period. In a scoffing article it declares +that “the world has long been haunted with the idea that somewhere in +Africa there is a nation of Tom Thumbs”; but “the grand difficulty +about the African nation of dwarfs is the fact that not a single +specimen has been seen either in Abyssinia or Egypt.” “The pygmy dream, +one of the last lingering superstitions of travel, has been puffed +away,” confidently asserts this periodical. These so-called pygmies +were monkeys, not men. + +In 1863 Paul du Chaillu explored the coast lands of West Africa and +in 1871 published the results in _The Country of the Dwarfs_. The +scientific skepticism of the ages delivered its last stroke in the +attacks that met this book, for already, although the world did not +know it, Schweinfurth, farther east in the equatorial region, had +reviewed an entire pygmy army. The _London Graphic_ wonders whether +or not “Mr. du Chaillu means us to accept the book as a bona-fide +narrative of what he has himself seen.” Thus cautiously this periodical +registers its doubts: “The first part of the book reads very much +like other descriptions of African exploration; but further on Mr. du +Chaillu represents himself as having arrived at the country of the +dwarfs, whom he considers to be identical with the supposed fabulous +pygmies. This strange race, who average only from four feet to four +feet seven inches high, live a perfectly wild life in the forests of +equatorial Africa, feeding on snakes, rats, mice, and berries. They go +entirely naked, and inhabit huts made by bending branches of trees in +the shape of a bow. The height of the huts is just enough to keep the +head of a man from touching the roof when he is seated. These dwarfs +are very shy of being seen and hold no communion with the negro tribes +about them, by whom they are called Obongos. Truly we have here a +strange tale.” + +Truly, there are not only lost arts, but lost records, forgotten +histories. Forty-four centuries before du Chaillu was scoffed at for +a true tale, an authentic pygmy testimony was set down in a letter +which a king of Egypt wrote to a vassal chief, and which is still in +existence. The world believed in pygmies then because sometimes it saw +them; and their descendants still hunt the elephant in the forests of +equatorial Africa. + +[Illustration: “THE SWARTHY MEN CALLED PYGMIES”] + +To the Egyptians of that time the country beyond the Second Cataract +of the Nile was the Land of Ghosts, whence the negroes brought to the +markets of Assuan strange stories of shadowy folk who dwelt there. Into +this land a prince of Elephantine named Herkhuf marched with a little +force. An account of his journey has been written by Arthur E. P. +Weigall, of the Department of Antiquities of Egypt. + +In the country which Herkhuf penetrated he found pygmies dwelling, and +one he secured. He sent word back to the boy Pharaoh, Pepy II, and had +from him a letter believed to be the earliest example of a private +communication. Yet life still throbs through its lines and the colors +glow in the picture of an excited royal lad awaiting the coming of this +wonder of the south, directing that his meals shall be ample, that his +slumbers shall be guarded, and that on taking ship at Memphis there +shall be men to see he does not fall into the water. The Pharaoh’s +letter follows: + +“You say in your letter that you have brought a dancing pygmy of the +god from the Land of Ghosts, like the pygmy which the Treasurer Baurded +brought from the Land of Pount in the time of Asesa. You say to my +majesty, ‘Never before has one like him been brought by anyone who has +visited Aam.’ Come northward, therefore, to the court immediately, and +bring this pygmy with you, which you must bring living, prosperous, and +healthy, from the Land of Ghosts, to dance for the King and to rejoice +and gladden the heart of the King. When he goes down with you into the +vessel, appoint trustworthy people to be beside him at either side of +the vessel: take care that he does not fall into the water. When he +sleeps at night, appoint trustworthy people who shall sleep beside him +in his cabin; and make an inspection ten times each night. My majesty +desires to see this pygmy more than the gifts of Sinai and of Pount. If +you arrive at court, the pygmy being with you, alive, prosperous, and +healthy, my majesty will do for you a greater thing than that which was +done for the Treasurer Baurded in the time of Asesa, according to the +heart’s desire of my majesty to see this pygmy. Orders have been sent +to the chief of the New Towns to arrange that food shall be taken from +every store-city and every temple (on the road) without stinting.” + +A Nubian Highway, so Weigall calls the ancient road down which the +dancing pygmy came to civilization about B.C. 2500. In A. D. 1878 a +little farther south, Stanley followed what he calls a Pygmy Highway, +“along which quite a tribe must have passed. It was lined with amoma +fruit skins, and shells of nuts, and the crimson rinds of phrynia +berries. Our elephant and game track had brought us across another +track leading easterly from Andari, and both joined presently, +developing to a highway much patronized by the pygmy tribes. We could +tell where they had stopped to light their pipes, and to crack nuts, +and trap game, and halted to gossip. The twigs were broken three feet +from the ground, showing that they were snapped by dwarfs. Where it was +a little muddy the path showed high, delicate insteps, proving their +ancient ancestry and aristocratic descent, and small feet not larger +than those of young English misses of eight years old.” Later Stanley +met individuals of this tribe. + +These were the Akkas, or Mambuti, the same pygmy tribe, it would +appear, whose sculptured reliefs on monuments of Egypt going back as +far as B.C. 3366 were dwarfed, so Cuvier had thought, merely to make a +conqueror seem larger than life and indicate their own inferior estate. +When a regiment of several hundred of these little warriors marched +behind Moummeri in 1870 to do homage to Munza, the East African negro +monarch, the pygmy tradition marched with them out of the mists of +fable across the border of geographical knowledge. For Schweinfurth, a +European explorer, was there to behold these “grasshopper warriors,” as +he called them. + +The revolution in scientific opinion since that day appears in the +statement that the ninth edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ +prints one paragraph about the pygmies, nearly all of which is an +exposition of myths and a statement of doubts, while the eleventh +edition prints two full pages of ascertained facts. + +Although science always balked at the name of pygmy and refused as long +as it could to admit that the African forests concealed a race of tiny +men, yet the world had long known something of the little peoples. +The Spaniards rightly reported that pygmy Indians had lived in Peru, +and they found negritos in the Philippines. Although Arab traders gave +the Andamans a wide berth because, as they believed, these islands +contained cannibals and no cocoanuts, yet they knew even before the +Middle Ages that a dwarfish people dwelt there. The Dutch found the +Bushmen when they settled South Africa, and hunted them for sport as +if they were jackals; they found also the still smaller Vaalpens, or +“dusty-bellies.” The Lapps of Russia and Scandinavia were known to +mediæval travelers, who were terrified by their diminutive stature +and witch repute. These mongoloid people, whose mean stature is only +five feet, and their kinsmen, the Eskimos, who are a little taller, +are, however, not classified among the true pygmies, a term which an +arbitrary convention restricts to Little Black Men. + +The pygmies of Asia and Oceania are called negritos, the pygmies of +equatorial Africa negrillos. They vary by tribes in average height from +four feet eight inches to five feet two inches, with the women smaller +and many individuals only a little above four feet. A full-grown +Akka adult, says Stanley, may weigh ninety pounds. Another explorer +estimated the average weight of six of these adults at seventy-seven +pounds and found that two of them weighed but fifty-three pounds apiece. + +Wherever seen, the tribes of little people have certain things in +common beside their stature. One of these is their discontinuous +distribution. They do not adjoin each other in a continuous zone of +population as the taller races do, but are dotted here and there +across the earth like islands in a sea of alien populations. Always +they occupy the less desirable districts. The Spaniards called the +Philippine pygmies Negritos del Monte, for they had retired before the +Malays to the mountain gorges. The Lapps rove the tundras of northern +Europe. The Bushmen dwell in the deserts of South Africa. The Akkas +inhabit the steaming forests of equatorial Africa, in parallels of +latitude deadly to the white man. The Batwas live on volcanic uplands +in the Tanganyika country. In the Malay Peninsula and New Guinea, one +seeks in vain for littoral-dwelling negritos; they have been driven +inland and to the mountain recesses. + +Almost everywhere the little people somewhat resemble in feature +the races that surround them. This is due to unions, temporary or +otherwise, between the pygmy women and the men of the neighbor +tribes, by which various streams of strange blood have poured into +the veins of the lesser stock. Among the Lapps of earlier generations +it almost seemed as if it were conscious tribal policy to promote +a taller stature by encouraging women and girls to form irregular +connections with men of other European races. There is Bushman blood +in the Hottentots, or Hottentot blood in the Bushmen. In the so-called +Bastards of the Kalahari Desert--a term whereof the wearers are +proud because it concedes to them a Caucasian strain--the blood of +the Bushmen meets the blood of the Boers in the halfway house of the +Hottentot. + +Herbert Long, who spent six years in Central Africa with an expedition +from the American Museum of Natural History, notes in its _Journal_ for +1919 the fact that the pygmy men he saw were often much taller than +their mates, and gives a reason, that may explain the same phenomenon +in related tribes. Comely pygmy girls enter the harems of the chiefs of +the tall negro tribes. Their half-breed sons are sent back to their own +people. Since women are valuable chattels, the daughters are retained +by the father’s tribe. The custom increases pygmy prestige; but the +little men must not wed the women of their tall friends. + +The small black folk of the forest have thus won a right to the marked +regional resemblance they bear to the larger black folk of the yam and +breadfruit clearings, whom they serve as scouts against the approach of +an enemy and as allies in forest warfare. “In western Africa, as in the +Philippines and in the two Gangetic peninsulas,” asserts Quatrefages, +“the pygmies have played an ethnological rôle, at times important, +in crossing with superior races and in giving birth to half-breed +populations.” The Pandavas, or heroes of the oldest Indian times, set +the example of these unions with lower races. + +The Dravidians of southern India, Quatrefages declares, occupy the +territory formerly populated by the negritos--and carry their blood. +He also thinks that the blood of these little blacks shows itself in +the skin and stature of natives in parts of Japan. Relics of a pygmy +race are supposed to exist in Sicily and Sardinia, “along the highroad +between Pleistocene Africa and Europe”; fifteen per cent of the men +of South Italy and Sardinia are rejected for military service because +less than sixty-one and one half inches high. South of Salamanca in +western Spain, the valley called Las Jurdes is peopled by men and women +said to be little more than three feet high, whose shrunken stature is +attributed to unwholesome surroundings. + +No true pygmy race has developed a pronounced nose bridge, and only +the lozenge-faced Bushmen have salient chins. Among nearly all of the +tribes there is a deficiency in the fatty tissues which affect the +skin, so that, even before old age comes, they present a wrinkled +appearance as if the skin fitted too loosely. This is true even of the +Lapps. The countenances of these northern dwarfs are mongoloid, but +without the slanting eyes of the Chinese and Tartars, and their heads +are the roundest of any race of men. The negrito and negrillo tribes +have rounder heads than the tall negroes. The bodies of many of the +little people in Central Africa and New Guinea are covered with a downy +growth. Pygmy complexions show olive in the Lapps, light yellow in the +Bushmen, yellow brown in the Indonesians, dark brown in the negritos of +the Andamans and Philippines, and among the Akkas, as Schweinfurth puts +it, the color of coffee slightly roasted. + +Small hands and in some cases small feet characterize these tribes, and +grown girls of the Bushmen show, under measurement, feet but little +more than four inches long. Their bodies are long in proportion to +their legs, and the legs are slim. The mid-point of the body is above +the navel instead of below, as it is in the tall races. The pygmies +of Africa are pot-bellied; this is due to diet, and is corrected by +regular and wholesome food. + +In other respects the pygmies differ from the rest of mankind chiefly +in what they lack. Save in the case of the Semangs of the Malay +Peninsula they may have no separate language; and they use always the +speech of their taller neighbors. There is no pygmy state, or king, +and often no tribal organization; even among the Lapps there was a +nomad tribe called the “twice and thrice tributary Lapps,” because +its members paid tribute to two, sometimes to three states--Russia, +Denmark, and Sweden. The Andaman negritos and the Akkas of the West +African Rain Forest are the only races that never devised a means of +making fire, though both know its use. The Andamanese are also the only +people that never made a musical instrument and the only people that +never domesticated a food animal or cultivated a plant. + +One or two things, however, may be said for the culture of the little +folk. There are no pygmy cannibals. Although the Bushman houses, mere +mats suspended on stakes, are the most primitive known, yet these are +the most skilled artists in South Africa, and some of their figures +suggest that they may have known hieroglyphic writing. All the little +peoples treat their women kindly, and reverence gray hairs. The +Andamanese are monogamous and believe in an omniscient deity. On the +other hand, the highest religious concept among the polygamous Akkas +is of a pygmy devil. The Bushmen live in a state approaching sexual +promiscuity; it used to be the custom, when a man wished a temporary +mate, to kidnap a small child, and the mother would follow the child +into his home. The Andamanese have the peculiar custom of manifesting +joy by weeping, and it is said the Veddahs never laugh. + +No certain statements may be made as to the aggregate numbers of the +dwarf nations. There are about 50,000 Bushmen, 27,000 Lapps, 20,000 +Aetas, 2,000 Mincoupies, 2,000 Veddahs. It may be that the equatorial +pygmies are half as numerous as the Aetas. Everywhere the number of +these people is diminishing. + +As to their origin and the cause of their shrunken stature, there is +no agreement among ethnologists. The small blacks may have come into +existence in South India and spread thence east and west, peopling +Melanesia and Africa. Once they formed a belt of population clear +across equatorial Africa. On the evidences of crania which he examined, +Professor Kollman believes that, about b.c. 5000, they dwelt as far +down the Nile Valley as the Thebaid. The Oriental branch of the race, +pure or mixed, extends, says Quatrefages, from the extreme southeast +of New Guinea to the archipelago of the Andamans and from the Sunda +Islands to Japan, and on the Asiatic continent from Annam and the +peninsula of Malacca to the western Ghauts, and from Cape Comorin +to the Himalayas. This grandiose geography is challenged by later +scholarship. + +Yet over all these wide spaces, and over the Dark Continent, pygmies +may have been the first settlers. Once it was surmised that the tall +negritoes sprang from them; but this is a moot point. To accept +it would be to assert that short stature is a primitive trait, +and that all the tall races are in this respect abnormal. British +anthropologists hold that the Bushmen are a distinct people, but +that the Congo pygmies, though of livelier intelligence than the +tall blacks, are yet special groups of the Nilotic or Bantu negroes, +arrested or degenerated by the inhospitable forest. Their diminished +stature, Stanley urges, is the result of “three thousand years of +isolation, intermarriage, and a precarious diet of fungi, wild fruit, +lean fibrous meat of animals, and dried insects; in a word, of the +utter absence of sunshine and the lack of gluten and saccharine bodies +in their food.” + +Handicapping conditions may have produced the Lapps of the Arctic +Circle, the vanished Indian dwarfs of the Andes, the enigmatic Bushmen, +and the little black men of Africa, the Malay Peninsula, and various +isles of the eastern sea. But in old fables pygmyland is hard by the +country of the giants. It happens that the diminutive Lapp is neighbor +to the tall Karelian, the Bushman and Akka to the stalwart Bantu. +There are little people of the frigid zone, the tropics, and the south +temperate. There were dwarfs of rich ocean littorals as well as of the +tundra, the mountain glen, the desert, and the equatorial forest. + +“I believe mankind was originally a dwarf,” says Leland. Churchward, in +his _Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man_, holds that paleolithic man +was a pygmy, “the first little earth man or red man,” and that he was +evolved near the Nile springs, and thence overspread the earth. Sign +language and articulate sounds, the Masonic writer thinks, were worked +out by these little folk. After talking with representatives of their +race, he concludes that they have a monosyllabic speech, and words +with the same sounds as the Egyptian hieroglyphs. The resemblance of +living pygmies to the long-armed, short-legged, paunchy dwarf-gods of +Egypt and Phœnicia, and notably to Bes, has been remarked. These squat +divinities may have owed their being to ancient fear of small men, the +elder brothers of historic man. Sir Harry Johnston thinks it possible +that the little blacks once overspread Europe and, by their prankish +good nature and curious power of becoming invisible in herbage and +behind rocks, gave rise to folk-tales of gnomes, kobolds, and fairies. +Kollman, the Basle anatomist, contends that the pygmies were the child +race of mankind, and that each tall race was preceded by a small one. +The common opinion, that healthy dwarf tribes have been produced by +degeneration from men of larger mold, is not fully satisfying. Yet the +oldest human skeletons found thus far are of men of normal size. + +There are pygmies, but why? The one riddle succeeds the other. + + + + +Chapter XII. The Amazons of Legend + + +Men gave up with regret, and not so long ago, and not until they had +ransacked all the horizons of geography, the belief that somewhere in +the world there is a state of warrior women. They are reluctant to +admit, nor have they quite admitted, that there never was such a state; +and still they ransack the horizons of history and folk-lore for proof +that at one time Amazons were. + +Myth has mapped the woman’s commonwealth in western Africa, in Armenia +on the Black Sea, in the Caucasus, in Russia along the lower Don, in +islands of the Baltic, the Indian Ocean, and the Caribbean, and upon +the River of the Amazons. There is report of it in Greek, Turanian, +Arab, Negro, and American legend. It figures in the poetry of Arctinus, +the history of Herodotus, the mendacities of Maundeville, the narrative +of Marco Milioni, the visions of Columbus, the journal of Orellana and +the Guiana prospectus of Raleigh. + +Unlike other ancient tales, the Amazon story, instead of slowly fading, +has grown in definiteness of outline as it approached to-day. The men +who discarded utterly the belief that there is a woman state lived not +long after the men who thought the state had at last been found. + +The Amazons--so runs tradition everywhere substantially the same--were +a tribe of women ruled by a queen and subsisting by the chase and by +wars of pillage. They fought both on foot and on horseback, using the +bow, the spear, the javelin, and the double-headed ax. Their garb +consisted of a short tunic clearing the knee and fastened over the left +shoulder, leaving the right breast bare. Their outlines were powerful +and beautiful. There was a dispute, never composed, between art and +etymology, as to their bosoms. The word Amazon, though of barbarian +origin, was thought to derive from _alpha_, privative, and _mazos_, +the Greek for breast. On this derivation the grammarians built up +the legend that the right breast of the women militant was either +amputated, or seared, or compressed in youth, so as not to interfere +with the recoil of the bow string. But the sculptors would not accept +this deformation, and statues and bas-reliefs represent the women +with bosoms entirely womanly. There are recent etymologies wherein +“Amazon” is supposed to mean “full busted,” “moon daughter,” “vestal,” +“girdle-bearer,” or “game-eater.” + +One feature of the myth shows the working of inference. The woman +state must sustain its numbers. There must be children even if there +were no men, or the tribe would become extinct. In place of husbands, +therefore, there were what Sir Walter Raleigh called “Valentines.” Once +a year the women paid a visit to the men of neighbor tribes, or once +a year these men called on them. The women retained the girl children +born of these excursions. As to the boy children, customs differed. +In some cases the mothers nurtured them until they were weaned, and +returned them to their fathers when these came back the following year, +as always they did. In other cases the mothers put the male infants to +death, or maimed them and raised them as slaves of the state. + +The Greek treatment of the myth had a certain other-worldliness. The +Amazons figured in epic events; their struggles were with demigods. +They came to the relief of Troy, and their subjugation was one of the +dozen labors of Hercules. With him they fought, and with Achilles, +and with Theseus, slayer of the Minotaur, and with Bellerophon, rider +of the winged Pegasus, and with the griffins which guarded Scythia’s +fabled gold; and they invaded Attica to attempt another _Iliad_ in +revenge for the capture of a queen. Greek sculptures and decorative +pottery show the national feeling that these were a people far removed +in time and space. The figures are beautiful, but something of +barbarian wildness animates the features. Earlier art had represented +them as bloodthirsty mænads, raiders of the borders, but the Greek +humanizing spirit wrought itself upon the legend until the story the +sculptors tell is of men’s regret that they need smite these beautiful +savages. + +This spirit is in the _Æthiopis_ of Arctinus of Miletus, wherein +Amazons appear on the side of beleaguered Troy. Their queen, +Penthesilea, spreads death among the large-limbed Argives and +overwhelms Achilles with abusive words. The angered hero slays her, but +when he removes her helmet the charm of her strikes him to the heart +and he grieves over his victim. + +The story, with its fine human touch, recedes into the mists in a tale +which in effect is its epilogue. After his own death and the ruin of +Troy, Achilles reigns over the isle of Leuke, an Avalon of the East +in the Black Sea at the Danube’s mouth. Thither, even to the land of +shades, the rage of the Amazons for the death of their queen follows +him. At their capital on the river Thermodon in Pontus they seize on +ships and compel the sailors to steer them to the enchanted isle. But +as they approach a temple in the grove their horses take fright and +bolt over a cliff into the sea. A terrible storm shatters the fleet and +few of the vengeful women escape. + +In classic legend, there were three woman states--the countries of +the Gorgons and Amazons in the west of Libya, and an Amazon state in +the northeast of Asia Minor near the modern Trebizond; the capital +of the latter was the mythical Themiscyra on the banks of the river +Thermodon, now called the Termeh. The African Amazons subjugated the +Gorgons, and under their queen, Myrina, marched in triumph through +Egypt, Arabia, and Asia Minor into Thrace, where they were defeated and +turned back by Mopsus. Ephesus, Smyrna, Cyme, and Myrina claimed them +as their founders. This horde was wiped out by Hercules at the time +when he erected the pillar in Africa, for, says Diodorus Siculus, “it +was a thing intolerable to him, who made it his business to be renowned +all the world over, to suffer any nation to be governed any longer by +women.” + +It was the Black Sea Amazons whom the Greeks mainly limned in art +and legend. These women, whose earlier home had been the Caucasus, +raided the coasts of Asia Minor and came to the relief of Troy. The +ninth labor of Hercules was to bring back the girdle of their queen, +Hippolyte, a task equivalent to the subjugation of the state. Theseus +carried off another queen, Antiope, and this led to the Amazonian +invasion of Attica; the fierce women were not halted until they had +penetrated Athens. + +This expedition and that of their African sisters were interpreted by +the Greeks as allegories of barbarian menace. In the tread of Amazonian +horse they may have had a presage of the hoofs of Hunnish, Turkish, +and Tartar cavalry that in after ages was to ride across their world. +Literally taken, the tales seemed to Strabo incredible. “For who can +believe,” he asks, “that an army of women, or a city, or a nation, +could ever subsist without men, and even dispatch an expedition across +the sea to Attica? This is as much as to say that the men of those days +were women, and the women men.” + +Twice, however, in the field of legend over which Strabo cast an +unbelieving backward glance, the note of reality, or perhaps of +realism, had been sounded. When Alexander the Great was in Parthia, +Thalestris, the Amazon queen, paid him a Sheba-like visit at the head +of a hundred women carrying double-headed axes and the traditional +half-moon shield. He was the bravest of men, said the lady, and she the +bravest of women. They owed a duty to posterity to raise offspring in +whom the two strains should conjoin. The appeal flattered the vanity +of the Macedonian, nor was he averse to meeting its conditions. So +runs a Greek story like unto others with which the Alexander legend +was embroidered. But Arrian explains that the so-called queen and +her followers had been sent as a present by the governor of the next +province--a time-honored Asiatic gift. + +There was a battalion of death perhaps three thousand years before +the young women of Russia took the field in the World War, and those +of Poland in the war that followed it. The story is told by Herodotus +in a chapter which begins in myth and seems to pass into history. In +the opening scene three shiploads of Amazons, captured in the Attic +campaign already noted, overpower the Greek sailors and slay them all. +They let the ships drift across the Black Sea and beach on the shores +of the Palus Mæotis (Sea of Azov), where the women seize a herd of +horses. Mounting them, they fall to plundering the land of the free +Scythians. Herodotus continues: + +“The Scyths could not tell what to make of the attack upon them--the +dress, the language, the nation itself were alike unknown; whence +the enemy had come, even, was a marvel. Imagining, however, that +they were all men of about the same age, they went out against them +and fought a battle. Some of the bodies of the slain fell into their +hands, whereby they discovered the truth. Hereupon they deliberated, +and made a resolve to kill no more of them, but to send against them a +detachment of their youngest men, as near as they could guess equal to +the women in number, with orders to encamp in their neighbourhood and +do as they saw them do. When the Amazons advanced against them, they +were to retire and avoid a fight. When they halted, the young men were +to approach and pitch their camp near the camp of the enemy. All this +they did on account of their strong desire to obtain children from so +notable a race.” + +The Scythian youths were sent out. The Amazons saw that no harm was +meditated against them and desisted from further attack; and slowly +the romance unfolded. Day after day the camps were pitched nearer each +other, and both parties, having naught but arms and horses, supported +themselves by the chase. “At last,” says Herodotus, “an incident +brought two of them together. The man easily gained the good graces +of the woman, who bade him by signs to bring a friend the next day, +promising on her part to bring with her another woman. He did so, and +the woman kept her word. When the rest of the youths heard what had +taken place they also sought and gained the favor of the other Amazons. + +“The two camps were then joined in one, the Amazons living with the +Scythians as their wives; and the men were unable to learn the tongue +of the women, but the women soon caught the tongue of the men. Then the +Scyths said: ‘We have parents and properties; let us therefore give up +this mode of life, and return to our nation, and live with them; you +shall be our wives there no less than here, and we promise you to have +no others.’” + +But the young women would not go home with their husbands to live with +their mothers-in-law. “Of womanly employments we know nothing,” they +said. “To draw the bow, to hurl the javelin, to bestride the horse, +these are our arts. Your women stay at home in their wagons engaged in +womanish tasks and never go out to hunt or to do anything. We should +never agree.” So they bade the bridegrooms go back to their parents, +ask for their inheritances, and return. This the youths did, and +then the Amazons told them they could no more get along with their +fathers than with their mothers. They had stolen horses and wasted the +ancestral lands. “As you like us for wives,” they pleaded, “grant the +request that we leave the country together, and go and dwell beyond the +Tanais” (the river Don). + +Again the Scythian youths consented, and all fared to a region three +days’ journey east and three north of the Sea of Azov. Thus was founded +the race of Sarmatians. From that day to this, concludes Herodotus, the +Sarmatian women ride with their husbands in the chase, and in war take +the field with them. Nor does a girl marry until she has killed a man +in battle, so that among them are women of advanced years, celibates +because they have never struck down a foe. Also, the Sarmatians do not +speak the tongue of Scythia correctly, because the Amazons learned it +incorrectly at the first. + +At least the topography of the tale has been confirmed. Sarmatia is the +ancient name of Poland and Niebuhr has traced the westward drift of +the tribes from the Don steppes to the great Hungarian plain, whence +they overspread Poland and Russia. One could wish to believe that Maria +Botchkareva, commander of the Battalion of Death that took the field +against Germany when the manhood of Soviet Russia faltered and grounded +arms, is of the high Amazonian strain. + +The Indian epic of the _Mahabharata_ has a similar tale, although in +less realistic vein. There was a religious rite known as the Aswamedha, +in which a leader would loose a horse, and follow it for a twelvemonth +into whatever adventures and countries it might go--a quest entailing +wanderings and warrings. Rajah Arjuna of the Gangetic city of Hatusapur +took the pledge, and in the fifth stage of his adventure followed the +ranging horse into the Country of Women. He entered it with heavy +heart, knowing its danger. + +These were not like other women, but rakshasis, or goblin women. Their +queen, the Rani Paranunta, was a beautiful young creature, and so were +all her women. But their customs were worse than Circean. When men +entered the land they were kindly entreated and beguiled into remaining +for a month or more; and, indeed, there were guards to prevent their +escape. After thirty days they were killed, and such of the women as +had entertained them, but were not expectant mothers, took their own +lives--the suttee. Thus was it assured that the Country of Women should +always be also the Country of Young Women. + +The roving rajah and his train were gloomily pondering these customs +when they saw a troop of Amazons appear, and lead away the Aswamedha +horse to the stables of their queen. These were young girls, all +between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, arrayed in pearls and rich +stuffs, with bows in their hands and quivers at their waists and proud +horses under them. Among them rode their queen on an elephant. And she +bade Arjuna to cease his quest. “Become my slave, drink with me, and +pass your time in pleasure,” said the young Rani. + +Arjuna reminded her that this was an invitation to die thirty days +later. To which the Rani replied that really it should make little +difference to him: “If you resist me you fall by my arrows; if you +remain you have to face the light of my eyes.” Already her beauty had +overcome his heart, but his mind made a last appeal. Let her permit him +to fulfill his vow and he would come back to wed her and would find +noble husbands for all her women. The young queen liked the speech and +sped him on his way to other adventures, and the tale itself to its +ultimate happy ending. + +In a fortified palace in an iron city of Ceylon--Hiouen Thsang tells +the story--dwelt other goblin women to the number of five hundred. +On their towers flags flew to attract passing ships. When merchants +were sighted, the rakshasis took the form of beautiful maidens holding +flowers and strewing scents, and with music welcomed them to the iron +city. There was a prelude of wanton pleasure and then the strangers +were shut up in an iron prison and devoured at leisure. + +Hither came Simhala, prince of the merchants, and five hundred of the +trader-folk, while the lucky signals waved on the towers of the siren +host. Simhala mated with their queen, and each of the men found a +companion, and of each union a son was born. But an evil dream came to +the prince, and he went in the night to the iron stronghold, whence a +captive’s voice told him who the women were and what he might expect. +If he would escape, there was a divine horse on the seaboard that would +carry him away. + +The next scene shows the goblin women, each with her child, questing +the air in search of their fugitive husbands and by blandishments +persuading them to return. Simhala alone stands out. But his deserted +queen, hastening before him to his father’s house, wins the elder man +for her husband, and then brings on the demon women for a carnival of +death. In the morning the royal ministers find in the palace hall no +living thing, but only gnawed bones. The remainder of the story tells +of the vengeance of the son in a second expedition to the Isle of Gems. + +“Then,” says the narrative, “the rakshasis were driven back, and fled +precipitately to rocky isles of the sea.” There for a while we must +seek the warrior women. + +Marco Polo found them “about five hundred miles toward the south in the +ocean” from Sind. Here were two islands thirty miles apart, supposed +by modern geographers to be the Two Sisters lying near Socotra. One, +inhabited solely by men, was called the Island of Males; the other, +inhabited solely by women, was called the Island of Females. In March, +April, and May the men lived with the women, and at the same time sowed +grain in the fields. The rest of the year, because of the climate, the +men lived in their own island, knowing that if they stayed with the +women it would be “at the risk of falling a sacrifice.” + +In Siamese folk-lore the Amazon island is farther to the east, in +the Mergui archipelago, where lies the Country of Widows, or See-Saw +Country of Widows--a vanishing city where are women only, and nothing +can float on water. Still farther east, legend--Arabic, mediæval, +and modern--tells of women commonwealths in Engano; in the “Sea of +Malatu,” identified as a bay of North Borneo; and in an island not far +from Samar in the eastern Philippines. Even in the Ladrones and the +Carolines the Jesuits heard of female islands. Pigafetta was told by a +pilot of an island called Acoloro, which lies below Java Major, where +are found no persons but women, and these become pregnant from the +wind. They kill their male offspring and any men who visit their island. + +The name of California, borne by an American state, was given by +mediæval legend to an Amazon island “on the right hand of the Indies +very near to the terrestrial paradise.” Although troglodytes, the +pirate women who inhabited it lived luxuriously. Their arms and armor +were of gold and their caves were richly tapestried and adorned with +gems and feather-work, won by plunder of passing ships. + +In the _Arabian Nights_ the Amazon legend becomes entangled in other +myths. Hassan el Bassorah loves and weds a strange and beautiful woman, +but she flies away to the farthest of an archipelago of seven islands +ruled by her father. He has an army of twenty-five thousand women, +“smiters with swords and lungers with lances.” The daughter queens it +over the island of Wak-wak. Here there is a forest the trees of which +bear fruit with the faces of the sons of Adam. When the sun arises, +these exclaim, “Wak-wak, Glory to the Creating King,” and when it sets, +“Wak-wak, Glory to God.” + +Lane, translator of the _Thousand and One Nights_, adds a note that +the island of Wak-wak, familiar to Arab legend, lay near Borneo. A +queen swayed it and her warriors were beautiful women. Even the trees +bore women who hung by their hair from the branches and syllabled, +“Wak-wak”; if their hair was severed, they died. Another editor, +Burton, holds that there were two Wak-waks. One was the peninsula of +Guardafui where the pagan Gallas cried “Wak” as the Moslems cried +“Allah”; the vocal fruit tree was the calabash tree, “a vegetable +elephant,” the gourds of which hang by slender filaments. The other +Wak-wak was an island identified as Madagascar, as Malacca, and as +Sumatra. Sometimes the Cantonese speak of Japan as Wo-kwok, and in +New Guinea birds of paradise, settling on trees, are supposed to cry +out “Wak-wak.” This is also the name of the Falcon-man among the +First People of American myth, and of Philippine sorcerers who could +disconnect their legs and fly about like bats. + +The narrative of Maundeville brings legend west again. Beside the Land +of Chaldea is the Land of Amazonia. The woman state emerged when the +king and all his nobles were slain in war. The high-born relicts slew +all the men left, “for they would that all the Women were Widows as +they were.” Thereafter, “they never would suffer Man to dwell amongst +them longer than seven Days and seven Nights,” and when they met their +lovers in neighboring realms they lived with them only “an eight Days +or ten.” These “wise noble and worthy Women” fought valiantly as +mercenary soldiers for neighbor states. + +There was an island of women in the Baltic, according to Adam of +Bremen, but he perhaps confused Gwenland, or Fenland, with the land of +gwens--that is to say, the land of women. + +That there was an Amazon nation in America the Chinese were first to +report. Buddhist travelers of the sixth century told of a Land of +Women beyond the Pacific in what may have been Mexico. Of this report +the Spaniards knew nothing when they gave the legend a home in the +Caribbean Sea, in islands that were halfway houses in time and space to +its wild but splendid domicile on the mainland of South America. + +The maps which Columbus knew had drawn into their contours of the +Orient the outlines of various islands of women. In the Catalan map of +1375 the _regio feminarum_ was placed in Ceylon. The fifteenth-century +Catalan map placed the _insula de bene faminill_ in the west of the +Indian Ocean and off the African coast. A map of 1489 now in the +British Museum had the _insula mulierum_ and the _insula virorum_ +not far from Zanzibar. These were islands of the east, and Columbus +thought he was sailing into the east, and he had with him the _Travels_ +of Marco Polo with their account of the isles of men and women. It +was confirmation of his hopes that shortly after his landfall in the +Bahamas the natives spoke, or seemed to speak, of the island of women. + +Through January and February of 1493 the journal of Columbus has much +to say of the _Isla de Mugeres_, of which many Indians had told him. +Its name was Madanino, the modern island of Montserrat. There was a +companion island of men called Carib, a dozen leagues away. Columbus +wanted to visit both, although the men were cannibals, and to carry +away a few of the Amazons as a present to his sovereigns. But somehow +he never made this expedition. + +On the second voyage Columbus unwittingly touched at another island of +women. It was Guadeloupe, where “abundance of women [his son Ferdinand +is the narrator] came out of a wood, with bows and arrows and feathers, +as if they would defend their island.” They were naked, with long hair +falling over their shoulders. The admiral sent two Haytian women +swimming ashore to barter for food. The armed women bade them go to the +north side of the island “where their husbands were.” But a landing +party of Spaniards brought back ten women and three boys--and report of +an adventure. One of the captives, wife of a cacique, had been pursued +by a swift-footed Canaryman, and him she threw down and had nearly +throttled before his companions pulled her off. Although nimble, the +women were excessively fat, “and there were some thicker than a man +could grasp.” + +The cacique’s wife told the Spaniards that the island was inhabited +only by women, and that four men they had seen were there by chance +from another island; “for at a certain time in the year they come to +sport with them.” There was another Amazon island called “Matrimonio.” +Having seen the prowess of these women, the admiral readily believed +their stories. He dismissed them with presents, but the Amazonian +wrestler had conceived a passion for a Haytian prince whom he held +captive, and remained with the Spaniards. + +Other explorers after Columbus mistook for Amazons various island women +who fought them when their husbands were away. The conquistadors even +imagined that the convents of Mexican virgins, who followed the austere +rule of Quetzalcoatl, were Amazon barracks in which, at seasons, men +were made welcome. Thus by a succession of reports the stage was +prepared for the revelation made by Orellana, when in 1542 he slipped +away with a party of men from the spice-hunter, Gonzalo Pizarro, who +was encamped near the headwaters of the great river--from that time +forth called the River of the Amazons--and descended its broadening +bosom to the sea. + +At the mouth of its affluent, the Rio Negro, Orellana had a spirited +fight with a band led by a number of women. An Indian captured farther +downstream told him that this was a district of women. Their five +Houses of the Sun were plated with gold, their dwellings were of +gold, and strong walls encompassed their cities; and their country +was neighbor to El Dorado. This story, brought back to Europe with +much corroborative detail, inflamed it, and Spain gave its author a +commission to conquer and colonize the lands he had skirted afloat. But +he died on his outward passage, and these lands, falling within the +territories of Portugal, Spain had no profit of them. + +Thenceforth the legend of the American Amazons followed its curious +course for three centuries, while the credulity and cupidity of men +wove for it a background bizarre in its colors and stiff with fabled +gold. + +Raleigh’s is the best account--such a recital as must interest his +sovereign, the Virgin Queen. The nations of these warlike women, he +said, were on the south side of a northern affluent of the Amazon in +the province of Topago, “and their chiefest strengths and retracts are +in the Islands situated on the South side of the entrance some sixty +leagues within the mouth of the sayd river. They accompany with men +but once in a yere, and for the time of one moneth, which I gather by +their relation to be in April; and that time all kings of the borders +assemble, and queenes of the Amazones; and after the queenes have +chosen, the rest cast lots for their Valentines. This one moneth, they +feed, dance, and drinke of their wines in abundance; and the Moone +being done, they all depart to their owne provinces. + +“It was farther tolde me, that if in the warres they took any +prisoners, that they used to accompany with those also at what time +soever, but in the end for certeine they put them to death; for they +are sayd to be very cruell and bloodthirsty, especially to such as +offer to invade their territories. These Amazones have likewise great +store of these plates of golde, which they recover by exchange chiefly +for a kinde of greene stones which the Spaniards call Piedras hijades, +and we use for spleene stones.” + +Even without the imported wealth of Old World legend--the tales of +pygmies and vampires and headless folk with which adventurers decorated +their narrative--it was a singular backdrop of tradition before which +the female warriors of America were paraded. Through its colors ran the +primitive lusts of men--for gold and women. The English sought gold, +the Indians sought women, and the Spaniards, so Raleigh said, sought +both gold and women. The natives were fighting over women a succession +of Trojan wars, in which copper-hued Helens passed back and forth as +the booty of the victors. Indian nobles with a dozen wives envied the +polity of other tribes where the caciques had half a hundred apiece. +When Raleigh asked Topiawara’s people what he should wrest from the +Epuremi, they replied “their women for us, and their gold for you.” + +Of such a world anything might be true, and Amazon proof kept coming. +The soldiers of de Agira, as Lopez Vaz records, “did finde that to be +true which Orellana had reported, that there were Amazons, but these +women fight to aide their husbands.” Father de Acunha, who went with +Teixera on his great journey of exploration, asserted (1698) that +the large ladies of fable had “treasures enough to enrich the entire +world.” Their realm was the summits of the Cordilleras of Guiana. The +males of the neighboring Guacaris were “the happy tribe which enjoys +the favor of the valiant Amazons,” and these dwelt well up the sides +of the mountains where the women throned it. When the men made their +yearly call, their hostesses met them on the frontier with arms in +their hands, which, however, they soon put aside. Each Amazon chose a +hammock at random from the canoes of the men, and its owner followed +her to her lodge. + +Brazilian folk-lore fitted into the legend. The devil-mask of the +Jurupary is supposed to represent the mythical hero who came from the +Antilles and overthrew the Amazons. All along their great river bands +of women attacked him, but, like another Hercules, he destroyed them +utterly. The cuirass of the conqueror became a sacred mask, and it was +said that Indian women would hide in the forests rather than look upon +it, so poignant was its reminder of their overthrow. + +In another story, found upon the middle Amazon, the Indian women +abandoned their lords and retired to the hills, taking one old man with +them. The oldster became the father of all children born to them, and +only girl babies were reared. One mother, however, had a crippled son, +and in pity she secreted and reared him, and cured his deformity. When +his retreat was discovered there began, says Rothery, a long and tender +persecution from the women, though the boy remained unmoved. To escape +this he agreed that his mother should throw him into a lake, where he +became a fish. Whenever the mother called him he swam ashore, changed +to his beautiful human form and took food from her hands. This secret, +also, was discovered, and the other women would imitate the call and +inveigle the deceived youth into their arms. The old man, sole tribal +husband of record, noted the neglect of the women, divined the reason, +and went fishing. Other nets failed to hold his prey, but a net of +woman’s hair caught the boy-fish, and youth was no longer served; the +old man killed him. + +Navaho myth tells a related story of the secession of the women, their +cohabitation with a water-monster, and their return to their natural +mates. Fragmentary tales of the woman state come also from Colombia, +Nicaragua, Sinaloa, and the two Californias. + +The Amazon exodus is related in a third story of Brazil, told by +Barboza Rodriguez. When the women abandoned their husbands, flood and +fell barred the way of the pursuers and the very monkeys pelted them +from the trees. After a while the female republic relented so far as +to admit the men once a year. At length it disappeared into the land +of shadows, the women going down into a hole in the earth, led by an +armadillo. + +La Condamine, the French geographer and mathematician, went to Peru +in 1735 to determine the length of a degree of the meridian at the +equator, and on his homeward journey made the first scientific +exploration of the river Amazon. He returned with one certainty and +two doubts. He was sure there had been a woman state, but he did not +know whether there still was, nor where it could then be found, for the +Amazons were nomads who shifted their camps. + +The distinguished scientist arrays his evidence: testimony of an Indian +whose grandfather had seen an Amazon band pass by at the entrance of +the Cuchura River and spoken with four of them; like testimony from +other natives; statement of the Topayos that the green stones called +Amazon stones which they wore were inherited from forefathers who had +them from a tribe of women; statement of an old soldier that he had +seen necklaces of Amazon stones among a tribe of long-eared Indians +and learned they had procured them from the women without husbands, +whose territories were seven marches west; native name of these women, +Cougnantainsecouima, meaning “the independent women who receive men +into their society only in the month of April”; offer of a native of +Mortigua to guide La Condamine up the river Irijo which flows hard by +the woman state; passages in the Jesuit _Relations_ of 1726 and reports +of two Spanish governors of Venezuela, Don Diego Portales and Don +Francisco Torralva. + +Where are the Amazons now? asks La Condamine. He notes that while +different accounts designate the point of their retreat, some toward +the east, others the north, and others again the west, these several +routes converge in one common center, the mountains in the midst of +Guiana. But without further proof he will not credit the existence of +the woman state there in his time. The tribe may have moved again. “Or, +what to me appears a more probable event than any other, it will have +forsaken its ancient habits, either in consequence of being overpowered +by some other nation, or of the maidens’ having at length lost the +aversion of their mothers to the company of men. Thus, though no +remaining vestige should be found of this feminine republic, this would +not yet prove that none such had ever existed.” + +The majority of the natives of South America, La Condamine declares, +are liars, credulous, and prone to the marvelous. But none of them, he +urges, could have heard of the Amazons of Diodorus Siculus, and Justin +previous to the arrival of the Spaniards; yet even then Amazons were +spoken of as existing in the center of the country, and later reports +come from tribes that never had held commerce with Europeans. + +If ever there was such a nation, concludes La Condamine, it must have +been in America. The Indians were constantly wandering. Their wives +often went with them to war. They had plenty of chances to get away +from the men, and provocation enough in the hard estate of slavery in +which they were held. Why could not these aboriginal women do what +even imported slaves had done? Negroes in Latin America had fled from +their taskmasters into the tropical forests, and there had reared a +dozen Cimarron republics. Thus, weighing evidence, common report and +probabilities, La Condamine casts the weight of his name in favor of +the Amazons. + +Two generations later the woman state received the allegiance of +Alexander von Humboldt, founder of the science of physical geography +and largest name among the savants of the nineteenth century. He had +spent five years in tropical America at the opening of the century, +and in his _Personal Narrative_ of travel there he records affirmative +answer to the question: Did he accept the conclusions of La Condamine? +There was exaggeration, he thinks, in the stories of Raleigh and +Oviedo; but nevertheless he cannot entirely reject “a tradition which +is spread among various nations having no communication with each +other.” + +Ribeiro, the Portuguese astronomer who had traversed the Amazon basin, +entering it a disbeliever of the story, had found the same traditions +of the woman state among the Indians, and confirmed all that La +Condamine reported a generation before, Humboldt notes. He is impressed +with the contemporary testimony of Father Gili. The friar had asked a +Quaqua Indian what tribes inhabited the Rio Cuchiviro and the Indian +named three, one of them the Aikeambenanos. The missionary knew the +Tamanac tongue, and in that tongue the word signified “women living +alone.” The Indian confirmed his translation, and explained that these +were a community of women who made blow-tubes and other weapons of war. +After the familiar Amazon custom they had seasonal amatory relations +with the neighboring nation of Vokearos and sent their men visitors +back with presents, but killed their male offspring. This tale, says +Humboldt, seems framed on the traditions which are rife among the +Indians of the Maranon and among the Caribs; yet the Quaqua who told it +knew no Castilian, had never before talked to a white man and certainly +did not know that below the Orinoco was the river of the Amazons. + +“What must we conclude?” asks Humboldt. “Not that there are Amazons +on the banks of the Cuchivero, but that women in different parts of +America, wearied of the state of slavery in which they were held by the +men, united themselves together; that the desire of preserving their +independence rendered them warriors; and that they received visits +from a neighboring and friendly horde. This society of women may have +acquired some power in one part of Guiana. The Caribs of the continent +held intercourse with those of the islands; and no doubt in this way +the traditions of the Maranon and the Orinoco were propagated toward +the north,” so that Columbus and other navigators who followed him +heard of them repeatedly before reaching the mainland of America. + +A generation later the woman state is spoken of by Schomburgk, who +traversed Guiana in 1835-43. Everywhere the Caribs told him of the +Woruisamocos, a tribe of warlike women who lived near the sources of +the Corentyne in a district where no white man had been. They shot +with the bow and arrow and used the blow-pipe. Their own fields they +cultivated, and men came thither only as their lovers, and but once a +year. Schomburgk pushed on to the district where the women should have +been; they were not there. + +In the remote regions of the River Amazon’s northern affluents, says a +recent geographer, the women warriors are still vainly sought. + +Thus this world-wide, world-old story has been followed through perhaps +thirty centuries of tradition on four continents and in five seas; and +the end is a doubt. Men have fought with parties of armed women, but +none has found the City of Women. Stories of male and female islands +may have arisen from the custom of naming companion islets “brother” +isles and “sister” isles, like North Brother and South Brother islands +in New York’s East River. It is contended that Orellana concocted his +tale to divert attention from his desertion of Pizarro; that Spaniards +mistook young Indian braves, with topknots and berry-bracelets on their +arms, for women; and that the prose behind the poetry of the American +Amazons is the tribe of Naupes, which still wears green stones for +amulets. It is even suggested that the New World legend grew out of the +coast Indian word, _Amazuni_, to denote a tidal bore upon the great +waterway of Brazil. + +It has happened that the vivid imagination of the conquistadors +projected stories among the Indians which came back later with such +a wealth of detail as to seem native stuff. Is the New World Amazon +tradition merely Book III, Chapter XXXIV of the _Travels of Marco +Polo_, writ large upon the wax-like minds of savages by the curiosity +of Columbus and his great companions? + +Before answering, it will be well to turn from stories of a woman state +to authentic records of women who were less than the Amazons of fable, +but more, or rather other, than women of the hearth. Perhaps the answer +is there. + + + + +Chapter XIII. The Amazons of History + + +Whether there have been Amazon states or no, there have been Amazon +queens--warrior women who knew how to lead and whom men were willing to +follow. The portrait gallery of history has set aside its more spacious +halls for women of another kind, for Helen, Cleopatra, Messalina, +Theodora, and their sisters of blandishment. But women militant have +also a place. Tomyris, queen of the Massagetæ, defeated and slew +Cyrus the Great. Semiramis, legendary queen of Assyria, matched her +adulteries with her victories in arms, won all her campaigns except the +Indian, and, in the words of Strabo, left her monuments in “earthworks, +walls, and strongholds, aqueducts, bridges, and stair-like roads over +mountains.” Boadicea led the Britons in momentarily successful revolt +against Nero. Zenobia, Arab queen, established the Palmyrene power over +the trade routes of the east and swayed Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and +part of Asia Minor, until the arms and gold of Aurelian encompassed +her downfall. Under the poetess Telesilla the women of Argos repelled +a Spartan attack. Joan of Arc led the armies of France as a girl of +nineteen. + +Women have gone to war as single soldiers or in troops, in disguise, +or with husbands, brothers, and lovers. When the Goths crossed the +Roman frontiers their families came with them in ponderous wagons, +and their yellow-haired wives figured in the Roman triumphs. American +Indian women, as the Spaniards found, were able to use the bow, and +defended their homes when their husbands were away, and sometimes went +with them in battle. The aftermath of a victory among various tribes +of North American Indians--the scalping of the dead, the torture of +the living--was intrusted to the women. They bear their part in the +Mexican revolutions. Thus Ibanez puts it: “The army is composed of men +and women. No one has ever decided which of the sexes makes the better +soldier.” + +To count the women, the Spanish author says, is to count the Mexican +soldiers, for every one has a wife along, and more often than not +a string of children. The woman is called a “soldierette” or a +“hard-tack,” and if her man is tiring of her, “the Indian”; and +generals have their “generalettes.” Women constitute the commissary +of the army. Each carries bedding for herself and man, a basket, and +perhaps a parrot. With her sisters she forms an advance guard several +miles ahead of the main force when the troops are on the march. When +the latter reach camp they find the fires burning and a stew in the +pot. The stew comes out of the basket and the basket is filled by +foraging along the way. The Mexican hard-tack does this thoroughly, +Ibanez thinks: “She passes over the country like a scourge of God. +Along her path not a tree remains with a piece of fruit, not a garden +with a turnip, not a coop with a chicken, not a barnyard with a pig.” +When a soldier dies his companion passes to another through the swift +courtship of circumstance; and sometimes she seizes the rifle of her +fallen mate and uses it in his stead. + +Among nomad peoples women have always shared the activities of the +men; the seclusion of the harem is for settled folk. The chronicles +and legends of High Asia have their instances of feminine prowess in +arms. Marco Polo devotes a chapter to Aigiarm, daughter of Kaidu, +king of Great Turkey and nephew to the Grand Khan. She would marry no +man, she said, who could not overcome her by force. Suitors came from +other lands and wrestled with her before the court. Her hand was the +prize of success and a hundred horses were the forfeit of failure. “In +this manner,” says Marco, “the damsel gained more than ten thousand +horses, which was no wonder, for she was so well made in all her limbs, +and so tall and strongly built, that she might almost be taken for a +giantess.” In war she fought beside her father. + +From Usbeck ambassadors at Delhi François Bernier heard vaunts of the +Amazonian ferocity of the Tartar women. One of their stories was of +the campaign of Aurungzebe against the Khan of Samarcand. A score of +Mogul horsemen had plundered a village and were binding its people to +sell them as slaves, when an old woman said: “My children, be not so +cruel. My daughter, who is not greatly addicted to mercy, will be here +presently. Should she meet with you, you are undone.” With a laugh the +horsemen tied her up also, and started with their captives across the +plain. The old woman kept looking behind her, and at last uttered a +scream of joy. + +The raiders turned and beheld a cloud of dust, and in the midst of +it a young woman furiously riding. Raising her great voice, like the +heroines of Russian epic, she bade them loose their captives and she +would spare them. The horsemen heeding not, her bowstring twanged and +twanged again. Four men tumbled from the saddle, shot at a range beyond +their own arrows. The young Amazon galloped in among the others, slew +the greater part with her unerring bow, and with her saber cut down the +rest. + +There may be an element of romantic exaggeration in each of these +stories. But they make the point that the women of the Asiatic +highlands knew the bow as well as the distaff, and they bring the +tradition of female warriors into the region where Greek fable placed +the Amazons. There are continued references to women bearing arms +in Armenia, in Kurdistan, and in the early wars of Islam in Arabia. +Women in armor fought with Miltiades of Pontus against the Romans. The +seventeenth-century traveler, Sir John Chardin, had adventure with a +ragamuffin and lewd-tongued queen of the Mingrelians. The Prince of +Georgia said the women of the Caucasus rode as well as the men, and +he accepted the Amazon legend. When Father Angelo Lamberti was in +Mingrelia in 1654, word came that among the dead in a raiding force +from the Caucasus were a large number of women. They wore complete +coats of armor over bright-red woolen skirts. Their half-boots were +adorned with brass disks and their gilded arrow-shafts bore heads +shaped like the new moon. + +As late as the Crimean war “the Black Virgin,” a Kurdish woman, paraded +at the head of a thousand horsemen before the palace of the Sultan in +Constantinople, and led them away to the campaign on the Danube. + +The outlines of a veritable woman’s state almost take shape in Bohemian +chronicle and legend of the eighth century. There was a Slavic queen +named Libussa who is supposed to have founded Prague and built its +imperial palace. She exercised her sovereign will by marrying a +peasant, instituting a Council of Virgins, and giving women preference +in the posts of state. When she died in 838 and affairs returned to the +old footing, Valasca, her chief woman counselor, undertook to found a +female commonwealth. Thus far more or less authentic history; legend +adds that for a while the commonwealth really was, and that under it +girls were trained to arms, while boys lost their right eyes and thumbs. + +St. Bernard organized the Female Crusade in 1147, in which bodies of +armed women marched. The tradition of fighting women was kept alive +in western Europe in the Middle Ages by girls who accompanied their +knightly lovers as pages, and with them entered the chants of balladry. +It was nurtured by the romances of chivalry, in which disguised female +warriors like Bradamante, “in prowess equal to the best of knights,” +figured. But when, for the first time in the modern era, the Amazonian +impulse seized upon masses of women, there was needed, not the +modulated voice of the _trouvères_, but the Gothic accent of a Carlyle +to tell of it. The phenomenon is known as the Insurrection of Women, +the march on Versailles of October, 1789. + +This was the sudden inspiration of perhaps ten thousand women drawn +from the Central Markets and other rallying places--“robust dames of +the Halle, slim mantua-makers, ancient virginity tripping to matins, +the housemaid with early broom.” The mob, continues Carlyle, storms +tumultuous, wild-shrilling, toward the Hôtel de Ville. There Theroigne +de Mericourt leaps astride a cannon, her chariot on to Versailles. +Mænads clamor behind. It is the cause of all Eve’s daughters, mothers +that are or that ought to be. “Paris is marching on us,” exclaims +Mirabeau in the National Assembly as the sinister murmurs come from +afar. Soon the esplanade is covered with “groups of squalid, dripping +women, of lank-haired male rascality.” They break into the assembly, +they compel the king and queen to show themselves, and they bring them +back to Paris, leaving the monarchy in ruins behind them. The return, +says Carlyle, is “one boundless, inarticulate ha-ha--transcendent +world-laughter, comparable to the saturnalia of the ancients.” + +[Illustration: THUSNELDA AT THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY OF GERMANICUS INTO ROME + +_By_ C. T. von Piloty] + +Not as idealized figures of the Greek friezes, but as turbulent, +blood-hungry corybantes of earlier Greek story the Amazons of France +emerged, almost on the threshold of the nineteenth century--vanguard of +the Revolution. Later the market women were enrolled in a brigade which +wore the Phrygian cap, the tricolor, a baldric, a short skirt of red, +white, and blue, and sabots. With pike and cutlass, it was their task +to escort the carts which bore condemned royalists to the guillotine. +There were also armed battalions of women and girls in the provinces. +In the external wars of the Revolution about half a hundred women are +known to have fought, young girls in the infantry, middle-aged women in +the cavalry. + +French Amazonism was partly portrayed, partly parodied in the person of +Theroigne de Mericourt. She was a popular actress, in Carlyle’s phrase +“brown-locked, light-behaved, fire-hearted,” who had “only the limited +earnings of her profession of unfortunate female.” At Versailles she +cajoled the guard, “crushing down musketoons with soft arms.” This +woman rose high, and fell far. Suspected of being a Girondist, “the +extreme she-patriots” seized, stripped, and chastised her on the +terrace of the Tuileries, with Paris looking on agrin. Theroigne lost +her wits from brooding over it, and passed out of the Revolution into a +mad-house. + +Olympe de Gonges, widow at sixteen, blue stocking, pretended natural +daughter of Louis XV, entered the Revolution at middle age and +countervailed the declaration of the Rights of Man with a declaration +of the Rights of Woman. She tried the patience of Robespierre and he +sent her to the guillotine, after a jury of matrons had found against +her plea that she was “about to give the Republic a citizen.” + +Younger women aped men’s attire and men’s ways. _Les Merveilleuses_ +indecently imitated Roman costumes, going about in sandals with rings +on their bare toes. When a man clad only in a loin-cloth paraded +between two stark-naked women, the lurking sense of propriety, or +of humor, was affronted, and the group was mobbed. La Maillard, the +opera-singer, who was Goddess of Liberty at the Feast of Reason, wore +trousers, fought duels, and with her female followers went about the +streets to compel other women to dress as she did. This provoked +reaction and the Committee of Safety decreed that women’s political +clubs should disband and no woman henceforth have part in government. +Thus disappear the Amazons of France. + +In domestic insurrections and in the defense of besieged cities, women, +as might be expected, figure more largely than in field operations. +Plutarch had told of the women of Argos who defended their city with +such courage that a public decree gave to them the right to dedicate +a statue to Mars, and to their daughters henceforth the singular +privilege of wearing false beards on their wedding day. The Feast +of the Valiant Women is celebrated in Majorca to commemorate the +part taken by two women in repelling a pirate attack upon an island +town. Spanish women manned the walls of Barcelona during the War of +Succession and provided most of the soldiers that held Saragossa +against the lieutenants of Napoleon. On the maid Agostina was conferred +the honor of bearing the name and arms of Saragossa. + +The most remarkable woman in the Amazon story and, save Joan of Arc, +perhaps the most dramatic figure in the whole story of her sex, was +born in July, 1889, in the Russian province of Novgorod. The attempt +of Maria Botchkareva to prevent the suicide of her country in 1917, +by taking the field with a force of women soldiers--the Battalion of +Death--who were pledged to obey and not to debate, to shoot the foe and +not to embrace him, has the romance of a lost cause and more. It is +related in _Yashka_, her utterly frank autobiography, transcribed for +her by Isaac Don Levine. + +Out of her old life as misused peasant girl and misused wife this +daughter of Russia marched away into another world where she could +strike as well as be stricken. In the Tsar’s uniform she seemed just +a tall, powerfully built, round-cheeked young soldier. But under the +hoyden of the surface there were commanding qualities; and it would +almost seem that Yashka, as the soldiers nicknamed her, could see +straighter than any man in the empire. + +Her early experiences as a woman soldier in a men’s regiment were such +as perhaps might have been anticipated. She describes her first night’s +slumber in barracks and the blows and kicks she had to administer to +the men on either side. “All night long,” she says, “my nerves were +taut and my fists busy.” Soon, however, she won the respect and then +the affection of her comrades, and a corner of the regimental bathhouse +was reserved for her ablutions. She joined in trench raids, herself +bayoneted a German, killed several more with handgrenades, was captured +and escaped, was wounded and shell-shocked, repeatedly was commended +for acts of bravery or mercy; and kisses greeted her when she returned +from hospital. + +Then came the revolution, committee rule in the army, incessant +soldiers’ meetings, refusal to attack. With Russia dying before her +eyes, Yashka proposed to Rodzianko, president of the Duma, a desperate +expedient--the formation of the Battalion of Death. Let the women +organize a small command free from committees and subject to full +military discipline. The men would neither fight nor take orders, but +perhaps if their women attacked the enemy, the men might be shamed into +moving forward behind them. + +Rodzianko saw a gleam of hope in the project; Brusilov, +commander-in-chief, approved; Kerensky set his seal on it; and Maria +Botchkareva found herself at the head of two thousand women of all +classes from princesses to peasant girls and domestic servants. “Who +will guarantee,” asked a delegate at the meeting that authorized this +step, “that the presence of women soldiers at the front will not yield +little soldiers there?” “I will hold myself responsible for every +member of the command,” was Yashka’s spirited reply. “Only discipline +can save the Russian army. In my battalion I shall have it.” And she +did, although the securing it reduced the command she led to the front +to three hundred girls. + +“I had a vision,” she said. “I saw millions of Russian soldiers rise in +an invincible advance, after I and my women had disappeared in No Man’s +Land on the way to the German trenches.” + +There was a day in July, 1917, when it looked as if the vision was +to become fact. Artillery had prepared the way for a general attack. +Then the committees began to debate, precious hours passed, the day +declined. Into the Battalion of Death came nearly a hundred men +officers, followed by soldiers who would rather fight behind a woman +than not at all. + +Rifles were placed in the officers’ hands, and, a thousand strong, +the detachment formed its battle line, every girl flanked by two men. +Coarse jests rose around them, but the laughter died in men’s throats +when the little command leaped the trenches and went swiftly forward, +alone, as it seemed. “Suddenly,” says Yashka, “we caught the sound of +a great commotion in the rear. In a few moments the front to the right +and left of us became a swaying mass of soldiers. First our regiment +poured out, and then, on both sides, the contagion spread, so that +almost the entire corps was on the move.” + +The German first line was overwhelmed and the second, and the third, +Yashka’s regiment alone taking two thousand prisoners. Then word came +that the Ninth Corps, which was to relieve the attacking troops and +continue pursuit, was debating instead of advancing! + +They must needs run for it, for the German counter-attack was forming. +Back over all the trenches they had won at such cost fled the Russians, +the enemy reoccupying them without a fight. Yashka, shell-shocked, was +carried in on the shoulders of her adjutant. + +Thus the great moment of the Battalion of Death came--and went. Russian +manhood was still capable of a heroic thing. But the chaos which it had +made its world could not resolve into order even at the poignant drama +of Russian women marching alone. + +What went before and was to come after was all in keeping. The tread of +the little battalion resounds through scene after scene of delirium. +Behind the lines one hears agitators haranguing the women. One beholds +Kerensky banging his table and, forgetful he has just abolished +capital punishment, threatening to have Yashka shot because she will +not tolerate committee rule in her command. One glimpses snipers in +Petrograd firing on her women as they leave for the front. Her own +angry scorn flashes out in a violent scene when she reviews the Moscow +Woman’s Battalion--committee ruled--and notes the rouge, the slippers, +the fancy stockings, the evidences of a dubious familiarity with the +men. + +There was worse at the front--the men killing their officers and +embracing the enemy; No Man’s Land “a boulevard for promenading +agitators and drunkards.” Resolved that there should be some real +fighting, Yashka shot a German in the leg as nonchalantly he approached +the lines. Real fighting did follow; the Russian soldiers turned their +machine guns on their own women. The latter were sent to another +sector, and when the men heard that Lenin and Trotzky had seized +control they celebrated; they tried to lynch the little command. Twenty +girls were killed, the rest fled into the woods. + +It was the end. The Battalion of Death disbanded and Yashka was seized +and brought before the duumvirs. They bade her join them in “bringing +happiness to Russia,” and laughed at her fierce scorn. But they let her +go, and she follows her command out of these pages. One salutes with +pride and pain. + +About four hundred other Russian women, most of them Siberians, +served in men’s regiments, and the colonel of the Sixth Ural Cossack +Regiment was a woman. There was a smaller number of female fighters in +the Austrian armies, a few in the German. Women figured also in the +conflicts that followed the World War. The Vilna unit of girl soldiers, +about a thousand strong, suffered heavy losses in the defense of Poland +against Soviet Russia. “Their heads thrown back, they seemed the very +spirit of Poland,” said one who saw them in action. + +These were Amazon volunteers. Until yesterday there were professional +Amazons at many of the courts of Asia. The Celestial King of the +Tae-Pings had a regiment of fighting women. For centuries Indian +princes, notably of Hyderabad and the Deccan, had female guards called +Urdu-begani, or “camp-followers,” on whose loyalty they could rely +utterly. A body-guard of one hundred and fifty girl archers, the +loveliest that could be found in Cashmere, Persia, and the Punjab, rode +milk-white steeds in the service of Ranjeet Singh of Lahore. There were +female sepoys in the palace at Lucknow, female guards at Bangkok and +in Bantam. With their slender bodies incased in tunics and trousers of +rich Eastern colors, with plumed caps on their small dark heads, and +with their erect and slightly swaggering carriage, these palace troops +gave an added effect of theatricalism to the lesser courts of the +Orient. The Amazon march of the modern stage mimics a reality of Ind. + +The _Chronicle of the Cid_ may provide a prologue for the motley +spectacle of Africa’s warrior women which follows here. Six-and-thirty +kings of the Moors and one Moorish queen attacked Valencia. The queen +was a negress, and two hundred mounted negresses rode behind her, all +with hair shorn save a tuft on the top. They wore coats of mail and +wielded Turkish bows, and their queen drew hers so skillfully that +they called her the Star of the Archers. The Christians centered their +attack on this female cavalry, slew the leader, and dispersed her force. + +Through legend and doubtful chronicle of enterprises Amazonian, one +moves in Africa to a basis of fact as completely documented as the +recent deeds of warrior women in Russia and Poland. Father Alvares, who +went with the Portuguese ambassador to the Abyssinian court (1520-27), +gives it on hearsay that to the south of the kingdom is a country where +the women have husbands but dispense them from fighting. Their queen +has “no special husband, but withal does not omit having sons and +daughters.” “They say,” says this traveler, “that they are women of +a very warlike disposition and they fight riding on certain animals, +light, strong, and agile, like cows, and are great archers.” + +In his history of Ethiopia, Father Giovanni Cavazzi has two stories +of negro Amazons in the Congo country of the seventeenth century. One +is of the Princess Lliuga, who refused to submit to the Portuguese +and fought until she won a favorable peace. Her garb was skins; her +weapons were the bow, the ax, and the sword; her battle custom was to +sacrifice a man--cutting off his head and drinking his blood--before +attacking the enemy. The other story is of Tembandumba, a royal negress +who must have known the Amazonian tradition and who sought to establish +the Amazon state. Like Semiramis, she had a procession of lovers, and +slew them as she tired of them. She ruled her state through women. All +male infants, all twins, and all village-born babies were killed by +her orders, and a magic ointment was made from their macerated bodies +mingled with herbs. The queen set the example by destroying her own +boy baby. She told the young girls that their temporary matrimonial +alliances should be marriages by capture, they to do the capturing in +war. The turbulent career of this one-eyed queen of a cannibal tribe +was ended by a husband who poisoned her before she had quite reached +the point of doing for him. + +Until, in some instances, less than a generation ago, the courts of +Negroland maintained palace troops and other fighting forces of women. +Burton and Rothery have collected their stories. In the Congo empire +of Monomotapa, Lopez found in 1680 battalions of women, armed members +of the royal harem. A generation before, Jinga, queen of Angola, +maintained a harem of half a hundred young men. The monarch of Yoruba +boasted that if the members of his female bodyguard clasped hands, +they could span his kingdom. In the time of the traveler Bosman the +king of Whydah on the Slave Coast had four thousand armed wives. On +the Gle’ lagoon of the Ivory Coast rumor placed a community of fetish +women ruled by a queen who was able with herbs to develop artificial +elephantiasis. These women put their male infants to death. Dahomey, +which lies back of Whydah, and which became a French protectorate in +1894, was the best known of African kingdoms--and known for two related +things, its annual Customs of blood sacrifice and its army of Amazons. + +Sir Richard Burton, who went on mission to King Gélélé in 1863, bearing +Queen Victoria’s urgent request that he abolish the slave trade and +human sacrifice in his dominions, has written the account of this +nearest modern approach to the Amazon state. It is a veracious report +and it reads like an evil dream. The _Thousand and One Nights_ has been +called a blend of blood, musk, and hasheesh. The Dahomey story is an +African _Arabian Nights_, with native beer and trader’s rum in place of +hasheesh, with blood flowing in more turbid torrents than at Bagdad, +and with a ranker musk--and under the musk the overpowering reek of the +body odors of Negroland. + +In this nightmare state, half hid behind the swamps and forests of +the coast, one senses the controlling and corrupting presence of some +primitive and abominable religion. Africans, says Burton, worship +everything except their Creator. Those of Dahomey worshiped, among +other things, their ancestors. The Dahoman sovereign must enter +Deadland in royal state, with a ghostly retinue of leopard wives, head +wives, birthday wives, eunuchs, singers, drummers, bards, soldiers. +The retinue was swollen yearly at Customs time when criminals and +prisoners of war, publicly sacrificed under the king’s eye, went +drunken and giggling to their doom, while at the same hour the palace +Amazons dispatched female victims to the land of shades. Throughout the +year, whenever the king would send a message to his deceased father, +he killed a subject and forwarded his soul with it. If he had invented +a new drum, or received a visit from a white man, or even removed from +one palace to another, the soul of some man or woman, slain for the +purpose, must carry the news to the paternal ghost. + +It was impossible, says Lady Burton, to venture from one’s hut without +seeing something appalling--skulls on posts, living victims impaled, +evidences of cannibal feasts, animals tied in every agonizing position +and left to die. Burton himself figured that there was an annual +slaughter of at least five hundred persons, and during the year of +the Grand Customs perhaps a thousand. The institution was strenuously +upheld by a powerful and interested priesthood; “to abolish human +sacrifice was to abolish Dahomey.” + +This was the woman’s state, somewhat as early Greek legend pictured the +Amazon commonwealth of the Black Sea, before art and song refined the +fable. Women in Dahomey took precedence over men and the warrior women +called themselves men. When one of the king’s Amazons walked abroad, a +slave girl with a bell went ahead, and men had to get out of the way. +It seemed to Burton, when he went up from the coast to the capital +city of Abomey, that the older and uglier the slave girl the louder +she rang the bell, and the more she enjoyed the ignoble scamper of his +interpreters and hammock men. The popular name of these women was Our +Mothers. Their official name was The King’s Wives, a title of courtesy +only, for the monarch had his own harem and these other women were +supposed to be a kind of fighting nuns. + +The Amazon army consisted of the Fanto company of the king’s bodyguard, +and the right and left wings, comprising five arms. The former were +distinguished by a headdress in the form of a narrow white fillet on +which was the figure of a crocodile in blue, and their hair was cropped +instead of shaven. The body of the force was composed of blunderbus +women, elephant hunters, razor women carrying eighteen-inch blades +attached to a two-foot handle, archers with poisoned arrows, and +infantry with tower muskets. The archers were little more than heavily +tattooed, lightly clad camp followers with knives lashed to their +wrists. The elephant hunters were the élite. They wore knickers under +short skirts, their breasts were bound with linen strips, and antlers +were attached to their caps. Other Amazons had the same uniform, but +wore on their shaven heads small caps on which were blue tortoise +figures. + +Travelers of two centuries ago computed the female army as about ten +thousand strong. The court may have deceived them by having the women +march like a stage army across the parade ground, slip around, and come +back again; or the kingdom may have been depopulated by its incessant +wars, its blood sacrifices, the slave trade, and the dedication of a +fourth of the females to the celibacy of arms. When Burton was there +in 1863 he figured the total number of Amazons at about twenty-five +hundred, of whom one-third were unarmed. + +The nature of this force seems to have varied from generation to +generation. Travelers report in turn that the Amazons are cadets of +the leading families; that they are slaves made in war; that they +are criminals, common scolds, and women taken in adultery; that they +are loose in morals and that they are celibates; and that the custom +of permitting those no longer young enough to bear arms to marry was +a thrifty substitute for a state pension. Burton recites the common +belief that two-thirds of them are maidens, the remainder unfaithful +wives condemned to soldiering. He thinks pretty well of their morals, +which were protected by tabu, although while he was in Dahomey the +king had to judge the cases of more than a hundred Amazons about to +become mothers. The crime was lèse majesté, for in theory these were +royal brides, but the punishment was moderate--a few beheadings, and +imprisonment, banishment, or pardon for the rest. + +Dahomans themselves supposed that their peculiar institution was of +their own time, had forgotten, what Europe knew, that women guarded +their court two centuries before, did not dream that back to an +unfathomed antiquity, it may be, theirs had been a woman state. + +Burton was present at the annual saturnalia of the Customs, and to his +sometimes sardonic vision all was invested in African grotesqueness. +He noted the immense thighs of the women officers and found it hard to +reconcile celibacy and corpulency. He described their dances, for also +they danced before the king, “clapping palms on thighs, or on something +fleshier.” The women stamped, wriggled, kicked the dust, and ended with +a violent movement of the shoulders, hips, and loins--an anticipation +of the most modern of popular terpsichorean contortions. One captain +is pictured in terms that approach admiration--a fine, tall woman with +glittering teeth and a gait that was partly a military swagger and +partly a sensuous dance. But the costumes of all had a phantasmagoric +quality--Amazons with beards of monkey skin, with men’s nightcaps, with +red liberty caps, with fools’ caps, with human skulls, or the lower jaw +of a skull, dangling at the waist. + +These women paraded past the king while Burton looked on. It may be he +tried to take notes and tired at the task. His narrative reads as if +his own head whirled with the dancers, until he could no longer frame +complete sentences. He concludes that it was something like a pawnshop, +for the King’s Valuables went by with his women. + +About in his own words and manner, but condensed, this is the picture: + +“Sixteen brilliant banners held horizontally, preceding a wheelbarrow +with a fancy red-and-blue flag. Five huge fans, followed by razor +women. Eight images, of which three were apparently ships’ figureheads +whitewashed, and the rest very hideous efforts of native art. +Sixty-seven women with brown faces and bead mittens. Twenty-one girls +carrying cylinders of red and white beads. Seventeen women with +silver plates fastened to the sides of their skulls, habited in red +clothes and handling bead cat-ó-nine tails. Twelve women, also in red. +Seventeen fetish pots, three jars, one silver plated urn, attended +by singing women. Twenty casque women with red tunics and plumes and +black horse tails. Eight helmet girls with red plumes, dark coats, and +white loin cloths. Six pieces of plate, a tree, a crane, a monkey. +After singers and dancers, a huge drum carried by a woman porter. Three +large chairs, preceding about fifty heavily armed elephant huntresses, +clad in chocolate and dark blue, with bustles of talismans behind +and strings of cowries before. Four pots. A bullock trunk. Fourteen +fetish women in white caps and tunics and bright yellow grass cloth. +Five black girls dressed in blue. A line of 703 women and girls with +country pots of native beer and bottles of trade rum and gin. A motley +group surrounding two women in big felt hats. A band and a troop +of bardesses. Two girls with serpent flags. Seven troubadour women +dancing. Two warming pans. An escort of bayonet women. Royal equipages +hauled by men harnessed with ropes. A body of armed women preceding +seven umbrellas and drinking rum. A troop of girls with jugs, ewers, +and jars. Twenty blunderbus women in red caps. Six kettledrum girls in +scarlet caps and bodices and blue skirts. A calabash with a pyramid of +four skulls. Two dancing women with long switching tails. Fifty captive +female dancers. An old cut-glass chandelier. Living representatives of +the mothers of the Dahoman dynasty. A company of singers commanded by +an old woman in a broad-brimmed hat. A stunning salute of blunderbuses. +Good night after seven mortal hours.” + +Yet there was no doubt that these fantastic women could fight. +Their frames were as powerful as those of the men, whose military +organization their own paralleled; and their hearts were higher. They +were the king’s own troops with his favor to vindicate and a tradition +to sustain. They had greater ferocity as well as greater courage than +the men--“savage as wounded gorillas,” Burton called them, and he laid +this to their enforced chastity. With them, two centuries ago, Dahomey +conquered the joint forces of Whydah and Popos, and the women fought +bravely against the French. Travelers who saw them in maneuver at the +annual Customs tell how they charged barefoot and half naked through +barriers of thorny acacia, and emerging, torn and bleeding, but with +impassive faces, passed in review before their sovereign. + +Out of one passage in the history of Dahomey a ray of light streams. +When a king died at Abomey a wild orgy began among the Amazons of the +palace. They took their own lives and they slew one another. When +Sinmenkpen passed to his fathers, five hundred and ninety-five Amazons +died with him; only by extorting a solemn fetish oath did Gezo end +this custom. There were similar practices elsewhere. Among the Behrs +of the White Nile, Rawlinson reports, a woman’s guard prevented any +man from approaching the king, except the ministers who came to +strangle him when his end was near. Megasthenes, Greek ambassador to +the court of Sandrokotos at about B.C. 300, says that the Indian king +was surrounded by armed women who guarded his chamber and attended his +hunts in chariots or upon horses and elephants. Sometimes it was their +right to kill their lord, and the slayer married his successor. In +Bantam half a century ago the king was escorted by a girlish cavalry +that rode astride and carried muskets and lances; it was said that if +he died without issue the custom was for them to meet and elect a new +sovereign. + +When kings died, their women guards functioned. It was the function of +priestesses of death. This is the secret of the Amazon legend and the +key to practises of human sacrifice and periodic and indiscriminate +sexual intercourse with which, alike in Asia, Africa and America, the +legend is associated. + +Before fitting the key into the lock of legend it will be well to +let the rule of reason say its word. That large bodies of women +should withdraw themselves from the state, abjure the society of men +altogether or except at stated intervals, live their own lives and +develop their own social tradition, has seemed to skeptical opinion in +all ages a thing not to be believed because against nature. Yet in all +ages women have done before the eyes of men something very like this. +Thousands of them have gathered in great convents, or as temple harlots +have served at the vast shrines of the Farther East, or as armed +priestesses of the Nearer East have loosed the leash of fable. Their +periodic withdrawals from society for the performance of the Eleusinian +and other mysteries were a routine of the classic civilizations. + +There have been times when the woman state was a fact of a season, +or of a year, or more--as when the men of an island were fishing +elsewhere, or the able-bodied members of a tribe were away on the +annual hunt, or the warriors were on a long campaign; and the traveler, +seeing none but women, might misread what he saw. Doubtless there have +been instances where the men of a tribe were exterminated in war, and +their women, retiring to inaccessible retreats, maintained their +independence for a while. Time was when everywhere the women commanded +and the men obeyed. It is not beyond imagination that, sometimes and +in some places, with the memory of the matriarchate to inspire them, +women have revolted against the cruel lot which was theirs in primitive +society, and set up for themselves; for they were the daughters as well +as the wives of the hard-headed men of the caves. This is perhaps as +plausible as the conjecture that savage man merely concocted the story +to dramatize the natural antipathy of the sexes, to account for the +deep groove of division which this sentiment had run through primitive +society and to justify the fact that society gave men so much the +better of it. + +The roots of the Amazon tradition, however, lie deeper than what may be +called the politics of sex. The truth underlying the several legends +is to be found where, according to report, the fighting women had +their commonwealth. The descendants of the Cappadocian Amazons who +came to the aid of Troy are to be found in the Armenian highlands. The +descendants of the West African Amazons, on whom, as Diodorus fables, +the vengeance of Hercules fell, are to be found in Dahomey and near-by +negro states. The secret of the Brazilian Amazons is to be sought, +among other places, in Mexico. + +With a single word out of the Old Testament the door of legend opens. +Of the Hittites the Hebrew writers seemed to know only that they +occupied mountainous districts in the land flowing with milk and honey; +that for a space the Jews dwelt with them and “served Baalim and the +groves”; and that Solomon put a tribute upon them. From the rock +carvings of Asia Minor and from Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions the +present age has learned more. The discovery by Sayce and other modern +scholars of the important place once held by the Hittites has been +called the romance of ancient history. + +That place may be likened to the place held by the Ottoman Empire in +its strength. Like the Turks, the Hittites were a Turanian people who +planted themselves across the great roads of Asia Minor and absorbed +and crudely reproduced the culture of more civilized neighbor peoples. +Their capitals were at Carchemish, where they commanded the fords of +the Euphrates, and at Kadesh on the Orontes, whence they ruled Syria +and the cities of the Ægean. They were mountaineers from the Taurus, +with olive skins, mongoloid features, and the Chinese cue. Their +double-headed eagle passed through the Turkomans and the Crusaders into +the imperial arms of Russia, Austria, and Germany; the Phrygian cap of +their successors has become the headgear of revolutionary woman, and +the Turks still wear their peaked shoes. + +The Hittite Empire flourished in the Bronze Age, when it met Egypt, +Babylon and afterward Assyria on equal terms. It began to loom in the +sixteenth century B.C. and it was a power to be reckoned with until +well into the first millennium before Christ. On its ruins arose +Cappadocia, Phrygia, Lydia, and later Pontus. The rock carvings that +proclaimed its sway, and that Herodotus described but misread, still +look down on the Pass of Karabel along an old road of empire. + +The Amazons of Greek legend, according to the convincing scholarship of +Sayce, were the armed priestesses of the Hittites. Their fabled capital +of Themiscyra is the ruined city of Boghaz Keui in Asiatic Turkey not +far from the Black Sea. The authentic likenesses of the warrior women +are to be found, not in the temple friezes of Attica, but in the rock +carvings on the hills that overlook this ancient ruin. Yet Greek art +reflects correct observation or trustworthy report, for its warrior +maidens wear the kilt of the mountain-dwelling Hittites and carry the +same double-headed ax that is seen in their crude sculptures. + +In the service of the Asiatic goddess, known variously as Astarte, +Derceto, Cybele, the Great Mother, and Diana of the Ephesians, was a +multitude of armed priestesses so numerous that to the Greeks they +seemed not a cult but a nation. Whole cities were in effect mere temple +precincts populated by these women and by eunuch priests; the high +priestess of the temple ruled the city and the surrounding country, +and had some claim, therefore, to the title of Amazon queen. At Komana +were six thousand of these armed maidens of the shrine. At Ephesus vast +throngs of them served a high priestess who called herself the Queen +Bee. + +These Hittite women worshiped the Asiatic goddess with orgiastic +frenzies that simulated, or literally repeated, the primal processes +of dissolution and reproduction. It was easy for the Greek mariners +who saw them dancing to the goddess and flourishing their weapons on +the shores of the Black Sea to infer that a woman’s capital lay a +short distance inland. It was natural, also, to attribute to them the +actual feats of the Hittite armies, and fable that the cities founded +or subjugated by that empire on the Ægean--Ephesus, Smyrna, Cyme, +Myrina--were colonies of Amazonian origin. + +The Amazon legends of Africa and South America and the customs of the +female palace troops of Africa and Asia are made clear if one goes +behind the cult of the Asiatic goddess to the domain of primitive +magic whence it arose. There one finds beliefs that belt the earth and +are reflected not only in ancient tradition, but in modern practises +associated with May day and Midsummer Eve, with sowing and harvest, +with the summer and winter solstices. Frazer’s examination of these in +the _Golden Bough_ is deeply illuminating. + +Following the laws of sympathetic magic, men believed that in order +to make the grain flourish and the grass renew itself in the annual +death and resurrection of nature, it was necessary by some drama of +their own to repeat the phenomena of decay and of new life. There must +be a noteworthy human death and a resurrection. Sometimes men killed +a scapegoat, sometimes a divine animal, sometimes a divine man--a +god-king, as he was called--such an impersonation of divinity, for +example, as the Grand Lama of Tibet. The killing of the god-king was +preferred as a magic more constraining than any other upon the forces +of nature. + +There were several means of simulating the phenomena of resurrection. +This might be done by having two couples appear in the annual +drama--two sets of divine and royal mates. Frazer suggests that the +book of _Esther_, names and all, is based on a Babylonian religious +festival of this kind--that the gentle Esther is none other than the +lustful Astarte, that Mordecai is the god Merodach, that Haman is +Hannum the Aramite god, and Vashti a goddess unidentified. The triumph +of one set of characters and the humiliation and death of the other are +supposed to represent the bourgeoning of spring after the long death of +winter. + +The common means of symbolizing and constraining the reproduction +of new life in nature was through a period of promiscuous sexual +intercourse in which designated persons or whole populations took part. +It was deemed necessary to set an example to the woods and fields, and +in the woods and fields it was set. The saturnalia, the carnivals, +the May Days and St. John’s Eves of old time were not, in intent, +excursions into debauchery; they were exercises in sympathetic magic. +So it befell that in savage vision the withered leaf and the green +shoot, winter and spring, death and resurrection, came to mean two +things--periodic murder and lust. + +After a while the priest-kings sought escape from the custom that +gave them only a year of life upon their throne of grace. They chose +substitutes--a son, a slave, a malefactor--who for a few days reigned +in their stead, and as a sign of kingship were made free of their +harems, as Absalom went in unto King David’s concubines in the sight +of Israel. The king, or the mock-king, devoted to death but attended +by beautiful women, crowned with flowers and worshiped as a god--this +spectacle, as profoundly ironical as life itself, was staged in Mexico +when Cortez came; and when Huc visited Lhasa in 1846 he found the +Tibetans electing a monarch of misrule to carouse and suffer in place +of the pope of Buddhism, God’s vicar for Asia. + +The bacchic procession of the doomed king and his women, this dance of +death that went around the world, was the real Amazon march. It was the +part of the warrior women to kill the man-god whose last days they had +beguiled. It was their part, also, to co-operate with a multitude of +men in a lustful drama, so that every acorn and grass root and grain of +corn might heed the command to bring forth and multiply; back of the +myth of annual Amazon matings with neighbor tribes was this reality of +the saturnalia. In places the legend has suffered confusing changes, as +in the Dahoman Customs, where the king kills instead of being killed. +But the same meaning underlies the Phrygian worship of the Great +Mother, the lethal privileges of the female palace guards in Hindostan, +the self-slaughter of the warrior women when a king died at Abomey, the +going of women into the hills of Brazil with one old man as companion, +and the recurrent tragedy of the god-man of Mexico, who dismissed the +fair partners of his revelry, snapped the strings of his harp, flung +away his chaplet of flowers, and ascended the altar where an Aztec with +a knife awaited him. + +The meaning is death and life in nature, and the Amazon as priestess of +both. + + + + +Chapter XIV. The Folk of Tradition + + +Among the peoples of prodigy there were races without deformity and yet +set apart from other men by their peculiar habits or habitat, or, as +in the case of the giants of geography, by their unusual stature. Men +who dwelt in caves or whose diet was too much unlike their fellows’ +were themes of marvel. Under fables told about them the outlines of +historical peoples may often be discerned. + +While the tall men merge on the one side into the colossal creatures +of mythology, on the other they approach mortal size and the human +quality. Their tradition has been shaped by nature myths growing out of +volcanic eruptions, the phenomena of frost and darkness, and storms in +the desert. But popular beliefs rest mainly on more tangible things--on +the argument that since there are giant individuals there may well be +giant races; on the actual existence of tall races; on the presumption +that men of old time were taller than those of to-day; on dim memories +of tall vanished races such as the Cromagnous, and on an ancient notion +that the fossil remains of extinct animals were the bones of giants. +Travelers have done much to build the legend. Almost always they +underestimate the mean stature of a people with many small individuals +and overestimate that of a people with many tall individuals, the usual +margin of error running from two to four inches. + +Above all, there has been the witness of geological strata uncovered to +eyes that misread their record. On the basis of a five-pound tooth and +an eleven-foot thigh bone, found in New England in 1712 and supposed to +have been a mastodon’s, Increase Mather reported to the Royal Society +of London that men of prodigious stature had inhabited the New World. +Other fossil bones found in Switzerland in 1577 became the basis of a +legend, which is commemorated in the colossal statues of Basle and in +the figures supporting the arms of Lucerne, that a race of giants from +sixteen to nineteen feet high lived in the Alps. + +Ctesias reported that the Seres, whom he located in upper India, +reached a stature of fourteen feet and an age of two hundred years. +Onesicritus declared that in those parts of India where the sun cast no +shadow the men were eight feet high. But ancient writers were neither +so specific nor so insistent upon the existence of a colossal race as +later writers have been. Near the Vale Perilous, says Maundeville, are +two islands occupied by giants. The tenants of the first of these are +of comparatively modest stature, from twenty-eight to thirty feet. +Those of the farther isle are from forty-five to fifty feet. + +“I saw none of these,” admits Sir John, “for I had no Lust to go to +those Parts. But men have seen many times those Giants take Men in the +Sea out of their Ships, and bring them to Land, two in one Hand and two +in another, eating them going, all raw and all alive.” + +Amerigo Vespucci found a prodigious people in the island of Curaçoa +off the coast of Venezuela, “every woman appearing as a Penthesilea, +and every man an Antæus.” Pigafetta, writing of Magellan’s cruise, +is responsible for the belief, long held in Europe, that the tall +Patagonians were true Titans. One of them he pictures as advancing to +greet the white men, dancing and singing and putting dust on his head, +as if in token of peace. The savage towered above the Spaniards, who +came only to his waist. Dismissed with gifts, he returned at length +with other men of a like stature, and two of these the mariners decoyed +on shipboard. Leg irons were placed on them on the pretext that they +were ornaments, but when the Spanish purpose was disclosed they broke +in pieces as easily as if they were the baubles they were represented +to be. + +Herrera, Van Noort, Le Maire and other travelers confirmed the account +of the size of the antipodal Indians. Lopez Vaz described them as “very +mightie men of bodie of ten or eleven foot high, and good bow-men, but +no man-eaters.” It remained for Drake to correct report when he made +his own circumnavigation of the globe. This was one of the “notorious +lies” which the Spaniards disseminated; the Patagonians were “but of +the height of Englishmen”; they are, however, somewhat above it. Five +feet eleven inches is the average among them and individuals reach the +height of six feet seven. + +At the other extremity of South America the natives of the northern +Andes have a legend of a monstrous race that arrived in huge boats +at Cape Santa Elena about the beginning of the Christian era. Their +knees stood as high as the heads of other men and their eyes were like +small plates. They abused the Indians, their habits were abominable, +and fire from heaven destroyed them. This is perhaps a reminiscence of +an extinct civilization, the grotesque art of which has been brought +to light by recent excavations. There is an Oregon tradition of an +underground village of gigantic Indians on Coos Bay. They bashed each +other over the head with heavy bone knives without being hurt. When the +smaller Indians attacked them they fled down the river and out to sea +on two rafts and never came back. + +Buffon, who would not credit the pygmies, believed there had been +giants of from ten to perhaps fifteen feet in height. The Bible +narrative giving Goliath, the Philistine bravo, the stature of six +cubits and a span, or three inches above seven feet, is conservatively +phrased. Buffon to the contrary notwithstanding, it is generally +thought that no man ever lived who reached the stature of ten feet, and +no race that reached the mean stature of seven. A very few individuals +have exceeded the height of eight feet and there is record of one or +two who have passed nine feet. According to the principles governing +the distribution of the overlarge individuals of a race, as worked out +by Quetelet, the appearance of a twenty-foot giant would imply the +existence of a race with a mean stature of from twelve to fourteen feet. + +If there was once a race a foot or so above the stature of modern man, +it may be that the tall individuals who appear in each generation are +not the product of a favorable environment and fortunate combination of +elemental forces, but represent remote ancestors of unusual size. Zell +in his _Polyphem ein Gorilla_ argues that if races of average height +are the normal, and if there are dwarf races, then there must have been +giant ones to strike the balance. At any rate, tales of such races are +world-wide and a tang as of reality is in some of them. The Celt, for +example, said that giants had a strong body odor. “Giants,” says Grimm +in his summary of their tradition, “consider themselves the old masters +of the land, live up in the castle, and look down upon the peasant;” +the picture might be of something fabled, or of something vanished. + + +_The Macrobians_ + +As report gave certain races a great stature, so it gave others a great +age. These were known as the Macrobians. Herodotus mentions such a +people in Ethiopia; “the venerable and harmless men of Ethiopia,” Walt +Whitman calls them. Such also were the Hyperboreans, on the other side +of the north wind. The tall Seres lived to be two hundred years old. In +tropical India another tall race lived to the age of one hundred and +thirty years, and died just as if they were in the middle period of +life. Some writers called the elderly Indians Gymnetæ, or Naked Folk. +Another Indian people, the Cyrni, were reported to attain four hundred +years. Holding that the Indians were exceedingly just, and that the +just are long lived, the ancients credited the general statement of +Ctesias that the nations of the Indus live to one hundred twenty, one +hundred thirty, and one hundred fifty years, and the very old to two +hundred years. Pliny adds that they never expectorate and are subject +to no pains in the head, teeth, or eyes. There were Macrobians in +Brazil. A German woodcut of 1505 pictures them at a cannibal feast, and +the accompanying legend says, “They become a hundred and fifty years +old, and have no government.” + +There was a reason, named by Isogonus, for the longevity of the +inhabitants of Mount Athos in the Balkans. They used the flesh of +vipers for food, and hence were “free from all noxious animals both in +their hair and their garments.” + + +_Albinos_ + +The Albania of the ancients was a country of Asia in the eastern part +of the Caucasus. Somehow the early writers confused its inhabitants, +the Alani, with Albinos. Beeton says that there is in Albania “a +certain race of men whose eyes are of a sea-green color, who have white +hair from childhood, and who see better by night than by day.” In the +kingdom that men call Mancy in “Ind the More,” says Maundeville, “they +be full fair Folk, but they be all pale. And the Men have thin Beards +and few Hairs, but they be long. In that Land be many fairer Women than +in any other Country beyond the Sea, and therefore Men call that Land +Albany.” Also, the hens are white. + + +_Sun-hating Folk_ + +There were sun-haters as well as sun-worshipers in the sun-smitten +lands of the older day. Carpini tells of the troglodytes of the +Caucasus who “lived in terror of the mysterious and fatal sound which +accompanied the rising of the sun.” Herodotus and Pliny describe the +Moroccan peoples called the Atlantes. When they look upon the rising +and the setting sun they “utter direful imprecations against it as +being fatal to themselves and their lands.” If one believes what is +said of these tribes beside the western sea, says Pliny, they have lost +all characteristics of humanity. They do not distinguish one another by +names, “nor are they visited with dreams, like the rest of mortals.” + + +_A Poisonous Nation_ + +The Psylli were a nation dwelling near the Great Syrtis on the North +African coast. Pliny, who sponsors them and says they were exterminated +by the Nasamonians, tells a story which reveals the two great +obsessions of the ancients--a curious credulity as to poisons, and an +incredulous curiosity as to the continence of women. In the bodies of +the Psylli, there was by nature a certain kind of poison that was fatal +to serpents and the odor of which rendered them instantly torpid. It +was the custom to expose newly born infants to the fiercest serpents +“and in this manner to make proof of the fidelity of their wives, the +serpents not being repelled by such children as were the offspring of +adultery.” + + +_The Troglodytes_ + +What the moderns call cave-men the ancients called troglodytes. In +the phrase of Æschylus they knew not how to build a house against the +sun, but “lived like silly ants, beneath the ground, in hollow caves +unsunned.” Because they shared the habitations of bats and snakes, +their voices were bat-like in their shrillness, and with hissing +tones; and they ate reptiles and crickets. They were fleet-footed +like the creatures of the rocks, the troglodyte Ethiopians being, says +Herodotus, the swiftest of men. The inhabitants of the country of the +Robbers (Lestai) in Farther Asia, says Ptolemy, were savages, living +in caves, and “having skins like the hide of the hippopotamus which +darts cannot pierce.” Artemidorus speaks of naked night-traveling +troglodytes of Arabia who put away their dead amid laughter. There are +cave-dwellers to this day in southern Cambodia, and a Chinese account +of the thirteenth century tells of the skin breastplates which they +wore. + +The ancients knew of various races of troglodytes, notably those along +both shores of the Red Sea. Others were in Syria, and upon the Nile, +and in Fezzan, and in the Caucasus. The voiceless troglodytes of Pliny +are supposed to be the Rock Tibboos on whose whistling speech their +neighbors still comment. The best account of the elder cave-dwellers +happens to be authentic history. When Xenophon was retreating with the +Ten Thousand to the Black Sea he found upon the Armenian frontier a +people who lived in underground burrows with vertical entrances like +wells, up and down which they passed on ladders. Their beasts used a +sloping path and lived with them underground, cattle, goats, and sheep +thriving there on green fodder gathered above. These subterranean +habitations were also granaries and wine-cellars. + +With all their lively interest in the ways of troglodytes, the ancients +knew less than the moderns about them, and were perhaps farther in +spirit from the cave-man. In the caverns of western Europe men of +to-day have studied his household economy, his art, and the animals he +tamed or hunted. Travelers in various lands have come upon underground +chambers, many of them still occupied. In the Berber rock-towns these +subterranean dwellings number thousands, and the ravines which furrow +the plateaus serve as their streets. On the Cappadocian plain deserted +subterranean villages, called _kataphugia_, or places of refuge, +underlie occupied villages of the surface, and thither the cattle +descend in severe weather, as in Xenophon’s time twenty-three centuries +ago. The peoples of the surface are supposed to be descendants of true +troglodytes. + + +_The Anthropophagi_ + +It never occurred to the early writers to classify men according to the +color of their skins, or the breadth of their skulls, or fundamental +differences in their languages; and the Greeks and Romans were +ignorant of the Noachian genealogy and heedless of the apportionment +of the earth among the sons of Shem, Ham and Japheth. But they had a +rough-and-ready method of cataloguing savage races according to what +they ate, in the thought that whatsoever a man ate, that in some degree +he became. After naming the races of fable from the size of their feet +or ears or other bodily peculiarity, they grouped and named, according +to their supposed diet, various races of reality that dwelt at a +distance. + +Classic writers took passing note of the Anthropophagi, or tribes that +ate human flesh. There were such peoples in Africa and in Asia. The +best known account is the description in Herodotus of the Issedones. +These Scythians of Central Asia ate the flesh of their deceased +relatives prepared with other meat, and made gold-rimmed drinking cups +of their skulls--a rite of honor to the dead. A tribe in northern Tibet +is supposed to be descended from them. + + +_The Ichthyophagi_ + +The races that subsisted on fish, the Ichthyophagi, were described +by the ancients with unusual detail. One of the first accounts is +by Herodotus, who tells of the folk that lived on platforms above +Lake Prasias. They drew their fish through trap-doors from the water +beneath, and the custom was that for every woman a man took to wife he +drove three piles into the lake. + +All along the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea there were tribes of +Ichthyophagi. Their very cattle ate dried fish and the beef had a fishy +flavor; Ibn Batuta remarked this in Yemen, and it is still true of the +Coromandel Coast. Arrian’s account of the voyage of Nearchus describes +the Ichthyophagi as occupying for four hundred miles the barren shores +of the Mekran; they had few boats and were indifferent fishermen, but +by intercepting the ebb tide with palm-bark nets they obtained their +food. + +Arrian repeats a legend of the origin of these tribes in whose lines +one hears faintly the wild music of the Sirens. The island of Nosala, +off the Mekran coast, was the residence of a Nereid “whose practice +was to seduce such mariners as landed there to her embraces, and then, +after transforming them into fish, to throw them into the sea.” But the +sun ordered the nymph to quit the island and himself changed the fish +back into men. These were the first Ichthyophagi. + +Farther west, in Ariana, were fish-eating tribes who made their +dwellings, Strabo says, of shells and of the bones of large whales, the +ribs furnishing the beams and supports, and the jawbones the doorways. +Sections of the backbones of whales were used as mortars wherein +sun-dried fish were pounded. + +Diodorus Siculus has a spirited account of the Ichthyophagi along the +Red Sea. This people, he says, do not use nets, but so wall the caverns +and gullies of their rocky shore that the receding tide leaves the fish +imprisoned there. Whereupon, with a shout, the tribe assembles on the +beach. Women and children gather the little fish next the shore; with +sharp goats’ horns the men dispatch the larger ones, throwing all upon +the land. The booty is put into stone pots tilted toward the south and +the fish are fried by the sun until the flesh drops off. The bones are +cast into a pile and the meat boiled with fruit seeds. Then everybody +falls to and gorges. The heap of bones is a dietary reserve which the +tribe pulverizes and devours when storms shut off the shore. + +The life of these Ichthyophagi is thrown into a sort of rhythm by the +need, every fifth day, of going inland on an extended journey for fresh +water. For four days they fish continually and make merry in great +throngs, “congratulating one another with harsh and discordant songs; +then they fall promiscuously, as every man’s lot chances, to company +with their women for procreation sake.” On the fifth day the tribe goes +in a body to a district lying under the foot of the mountains where +there are springs of sweet water. Hither, also, the shepherds drive the +flocks. Nor do the shore folk differ much from the herds, for “they go +making a horrid noise and without articulate voice.” Arrived at the +springs, they throw themselves on their faces and “drink as beasts +until their stomachs are distended like a drum.” Slowly they wend +their way back to salt water, and for a day recline without tasting +food. The following day they begin anew their fishing and feeding. Such +is the round of their lives. + +Diodorus remarks, apparently to commend, that these fish-eaters “far +exceed all other men in freedom from boisterous passions.” They give no +heed to a stranger, nor even look at one when he addresses them: “Nay, +if they be assaulted with drawn swords they will not stir; and though +they are hurt and wounded, yet they are not in the least provoked. Even +though their wives and children be killed before their eyes, they show +no sign of anger.” + +These accounts are not fables. But there is fabulous admixture, most +of it arising from the primitive belief that a fish diet makes men as +cool-blooded as the creatures upon which they live. + + +_Other Dietary Nations_ + +Akin to these nations were the Chelonophagi, or turtle-eaters, +concerning whom Strabo recites facts entirely in keeping. This tribe +lives under the cover of turtle shells, which also it uses as boats. +Some of its members, however, collect seaweed in heaps, hollow the +heaps, and dwell under them. Their dead are cast into the sea, and +carried away by the tide to become food in turn for the fish and +turtles. + +The Acridophagi were grasshopper-eaters--insectivorous, ornithologists +would call them. The locust was, and is, a favorite diet of desert +peoples, a staple food of the Arab, as well as of the pygmy folk and +other singular breeds. Niebuhr likens its taste to that of “a small +sardine of the Baltic, which is dried in some towns of Holstein.” What +Dampier has to say of customs he found in two Pacific islands in 1687 +may stand without essential change for the ways of earlier acridophagi: +“They had another dish made of a sort of locusts, whose bodies are +about one and one-half inches long, and as thick as the top of one’s +little finger; with large thin wings, and long and small legs. These +came in great swarms to devour their potato leaves and other herbs; and +the natives would go out with small nets and take a quart at one sweep. +When they had enough they would parch them in an earthen pan; and then +their wings and legs would fall off, and their heads and backs would +turn red like boiled shrimp. Their bodies, being full, would eat very +moist, their heads would crackle in one’s teeth. I did once eat of this +dish, and like it well enough.” + +Certain other races living in Africa the ancients knew chiefly as +specialists in diet. Pomponius places the Ophiophagi, or snake-eaters, +on the Red Sea. Homer gives the Lotophagi, or lotus-eaters, a habitat +on the Mediterranean coast. Agatharcides names the Rhizophagi or +root-eaters who dwell on the banks of the Atbara and subsist on reed +roots; and the Elephantophagi, farther inland, who hunt and eat the +elephant. Also in the interior Diodorus places the ostrich-eating +Struthophagi, and there Pliny places the Agriophagi “who live +principally on the flesh of panthers and lions,” and the Pamphagi “who +will eat anything.” + + +_Geographical Glimpses_ + +The citations below, from classical, mediæval and modern writers, are +reproduced because of their flavor and for whatever they are worth: + +The Gamphasantes, who go naked, are unacquainted with war and hold no +intercourse with strangers. + +In the African deserts “men are frequently seen to all appearance and +then vanish in an instant,” says Pliny--perhaps the mirage. + +“On the one side of the Senegal,” says John Lok, “the inhabitants are +of high stature and black, and on the other side of browne or tawnie +colour.” The latter are the “tawny Moors” of Prince Henry’s ship +captains. + +The Annamese of pure stock have a peculiar formation of the great toe +whereby they are able to pick up small objects with their prehensile +feet, says Keane. Their ancient Chinese name was Giao-chi, which +signifies “with the big toe.” + +“Many of Canton and Quansi Provinces,” says a Jesuit missionary in +Purchas, “on their little toes have two nailes, as they have generally +in Cochin-China.” + +On the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, says the seventh-century +_History of the T’ang Dynasty_, is a naked swarthy race with red +frizzled hair, bestial teeth, and hawk claws who hold their markets at +night with veiled faces. + +The Korwars of India, according to a local legend, “derive from +scarecrows animated by a prowling demon.” + + * * * * * + +Because they are recognizable peoples with representatives who may +still be studied, the folk of tradition are useful exhibits in the +museum of history. + + + + +Chapter XV. The Horizon Lands + + +Not until yesterday did men encompass the earth. But their minds were +always more adventurous than their feet, and from the beginning, +almost, the sense of remote horizons was in them. Fantastic though +its form might be, there was a divine breadth in their speculation as +to the earth and its peoples. The peasant of antiquity, who knew only +his township in Europe or his mountain canton in high Asia, had yet a +vision of continents and distant seas. His imagination explored the +waste places, ascended the high places, descended into the earth. Its +product was the geography of legend, which gave ground but slowly to +the geography of reality. + + +_Beyond the North Wind_ + +One of the earliest countries to find a place in the geography of +legend was that of the Hyperboreans. It lay on the other side of the +north wind. These people lived so far toward the pole that they were +beyond the icy blasts, and beyond all contacts of war or commerce with +the peoples of the south. Only the priests and the poets knew of them. + +The priests knew of them because of the yearly offerings sent in to the +temples of Tempe, Delphi, and Delos. These were gifts of amber, and +virgins bore them from nation to nation across the whole of Europe. +For many years the holy maidens had honor and hospitality from all the +countries along their path. When violence was done them the journeys +ceased. Not, however, the offerings. The Hyperboreans deposited these +upon the boundary of the people who adjoined them. The latter carried +them to their neighbors; and so by successive stages the tribute came +to the shrines of Apollo, whom the distant nation held in especial +honor. At last the custom fell into disuse. + +No return visits were made from the south, for the way was hard. Yet +the poets had, as always, their own means of information. Homer has +nothing to say of the Hyperboreans, but Hesiod speaks of them, and +Pindar, and Æschylus, and a host of later and lesser voices. From +these authorities it appeared that the Riphæan Rocks, an imaginary +prolongation of the Ural group westward across Europe, shut the +Hyperboreans off from the south. Out of the rocks the north wind came +sweeping down over the lower latitudes, but on the farther side of the +range was summer. It was a favored land, and this a favored people. +“The muse is no stranger to their manners,” says Pindar. “The dances of +girls and the sweet melody of the lyre and pipe resound on every side, +and twining their hair with the glittering bay, they dance joyously. +There is no doom of sickness or disease for this sacred race; but they +live apart from toil and battles, undisturbed by exacting Nemesis.” +Isidore adds that when the cithara players smite their instruments the +swans fly up and sing very harmoniously. + +Rightly discerning that this was no region of the earth, Herodotus +assigns its inhabitants to the realms of fable. But Hecatæus, Damastes, +Diodorus, Pliny and others credit the legend, though sometimes with a +note of doubt, as when Pliny begins, “Beyond the region of the northern +winds, there dwells, if we choose to believe it, a happy race known as +the Hyperboreans.” From their country Hercules brought the olive. They +were a pious folk, loving justice, dwelling in woods and fields, living +on the fruits of the earth and abstaining from taking even animal life. +No rude winds agitated this delicious land. Here were “the hinges upon +which the world revolves, and the extreme limits of the revolutions of +the stars.” There was but one rising of the sun for the year, and that +at the summer solstice, and but one setting, and that at the winter +solstice; and the day and night each lasted six months. In the morning +of the long day the people sowed, at midday they reaped, at sunset they +gathered the fruits of their trees; and the long night they spent in +caverns; and so their lives were passed. + +They lived to be very old in the country beyond the north wind, +sometimes as much as one thousand years. But a fateful note runs +through all accounts of them. The happy Hyperboreans were wont to tire +at last of their felicity. They ended a career of feasting and an old +age sated with every luxury by leaping from a rock into the sea. At +the close of each life lay the rock and the sea. + +Just where was this worshipful nation? The answers are vague and +conflicting. On the left bank of the Danube, it was first thought; on +the very verge of Asia, others said. Later its home was fixed “midway +between the two suns, at the spot where it sets to the antipodes and +rises toward us.” There were Greek writers who confused the Riphæan +Rocks with the Alps and Pyrenees, and confounded the Hyperboreans +with the Etruscans and the Gauls. Hecatæus gives them an island home +as large as Sicily, lying under the arctic pole, over against Gaul. +Here Apollo has a stately grove and a renowned temple in a city where +all the residents are harpers. This is the Britain of the bards and +druids, of whose people it was said in later time that they take their +pleasures sadly. + + +_At the Cardinal Points_ + +While the ancients peopled the rim of the earth with deformed races +and monstrous animals, their pictures of the nations that dwelt at +the cardinal points show mainly the ideal treatment. In the far east, +in the far west, in the far south, there were men like unto the +Hyperboreans of the far north. Of the Indians, the Ethiopians, and +the Iberians of early story the same report was had. They were “just” +and “blameless”--these words recur again and again--and they were +long-lived and fortunate. Thus real races took on some quality of myth. +The classic sense of equilibrium demanded this equal reverence to the +four quarters of heaven, just as it was fancied that, to balance the +Pillars of Hercules in the west, Bacchus had set up two columns “by the +farthest shore of the Ocean stream, on the remotest mountains of India, +where the Ganges pours down its white waters to the Nysæan shore.” + +This cast of thought did not die with the ancients. The epithets, +“just” and “blameless,” reappear in the writings of eighteenth-century +philosophers when they speak of the Chinese. A little later the +beautiful and artless natives of the South Seas laid upon the thought +of more sophisticated lands a spell that endures. Now, as always, the +four points of the compass are points of fable, and the primitive +worship that was paid them lurks in the magic with which the number +four is invested. The rising and setting of the sun fixed two of these +points and the course of the Nile northward through Egypt may have +fixed the other two. + +“All evil comes from the northeast,” say the Japanese. Thoreau usually +walked southwest. “Eastward,” he said, “I go only by force; but +westward I go free.” Tartar tent doors, as Marco Polo notes, face +south. The mythical Irish voyages were toward the west. In the thought +of many races witchcraft is of the north. In Norse mythology hell-way +is always downward and northward. When cutting black hellebore the +hedge doctors of Greece faced eastward and cursed. “Altars should +regard the east,” said Vitruvius. Thither the Mohammedan turns in +prayer. The manifestations of God are in the west, says the Talmud. The +Babylonian temples lay due east and west so that the rising sun would +illumine their altars at the equinoxes. Some of the Egyptian temples +were so planned that this would happen only on Midsummer Day. The +older Christian churches lie east and west, although some of them are +oriented to permit the rising sun to gild their altars on the day of +the saint whose name they bear. The west was the seat of darkness and +hence the rose-window was placed high in the cathedral’s western wall +to illumine the benighted, with the bell-towers flanking it to summon +them to Christ. The eastern side with its altar and the southern with +walls and windows consecrated to saints and martyrs were both sacred. +But the northern, or Black Side, was Satan’s, and effigies of unclean +beasts and sculptured allegories of lascivious deeds proclaimed it. + +The cities of ancient Yucatan had gates toward each of the cardinal +points. With the Aztecs all the world directions were significant--the +north standing for emptiness, the east for sterility, the west for +fertility, the south for good fortune. In the symbolism of the Navahos, +white, the dawn color, stands for the east; blue, the sky color, for +the south; yellow, the sunset color, for the west; and black, the +curtain of night, for the north. The Pueblo Indians assigned the north +to the air, the west to water, the south to fire, and the east to earth +and the seeds of life. In old Chinese writings the men of the north +are called brave, the men of the south wise, the men of the east kind +and friendly, the men of the west upright and honest. Over the four +cardinal points the old Brahman gods presided. + +Thus by a primitive law of the mind illusion lurks in every corner of +the heaven. It lies deepest in the track of the sun. From east to west +go the great wanderers--Hercules, Ulysses, and the rest--and solar +myths thicken along their path through legendary lands. The east and +west dominate the thoughts of men with their eternal spectacles of +sunrise and sunset. Whatever commerce, geography, or political history +may teach them, the east is still the region of the morning sunlight +and the west of the evening shadow. Though their steps turn westward, +men’s thoughts drift eastward. Though the east be hunger-bitten and +poverty-stricken and its subjugated millions seem to count but little, +it is still the gorgeous east, “the dancing-place of the dawn.” + +Beyond the curtains of the west lie the realms of repose: “If sunrise,” +says Max Müller, “inspired the first prayers, called forth the first +sacrificial flames, sunset was the other time when again the whole +frame of man would tremble. The shadows of night approach, the +irresistible power of sleep grasps man in the midst of his pleasures, +his friends depart, and in his loneliness his thoughts turn again to +higher powers. When the day departs the poet bewails the untimely death +of his bright friend; nay, he sees in its short career the likeness of +his own life. Perhaps, when he has fallen asleep, his sun may never +rise again, and thus the place to which the setting sun withdraws in +the far west rises before his mind as the abode where he himself would +go after death.” + +Though the westward journeys of the sun are but a seeming, their trail +lies broad across the spiritual life of mankind. + + +_On the Mountains_ + +Half of history has been written in the passes of the mountains. What +lies above these deep saddles of the ranges belongs in the main to +legend. Not much, even now, is known of the mountain tops, for men do +not dwell there. Antiquity seldom went up to see. The high places of +old sacrifice were hilltops, not mountain peaks. + +Men have been content to travel the valleys and, where necessity +impelled, to cross the passes. The steeps overhead seemed fit abode for +the elder gods, for giants and dwarfs and griffins, for dragons whose +breath was the avalanche, for ghosts whose voice was the echo, for the +carnal revels of Satan and his witches; sometimes, also--since legend +is its own law--for cities of enchantment, invisible and beautiful. + +Most famous mountain of classic story was the Atlas; the most fabulous +locality, even in Africa, is the superlative of Pliny. Its summit +reached beyond the clouds and well nigh approached the very orb of the +moon. Rugged and precipitous on the side of the ocean to which it gave +a name, it fell by a gentler slope on the side toward Africa, and dense +groves covered its flanks where streams flashed and fruits abounded. +But in the daytime men were never seen there. All was silent like the +dreadful stillness of the desert. A religious horror stole over those +who drew near. At night, fires innumerable gleamed upon its sides. “It +is then,” says Pliny, “the scene of the gambols of the Ægipans and the +Satyr crew, while it re-echoes with the notes of the flute and the +pipe, and the clash of drums and cymbals.” + +The legend of a mountain of nightly tumult and illumination recurs +in Arab and Christian chronicle. Solinus repeats it. The mountain is +Felfel in the Sahara, says an Arab author of the twelfth century, +and genii hold court in towns on its slopes whence the people have +fled. Ibn Khordadbeh places the realm of nocturnal revel in the +Southern Ocean. Argensola, writing of the Moluccas in the sixteenth +century, reports that for ages “cries, whistles, and roarings” had +been heard from a mountain in Banda. The spot is inhabited by devils, +he concludes. Sindbad tells of an island, called Kasil, where nightly +resounds the drumbeat of rebellious djinns. So was Prospero’s isle full +of noises, but these were “sound, and sweet airs that give delight and +hurt not.” + +[Illustration: _The Steeps Overhead Seemed Fit Abode for Giants and +Dwarfs and Griffins--for Cities of Enchantment_] + +It may be that the Atlas story grew out of the habits of the Kabyles +who tenant the mountain’s recesses. During the heat of the day they +would retire to their dwellings, coming out at night to dance about the +village fires to the music of drums. Similar legends among the Indians +of South America of strange lights seen upon the mountains appear to +have a basis of fact. Sir Martin Conway tells of a village where the +bells were rung and the people flocked to church in dreadful fear +because, after sunset, the peak of Illampu glowed red like fire and +the end of the world seemed at hand. In Venezuela Im Thurn beheld a +mountain strangely luminous at night. Humboldt saw a similar spectacle +in Venezuela and guessed it might be the burning of hydrogen gases. In +Colombia, Zahm saw brilliant lights along the crest of the Cordilleras, +and judged it was an electric phenomenon, the summits acting as a vast +condenser from which electricity escaped by a silent glow or brush +discharge--St. Elmo’s fire. Here, perhaps, is the key to the Old World +story. + +The Mountains of the Moon, which lift their snowy peaks on the line of +the equator in East Africa not far from the springs of the Nile, bear +a myth-engendering name. It was given them by Ptolemy, who perhaps +translated it from native words of the same meaning. Lying within the +sphere of Arabic mediæval geography, Eastern fable enveloped them. +One story was that whoever looked upon them was drawn to them as by a +magnetic influence and only death would release him. According to an +Arab compiler, “a certain king sent an expedition to discover the Nile +sources, and they reached the copper mountains, and when the sun rose, +the rays reflected were so strong that they were burnt.” + +To the early Greeks the Caucasus was the end of the world; beyond +it was naught but the Ocean Stream. Æschylus describes it in his +_Prometheus Bound_ as the loftiest of mountains and speaks of its +“star-neighboring summits.” Here he pictures the fire-stealing Titan as +chained to a rock with a vulture at his vitals. Herodotus repeats that +these peaks are higher than any other. No Roman general ever passed +them. And they stood for things dreaded and unknown--the sanguinary +Amazons, fugitive and barbaric tribes of Israel, and the sinister +nations of Gog and Magog. These are perhaps the mountains of Aaf of +Malay tradition, which run their ramparts of green chrysolite clear +about the earth and the encompassing sea. + +The high places of American Indian tradition lay in the west. The +plains savages and some of the forest tribes looked upon the Rocky +Mountains as the boundary of the known world. These peaks held up the +sky; the spirits of the storm haunted them, and stone giants, and +huge-bellied anthropophagi. Into this west ran the underground trail +to the land of the dead. In South Dakota was the Hill of Little Devils, +malignant pygmies with unduly large heads, of whose arrows the prairie +tribes stood in awe. + +There were seven sacred mountains in the land of the Navahos--four at +the cardinal points, and three at the center; and legend gave each its +own color, jewels, birds, and plants. One mountain was fastened to the +earth with a lightning flash, another with a stone knife, another with +a sunbeam, a fourth with a rainbow. Almost in the Greek spirit the +Indians of Guiana chanted the glories of “Roraima of the red rocks, +wrapped in clouds, ever-fertile source of streams.” White jaguars and +white eagles were upon it, a magic circle surrounded it, and demons +guarded its sanctuary. + +Whenever the Kirghiz pass by Mustaghata, loftiest of the Pamirs, they +fall upon their knees in prayer, for threescore and ten saints live +there. Sven Hedin, who made four attempts to ascend it, repeats its +legends. One story tells of a holy man who, climbing it, found on its +slopes a garden with plum trees where old men in white garments were +walking. He plucked and ate the fruit. One of the graybeards told him +it was well he had done so, for had he despised the fruit, as they had +done, it would have been his fate to stay, as they must, walking up and +down the garden till time was no more. Then a rider on a white horse +dashed into the garden, and seizing the holy man, galloped with him +down the mountain side, leaving him in the valley, dazed and with only +a confused memory of what he had seen. Another story tells of forty +giant horsemen who swept down the mountain and routed a Chinese army. + +On the summit of Mustaghata, to which neither Sven Hedin, nor the holy +man, nor the graybeards could climb, the Kirghiz say is the ancient +city of Janaidar, built in a golden age when everyone was happy and men +were at peace. Its inhabitants had no intercourse afterward with the +peoples below, and all the ills and woes of life are stranger to them. +Their groves bear fruit the year around, their flowers are unfading, +their women never grow old. Cold, darkness, and death are alike unknown +to them. The ramparts of Mustaghata are one of the seats of the realm +of eternal youth. + +Though its name is but the Latin word for “bald,” a grim Swiss legend +has it that Mount Pilatus is the burial place of the Roman viceroy who +surrendered Jesus to the mob. When he took his own life, neither the +Tiber nor the Rhone, into which in succession his body was flung, would +contain it. Evil and sordid spirits raised such storms that it was +carried farther. An uncanonical book of the thirteenth century recites +that it was dropped at last “into a well surrounded by mountains, +where, according to some accounts, certain diabolic machinations and +ebullitions are still seen.” This spot was identified with a marshy +pool near the summit of Pilatus. + +Throughout the Middle Ages it was believed that if anyone threw a stone +in this little lake, a tempest would follow. Once a year Pilate left +it and sat on a rock arrayed in scarlet. Whoever beheld him died in a +twelvemonth. The fearful burghers of Lucerne made an ordinance that no +one should approach the pool unless one of their number went with him +to see that he cast no stone. At length, in 1585, Johann Mueller, state +pastor of Lucerne, climbed the mountain with a party of friends, flung +stones into the water, and derisively challenged the evil spirit to +come forth. Nothing happened, and the legend lapsed. + + +_In the Desert_ + +The desert holds the green surprise of the oases, the promise of +mysteries beyond its veil, and, as men have thought, the memory of +wonderful things that were. Tradition broods over it, legends of +caravans that never came back, of armies swallowed up in its silences, +of vast cities buried in the sand. Where there is so little for the eye +to see, the most haunting things are those the ear has heard--music +that steals from the under edges of the dunes; voices, mocking or +beguiling, which call to caravan stragglers; the crash of ghostly drums +and the clash of arms heard afar. + +Any survey of the deserts of history reveals the stuff of wonder. There +each man’s hand is turned against his brother, and yet in every tent +all are safe; masked tribesmen roam the waste; stealthy slave columns +cross it by abandoned routes; hereditary clans of dancing girls supply +the streets of women in the environing lands; hermits wither in rocky +cells and militant fanatics range the plateaus; the bustard and the +wild camel show along the uncertain skyline, and remnants of forgotten +peoples rove below it. These are momentous details; legend has done +much with less to work upon. It needs only that thirsty wayfarers +shall have, as sometimes they do, the sudden vision of lakes of water +shimmering in the distance, with palms fringing them and temples +mirrored in them. Realities of an instant only, their passing leaves a +sense of wonder that expects, and invents. + +Much of the tradition of the waste places has been set down by Marco +the Venetian in his account of the passage of the desert of Lop. It +is asserted as a well-known fact, he recites, that here is the abode +of evil spirits “which amuse travelers to their destruction with most +extraordinary illusions.” During the daytime, if men fall behind the +caravan, or are overtaken by sleep so that the column has passed a hill +and is out of sight, they hear voices calling their names in tones to +which they are accustomed. Following these, they are lured from the +direct road and perish alone. At night men seem to hear the march of +a large cavalcade on one side or the other of the road. Again they +follow, in the belief that the camel bells are of their own party; the +daybreak finds them pursuing strange paths alone. Day or night, evil +spirits take the shape of their companions and seek to decoy them from +the proper route. Ghostly bodies of armed men seem to rush upon them, +and in the terror of flight they lose the way. + +“Marvelous indeed,” concludes Marco, “and almost passing belief are the +stories related of these spirits of the desert, which are said at times +to fill the air with the sounds of all kinds of musical instruments, +and also of drums and the clash of arms, obliging the travelers to +close their line of march and to proceed in more compact order.” + +This is such a recital as one would rather have expected concerning +the desert of ancient Egypt. There were the graves of the dead, and +report had it that their spirits, doomed to a miserable existence in an +inhospitable land, developed into predatory demons who meant no good to +the traveler. + +Stories still current in Asia, however, have the flavor of Marco’s +report of seven centuries ago. Doughty tells of the fantasy they have +at Teyma of a neighboring spectral oasis, often beheld by the Bedouins. +Slaves and horses issue from the enchanted appearance of palms; “but +all fadeth soon if a man approach them.” + +In the little desert of Reig Rawan at the foot of the heights of +Kohistan the wind-blown sands sweep through the rocky fissures with +a sound that is like the music of an æolian harp accompanied by the +distant beating of drums. These wild harmonies of the wind in open +spaces are the source of many strange tales. In Reig Rawan they are +fabled to be the martial strains of armies which have been swallowed up +in the sands, but march on to unknown destinies. + +The kingdom of Prester John has been mapped in Asia, in Africa, and in +the imagination of men. In the latter domain lies the Gravelly Sea, a +desert phenomenon which Maundeville describes: “It is all Gravel and +Sand, without any Drop of Water, and it ebbeth and floweth in great +waves as other Seas do, and it is never still nor at Peace, in any +Manner of Season. And no Man may pass that Sea by Ship, nor by any +Manner of Craft, and therefore may no Man know what Land is beyond that +Sea. And albeit that it have no Water, yet Men find therein and on the +Banks full good Fishes of other Manner of Nature and Shape, than Men +find in any other Sea, and they be of right good Taste and delicious +for Man’s Meat.” + +What lies beyond it? Mezzoramia, it may be, if it is accepted that +Prester John was an Abyssinian. This is an earthly paradise, situated +somewhere in Africa. Only one road leads to it, and the road is hard to +find and easy to lose again. No man ever found this secret highway save +Gaudentio di Lucca. He traveled it to its end, and for twenty years +lived behind the desert’s curtains in a country of every felicity. + +Fables of the waste tell of cities on which some sudden curse has +fallen and turned their people into stone. The sand has not covered +them with the decent pity of its mantle. They lie open to the air. The +sunshine falls on their silent market places and only the wind wanders +in their streets. The stony figures of the men and women that once +lived there stand where the curse had found them, disquieting things in +their semblance to statuary and their ancient caricature of humanity. + +The map on which Anthony Jenkinson recorded his travels in Tartary +makes note of a petrified city in the plains of Central Asia. +Garcilasso de la Vega, Inca historian, tells a like tale of +petrification based on a numerous group of stone images. The Museum +Metallicum of Aldrovandi pictures an assemblage of men, sheep, and +camels converted into stone. The Arabs have a story of a petrified camp +at Hamam Meskouteen in Numidia, where they assert that stony tents +are pitched and stony sheep dot the plain. Most circumstantial of all +such legends is that of Ras Sem, an extensive petrified village in the +Cyrenaica. It was surmised that this might be the region of the Gorgons +of classic story, whose frightful glance turned everything into stone. + +This village figures in old travel books, one of them dating as far +back as 1594, and Sir Kenelm Digby may have had access to these when +he printed in the _Mercurius Politicus_ his travel tale of a petrified +city in northern Africa. The Tripolitan ambassador in London asserted +that a thousand persons had seen the wonders of Ras Sem. It was a large +town of circular outline, with streets and shops and a central palace. + +The olive and the palm stood in the courtyards, but the trees had been +turned into a cinder-colored stone. There were men also in different +postures. Some were plying their trade and occupations in the bazaars +or holding fabrics and breadstuffs in their hands, as if to attract +the passer-by. There were women suckling their children or kneeling at +the kneading trough. In the palace a man was lying on a bed of state, +and guards armed with pike and spear stood at the door. The tenants of +the palace, and the men and women without--they, too, were of the same +bluish stone. The heads of some were wanting and others of the Silent +People had lost a leg or an arm. + +There were camels, oxen, asses, horses, and sheep in the market place, +there were large birds perched on the walls, and in the houses there +were dogs, cats, and even mice--and all these, like their masters and +hosts, were petrified. The pieces of money which had been brought +thence were “of the bigness of an English shilling, charged with a +horse’s head on one side and with some unknown characters on the other.” + +The quotation is from Shaw’s _Travels in Barbary_. The writer tells of +an inquiry into these stories by order of the French court made some +time before by M. Le Maire, consul at Tripoli. The Turkish janizaries +who gathered the tribute would not bring him the body of an adult +person from Ras Sem, alleging it would be cumbersome to carry. But for +a thousand dollars they did bring the body of a little child. They +declared they had run the risk of being strangled by their companions +for having delivered to an infidel the mortal remains of one of their +unfortunate Mohammedan brethren, as they deemed these people to be. +What they brought was the statue of a small Cupid taken from the ruins +of Leptus. + +The consul sent other persons, but none could find a trace of walls, +buildings, animals, or utensils where Ras Sem was said to be. They +did find one thing he could not explain. This was what seemed to be +tiny loaves of petrified bread; but Shaw declares these were fossil +echinites of the discoid kind. Little pools of “heavy and ponderous +water” were also come upon, which the wind had uncovered. This, +continues Shaw, “may be the petrifying fluid which has contributed to +the conversion of the palm trees into stone.” He thinks the country of +the Gorgons was farther west. + +From any one of several causes the fable of stony cities might arise. +While sand does not petrify, it does preserve; and sometimes, with +the winds for its artisans, it has wrought its own architecture and +sculpture in the living rock, repeating in the infinite chances of its +labors the outlines of minarets and templed columns, and other contours +in which fantasy may find the forms of bygone worshipers. There seem +to have been cases where peoples of a higher culture have built their +cities in the desert, and have passed; and a ruder race, coming later +upon the scene, mistook their statuary for the breathing handiwork of +nature stricken into stillness and stone. + +The typical desert legends are of splendid cities that the sands have +covered. There is truth under them, as there are ruins under the sand; +how much truth and how many ruins is a secret the desert yields but +grudgingly. In a series of striking passages the Jewish Scriptures have +sketched these dead capitals of the waste with their jackal tenants. +The Arab deems them the home of evil spirits and hastens by. The nomads +of Central Asia speak of opulent cities which sandstorms have blotted +out in a night and of treasure to be found in them if one digs for it +under a fortunate star. But there are unearthly chances to be faced, +and treasure-seekers will not invite them by venturing many days’ +march from the desert’s rim. One legend tells of the vanished city of +Ho-lao-lo-kia and the princes who came from many lands to excavate the +site. “But every time they try to dig the sand away a violent wind +arises, setting up whirlwinds of smoke and a thick mist, which sweeps +away the path and leads the workmen astray into the desert.” + +A passage from an antique Indian script, describing a city which +perished two thousand years ago, may stand for a silhouette of the +buried cities of Iran and of Turkestan, as legend has pictured them: +“The temples and the palaces of Anuradhapura are numberless, and their +golden cupolas and pavilions shimmer in the sun. In the streets are +crowds of soldiers armed with bows and arrows. Elephants, horses, +chariots, and countless multitudes pass in a continual turmoil. There +are jugglers, dancers, and musicians from many lands, whose timbals +gleam with golden ornaments.” + +It is more than conjecture that in these ancient lands not only cities +but states have disappeared under the sand. Gradually they have yielded +to their fate, as the desert has moved upon them through periodic +cycles of deficient rainfall. It may be that sometimes destruction came +with almost its fabled swiftness. MacGregor saw the sands in the very +act of billowing over the walls and rolling through the streets of +the Persian town of Yazd. Much may have happened, must have happened, +in forgotten times in the great space of fifteen hundred miles of +longitude and four hundred miles of latitude comprised in the Lop +basin; and many and circumstantial are the legends thereof. + +In the Gobi Desert Sven Hedin discovered one of these buried +cities--God-accursed he calls it--over which the wind had flung the +sands, only to sweep them away and leave the site bare to the sun +after uncounted centuries had passed. Its walls had once been washed +by a powerful stream along which millstones turned under the shade of +luxuriant groves. There were apricot trees in the gardens, and mulberry +trees where the silkworm fed and spun its cocoon. There were bazaars +loud with the tumult of craftsmen. This was the city of Takla-makan. + +What the explorer found was a dead forest, and ruins several miles +across. The timbers of hundreds of houses were still standing, +chalk-white poplar wood brittle as glass. Among them were fragments of +images in gypsum, showing the Buddha and praying women with faces of +the Aryan type, all executed with refinement of taste; and there were +even figures of boats rocking on the waves of vanished seas. + +“At what period,” asks its discoverer, “was this mysterious city +inhabited? When did its last crop of russet apricots ripen in the sun? +When did the sour green leaves of its poplars yellow for their last +fall? When was the trickling hum of its millwheels silenced forever? +When did its despairing people finally abandon their dwellings to the +ravenous maw of the desert king? Who were the people who lived here? +What was the tongue they spoke? Whence came the unknown inhabitants of +this Tadmor in the wilderness? How long did their city flourish, and +whither did they go when they saw that within its walls they could no +longer have a safe abiding place?” + +Passing the ruins of other cities, the nomad has asked himself these +and stranger questions. And out of the answers which his superstition +and fancy have suggested has been woven the myth of the desert. + + +_In the Forest_ + +Men can lose their way in the deep forest, easily become confused +there, and make it a proverb that friends are not to be met in a wood. +There races that have passed out of the primitive culture do not feel +at home. Through successive stages of their history the forest was held +to be sacred, then enchanted, then ill-omened and haunted. + +In the beginning men worshiped trees and groves. Pan, with his +attendant fauns and satyrs, presided in the forest. The hamadryads +lived in trees, and died with them; and they might contract marriages +with mortal youths. Sometimes the tree had its own soul, sometimes +it was possessed by a spirit which had entered it, sometimes it was +the symbol, sometimes the sanctuary, of a god. Deity dwelt in the +oak of Dodona. Diana in Autun was a midday demon of the forests +and crossroads. In the tabooed grove near Marseilles the trees were +stained with sacrificial blood, the flames burned without consuming the +boscage, and even the priests dared not venture there at midnight or +midday. The sacred bo tree is still worshiped in India. The mistletoe +is magical above all other objects. Savages hang offerings upon trees, +and in the same spirit the gypsy spits when he passes under them. + +The wood spirits of the primitive mythologies became at length the +stuff of folklore and travel tale--degenerate Pans and dryads that +wanderers saw sometimes in the shadows of trees. The Old Man of the +Woods, lame, hairy, green-eyed, ranges many countries and is most +clearly pictured in the tales of the Brazilian Indians and the eastern +Slavs. A mocker, misleader, and seducer, he cast a spell of terror +upon the forest. In the wild women of Russian story it had still other +perturbing tenants. These were good-looking creatures with shaggy +bodies, square heads, and long hair. Sometimes they came into the +villages to borrow kneading troughs, but it was dangerous to meet them +in their own domain, for they turned the solitary intruder round and +round until he lost his way. They were fond of music and might invite +lads and lasses to dance with them; whistling, however, they could not +endure. Polish tales picture them as tall, thin-faced, sensual females, +with disheveled hair and garments in constant disarray. When groups of +them encountered human beings they tickled the adults to death and took +the youths with them for their lovers; wherefore young people never +went singly to the woods. In Swedish tradition this was the terrible +Skogfrau, or Woman of the Thicket. + +These beings personified the mystery of forest shadows and what +Ruskin called the mediæval dread of thick foliage. “Forest in every +semicivilized land,” says Belloc, “is ever a word of fear.” There +the knights of old tale had adventure with giants and dwarfs and +spell-weaving witches, and there the younger sons of folklore followed +lonely paths with beasts and birds to counsel them. As the enchanted +woods of romance with their goblin glooms and talking trees faded from +the minds of men, in their place appeared the real terrors of thickets +where robbers, banished men, and fugitive peoples beset the ways with +danger. The conception of forests as sanctuaries of peace is modern. + +[Illustration: _The Enchanted Woods of Romance with Their Goblin Glooms +and Talking Trees Faded from the Minds of Men_] + + +_Under the Ground_ + +The cellar strain that is in human nature betrays itself in the +satisfaction men take in roaring songs and drinking bitter liquors +in rat-haunted sunken spaces. If groves were God’s first temples, +grottoes were men’s first dwellings. They came out of caves, and in +flight sometimes they return to them. For their extremity mother earth +has provided a rocky roof, a bedchamber, a storeroom, and a fireplace. +Wherefore they deem no habitation complete until they have dug a cave +under it. + +“Men,” said the Caribs, “should avoid places which are enlightened +neither by the sun nor by the moon.” Yet there are races whose legends +have dug a cellar under the entire earth; if its surface is the floor +of one world, it is the roof of another. Beneath it are the happy +hunting grounds of the Indian. According to Cherokee myth the living +can descend thereto if, after fasting, they follow back the streams to +their springs and have one of the underground folk to guide them, for +the springs are doorways to the world below. There one finds people, +animals, and plants about as they are above, but the seasons are +different, for are not the springs warmer than the air in winter, and +cooler in summer? Navaho legend makes the surface of the earth the top +story of a structure five stories high. Beginning as ants, beetles, +dragonflies, locusts, and bats, mankind climbed from one story to +another, or rather was expelled from each, usually for sexual sin. + +The gods’ land, or Elysium, of the Celts was commonly placed upon far +islands of the west, but sometimes in the hollow hills called Sid. Here +were fair meadows and stately palaces and musical trees and a beautiful +people whose berry diet kept them ever young; in the song of the magic +birds of this underworld there were seven years of joy and oblivion. +These people were the Tuatha Dé Danann. Giraldus Cambrensis describes +a like people, but of fairy stature, dwelling underground, swearing +no oaths, forswearing human ambition and inconstancy, and subsisting +on milk and saffron. Yet the Nagas of Hindoo story and the gnomes of +European folk-tale may be true historical races. + +With his keen sense of an earthly origin primitive man was deeply +interested in burrowing creatures--in the scarab with his little round +ball that symbolized the sun in Egypt; in the beetle of the South +American pampas, which symbolized the Creator; in the rats and mice +which various tribes worshiped; in the runway of the armadillo which +in Brazil was an entrance to the land of shades; in the tunnel of the +mole, and the cities of the marmot. This underground world of tiny +animals figures large in the folklore of early peoples, shaping their +genealogies, influencing their councils, intervening in their affairs +for good and ill, at times deciding their destinies. + +There was sorcery underground. Life came from it with each recurring +spring. The dead were laid there, and far beneath were the abodes of +their spirits. In the caverns were witches who had some command over +life and death. There also were the haunts of necromancers, and though +their dens were squalid, all the riches of the world were around them. +Legend became sumptuous and prodigal when it left the surface of the +earth and plunged into the darkness under it. + +The story of Aladdin’s descent into this realm carries nearly all the +elements of subterranean myth. His false uncle, the African magician, +conducted him to a valley between mountains near a large Chinese town. +When he muttered a spell the earth opened, and the lad went down a +stone staircase into a palace where were brazen cisterns brimming with +gold and silver. Beyond in a terraced garden was a magic lamp. Securing +the latter and starting back, the youth paused to look at the fruits +that hung from trees in the garden. These were of various hues, and +though he did not know it, they were precious stones. Aladdin would +have wished they were figs or grapes or pomegranates; but he filled his +purse with them and crammed them in his bosom. + +Because the youth was slow in passing up the lamp, the magician who +was waiting without lowered the stone over the staircase, and Aladdin +was left in darkness. But a genie of frightful aspect appeared when he +chanced to rub a ring his false uncle had given him. The apparition was +a slave of the ring, and with it began the cycle of deeds and gifts +that won the Chinese gamin a princess and a throne. + +One element is missing in this descent, type otherwise of a thousand +others. That is women. There were beautiful enchantresses as well as +foul witches under the ground. They figure in a characteristic story of +India told by Hiouen Thsiang. A good-natured fellow, versed in magic +formulas, entered a cavern with thirteen companions. They came to a +walled city with towers and lookouts of gold, silver, and lapis-lazuli. +Young, laughing maidens greeted them at the outer gates, and at the +inner gates were two slave girls each holding a golden vessel full +of flowers and scents. Before the men went farther, these told them +they must bathe in the tank that stood there, anoint themselves with +perfumes, and crown themselves with flowers. But they must wait awhile +before they bathed; only the master of magic could immerse at once. +Of course the thirteen ignored the warning, and when they entered the +tank they became confused. They were found afterward, says the Chinese +author, “sitting in the middle of a rice-field distant from this +due north, over a level country, about thirty or forty li,” with no +recollection of how they got there. + +The sorceress and enchantress motives are developed into drama in +the great myth of Tannhäuser. This minnesinger of the Middle Ages +was riding through the dusk toward Wartburg, where minstrels were to +compete for a prize, when he saw a glimmering figure on the slopes of +the mountain called the Hörselberg. White arms were stretched to him +in the gesture that is always more eloquent than words, and, leaving +his charger, he followed the woman. Flowers bloomed in her footsteps, +nymphs attended her, and a rosy light lay on the path as she led the +knight to a cavern’s mouth and thence to her palace in the heart of the +mountain. There for seven years he was the willing slave of the pagan +Goddess of Love, and partner in the revels of her court. + +Satiety and an awakened conscience came together. The minstrel longed +for a breath of pure mountain air, for the tinkle of sheep bells, +for the sky of night and its stars. When Venus would not release her +thrall, he spoke the Virgin’s name--and the mountain-side opened. He +found himself again aboveground and heard the chime of church bells. + +To one priest after another Tannhäuser made confession of his great +sin, but the shocked clerics dared not give him absolution, and at +length he stood before the Pope. + +“Sooner shall this staff in my hand grow green and blossom,” said +the stern vicar of Heaven, “than that God should pardon thee.” With +darkness in his soul, Tannhäuser turned away. Three days afterward +the papal staff put forth buds and blossoms, and messengers were sent +in haste from Rome. They reached the Hörselberg only to learn that a +haggard wayfarer had just entered the mountain. The minstrel was never +seen again. + +The golden age will issue from underground, according to a noble legend +of the mediæval time which concerns Frederick Barbarossa, head of the +Holy Roman Empire. He was not drowned in Cilicia while on crusade, as +report had it. He is sleeping in a cavernous chamber in the Kyffhäuser +Berg which rises from the emerald meadows of Thuringia. His long red +beard has grown quite through the stone table where he sits in slumber. +The good knights surround him, and once in a hundred years he rouses +himself and asks if the ravens still fly around the mountain. When the +birds of omen no longer call about the steeps he shall awake and sally +forth with his horsemen, and the peace of all men shall follow. + +Thus at times has legend walked the earth, as men might cross the flat +housetops of an Eastern city, with the thought that what counted most +was just beneath its immense roof. + + +_Darkness_ + +The dark has other creatures besides the bat and owl, other spectacles +than those that pass in dreams. Sometimes in Celtic legend a mist +descended on a man, and until it lifted the towers and orchards of +elysium were all about him. There is a class of Eastern legends which +tell of men around whom a sudden shadow fell, so that they were seen no +more, or next were seen in another place. Maundeville has a tale of a +cloud which settled down upon a land and did not lift again. This was +a province called Hanyson in the kingdom of Abchaz which is next to +the kingdom of Georgia. One must travel three days to ride around the +province, and one dare not ride through it, for thick twilight covers +it. Out of the gloom the people of neighboring lands hear voices of +folk, and horses neighing, and cocks crowing. + +The story is that a cursed emperor of Persia that was hight Saures +overtook a Christian host in the plain that was hight Megon and would +have destroyed it. “But anon a thick Cloud came and covered the Emperor +and all his Host. And so they endure in that Manner that they must not +go out on any Side; and so shall they evermore abide in Darkness till +the Day of Doom, by the Miracle of God. And then the Christian Men went +where liked them best. Also ye shall understand that out of that Land +of Darkness goeth out a great River that sheweth well that there be +Folk dwelling there by many Tokens; but no Man dare enter into it.” + +Some report of the long Arctic night reached the Asiatic countries of +lower latitudes, and Marco Polo when he traversed them. He gives a +hearsay account of what he calls the Region of Darkness. It is distant +fourteen journeys by dog-sled across the tundras from the country of +the Tartars. The atmosphere in this twilight land is “as we find it +just about the dawn of day, when we may be said to see and not to see.” +Its people are tall and well made, but pale, stupid, and brutish, and +without prince or other governance. They have great stores of furs of +ermines, martins, and foxes. Under cover of the prevailing darkness the +Tartars raid them, plundering them of their furs and driving off their +cattle. That they may not become lost forever in the gloom, the raiders +ride mares that have young foals, and these are left on the frontiers. +When the Tartars would return, they lay the bridles on the necks of the +dams, and maternal instinct finds the homeward track. + +Fable and fact ride abreast through this narrative, as horsemen through +the chill obscurity of dawn, and a great thing has come of it. Marco’s +account of the peltry of the north had more to do than aught else, +tradition says, with the founding of the Hudson Bay Company and the +opening of the northern half of the American continent. + + +_Distance_ + +The haze on all these horizon lands is the haze of distance. There are +two phrases which come to the ear with the sound of unlocking doors. +One is Once upon a Time, which children hear; it is distance measured +in years. The other is Beyond the Mountains, which plainsmen use; it +is distance measured in miles and difficulties. For either distance, +fetters fall. + +Three tales may declare this as well as a thousand, and a thousand +might be told. Russian peasants speak of a land which they call +Bielovodye, and which lies, as they think, somewhere on the borders of +Mongolia in the distant east. It is a country of peace and plenty, and +nobody lives there. + +Rubruquis gives just a glimpse, as of something seen afar through a +narrow window. “A Chinese priest,” he says, “told me also for truth +(which neverthelesse, I doe not believe) that there is a province +beyond Cataia, into the which, at whatsoever age a man enters, he +continueth in the same age wherein he entred.” + +The widest horizons of time and space are reached in a single artless +sentence in a gypsy folk tale: “They went then further than I can +remember, till they reached the knoll of the country at the back of the +wind and the face of the sun, that was in the realm of Big Women.” The +men who made this journey skirted all the coasts of illusion. + + + + +Chapter XVI. Lands of Legend + + +There are countries whose boundaries have not been fixed by armies or +treaties, nor their ways marked out by trade. The dreams of men have +made them. Their substance is reality, yet their effect is vision. By a +sort of conspiracy of wish, to which men of imaginative mind have been +parties and all others have yielded assent, these countries have been +supposed to be different from what any was or could be. It has been +easy enough to create the illusion, for one’s view of another land is +always more or less a symbolic drawing. + + +_Ophir_ + +The geographical table in the tenth chapter of Genesis tells a straight +tale which men debated for something more than two thousand years and +only in the present century have accepted at its face value. In one +phrase the Scriptures link Ophir and Havilah, and then add that “their +dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar, a mount of the +East.” Where was Ophir? Perhaps the learned men of Alexandria were the +first to ask the question. What was Ophir? This question nobody thought +of putting, and it was vital. + +Ophir was a magic word which let no man rest once he had heard it. The +spell of gold was in it. Even as they wrote, it seemed to intoxicate +the Jewish prophets, poets, and chroniclers. Isaiah speaks of the +“golden wedge of Ophir.” It is said of wisdom in the Book of Job that +it cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx or +the sapphire. “Then shalt thou lay up gold as dust, and the gold of +Ophir as the stones of the brooks,” says another passage Oriental in +its opulence of suggestion. + +From Ophir came the fleet of Solomon and Hiram of Tyre, fetching gold, +four hundred and twenty talents, and sandalwood. The arrival of the +treasure fleet is associated in the narrative, for some reason one may +only guess, with the coming to Jerusalem of the Queen of Sheba. The two +incidents constitute the most gorgeous episode in Jewish history. + +Sheba’s queen comes to visit Solomon with a very great train, with +camels that bear spices, and very much gold and precious stones. She +sees the meat of his table, the sitting of his servants, and the +attendance of his ministers. She proves him with hard questions, and +pride dies in her. The report she has heard in her own land of his +wealth and wisdom was a true report, she declares, but the half had not +been told. Then she goes back, and her camels take across the deserts +gifts richer than they had brought. Gold of Ophir travels north, and +south again, and legend follows it. + +Two other place-names appear on this piece of Hebrew brocade. One is +Ezion-geber, Solomon’s port on the Red Sea in the land of Edom. The +other is Tharshish, where the king had ships. Once in three years +came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold and silver, ivory and apes +and peacocks. There was nothing in these imports that one might eat +or drink or use for shelter or raiment. The commodities were typical +of ancient commerce in their magnificence, their vain show, and their +uselessness--and the cargo has freighted the imagination of men ever +since. There was contraband in the ships of Tharshish. Among the +elephants’ teeth and peacocks was stowed away the spirit of the East. + +Where was Tharshish? Where was Ophir? Where was Havilah, mentioned +rarely, but in a significant context? + +It was long thought that Tharshish was the Carthaginian port of +Tartessus beyond the Pillars, where now is the Spanish port of Cadiz. +But Spain had few apes, little gold, and no ivory. The text of Genesis +seemed to point to the Arabian coast as the seat of Ophir. But Araby +had no elephants and its gold came from elsewhere. Ophir was sought +also in the African spiceland of Punt, in the Midian country of +northern Arabia, and at the mouth of the Indus in Hindostan. Once in +every three years came the fleet, so said the text; and into this was +read the meaning, not of periodic sailings, but of voyages that covered +three years. Ophir, therefore, must lie in the far East, and men sought +it in the Malay Peninsula, in that Golden Chersonese where were ivory +and apes and peacocks, as well as precious metals. + +For one splendid century it was Portugese instinct to advance steadily, +to see clearly, and to do great things easily--the legacy, perhaps, +of that incomparable spirit, Prince Henry the Navigator. Within the +century after his death, his countrymen had gone around Africa, opened +a sea route to the Indies, and made the coveted Spice Islands their +own. Also, they had discovered Ophir, or rather almost discovered it. +What they found was the missing port of Tharshish, and Havilah, the +land which scriptural writers linked with Ophir, and dismissed. + +A Portugese squadron, outbound for the Indies in 1505, put in at the +little African port of Sofala on the Mozambique Channel, looking east +toward Madagascar. Learning that the Arabs, or Moors, as they called +them, were trafficking here for gold brought down to the coast from the +interior, its captains said that this must be Ophir. It has taken four +centuries to show how near this casual judgment was to the truth. The +gold of Ophir reached the Indian Ocean through the African port once +named Tharshish and now called Sofala, and came from the Mashona and +Matabele region between the lower Zambesi and the Limpopo rivers in +what is now Rhodesia. It was Hottentot gold, not gold of Araby. + +What was Ophir? When at length this question was asked, the Scripture +texts, which pointed eastward toward Arabian regions where gold was +not, slowly yielded their paradox. Ophir was not a country at all. +It was a port, perhaps the greatest of the ancient world. Here the +products of India, of Africa, and of the Eastern Mediterranean were +interchanged. The gold of ancient Rhodesia (Havilah) became gold of +Ophir, just as figs of the Levant become Smyrna figs and the white +grapes of Spain become Malaga grapes, when freighted on ships outbound +from those ports. + +In the days of its decline Ophir was known to Ptolemy, the Alexandrian +geographer, as the Sapphar Metropolis; to Arrian, the Greek geographer, +as Portus Nobilis, and to the Romans as Moscha. It lay where Genesis +places it: “and their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto +Sephar a mount of the east.” There, under the shadow of Mount Sephar, +nearly opposite the island of Socotra and about midway along the +southern coast of Arabia, its ruins lie around a silted inlet of the +sea. Mesha, or Moscha, signifies a wharf or landing place, and was +at the inlet’s mouth. Ophir stood at the head of the inlet. The name +signifies simply The City, The Metropolis, as the Roman used the single +word _urbs_ to designate his capital. + +This was the great mart of Himyaritic civilization. The Himyarites were +the settled folk of southern Arabia--the Minæans and their successors, +the Sabæans. It may be that their civilization was the earliest in the +world, still older than the Egyptian and Chaldean. There is reason to +believe that the carrying trade of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean +was in their hands for a greater part of the period during which it +has been assumed that the Phœnicians controlled it. The merchants of +Tyre and Sidon were brief interlopers in a sea-borne commerce which +for thousands of years had been the monopoly of the Sabæan Arabs. +That the latter worked the mines of ancient Rhodesia in the land they +called Havilah is the simple and unavoidable inference from facts which +nevertheless required about a generation of archæological research to +establish, and which the geographer, A. H. Keane, has summarized in +his striking monograph. The Himyaritic inscriptions in southern Arabia +and the inscriptions on the extensive ruins of ancient gold workings +between the Zambesi and the Limpopo were made by the same people. + +The going of Solomon’s ships and the ships of his Tyrian ally to Ophir +and on to Tharshish, and the coming of Sabæa’s queen to Jerusalem, were +what they are represented to be, brilliant and exotic incidents in the +troubled march of Jewish history. This traffic covered only about a +century, and millenniums of Arab commerce between Ophir and Tharshish +envelop it. After that century Israel and Phœnicia disappear from the +Indian Ocean, and the South Arab takes up the gold trade anew. At this +task the Portuguese found him. + +The Jew was the prosperous visitor of an hour at the port of the +Sabæans. Perhaps their queen made a return call to learn why he had +come and whence the gold in his wallet. The answer was not in Solomon +himself; truly, indeed, the half was never told her. It was David whose +conquest of Edom had given Israel temporary control of important trade +routes. The wealth of Solomon was in part a transportation charge, and +in part a police tax upon “the traffick of the spice merchants and all +the kings of Arabia.” They paid it rather than have their caravans +plundered on the roads the Jew controlled. The gold that Israel and +Phœnicia brought from Tharshish direct, like the gold which Spain +brought from Peru, was not obtained in trade exchanges. It was wrung +from slave labor, Hottentots and Bushmen--whose present physiognomy and +complexion show an Asiatic strain--toiling for taskmasters, as since +they have toiled, under the sjambok. + +Ezion-geber, the Jewish port, lay at the head of the Red Sea. Tharshish +lay nearly six thousand miles to the south as coasting vessels made +it, and voyages were probably by way of some port in the west of +Madagascar, where Semitic influences have been discovered. Midway +between Tharshish and Ezion-geber, and midway between the east and west +of antiquity, lay Ophir. The age-long vision of a golden land lifts +from its name. In its stead loom the shadowy outlines of a mighty port, +with strange ships at anchor, and clinking bags and odorous bales upon +the wharves, and hawk-faced merchants at their traffic, where now are +ruins and the oblivious sea. + + +_Lotus-land_ + +The country of the lotus-eaters was a promontory jutting out into the +Mediterranean Sea from the land of the Gindanes. Whoso tastes the fruit +of the lotus, Homer said, forgets his native shore, his family, and his +friends. In an age that avows a world-weariness to which the wandering +Greeks were strangers, this brief glimpse of a land released from +remembrance has been an arresting thing. + +Later poets expanded the Odyssey legend, wrote new significances into +it, and sometimes provided it with a different ending, as in the fine +poem of Tennyson. The Victorian gives no hint that the companions of +Ulysses fled from Lotus-land. It seemed to them better to stay there. +They had traveled unto fatigue, and their island homes were still +far beyond the wave. Dear as were the last embraces of their wives, +it was likely that themselves were now all but forgotten, that their +sons had inherited them, and that their deeds before Troy were sung +by minstrels as things of long ago. Why return like ghosts to trouble +joy? So the mariners burst into choric song declaring the delights of +long rest and dreamful ease and mild-minded melancholy upon a slumbrous +shore. Then the rhythm changes to carry their resolve: + + We have had enough of action, and of motion we, + Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething + free, + Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea. + Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, + In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined + On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. + +In the Homeric story the lotus strand was a halting place for Ulysses +and his men on the way from the Ciconian coast to their adventure with +the giant Polyphemus. Their momentary pause in the enchanted Libyan +land is the slightest episode in the Odyssey. After nine days of stormy +faring they anchor by a fragrant beach and go ashore for water and a +feast. Three of their number wander farther and hospitable natives bid +them eat the fruit of their trees. Having eaten, a spell of oblivion +falls on them and they would travel no more; but their comrades bind +them and carry them aboard the ships, and hastily the company sails +away. + +Herodotus locates the land of the lotus-eaters in the Syrtic district +of the North African coast, whence a caravan route leads to Egypt. +This people, he says, live entirely on the fruit of the lotus tree. +The fruit is about the size of the lentisk berry, and in sweetness +resembles the date. The lotophagi even succeed in obtaining from it a +sort of wine. Rawlinson, who identifies the lotus with the rhamnus, +asserts, however, that it looks and tastes “rather like a bad crab +apple.” + +There has been controversy as to what the ancients meant by the lotus. +Some writers said it was a kind of clover, the poa of Strabo. The lotus +of Egypt and India is a water lily whose roots and seeds are eaten by +the poor. Pliny says that the lotus of Homer was a tree “the size of a +pear tree, though Cornelius Nepos calls it low.” The latter describes +its fruit as yellow, the size of a bean, and sweet and pleasant to +the taste. It was pounded into a paste and stored for food, and a wine +like mead was made from it. In the district where Ulysses anchored, +and which has been identified with the modern Jerba, the tree still +flourishes; Arabs eat its fruit and make a wine of it. Its commercial +name is jujube, and in the Mediterranean countries it is prized as a +winter dessert fruit. + +If there were poppy dreams in the orchards of Africa, the secret of +them passed with the wine the ancients brewed there. The longing for +forgetfulness remains. Those who have come by it honestly through toil +have found, as Ulysses did, that lotus-land is a port of call upon +struggling seas. + + +_The Incense Country_ + +The world commerce of ancient times was in four commodities--gold, +amber, precious stones, and incense. With transportation by pack, +caravan, and small coasting craft, nothing of greater bulk or less +intrinsic worth could be carried far at a profit. The first three of +these commodities were come upon more or less by accident. Incense was +the root, bark, gum, seeds, dried leaves, or flowers of various trees, +shrubs, and plants, and was gathered at stated seasons of the year. +The business had the element of certainty, so far as anything could be +certain in ages when land and water travel were pursuits of hazard, +when there was little law upon the desert and none upon the sea. The +incense trade was therefore the great trade of antiquity. By it the +nations of the east, west and south first came to know one another. + +How important was this traffic Pliny bears witness in his _Natural +History_. Page after page, chapter after chapter, book after book are +devoted to the incense, perfumes, and unguents of the East. It is an +impatient, although a faithful, testimony. The Latin writer groans over +the enormous prices the precious gums command, recites how they are +sophisticated in the Alexandrian warehouses with resin, turpentine, +and Cyprian wax, lists the nine substances with which Indian nard +is imitated, and rails at the superstition which uses scents for +sacrifice, the sinful luxury which drenches the body with them, and +even mingles them in the wines of the table. Consider, he says, the +vast number of funerals celebrated every year throughout the world, +the heaps of incense piled up in honor of the dead, the quantities +offered to the gods. Is anybody the better off? It seems to Pliny +that the immortal ones were kinder to men when a salted cake was the +best they could hope to find on their altars. At the very lowest the +Indians, Seres, and Arabians took from the empire one hundred million +sesterces every year--“so dearly do we pay for our luxury and our +women.” + +Not content with the prodigality of nature, Pliny continues, luxury has +seen fit to combine all pleasant odors into a single whole, and hence +have come unguents. The Persians quite soak themselves in these blended +perfumes, to conceal from themselves that they live in dirt. There are +Romans who go still further, for they plaster themselves with unguents. +Some of them, and Nero of the number, even sprinkle therewith the soles +of their feet. On festival days the very eagles on battle standards, +thick with the dust of the camps, are anointed. Pearls and jewels have +a value that lasts, but scents die as soon as they are born. To what +good is this all, Pliny asks again. + +Few others put this question. For the living, for the dead, and for +the very gods, there must be a savor of satisfaction. Gums were burned +to purify the air of dwellings, to mask the odors of burnt sacrifice, +to disguise the intimations of mortality when the bodies of the dead +smoked on funeral pyres. Their use to these ends was the primitive +sanitary science of the East. In the rites of embalming, their fumes +reanimated mummy and mortuary statue and nourished the souls of the +departed on the journey to the spirit-land. The gods above were fed by +the smoke of sacrifice and their favor was flattered for the projects +of men. So it befell in Egypt, and the pages of Herodotus are in +evidence that the whole country had become a vast drug shop. + +Musk came from the highlands of China, and from India, gum benzoin +from Java, sandalwood from the Golden Chersonese, cloves from Eastern +islands unknown. Balm of Gilead, the most precious of odoriferous +substances, came from Judea, and according to Pliny battles had been +fought over it between Jews and Romans. There were other spicy roots, +leaves, and petals that grew in desert gardens or mountain parks of +the East; the geography of scents was wide and vague and little known. +But the true incense land of the ancients had definite bounds. It +lay on both sides of the promontory known variously as the Aromatic +Cape and as the Cape of Spices and now as Cape Guardafui, where the +continent of Africa juts farthest into the Indian Ocean. This land had +two provinces--Punt, which is the modern Somaliland, and Sabæa, which +is southern Arabia. + +Cinnamon and cassia were taken from Punt, and some frankincense, the +“true incense,” as the name signifies and as the Christian altars +of Europe afterward came to know it. From Sabæa were taken large +quantities of frankincense, as well as myrrh and ladanum. The latter +country had credit also in the ancient world for a long list of balms +that came from elsewhere. The secret, never more than half known, was +that Sabæa imported odorous things as well as grew them. It brought +them in from more eastern countries and sent them forth on its ships, +or on the camels that traveled the incense route northward to Petra, +whence they were dispensed to the Mediterranean peoples. The incense +land was the center of world commerce, which was above all a traffic +in sweet savors, and the countries commanding the southern approach to +the Red Sea had the same significant relation to it that now belongs to +Suez, the northern approach to that sea. + +The air of incense-land was as heavy with traditions as it was reported +to be with odors. The desert hemmed in both Punt and Sabæa, and its +mysteries stole in with the sands. The rites of a dim religion were +wrapped around the harvest of the precious gums. Merchant subtleties +spread afar the stories of more than mortal perils to be met by those +who entered the places of fragrance. The effect of these fables was to +enhance prices and confirm the Arab monopoly. To the ancient world the +land of incense was an enchanting, and yet a forbidding and a forbidden +land. + +Its enchantments were felt even at a distance. The whole country of +Arabia, says Herodotus, is scented with spices, and exhales an odor +marvelously sweet. Diodorus declares that even before the mariner +sights this coast its delights come out to meet him upon the sea. The +breezes of spring waft to him the fragrant breath of trees and shrubs, +and keener satisfactions than he may have elsewhere, for these are +no old and stored aromatics, but fresh from new-blown flowers. Pliny +is skeptical, yet repeats the story with further detail. Under the +rays of the noonday sun, he says, the entire peninsula gives forth an +indescribable perfume, the blend of many beguiling odors. Thus it was, +while still far out, the fleet of Alexander knew it was nearing Araby +the Happy. + +The languors of incense floated through the towns and villages of Sabæa +and enveloped its lofty capital. Timbers and floors of the houses +were of sweet-scented woods, and fagots of frankincense and sticks of +myrrh, burning in the fireplaces, gave them a perpetual fragrance of +sacrifice. To counteract these bland but debilitating suavities the +Arabians of the south brought the gum of storax down from Syria. This +they burned in goat skins and found its pungent smell a reviving thing. + +Saba, the country’s capital, was a dream-city of spices and gold. From +a steep which commanded the surrounding lands its temples and palaces +reared their roofs amid delightful groves. The trade of countless +centuries had drawn vast riches to the incense metropolis. The houses +of the merchants were resplendent with precious metals and precious +stones. Reclining upon couches inlaid with silver, they drank from +gem-studded goblets of gold. The camels padding northward, and the +ships faring north, east, and south, brought back the wherewithal to +sustain a life of sensual magnificence. Chief among the voluptuaries +was the Sabæan king. From his seat of judgment in a gorgeous palace he +determined all disputes with the authority of an absolute sovereign. +Yet his own freedom of movement was restrained by the priestly class. +He was a prisoner of the palace, and, should he venture outside its +scented courts and shaded gardens, the rabble assailed him with stones +and drove him back to them. So an oracle had prescribed. + +Over the gathering of incense, and its coming and going in the land +of the Sabæans, priestly tradition had flung a mantle rich in fable +and somber with fear. Eight days’ journey to the northeast from the +capital, in a district a hundred miles long by fifty miles wide, stood +the sacred groves in a soil of milky white a little inclining to red. +Thither at the time of the rising of the Dog Star, when the heat was +most intense, went the Arabians to make incisions in the trees. The +unctuous foam which gathered on the bark was permitted to remain and +harden; nor was it removed until autumn. The gum which assumed the +form of globular drops was called male incense. More esteemed were the +pieces where two drops had adhered into the semblance of breasts, which +were called female incense. + +By inherited right the harvest was the privilege of three thousand +families. Their persons were deemed to be holy. While pruning the +trees and gathering the gum they must receive no pollution either by +intercourse with women or by coming in contact with the dead. They +carried their produce to the capital upon camels by an appointed road +and were admitted at a single gate. It was death to deviate from this +road. + +Various deductions were made from the camel loads to pay for carriage, +the service of the temples, the expenses of the state, and the +transportation taxes laid by other countries through which the overland +caravans were to pass. The entertainment of strangers at the capital +was provided for out of a tithe taken from frankincense. In its journey +of more than a thousand miles northward from Saba to Petra in the land +of the Nabatheans, successive peoples, beginning with the Minæans, +received the freight and passed it on. Mecca and Medina, afterward +holy places of Islam, were stations on the incense route. It was a +drowsy traffic that went up and down this ancient road. The suns of +the desert, falling upon the bales, drew from them that which made the +carriers nod upon their beasts in a dream of delight. They revived +themselves, legend continues, by inhaling the pungent fumes of bitumen +and goat’s-beard. + +There were other than ritual terrors in gathering frankincense and the +related substances. Herodotus heard the story that the groves were +infested by small winged serpents of the same sort that invade Egypt. +These clung to every branch, but if one burned gum storax under the +tree they were dislodged; a like report had it that in Malabar great +serpents coiled themselves about the sandalwood trees. + +The cinnamon and cassia which the Sabæans imported from Punt, on the +African side of the Gulf of Aden, or themselves gathered there, were +harvested with difficulty and peril, and only after the consent of the +god had been given. The entrails of forty-four oxen, goats, and rams +were offered up, nothing could be done before sunrise or after sunset, +and when the harvest was made a priest set aside the god’s portion with +the point of a spear. A third portion was devoted to the sun, and this +burst at once into flame. + +There were great birds which collected sticks of cinnamon for their +nests, which were fastened with mud to a sheer face of rock that foot +of man could not climb. Sometimes these nests were broken down by means +of leaden arrows. Sometimes the merchants, like the diamond-seekers in +the Sindbad tale, placed large pieces of meat on the ground, and their +weight caused the nests to fall when the mother birds bore the meat +aloft to their young. The Arabians, returning, collected the cinnamon. + +Cassia grew on the marshy shores of a lake where were a number of +winged animals much resembling bats, which screeched horribly and were +very valiant. The Arabians covered their bodies and faces with the +hides of oxen, leaving only holes for their eyes. While they gathered +the bark they were kept busy shielding their eyes from assault from the +air. + +There was still a long journey for these aromatic stuffs before +they reached the marts of Arabia, at least when the people of Punt +themselves made it. They put forth over vast tracts of sea upon rafts +which were neither steered by rudder nor impelled by oar or sail. At +the time of the winter equinox they went to sea on a wind from the +southeast, and when they doubled the promontory of Arabia the northeast +wind met them and took them from gulf to gulf. They skirted shores +where forests, set afire by the heat of the sun, were blazing. It might +be five years before their rafts, laden with copper, cloths, bracelets, +and necklaces, were hauled up again on the beaches of Somaliland. + +There may have been a memory of musk in stories told about cassia +and about ladanum. The ends of cassia branches of the length of two +fingers were cut off and sewn in fresh skins of cattle. When the skins +putrified, maggots ate away the woody parts but left the bark, which +was too bitter to invite their attack. As to the ladanum of northern +Arabia, Herodotus remarks that, although found in a most inodorous +place, it is the sweetest-scented of all substances. Goats gathered +it. These animals cropped the sprouting shoots of mastic branches when +they were swollen with a juice of remarkable sweetness. Drops thereof +were wiped up by their unlucky beards, and became clotted with dust and +dry from the sun. Men with shears collected it, and that was why the +Romans found goats’ hairs therein. + +Out of such stories were framed the geography, polity, and ritual of +the land of incense. What came of them was a monopoly, a mystery, a +spell that was slow to pass. In the smoke of altars one may almost +glimpse the temples of this dim domain, and in the tinkle of the +censing bell hear the bells of camels along an ancient path. + + +_Gog and Magog of the North_ + +The pastures of High Asia were the range of Gog and Magog. The Caucasus +was their prison home. Sometimes these formidable races were pictured +as roving the steppes and deserts of the north, sometimes as swinging +back and forth against the walls of mountain valleys, where the policy +of Alexander or divine compassion for the rest of mankind had confined +them. Always they were seeking a way out, and sometime they would find +it, and the world would shudder down in ruin under their tread. + +These races were the nightmare vision of two thousand years. There are +words the very sound of which evokes the myths of fear. Such are Gog +and Magog, with their harsh internal echo and inhuman suggestion. They +were associated with the terrors of Scythia, known and unknown--the +incursions of dwarfish, shrill-voiced nomads upon the civilizations of +the south, the sense of vast desolate spaces where prodigious things +had their beginning. These misgivings, made definite by biblical +imagery and by the literal statements of the Koran, grew into legends +which were enriched by contributions from classic fable and shared by +the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem worlds. + +Magog was a son of Japheth, says Genesis. In the book of _Ezekiel_ it +is declared that the Lord will bring Gog with his horses and horsemen +out of the north, and Persia, Ethiopia and Libya with them. They shall +ascend and come like a storm and like a cloud shall cover the land. +They shall think an evil thought, to take a spoil and to take a prey. +But the fury of the Lord shall come up in His face and there shall be +a great shaking in the land of Israel. Gog shall fall upon the open +field, and a fire will be sent upon Magog and among them that dwell +carelessly in the isles. The wreckage of their shields and staves shall +burn for seven years, and Gog shall have a place of graves in Israel, +the valley of the passengers on the east of the sea. + +The burden of prophecy is taken up anew in _Revelation_. When the +thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed from his prison and +shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of +the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle. They shall +compass the camp of the saints about, and fire will come down out of +heaven to devour them. + +The Koran buttressed biblical prophecy with a historical narrative. +It concerns the journeys of Doul-Karnain, the Lord of the Two Horns, +a personage variously identified with Alexander, Julius Cæsar and +Augustus, but by the east believed to be Alexander. When he went forth +with his army he marched to the going down of the sun and found it set +in a miry fount. He marched to the farthest east and found a people +oppressed by the heat. Then he marched north and in a valley between +two mountains he found a people who told him that Gog and Magog laid +waste their land. “Build us, O Doul-Karnain,” they begged, “a rampart +between us and them.” He bade them bring him blocks of iron, and when +he had filled the space between the mountains, he caused them to blow +upon the wall with bellows, and heated it fiery hot, and poured molten +brass upon it. Gog and Magog could not scale it, nor were they able to +dig through it. + +Ezekiel wrote when the memory of an invasion of Scythian horsemen +was still fresh in Asia the Less, and he drew his imagery from it; +to him, and to John after him, Gog and Magog were symbols of earthly +power opposed to Jehovah. But the Semitic world, Jew and Arab alike, +scanned the vigorous picture of a nation from the steppes riding over +the world, and saw in it inspired prophecy of a Mongol devastation +of civilization. So Josephus thought: Gog and Magog were Scythian +peoples. Thrice and four times, on the immense canvases of Asia and +eastern Europe, the fading colors of the Ezekiel vision took on the +freshness of actuality--and the restoring brush was wielded in turn by +Genghis Khan, Othman, Tamerlane and Akbar. Thus history has been kind +to men of literal minds; but it has seen a misshapen fable grow up +in its shadow. The north had been the home of the monstrous races of +classic myth, and all their bestial and godless traits were merged in +the Tartar tradition. + +[Illustration: “BUILD US, O DOUL-KARNAIN,” THEY BEGGED, “A RAMPART +BETWEEN US AND THEM”] + +Bald, deformed anthropophagi mustered behind the barrier of the +Scythian mountains. Gog was the Turkish race, Magog was the Mongol. +The campaigns of Alexander had left legends that persist to this day +in Central Asia, and these were gathered up in the accumulating myth. +Alexander had also left earthworks and monuments of his marches in +those regions, and these became memorials of the terrible peoples of +Ezekiel. At first the two races were placed a little to the north of +Palestine, but tradition moved them farther to the north and east to +bring them within the Alexander cycle. As Eden was at the end of the +east, so Gog and Magog were in the farther north, “in Scythia beyond +the Caucasus and near the Caspian Sea,” says St. Jerome, writing in an +age when that sea was thought to be a gulf of the Arctic Ocean. + +Confused reports about the Chinese wall grew into a fable of Iskander’s +wall, which at one time was deemed to be in the Far East, and again +was identified with the fortifications which the Sassanid kings had +built in the passes of the Caucasus, fragments of which are still to +be seen at Derbent. It seemed most fitting that the Caucasus with its +towering peaks, its broken valleys, and its remnants of diverse peoples +should be the mountain prison of these predestined scourges of mankind. +There also were to be found the Ten Lost Tribes, who had joined them. +Maundeville merges the two traditions and connects them with a third; +Gog and Magog and their Jewish associates all paid tribute to the queen +of Amazonia. According to Ricold of Monte Croce, they could not with +patience hear Alexander’s name. + +There was a legend that both races escaped, guided by an owl and a hare +over their mountain walls; wherefore the Tartars wear owl feathers +in honor of their deliverance. But Astrakhan has the story that they +are prisoned still in remote valleys of the Caucasus, where twelve +trumpets, blown by the winds, keep them in terror against the day when +they shall break forth and destroy the world. + + +_Prester John’s Kingdom_ + +When the Christian world was hard put to hold its own in its crusading +adventure in the Holy Land, word came to it that it had an ally in +the rear of Islam. Somewhere in the remote east, on the farther side +of Persia and Armenia, there was a king and priest who ruled over a +Christian people. He had taken the field with a great army, defeated +the Moslem kings of Media and Persia, seized their capital of Ecbatana, +and marched to the relief of Jerusalem. Without boats to cross the +Tigris, he had gone north into colder lands, intending to cross upon +the ice and reach the holy city by a roundabout road. But the winters +proved too mild, and after waiting several years he had gone home again. + +Thus the Europe of the twelfth century heard the story of Prester +John. In one form or another it was repeated by Otto of Freisingen, by +Maimonides, and by Benjamin of Tudela. In the travels of the latter, +John is a Jewish king reigning in gorgeous state over a Jewish nation +of the deserts. Popular tradition had it that the royal Christian of +Asia had addressed a letter to the Pope of Rome and to the Greek and +Roman emperors. Its recital of splendors and prodigies was a challenge +to the spirit of wonder. + +“I, Presbyter Joannes, the Lord of Lords, surpass all under heaven +in virtue, in riches and in power,” runs the letter. “In the three +Indies our Magnificence rules, and our land extends beyond India; it +reaches towards the sunrise over the wastes, and it trends towards +deserted Babylon near the tower of Babel. Seventy-two provinces, of +which only a few are Christian, serve us. Each has its own king but all +are tributary to us. Our land streams with honey, and is overflowing +with milk. In one region grows no poisonous herb, nor does a querulous +frog ever quack in it, no scorpion exists, nor does the serpent glide +amongst the grass, nor can any poisonous animals exist in it or injure +any one. With us no one lies, for he who speaks a lie is thenceforth +regarded as dead.” + +The royal letter writer recites that in his dominions is the earthly +paradise, claims as his subjects all the peoples of prodigy, and +describes in detail his human menagerie in the Caucasus. The accursed +fifteen nations imprisoned there eat their foes, only desisting at +Prester John’s word. They will “burst forth at the end of the world, +in the time of Antichrist, and overrun all the abodes of the Saints as +well as the great city Rome, which, by the way, we are prepared to give +our son who will be born, along with all Italy, Germany, the two Gauls, +Britain and Scotland.” + +Whether this letter was ever received or no, Pope Alexander III did +dispatch to Prester John a letter which, between the lines, reads like +the reply to an irritating missive. It asserted the papal claims to +universal dominion and demanded that the priest-king recognize them. +The messenger who bore it eastward in 1177 was never heard of again. +Meanwhile the pagan Mongols had broken into Europe and it became papal +policy to conciliate their good will and if possible win them over +as allies of the Cross against the Crescent. The monkish envoys who +penetrated the heart of Asia found a power as vast as that claimed for +the Christian monarch, but it was in the hands of the sons of Genghis +Khan; and there was no Prester John. + +This was a Nestorian fable, said Rubruquis; “about nothing they make a +great fuss.” As to their King John, “I traversed his pastures and no +one knew anything about him.” Rubruquis speaks of Ung-Khan, prince of +a province in Mongolia southeast of Lake Baikal. According to Marco +Polo, who entered Asia in the same generation, this was Prester John. +The Christian chief of a Hunnish tribe, he was defeated and slain by +Genghis Khan. The legend faded out of the consciousness of the west, +only to be revived and domiciled in Abyssinia when Europe learned of +the power of its sovereigns and that they were Christians of the Coptic +faith. + +The tale of this Asiatic priest-king who wanted to put his armies at +the disposal of the hard-beset Christians of the west has the irony +and pathos of allegory. Without purporting to do so, it tells the +story of a great eastern adventure of the church which the Greek and +Roman communions had almost forgotten. The Nestorians had been cast +into outer darkness in one of the schisms of the Eastern Empire in the +unhappy sixth century, when, as Gibbon says, Christians were “more +solicitous to explore the nature, than to practice the laws, of their +founder.” The offense of Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, was +that he called Mary the Mother of Jesus and not the Mother of God, +and contended that in Christ the divine and human natures subsisted +independently of each other. He was excommunicated, and died in exile. + +His followers, driven from the empire, went forth into Asia and +established an empire of the spirit wide as that afterward claimed for +the Prester John of legend. They founded churches in Persia, Bokhara, +Siam, and Sumatra. They penetrated India and contended with Buddhism +in Tibet. They won millions of followers in Cathay, where their +religion was tolerated under an imperial edict of the seventh century +as “virtuous, mysterious, and pacific.” From Palestine to China they +held the field for the Christian faith, and their communicants were +more numerous than those of either the Greek or Roman church. There +are places in Asia which have not seen a Christian missionary since +the Nestorians passed, as soon they did. In Kurdistan and Persia their +faith survives in the affections of perhaps three hundred thousand +worshipers. + +It was the weakness of this faith that it nowhere had a country of +its own, and therefore no powerful central hierarchy sleepless in its +cause. For better or worse it was never able to draw the sword; it +spread itself only by persuasion and the tolerance of pagan countries +whose princes followed other cults. It must be that some dreamy +Nestorian monk, familiar with the west and its ways, and pondering what +his church had done in Asia and might have done had the fates been +kinder, wrote in the days of its decline the letter which gave it the +country it lacked and set forth its spiritual dominion in terms the +west would understand. + + +_The Witch Realm of Lapland_ + +In the dark ages a tradition arose that there was a witch nation in +the north of Europe. Its citizens were the Lapps, whose descendants +still fish, hunt and pasture their reindeer in the wilder districts +of Norway, Sweden, Russia, and Finland. They are the most timid and +inoffensive of men. They seem never to have had government of their +own, but have been overtaxed, exploited, and at times enslaved by +stronger neighbors. Swarthy, dwarfish, and shrill-spoken, with broad +heads, upturned noses, and bandy legs, they may be the survivors of +the small, dark race that once overspread the continent. Such a people +would need supernatural powers to overcome their manifold handicaps, +and with these legend endowed them. + +Their sinister reputation came to them because of their gnome-like +aspect, because they were still in the stone age of culture, and +perhaps because they were pagans after the remainder of Europe had +become Christian. Their magic drums were the terror of settled lands. +They could make themselves invisible. They could raise the winds. “They +tye three knottes on a strynge hangying at a whyp,” wrote Richard Eden +in 1577. “When they lose one of these they rayse tollerable wynds. +When they lose another the wynd is more vehement; but by losing the +thyrd they rayse playne tempests as in old time they were accustomed +to rayse thunder and lyghtnyng.” Tales of ships which went too near to +Lapland and were heard of no more were rife among the seafaring states. +Yet Ivan the Terrible sent for Lapp magicians to read the portent of a +comet, and the Norse princess Gunhild lived in their country to learn +its lore. + +Much of the superstition of the neighbor Finns has entered into the +Lapland tradition. Their magic songs picture their small cousins +as living in almost legendary lands--Lapland itself, a dark, vague +northern country where the people wore tall hats and spoke in whining, +mumbling voices: Turja Fells, with its wonder-working maidens; and +Pohjola, “home of the north,” where the old woman, Louhiatar, “the +blind whore of Pohjola,” queened it in a realm that had neither sun nor +moon. These songs have much to say of hazy headlands and spells wrought +upon them and on the main. A furious old wife sweeps the sea, with a +cloth of sparks on her head, and on her shoulders a cloak of foam. +Four maidens of the air mow grass on a cloudy cape in a foggy island. +The sharp maiden Terhetar sifts the mist on a shrouded promontory. A +wood spirit shrieks at people and fills the forest with murk when they +wander there. + +In the Orkney and Shetland islands, the Lapps were known as Finn-folk. +Sometimes they crossed the North Sea and, hiding their identity, +appeared among the islanders, with whom they intermarried; skilled +persons, however, detected them by their wrinkled visages and the odd +blemishes upon their skins. The visitors knew the language of birds +and beasts, into which, indeed, they could transform themselves; and +with impunity they rode the tricky water-horse. They could control the +weather, predict the future, cure diseases of men and cattle. It was +a slight task for them to make the passage from the continent. Most +people believed they swam across--for either they were seals who took +human form, or men who could take the seal form. Sometimes when fisher +folk harpooned a large seal they found a strange little man struggling +in the waves. + +These credulous island tales carry the legend of a witch nation of the +north almost into the twentieth century. + + +_The Spice Islands_ + +The ninth edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ forgot to mention +the Moluccas. A standard atlas of the world published in the United +States neglects to describe them. A day’s sail to the southeast from +the large Philippine island of Mindanao brings one to them, but +American travelers do not make this trip. Only a strait, to the right +and to the left, separates the group from New Guinea and Celebes, and +narrow are the seas between it and Java to the south; yet these are +names of consequence in modern geography, while it is a name all but +unknown. There is magic, modern magic, in the tropic islands of the +Pacific. These islands do not share it, though they lie on both sides +of the Line in the fairest of summer seas. + +They have another name, the Spice Islands. For the space of two +centuries men who followed the great waters thought of them and of +little else. It was spices that Columbus sought when he sailed west +from Palos in 1492 and the man who discovered sassafras in America had +honors comparable to his own. It was an eastern route to the spice +regions that engaged Portuguese endeavor and conducted the ships of da +Gama into the Indian Ocean in 1497. It was a western route to the Spice +Islands that Magellan sought in his voyage around the world a score of +years afterward. The royal grant to del Cano, who brought one ship +home from that expedition, was conditioned on the annual payment of +two cinnamon sticks, three nutmegs, and twelve cloves; and the coat of +arms which he was licensed to bear had the effigies of two Malay kings +holding spice branches; to have gone around the world seemed to Spain +a lesser thing than to have discovered a route to these islands. To +reach them was the object of the attempts to open a northeast passage +around Asia and a northwest passage around America. To determine their +ownership was the subject of two papal bulls and a dynastic agreement +between the royalties of Spain and Portugal; and they fell at last as a +prize of war to Holland. + +In the age of discovery India and China were small words compared +with the Spice Islands. The place this forgotten group once held in +the imagination of men is one of the great illusions of commercial +geography. + +Nor was it all illusion. If the world trade of antiquity was mainly +in incense, the world trade of the Middle Ages was mainly in spices, +and for a similar cause--with the primitive transportation of the +period, less valuable and more bulky things could not be carried far +at a profit. Nowadays the meats, grains, vegetables, and fruits of +all climes travel long distances to the dinner table, and men’s diet +has both variety and quality. In former times the range of eatables +was small, the quality poor. The service of spices was to improve +and diversify the flavors of viands, to disguise the shortcomings of +mediæval cookery as well as mediæval larders. The salt-fish diet of +European winters created the spice trade with the east. + +When the Turkish seizure of Egypt in 1521 closed the southern overland +route to the east the same year that both the Portuguese and the +Spanish reached the Moluccas, the stage was set for the romance of +spice. Passing from unknown sources through various hands, it had +reached the west at a tenfold price. Here was opportunity to deal +direct in what all Europe wanted. + +It was known that these were not the only spice lands. Cassia grew in +Somaliland and cinnamon in Ceylon, and both were used in food as well +as incense. The ginger root came from a reed of Cochin-China. Benjamin +of Tudela, Ibn Batuta, and Friar Odoric had described the pepper +“forests” of Malabar, and Marignolli had even told of pepper wars +between Jews and Christians. Through the Chinese port of Amoy, so Polo +thought, there passed a hundred times as much pepper as came to all +Christendom. But somehow the Moluccas, whence came cloves, nutmegs, and +mace--the husks of nutmegs--seemed to be the kingdom of spicery. + +They had won this distinction centuries before the first western +ship entered those seas. Although the islands have an area of only +twenty-five thousand square miles and a population of less than four +hundred thousand persons, their two sultanates of Tidor and Ternate +achieved dominion at about the same time as the Italian republics of +Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, which in power they paralleled; and the one +group of states, no less than the other, lived on the spice trade. +The colonial empire of the Moluccas extended over the neighboring +archipelagoes and penetrated the continent; their trading settlements +dotted the wide spaces of Malaysia. Java was their export market, and +there Polo saw the testimonials of their power in a spice trade that +seemed to him to account for the greater part of the world’s supply of +aromatic and pungent vegetable substances. They had already entered +into a political decline when the Europeans came, and this eastern +venture of the Portuguese executed for them the same decree of fate +that it was to do for the maritime states of the Mediterranean. + +When Serrano reached the Moluccas he wrote to his friend, Magellan: +“I have discovered yet another new world, larger and richer than that +found by Vasco da Gama.” The caravels of Portugal went no farther, and +the nation took such pains as it could that none others should go so +far. It was Portuguese policy in the spice trade, as it had been Arab +policy in the incense trade, that the sources of supply should remain +unknown. Always the unknown is magnified. Robert Thorne, writing from +the Spanish court in 1527, declared that the islands abounded not +only in cloves, nutmegs, mace, and cinnamon, but in “Golde, Rubies, +Diamondes, Balasses, Garnates, Jacincts, and other stones and pearles.” +The precious commodities he thought the simple natives would part with +on equal terms for the lead, tin, and iron of the north; and, measure +for measure, they would traffic their spices for corn, their diamonds +for pieces of glass. + +In these islands fable found another home. Here, it was said, were men +having spurs on their ankles like cocks, horned hogs, hens that laid +their eggs several feet under ground, oysters so large that the shells +were used as baptismal fonts for children, crabs with claws so strong +that they could break the iron of a pick-ax, stones which grew like +fish and out of which men made lime, and a river well stored with finny +creatures and yet so hot that it scalded the unwary bather. Drake, +refitting here in his voyage around the world, saw “an infinite swarme +of fiery wormes flying at night making such a shew and light as if +every twigge or tree had been a burning candle.” Also he saw bats as +big as hens and crayfish that dug holes like conies, and one of which +was a meal for four hungry men. + +These decorations of fancy can add but little to the great theme of +forgotten islands once the goal of the world’s desire. + +There was another curious chapter written when Dutch succeeded +Portuguese. It was such a chapter as monopoly writes, and it comes +down into the nineteenth century. The ships of Holland cruised in the +surrounding seas, cutting down spice groves wherever they found them. +Before they were exported, all nutmegs were treated with fire and lime, +so that no plantations could be started elsewhere--but pigeons carried +them to other islands and mother cloves were taken away in hollow +bamboos, and the produce of home orchards multiplied, and the world +spice trade dwindled in relative importance as the food of mankind +became more varied. + +Dampier tells of an island where the ground under the trees was +carpeted with cloves several inches thick, left there to decay. Another +traveler tells of seeing three heaps of nutmegs burning at one time, +each of which would have filled a church. So the Dutch East India +Company reduced supplies in striving to maintain prices. The spicy +odors that floated over the seas surrounding the Araby of fable became, +on occasion, a fact of the Molucca group. It was the incense neither of +nature nor of religion, but of a dying commerce. + +The nutmegs of to-day are grown mainly in the island of Penang in the +British East Indies and in the island of Grenada in the British West +Indies, while cloves come from the African island of Zanzibar. + + +_Arcadia_ + +Arcadia is at once a country and a province of the imagination. + +The real Arcadia is a mountainous plateau some forty miles square in +the central part of the Peloponnessus of Greece. Its chief exports in +the old time were asses. Its inhabitants were--and are--gruff-spoken +herdsmen and peasants, equally scornful of letters and politics. They +seldom went outside their own valleys, and few strangers came among +them. They had no central government and no relations with the other +states of Greece, and they wanted to be let alone. Yet they were +willing to fight--for pay; and sometimes they had to fight because +Sparta was their neighbor and they were on a war track. When Arcadia +took the field in force as the ally of another state, almost always it +espoused the wrong side. In the quarrels of the Greek republics, and +in the series of wars in which Pompey, Julius Cæsar, Mark Antony, and +Augustus figured, it shared the hard lot of the vanquished. Although it +lay remote and its spirit was aloof, the plateau had at least its share +of the troubles of the world. + +The Arcadia of poetry occupies the same boundaries, but has had a +different history. All that the poets have done has been to stress +certain facts and forget the others. This land, as it seemed to them, +stood like a fortress of rustic innocence above the turmoil of politics +and the bustle of maritime trade that was ancient Greece. At each of +the corners of the plateau, like bastions, rose a group of mountain +peaks, from which, on a fair morning, one might see the whole of +Arcadia, the neighbor states of the coastal plains, and beyond them +the Mediterranean. Great groves of gnarled oaks grew upon the mountain +sides, there were pine forests, and in the open fields stood the +graceful plane tree, beloved of the classic world. Though the Arcadians +were unlettered, pastoral song had its birth among them, before the +inspiration of Theocritus gave it a home in Sicily. Pan was their +tutelar deity, and it seemed to the rustics sometimes that they could +hear the plaintive music of his pipes as the goat-god reclined under +the plane tree. In this artless land, myth has it, Hermes strung cords +across the shell of a giant tortoise and made the harp. + +Arcadia was equally skilled at the harp and the flute, and to these +the shepherds sang their simple lays. Aside from their love of music, +they seemed to the Greeks of the towns men of ignorant rusticity, and +they figure as simpletons--“acorn eaters”--in the Middle Comedy. The +Romans copied this as they did everything else in Greek drama, and the +dull Arcadian of the stage moved Latin audiences to laughter; “Arcades +ambo,” both sweet innocents, is a phrase of the period. But the Romans +caught also the spirit of their rustic song, and the Arkady of poetry +was born in the Virgilian bucolics. Its outlines are disclosed in +the Tenth _Eclogue_, in passages which tell of browsing goats, and +clover-rifling bees, and bubbling springs where dark-blue violets +blow, and, animating the scene, the vintagers of mellow grapes and Pan +himself, red with elderberries and with cinnabar. “Arcadians, none but +ye can sing!” exclaims the poet. + +On this delicate outline the Renaissance laid the rich colorings of its +fancy. The rugged, troubled mountain land became the one land in all +the world of simple peace and rustic innocence and wistful charm of +things ideal. Sanazzaro’s Arcadian pastoral went through sixty editions +in a century. France, Spain, England, and Holland, following Italy, all +made their excursions into Arkady. There was a succession of romantic +sketches wherein lyrics declaring the loves of swains and bewailing the +death of virgins are interspersed with dialogues that tell in prose +the poetry of pastoral life. The classic work of this school is the +_Arcadia_ of Sir Philip Sidney. There, and not in the Morea, the Arkady +that is a province of the imagination may best be explored. + +It is a tale of knightly youths and dainty maidens and one sentence +will declare its quality. When Pamela disrobed for the bath and set +foot in a stream “the touch of cold water made a pretty kind of +shrugging come over her body, like the twinkling of the fairest of the +fixed stars.” + +Here, says Sidney, the very shepherds have their fancies lifted to +so high conceits as the learned of other nations are content both to +borrow their names and imitate their cunning. The hills garnish their +proud delights with stately trees, the humble estate of valleys is +comforted with the refreshing of rivers, and the thickets declare the +cheerful disposition of well-tuned birds. Sheep pasture with sober +security and by them are pretty lambs whose bleating oratory craves the +dam’s comfort. The herd girls sing their lays, while on the uplands +pipes the shepherd boy “as though he shall never be old.” + +This is vision, all of it, sunshine and haze working their spell upon a +rocky hillside. There are wolves in the sheepfolds of life. + + +_Bohemia_ + +Bohemia is a subtler Arcadia, another province of youth and love and +dreams; but youth passes thence, and love is a brief madness, and the +dream may fail of fulfillment. Like Arcadia, the Bohemia that is a +state of mind has its reality in a mountain-girdled land, but, unlike +Arcadia, it has shifted on the map, refusing to be confined by any +boundaries known to geography. + +Now even the name of it, with its music and implications of poetry, +is lost to geography, and in its stead is the harshly named +Czecho-Slovakia. Wherefore the Bohemians of art and literature, and +unregulated impulse and fantasy, have no homeland they can call their +own. This is a fitting thing. In a sense there never was a Bohemia, +although there was always the fortress land which nature placed at the +headwaters of the Elbe on the borders of Germany. The Celtic tribe +whence it was named is only a shadow in history, and the Bohemians who +fought with Poles and Germans, who wanted to be Protestant, who started +the Thirty Years’ War, who were a dukedom, and a kingdom, and a part of +the Holy Roman Empire, were Slavs who called themselves Czechs. + +Their literature is older than the German, their university at Prague +was one of the earliest centers of European culture, their capital is +the westernmost outpost of the east in Europe, their patriotism is a +proverb, and their glass fabrics, their beer, and their beet sugar +are staples of world commerce. Upon this people and their hill-walled +home the name of Bohemia and the traditions of “the gayest and most +melancholy country of the world” fit but loosely. Whence the Bohemia +that is a haunting word on the lips of youth? + +Shakespeare budded it, and the gypsies, and Frenchmen who knew too +little, and Frenchmen who may have known too much. _Winter’s Tale_ gave +Bohemia a seacoast and centuries of critics a chance to say its author +nodded. Yet under the puissant Ottokar the country did have coasts on +both the north and south of Europe. The scene of the play is near the +head of the Adriatic. The Bohemia it pictures, instead of lying inland, +is probably the maritime province of Istria, and historically the +background is correctly named. + +From _Winter’s Tale_ the Bohemians of the studio and pothouse got +themselves a coast, a glamour, and their First Citizen. “Places remote +enough are in Bohemia,” the poet says. Here again is shepherd’s love, +and a prince whose courtship of a “queen of curds and cream” is timed +by the flowers as they pass--“daffodils that come before the swallow +dares, and take the winds of March with beauty,” and violets dim, pale +primroses, bold ox-lips and the flower de luce. “The fanned snow that’s +bolted by the northern blasts” is far away. + +On this scene of Arkady enters a figure in no wise Arcadian--Autolycus, +earliest Bohemian, citizen of no country and of all. He is a vagabond, +a minstrel, a ballad-monger, a ribbon peddler, a cut-purse. His is +the footpath way, and his revenue, he explains, is the silly cheat. +“Enter Autolycus singing” is the stage direction. Exit Autolycus also, +singing, “A merry heart goes all the day, your sad tires in a mile-a.” + +Here is a blood-brother of Villon, and Bohemia is already a province +of his song. It becomes a kingdom with the coming of the gypsies. +Mediæval France called them Bohemians, and thought them such, as other +countries thought them Egyptians. The roadside was their home, the +world was their country, they paid no taxes or rents, and report had it +that they had written the canons of their creed on cabbage leaves which +a donkey found and devoured. They practiced the wandering arts, were +musicians, metal-workers, horse-dealers, bear-leaders, snake-charmers, +herb-venders; their women read palms, and were “pleasaunt dauncers.” + +The gypsy philosophy found its first devotees in rogues of old Paris, +who called themselves dukes in Bohemia; Hugo has sketched their lawless +commonwealth in his _Notre Dame_. The Bohemia of artists and dreamers, +like many a country of the map, had ruffians, cheats, and vagrants for +its early colonists. It was left to Murger to fix its frontiers, write +its laws, and treat for its admission into the league of ideal lands. +The results are spread at large in his _Scenes de la Vie de Bohème_. + +Much has been written of the whereabouts of this land and of the +conditions by which one becomes a citizen, but the matter is found +entire in Murger’s preface and in Arthur Symons’s introduction to +this preface. “Any man,” says Murger, “who enters the path of Art, +with his art as his sole means of support, is bound to pass by way of +Bohemia.” To Symons, Bohemia is “the sentiment youth has of itself +at the flowering moment of its existence”; the sadness of it is the +consciousness of the flight of youth. + +The whereabouts of the country that has been mapped as neighbor both to +Germany and Italy? Murger answers that Bohemia “neither exists nor can +exist anywhere save in Paris.” But that is only Murger’s answer. + + + + +Chapter XVII. Islands of Enchantment + + +“The thirteenth day of May we passed by the Island of Paris, and +the Island of the bankes of Helicon, and the Island called Ditter, +where are many boares and the women bee witches.” This glimpse of +Mediterranean travel from one of the sixteenth-century wanderers whose +voyages are recorded in Hakluyt might be paralleled from the outer +Atlantic, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, or the South Seas. In the +_Arabian Nights_, for example, Sayf Al-Muluk and his companions came in +turn to the isle of the old men of the sea; to the isle of ghouls who +sleep under cover of their ears; to the isle of gigantic blackamoors +with protruding eyeteeth; and to the isle of trained apes “bigger than +he-mules.” + +Such folk seem at home in the wilderness of waters. These distant +spaces of the sea are little worlds of their own which imagination +feels free to dower with peculiar institutions and stock with peculiar +peoples. In islands of reality or fantasy men place their ideal states, +their pirate realms, their abodes of exile, their refuges from the +restraints and traditions of life--the sanctuaries of pursuits and +companionships other than those of which they have tired. In them, +also, they place the regions of repose; to reach felicity one must +cross water. + +On journeys thither one might sight the shores of the folk of prodigy. +There were islands of men, and islands of women, and islands of +hermits, and islands of witches, and islands of satyrs, and islands of +giants, and islands of dwarfs, and islands of dog-headed, ox-worshiping +cannibals. The impulse thus to set aside a maritime domicile for the +nondescript nations was strongest with Arab geographers and Celtic +story-tellers. It culminates in the romancing narrative of Maundeville, +who dotted the eastern seas with the archipelagoes of his fancy and +settled them with the creatures of fable. + +When the spell of terror woven in classic times began to lift from +the Atlantic, its islands swam into sight as to the strains of harp +music. They appeared to belong equally to geography and to poetry. +Of Madeira, the discovery of which is associated with the romance of +fugitive English lovers, an old writer declared that such a delightful +land “could only have been discovered by love.” For reasons as yet +unexplained, nearly all the newly found islands of the eastern Atlantic +bore the names of animals or birds. About them, Sir John Hawkins wrote, +“are certaine flitting Ilands which have been oftentimes seene, and +when men approched neere them, they vanished.” The older maps show one +such island which was called St. Brendan’s. It is a memory of the Irish +sea epics, and the latter are themselves a review of the entire island +story. + +In these five wander-tales the empty spaces of the Atlantic are filled +in with islands which were loaned to the Irish by Homer from the +Odyssey and Plato from his Atlantis; by the Greek, Lucian, from his +Rabelaisian _True History_; by the Roman, Seneca, with his vision of a +continent in the west; by him who saw the Sea of Glass from the rock +of Patmos; by Arab story-tellers, and by early Moorish and Spanish +chroniclers from their narratives of the shadowy Antillia, the Isle +of the Seven Bishops, and the legendary journey of the Deluded Folk. +Celtic fancy passed a wand over this jumble of material, and a strange +new world appeared. Headlands of snow and ice and islands of perpetual +summer were within a day’s sail of one another, pagan fables and +monkish marvels were domiciled together, there was much mist and much +sunshine, and around all was “the mighty and intolerable ocean” which +St. Brendan saw at Sliabh Daidche. + +Tennyson has set one of these tales, _The Voyage of Mældune_, to his +own music. It was a journey of revenge a chieftain made with his men to +slay the man who has slain his father. They came to the Silent Isle, +where their voices were thinner and fainter than any flittermouse +shriek; to the Isle of Shouting where wild birds cried from its summit +till the steer fell down at the plow and the harvest died in the field; +to the Isle of Flowers where were blossom and promise of blossom and +never a fruit; to the Isle of Fruits, and in every berry and fruit the +poisonous pleasure of wine; to the Isle of Fire, which shuddered and +shook like a man in a mortal affright; to the Bounteous Isle, where the +men began to be weary, to sigh and to stretch and yawn; to the Isle of +Witches, naked as heaven, who bosomed the burst of the spray; to the +Isle of the Double Towers, that shocked on each other and butted each +other with clashing of bells; and to the Isle of a Saint, who told the +men, “Go back to the Isle of Finn, and suffer the past to be past.” + +This narrative may stand with variations for all of the Irish sea +tales. Under the sway of some overmastering motive the hero puts forth +upon the deep--for revenge, or to save a comrade condemned, or to seek +a woman, or to reach the Land of Promise, or to find the Lord upon +the sea. The voyagers pass from island to island. Complaisant Circes +greet them from one shore and indignant female virtue repels them from +another. They come to the isle called the Delicious, to the Isle of +Sheep, to the Isle of Laughter, to the Moving Isle which was a whale’s +back, to the isle which is the mouth of hell. They see demons racing +their horses on a magic course, and red-hot swine issuing from caves, +and stinging cats, and Judas on his rock, and ants the size of foals. +A griffin assaults them, the Cyclopes threaten them, birds sing psalms +to them. Repentant, or triumphant, or prophetic, or stricken in years, +they come back at last to an Ireland that has forgotten them. + +Who fares on from island to island with these Celtic dreamers may visit +the whole realm of fable. + + +_The Sunken Lands_ + +Gazing into the ocean depths in warm latitudes one sees the fronds of +tall aquatic plants sway slightly as if a slow breeze stirred them. +Walls of coral rise there with a wavering semblance to palaces. The +purple mullet swims in and out of sunken grottos. Such sunlight as +reaches them is subdued to softness, like that admitted by cathedral +windows when it is late afternoon. These seem to be groves and gardens +and habitations under the sea. Beings like one’s fellow mortals, but +more beautiful and gentle, might live there and rove in the dim peace +of meadows beneath the foam and tumult of the reefs. + +Such thoughts come without bidding. Always men have sought the land of +heart’s desire, and sometimes they told themselves that it was under +the sea; or perhaps that what they saw there was not the promise of +what should be but the wreck of what had been. + +The sea is a mirror as well as a window. It repeats the curves of +shore and sky and all that is between--cornfields, and grazing cattle, +and the burden of orchards, and cottage smoke, and the loom of church +towers. Here is an underworld, though it be but the simple magic of +light upon smooth water. There is a subtler magic of mist and water +and uncertain sun gleams when one stands on the west coast of Ireland +and looks seaward through the eyes of a people in whom wonder never +flickered down in doubt. + +Dwelling alone on the outer coast of the world as the ancients knew it, +these folk had beheld strange things in the great waters that roared +along their cliffs. Shadowy islands showed themselves in thick weather, +and, though no trace of them remained when the cloud bank lifted, these +were no tricks of mirage wrought by fog and muffled sunlight. They were +isles of enchantment that might have floated out of sight, but more +likely had sunk beneath the wave, not to emerge again until another +seven years were gone. The glints of splendor upon the distant sea were +not the track of the sun in broken water. They came from the golden +roofs and spires of a sunken city. + +So out of things seen--as in a glass darkly--upon, above, and under the +billow, and out of things imagined or hoped for, men have wrought the +legend of cities that sleep beneath the ocean. The tale of Atlantis +is the oldest form of the legend. But the tales of lost cities are +not legend altogether and the tale of Atlantis may not be legend +altogether. There are submerged ruins on which romance bases itself as +upon reality, there are authentic historical happenings, and there are +local traditions which, it may be, retain the memory of cities that +were upon islands or coasts engulfed by the sea. + +[Illustration: _In Islands Men Placed Their Ideal States.... To Reach +Felicity One Must Cross Water_] + +Along the Italian coast the columns of sunken Roman villas have given +rise to stories of drowned cities. The ruins of towns lie under the +Zuyder Zee. Some inroad of the deep may be preserved in the legend of +Vineta, the fabled city beneath the Baltic near the Holstein coast. +There have been subsidences within historical time in the waters about +the British Isles, and the ocean has taken toll of the English coast +itself. The Channel shoal called the Goodwin Sands, and Seal Rock, +fragment of the Irish island of Inis Fitæ which was split into three +pieces in the eighth century, are tokens of these subsidences. In the +Azores group, scene of the Atlantis legend, four islands appeared in +the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and sank again. Expedition +Island, northwest of Australia, which Dutch naturalists visited within +a generation, lies under seven fathoms of water. The populous island +of Torca in the Indian Ocean went out of sight in a sheet of flame in +1693. Tuanaki, an island in South Polar waters, has not been seen in +ninety years. The cloud bank which Peary called Crocker Land has been +removed from maps of the Arctic region. Three new islands have been +born in the Aleutian group, one of them as late as 1909. The strange +stone images on Easter Island have given rise to conjecture that it +might be the remnant of a continent and a civilization lost beneath the +Pacific. + +Thus there is a broad basis of fact for the legends of sunken cities. +Some of these are of great beauty. Whether the product of pagan or +Christian brooding, the sound of church bells is in them--peals that +come floating solemnly to the surface from towers through which deep +waters are moving. When the sunshine falls upon calm seas, so fisherman +say, they can discern these towers, and rising about them the peaked +roofs of houses like those of the Middle Ages. + +Beyond all others the Celts are the people of the lost lands. These +seem part of the Celtic heritage of defeat and dreams. The legends of +Wales tell of a fair land sunken by the folly of a drunken prince. +The lost Lyonesse, a great promontory of Cornwall, was such another +land, and the Scilly Islands are the remnants. Tennyson and Swinburne +have rescued its memory from oblivion and Walter de la Mare pictures a +scene “in sea-cold Lyonesse, when the Sabbath eve shafts down on the +roofs, walls and belfries of the foundered town.” The story of Is, the +vanished Breton capital, has been told in folk-song, in poetry, in +stately music. It is one of the haunting fables of men, and back of it, +as of so many tales of ruin and overthrow, is the figure of a beautiful +and wicked woman. + +The city of Is lay far in the west of France, where the coast of +Brittany makes its great thrust into the Atlantic. Peasants point out +the blocks, visible at low tide in the Bay of Douarnenez, which they +say are its foundations. The city was builded in a wide plain below +the level of the sea, and strong walls, controlled by sluice gates, +defended it from the encroaching waves. It was an habitation of vice +and pleasure, and it had a king as blameless as Arthur, and he a +daughter as cruel, as lustful, and as fair of face as Arthur’s sister, +Morgan le Fay. King Gradlon and Princess Dahut are the central figures +in the drama of Is. + +Dahut dwelt in a tower, where she entertained a long train of lovers, +drowning each as she tired of him. To please a paramour she stole from +her father’s neck in his sleep the silver key which unlocked the sluice +gates and let in the sea. Awakened by the warning tumult of the waters, +Gradlon mounted a horse and fled, bearing his daughter with him. But +the floods moved after him and a voice bade him sacrifice to the sea +the beautiful demon who rode with him. Dahut fell to her death in the +waves, and their course was stayed. At Quimper the king rebuilt his +seat, but Is was lost forever beneath the Atlantic. Though it happened +fifteen centuries ago, there are Bretons who say that the faint chime +of bells still comes to them when wind and tide move shoreward together. + +Nine is the number of islands under the sea to the west of Erin. +They appear above the surface once in seven years. Though a man may +descry them from the coast, yet might he go toward them in a currach +for two days and not come up with them. Some of them are larger than +Ireland itself. They have been seen by trustworthy observers,--Otway, +for example. In a paper read before the Royal Irish Society, Westropp +describes O Brasile, the best known of these, as he saw it in 1872: “It +was a clear evening with a fine golden sunset, when, just as the sun +went down, a dark island suddenly appeared far out to sea, but not on +the horizon. It had two hills, one wooded; between these, from a low +plain, rose towers and curls of smoke. My mother, brother, and several +friends saw it at the same time. One cried out that he could see New +York!” + +Illusion, but for thousands of years Irish eyes have beheld these +phantom islands lift and fade in the west, and the Celtic glamour is +in the legends that tell them. “Lost Kilsapheen,” sighs the poet, +“its palaces and towers of pride ... all buried in the rushing tide +and deep sea waters green.” Churches and convents and castles are in +these islands, and those who have seen them or thought they saw them +report more intimate touches--an old woman coming out of a cabin to cut +a cabbage; the bleating of sheep and lambs heard in a fog on the open +sea; the apparition of “an old Scotch gentleman” wearing the raiment +of another century upon an enchanted shore. Sometimes a seeming of +tumult troubles these realms of shadow. There are flames and smoke and +fugitives. Then the spell passes and there is naught but the slant of +the gull’s wing and the roll of a porpoise on a distant billow. + +The inhabitants of the islands are people of a vanished time, and +sealmen, and mermen, and giants, and the prisoners of giants. If you +can find the golden key to one of the sunken lands it will rise to the +surface and remain there; but the key has been hidden under a cairn +or is buried in the ruins of a Druid temple. There are other ways of +lifting the spell. Casting a clod of earth upon an island when it is +above water may disenchant it. Another way is by dropping a coal of +fire upon it, or knocking the glowing ashes from your pipe upon the +shore, or shooting a red-hot arrow from a boat, for “fire is hostile +to anything phantasmal.” So was Inishbofin fixed above the surface of +the sea. Fishermen landed upon it in a fog and lit a fire. Then the fog +cleared and they saw an old woman driving a white cow to drink. One of +them seized the cow’s tail and found in his hand a spray of seaweed; +and the woman and cow were turned into rocks. This was ages ago. + + +_Where Eden Lies_ + +Eden, Elysium, and the Fortunate Isles are one. They are upon the earth +and yet not of it. They are no part of the realm of shades and it is +not through the gates of death that one enters them. Mortal men have +dwelt in them, or may reach them, and thither the heroes pass without +leaving “the warm precincts of the cheerful day.” These are the ideal +lands of afternoon sunshine and airs that are at once a sigh and a +caress. The poetry and pity of men created them that there might be +some place of happiness with portals less somber than those of the +tomb, and without the sadness of irrevocable farewells upon the paths +that lead to it. + +So the realms of bliss were placed afar, at the end of difficult +journeys which yet might be attained, or at least attempted. Eden lay +eastward. The Fortunate Isles of the Roman and the Elysian lands of +the Greek and Celt lay westward. In the conception of men these were +islands, Eden almost as much as the others. The four sacred rivers +flowed from it and around it, and in later times, what men who came +near to it particularly noticed was the sound of falling water. + +It seemed to Columbus that the rushing current of the Orinoco flowed +down from Eden’s steeps. It seemed to men before him that paradise +might lie in the southern hemisphere, deemed “the noblest and happiest +part of the globe,” and perhaps in the South Seas. There were those +who made Eden a coast on the northern ocean, and others who placed it +among the fountains of Armenia. To most men the island of Ceylon was +its seat. There Carpini heard the plash of its waters, and Maundeville +drank thereof, as he reports, to his bodily betterment. + +The Fortunate Isles, the Elysian abode of the heroes, were placed by +the Greeks in the extreme west, near the river Oceanus. Their position +receded with the advance of world-knowledge and finally was fixed in +the Canary and Madeira islands, furthest outpost of Roman discovery. +Satire though it is, the _True History_ of Lucian describes the Blessed +Islands in the very term men used when they were glad to believe. +As his party approached these islands, odorous airs came out from +shore, in which one could detect the mingled breath of the rose, the +narcissus, the hyacinth, and the lily. There was music from harp and +lute, and then, as the boat grounded on the beach, “the guardians of +the isle immediately chained us with manacles of roses, their only +fetters.” + +These were the same islands which the Celts called by many beautiful +names and whither the coracles of legend journeyed. It is hard to tell +where the sunken islands of their history give way to the imaginary +islands of their geography, and these to the ideal lands of their +myths. The three groups seem to lie one behind the other in the outer +seas of the _Imrama_. The farthest group was the Celtic other-world, +and yet so near was it to the coasts of the New World, that a claim +for the discovery of America is based on St. Brendan’s voyage to the +Land of Promise. The group may best be called an archipelago where +pagan and Christian ideals shared dominion. Therein was not only the +Land of Promise, but “Magh Mell of many flowers,” the Land of Truth, +“whose truth was sung without falsehood.” There was the Land of the +Living, and the sensuous Land of Fair Women. In all these happy +islands music swelled, and laughter, and there was neither wailing nor +treachery, and death was not; and the magic food was unsalted pork, new +milk, and mead. + +It was the singular fate of this god’s land of the Celt to become +confused with the geographical story of both Europe and America. The +memory of actual Irish voyages to the New World may be in the legend, +and inference from wreckage carried from afar, along with the stuff +of old dreams. Of the latter is a Spanish story wherein the Celtic +paradise masks itself as the Island of the Seven Cities to which seven +bishops had led their flocks to escape the Moor. Men whose hap it was +to sight this shadowy coast were carried in a barge to the shore and +entertained in a lofty hall by men who spoke their own tongue, though +with the antique accent. Europe credited the tale, nor guessed that the +barge was the same as that which bore the wounded Arthur unto Avalon. + +These dream isles, at once aspiration and allegory, were found also, +or rather they were sought, in the eastern seas. It is recited in the +Buddhist records that the king of Udyana had a true report of the +silver walls and golden roofs of an island of the sages in distant +waters. The Chinese emperor, Tshe Huan Ti, of the third century before +Christ, heard of a happy land seven hundred miles to the eastward in +the Yellow Sea, and sent young men out to find it. They saw it on a far +horizon and a roseate light was upon it. But storms drove them back. +The Japanese tell of such a land lying toward the sunrise, and call it +Oraisan. + +Maundeville knew of an island in the eastern ocean. It was something +like the places of eternal bliss in the far west, and yet was the home +of people who were much as other men are except that they were better. +When Alexander would have conquered them, an embassy bore him this +message, “Nothing may thou take from us but our good Peace,” and he let +them alone. In this isle of Bragman was “No Thief, nor Murderer, nor +common Woman, nor poor Beggar, nor ever was Man slain in that Country. +And because they be so true and so righteous, and so full of all good +Conditions, they were never grieved with Tempests, nor with Thunder, +nor with Lightning, nor with Hail, nor with Pestilence, nor with War, +nor with Hunger, nor with any other Tribulation, as we be, many Times, +amongst us, for our Sins.” + +The island paradises of mankind lie upon many waters and in every +quarter of the earth. Alike for the Indians of Chile and of the +American Northwest, Elysium was in the distant Pacific. The natives +of Haiti believed it was in western valleys of their own island. The +natives of Australia called it “the gum-tree country.” The Semang of +the Malay Peninsula said it was across the sea in a land of screw +pines and thatch palms. It was their ancient island home, said the +people of the Celebes. It was northwest of Tonga, the Friendly +Islanders thought, and Bulotu was the name they gave it; yams and +breadfruit were plentiful there, hogs abounded, and there were reefs +for shark-catching. Many Kanaka tribes named it Havaika, which is +perhaps Java, or the Samoan island of Savaii, points of dispersion +in their migrations. The natives of Torres Straits called it the +island of Kibu; in its treetops ghosts sat twittering. But the Solomon +Islander could hear their laughter as they bathed in the surf of his +own sea-befriended paradise. “These Marquesas,” a nun said to Frederick +O’Brien, “make no more of death than of a journey to another island, +and much less than of a journey to Tahiti.” + +Among races of higher culture Elysium takes on a more ordered beauty, +yet remains naïve. Annwfn is its Brythonic name and it lies at the end +of a long voyage; no infirmity is there, and sweeter than white wine is +the drink from its mighty well. Before men embarked for it, they said +in Babylon, there was a formidable land journey to take, over a high +pass guarded by scorpion men in the mountains of Masu, along a road +of black darkness, through a park of precious stones, across a bitter +river--and then the waters of death; these may have been the Atlantic, +or the sea of the Arabs. Elysium was far to the east in some mellow +clime beyond the ocean, so the Slavs thought; and thither the birds and +insects went in autumn. It is a land of lotus lakes in the west, and +its name is Sukhavati, say the Buddhists of Nippon; out of it comes a +continual harmony of flowing rivers, murmuring leaves, and soft bells +swung by softer winds. It is a kingdom in the northern ocean and its +name is Vaikuntha, some Hindus say. Others speak of a paradise which +they call Svetadvipa, “the white island” that is somewhere in the north +beyond the Sea of Milk. + +For inland peoples the thought of a sea to be crossed, as every day +the sun crosses the sea to its rest, gave way at times to the thought +of a river with a difficult bridge, and paradise on the farther side. +Such in the Hindu classics was the land of the Uttarakarus which lay +on the shores of the northern ocean beyond the radiance of the sun and +the moon. A river that petrified whatever entered it flowed between it +and the countries of the south. Lakes with golden lotuses and tanks +of crystal water shimmered in the light airs of this favored land. In +its odorous orchards birds always sang, and beautiful maidens, hanging +by their long hair, grew among the blossom-burdened branches--another +glimpse of the enigmatic women of Wak-wak. Amid the sound of music and +laughter these Indian Hyperboreans did their pious deeds, nor shed the +god-unlawful tear, until ten thousand and ten hundred years had passed. +Then they died, and fowls with sharp beaks carried their bodies to +mountain caves. + +An Irish myth of the Middle Ages holds closer to the facts of existence +than any of these stories of terrestrial felicity, and there is a +note of sadness in the beauty of it. In a lake in Munster were the +islands of life and death. There was no port for death to enter the +first island, but age and pain and sickness were there, and all the +wearinesses of years. Its inhabitants learned at last to look on the +opposite island as the place of repose, and, steering their barks to +its shore, they entered upon eternal rest. + + + + +Chapter XVIII. The Terrible Ocean + + +In some of its moods the sea presents itself as a symbol of eternity. +For ages it was more than the symbol; it was eternity itself. +Men shrank from contemplation of it, as they might shrink from +contemplation of the hereafter. A voyage into its outer spaces was like +the voyage of the soul into the shadows that lie beyond life. Still, +this conception shapes the imagery and colors the faith of the race. +Life is a passage down a river that reaches an immeasurable sea. Death +is a journey upon dark waters. The bark of salvation spreads its sails +for the pure of heart, and favoring winds waft them to the Beautiful +Shore. In the songs of Christendom one hears soft winds blowing over +expanses of peaceful water. The earth geography of Homer is the +heavenly geography of Bunyan. The Ocean Stream that flowed around the +world is the river that flows by the Throne of God. + +Classic mythology ties up the sea’s infinities with those of time +through the medium of the Styx, which was at once a branch of the Ocean +Stream and the river that encircled the land of shades. The lake of +Avernus which afforded entrance to the nether world, Charon’s ferry, +the rivers Cocytus, Acheron, and Phlegethon, and the Stygian Pool +itself, all gave to a Roman death the aspect of maritime adventure, +although underground. The freer Greek fancy placed the Elysium of the +soul somewhere in the western ocean, where the sun sank to rest. There +were the Isles of the Blessed, or Fortunate Isles, where there was +neither rain nor snow, but the shrilly-breathing west wind fanned and +watered the land. + +Other isles were there, the abodes of formidable men and dangerous +women and prodigious animals. But one could get along very well by +accepting the fictions of the poets as good enough geography and +ethnography without launching maritime expeditions to confirm them. +The western ocean offered the peoples of the Mediterranean no present +promise or profit to match its terrors, and to alloy delights that +had too spectral a cast. Unlike the Indian Ocean, it was not a great +highway of trade. Thick clouds covered it, perpetual darkness reigned +upon it. It was an unnavigable morass and a confusion; so said Hesiod, +Pindar, and Euripides, voicing the beliefs of their time. + +There was one race that without fear put forth upon the sea. This was +the Phœnicians, and their rich African colony, the Carthaginians. Their +adventures beyond the Pillars of Hercules brought profit to them, and +they saw to it that the tidings of them should bring dismay to others. +A Phœnician fleet sent out by Necho, a Pharaoh of the XXXVIth dynasty, +seems to have sailed around Africa. About B.C. 500 a Carthaginian fleet +under Hanno explored the African west coast as far as the mouths of +the Senegal and Gambia. At nearly the same time another Carthaginian +fleet under Himilco discovered the British Isles, but it brought back +depressing stories. The islands were four months’ distant from the +Straits of Gibraltar, and the voyage thither was through waters haunted +by frightful monsters and thick with entangling seaweed, where wild +storms and protracted calms succeeded one another. + +These were not true tales, but other nations believed them, and the +seafaring Semites were permitted to build up trading stations along +the coasts of the outer ocean--in western Africa, in Lusitania, in the +Scilly Islands, and in Cornwall. None challenged their monopoly of +the tin trade of the Cassiterides. They covered their tracks so that +whoever had the temerity to test their fables, or seek to tap their +sources of raw material, would not know whither to go. Strabo tells +how the Carthaginians concealed from everyone the passage to the Tin +Islands: “When the Romans followed a certain shipmaster, that they also +might find the market, the shipmaster of jealousy purposely ran his +vessel upon a shoal, leading on those who followed him into the same +destructive disaster. He himself escaped by means of a fragment of the +ship, and received from the state the value of the cargo he had lost.” + +According to Eratosthenes, the Carthaginians went further: “They drown +any strangers who sail past on their voyage to Sardinia or to the +Pillars.” Thus through piracy, stratagem, and fable they maintained +their monopoly on the waters of the west, and for once Greek curiosity +played into a rival’s hands. Tyrian and Punic marvel tales were +elaborated and adorned by the poets of Attica, until everyone felt that +a journey beyond the Pillars was a thing not to be undertaken. All that +the earlier Greeks knew, even of the western Mediterranean, was that +near it was a mountain called Atlas on which the sky rested, and that +the world ended at the pillars set up by Hercules. + +One Greek was determined to learn more, and see if his countrymen could +not also profit from the tin and amber trades. The journey of Pytheas +of Massilia, at about B.C. 333, along the coasts of northern Europe +is one of the noteworthy scientific expeditions of history. He is the +first to speak of Thule. He found where amber came from. He noted that +the cereals gradually disappeared as one traveled north, that the +northern grain was threshed in barns instead of upon open threshing +floors, and that fermented drinks there were made from corn and honey. +In a peculiar passage he asserted that beyond Britain there was neither +earth, air, nor sea, but a mixture of all three--something like the +element which held the universe together. This substance, which he +compared to the jellyfish, rendered navigation impossible and led the +Romans later to name those waters the Sluggish Sea. The apparently +fabulous statement, made on hearsay, has been interpreted as referring +to the dense fogs of the northern seas, to the blended effects of +mist and light, and to the broken ice or slush that floats there in a +translucent state. The reference to the jellyfish may be either to its +translucence or its luminosity. + +All that Pytheas reported of northern Europe was discredited. How, asks +Polybius, could a private individual conduct such a vast expedition +with his narrow means? Strabo accuses the Massilian of having forged +his tales, “making use of his acquaintance with astronomy and +mathematics to fabricate his false narration.” His complete vindication +is the work of modern scholarship. + +The next report of consequence from the outer seas comes nearly three +centuries later and was made to Sertorius, the Marian general under +whom for a time Spain maintained its independence of Rome. A tale of +the Fortunate Islands--probably of the Canaries--drifted in through the +Straits and found the great soldier weary of life in camp and field. +Two sailors had arrived from islands which they described as about +twelve hundred miles west of the coast of Africa. Rains seldom fell +there, they said. The dews watered the earth, which yielded its fruits +in abundance without the labor of man. The seasons were temperate, +the air was serene and pleasant, and soft winds blowing from the west +and south brought days of bright moist weather. Even the barbarians +believed that this was the seat of the blessed. + +There was that in the jaded commander which lifted to the thought of +new horizons. Sertorius, says Plutarch, was seized with a wonderful +passion for these islands and had an extreme desire to go and live +there in peace and quietness, safe from oppression and unending wars. +But the Cilician pirates, who were his allies, wanted not peace, but +spoils. So the remainder of his life was spent in wars and government, +and the world was denied an adventure instinct with romance and +pregnant with the potencies of great discovery. + +With the voyage of Polybius in the fleet of Scipio along the west +African coast, the campaigns of Cæsar in Gaul and Britain and the +reduction of both into imperial provinces, even the incurious Roman +became possessed of adequate geographical knowledge of the western +coasts of Europe and the waters near them. This knowledge, however, was +tinctured with the marvelous, and was not long retained. Strabo, for +example, pictures the men of the Scilly, or Tin, Islands as wearing +black cloaks and tunics reaching to the feet, and as walking with +staves, thus “resembling the Furies we see in tragic representations.” +He must have meant the Druids. + +In the same century in which the legions were withdrawn from Britain, +Procopius, the foremost historian of the Eastern Roman Empire, was +born. Yet in that century of dissolution most of what the ancient world +had learned of the coasts and waters of the Atlantic was forgotten. +The western ocean had been a domain over which mists of ignorance and +superstition hovered, sometimes rising for a moment of distant vision, +sometimes falling like a blank curtain. In the sixth century A.D. they +drew so closely to the shores of Europe that even England was lost +behind them. It had ceased to be a Roman province and was become a land +of ghosts. + +Procopius tells his story with due note of its dreamlike quality; and +yet, he says, numberless men vouch for its truth. It is the story of +the English Channel become the ferry of souls. The fisher folk on the +continental side are subject to the Franks, but pay no tribute, because +it is their task in regular turn to transport the souls of the dead to +Britain. Those on duty for each night keep indoors until a knocking is +heard and a mysterious voice summons them. Arising from sleep, they go +down to the beach, where they find strange boats awaiting them. These +seem to be empty, but when they seize the oars and push off they find +the gunwales only an inch above the water. In silence they make the +journey and in an hour find themselves on the opposite shore, although +their own skiffs could scarcely cross in a night and a day. When the +keels grate on the beach, suddenly the boats ride high on the waves. +There is none to greet them, but again a voice is heard, announcing the +name and station of the spectral passengers. + +Thus the end of the ancient world found men knowing only a little more +about the western ocean than they did at the beginning. The chief +advance over the Homeric age was that they knew it was an ocean and not +a circumfluent river. The old idea was not dead that it was a morass +made unnavigable by seaweed and mud, too thick and too shallow for +sailing ships to venture upon. This notion was fostered by observing +the unfamiliar phenomena of ebb tides, with the long windrows of weed +and the wide expanses of muddy flats they laid bare upon the coasts. +Plato had deepened the belief and provided a reason for it in his story +of Atlantis. “That is the reason,” he concludes, “why the sea in those +parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is such a quantity +of shallow mud in the way.” + +Men had no such notions, or fears of the open seas to the east, +although they were careful not to get too far from their shores. +They knew that inhabited lands were beyond them, and that by not +impossible shores and islands they could reach these. The Periplus of +the Erythræan Sea had full accounts of the coasts from Aden clear +to the mouth of the Ganges, and reports also on Indo-China and China +itself. There were pirate-haunted archipelagoes and islands tenanted +by the monsters of Oriental fancy. But these were Eastern waters and +it behooved men to know something about them and to take a chance upon +them, for a great traffic moved across them--silken fabrics, spices, +pepper, gold and silver and precious stones from the hidden storehouses +of Asia. Wherefore men faced the seas of sunrise with no such fears as +invaded them when they looked out upon the empty and spectral Atlantic. + +Another race beside the Phœnician was unafraid of the western sea. This +was the Northmen, of whom it was said that they never slept under a +smoke-blackened roof, nor ate and drank at any hearth. Their tradition +looked outward, where that of the Mediterranean races looked inward. +The ocean was the whale path of their skalds, and their hearts sang +along it. Its waters carried the challenge and promise of the present, +not the glooms or pallors of the hereafter. When their long boats drove +through the Straits of Gibraltar into the old Roman world to pillage +and rule there, it was the return visit of the men of the outer spaces, +ferocious and blithe sea-rovers who thus requited the trafficking and +timid excursions of Phœnician and Roman into the seas that washed the +continent. + +The very names of Viking chieftains--Sigurd Snake-eye, Thord the +Yeller, Ottar the Swart, Harold Blue-tooth, Eric Blood-ax, Thorfinn +Skull-cleaver, Sweyn Split-beard--sketched a hardihood that made light +of supernatural terrors upon the sea and knew none other. These men of +the viks or fjords rid the coasts of Europe in the eighth and ninth +centuries of every fear except of themselves. Then they went westward +to America. + +There is a bolder note in their geographical tradition than in aught +that had been before. One catches the swing of the Atlantic surges and +the pulses of people at home there in the chapter, “On the Situation of +Countries,” which begins the chronicle of the _Heimskring’la_: “It is +said that the earth circle which the human race inhabits is much cut +asunder with bights and bays, and that great seas run into the land +from the outer ocean. Of a certainty, it is known that a sea goes in at +the Norva Sound (Gibraltar) right up to the land of Jerusalem; and from +that sea, again, a long bay, which is called the Black Sea, goes off +to the northeast, and it divides the two World-Ridings, that is to say, +Asia on the east from Europe on the west. To the north of the Black +Sea lies Sweden the Great, or the Cold (Russia); and this is reckoned +by some as not less in size than the Great Saracen Land, or even the +Great Land of the Bluemen (the Moors). And the northern parts of this +Sweden are unpeopled, by reason of the frost and the cold, just as the +southern parts of Blue-Land are waste because of the sun’s burning. +Mighty lordships are there in this Sweden, and people of manifold kind +and speech; there are giants and there are dwarfs--aye, and Bluemen, +and folk of many kinds and marvellous, and wild beasts, and dragons +wondrous great.” + +When the pagan Northmen became Christians their ferocity was moderated, +and their spirit of enterprise, as it seemed, almost extinguished. +Their old contempt of the sea did not pass into the veins of the +peoples over whom for a time they had dominion. Rather the confused and +credulous views of the churchmen became their own, henceforth occupying +the entire field of European thought. Adam of Bremen, eleventh-century +churchman, pictures the sea as his time conceived it--the old +forbidding canvas of classic legend framed with the icicles of Gothic +discovery. + +Terra Firma, says Adam, is entirely surrounded by the infinite and +terrible ocean. The northern spaces of the deep are covered with ice +and darkness and this expanse is called the frozen, glutinous, or +darkling sea. It is stiff with salt and covered with black ice, formed +long before and so dry that it will burn like peat. + +The German bishop even borrows a tale from the Northmen to engender +terrors to which they had been stranger. Their king, Harald Hardrada, +the most daring of men, had reports from Frisian mariners which caused +him to set sail for the limits of the earth. In the darkness he +arrived at the North Pole--a profound vortex into which the ebb tides +were sucked and out of which the flood tides were disgorged. His ship +plunged down into the boiling chaos, but the sea which took could also +give, and the outward heave of its vast bosom flung the vessel back +again beyond the clutch of the whirlpool. + +[Illustration: ROARING FORTIES _By_ F. J. Waugh] + +As late as 1406 a chronicler tells of English ships, bound for +Bordeaux, which penetrated an unfrequented sea where four vessels from +Lynn were swallowed up in a whirlpool, which thrice a day drew in and +cast out the flood. When fishermen of that time went a few miles from +land they used only haaf-words--a sea speech in which persons, animals, +and things had other names than what they bore ashore; so might they +avoid offense to whatever was astir in the deep. + +It is refreshing to turn from the gloomy imaginings of the West to +Indian and Chinese legends of the Seven Seas. In the quainter fancy +that animates them, at least the note of fear is missing. From the +Puranas, Gerini has made these identifications: The Sea of Salt Water +surrounds India. The Sea of Sugar Cane Juice surrounds Burma. The Sea +of Wine surrounds the Malay Peninsula. The Sea of Clarified Butter +surrounds the Sunda Archipelago. The Sea of Milk surrounds Siam and +Cambodia. The Sea of Curds or Whey surrounds South China. The Sea of +Fresh Water surrounds North China and Mongolia. + +Fear of the ocean, and above all of the Atlantic, is, however, the +distinctive note in mediæval Arab geography. This was perhaps a native +growth of the desert, and its spirit is in the Koran passage which +speaks of “black night upon the deep, which wave on wave doth cover, +cloud upon cloud, gloom upon gloom.” Arab merchants and pilgrims +ranged to the ends of the Moslem world. Save Marco Polo, Ibn Batuta +was the earth’s greatest and most curious traveler. To the Arab port +of Bassorah, sailors from the Nile, the Mediterranean, and even the +China Sea brought the gossip of mankind. Yet a dread of the deep sounds +through the works of Arab geographers, as through the saga of Sindbad, +with the effect of a refrain. + +Around the fair meadows of the world swung the terrible ocean, the Sea +of Darkness as the Arabs called it. To Massoudy the Atlantic was the +Green Sea of Gloom. None dwelt there, none could sail there, none knew +to what infinite distances it reached. Ibn Khaldun described it as +the boundless, impenetrable limit of the west. Other lights of Islam +spoke of the whirlpools into which vessels were drawn, and argued that +even if sailors knew the direction of the winds they did not know +whither the winds would carry them; nor could they carry them anywhere, +for there was nowhere to go, and in the realms of mist no prospect +of getting back. Sane men would not attempt a venture out of sight +of land, said certain of the doctors. To plan such a journey, it was +asserted, was evidence of an unsound mind; to embark upon it was ground +for depriving a man of his civil rights. + +Idrisi, Mohammedan savant in the service of King Roger of Sicily in +the twelfth century and the greatest of Arab geographers, utters the +authoritative Arab word upon the sea: “The ocean encircles the ultimate +bounds of the inhabited earth, and all beyond it is unknown. No one +has been able to verify anything concerning it, on account of its +difficult and perilous navigation, its great obscurity, its profound +depth and frequent tempests; through fear of its mighty fishes and its +haughty winds; yet there are many islands in it, some peopled, others +uninhabited. There is no mariner who dares to enter its deep waters; or +if any have done so, they have merely kept along its coasts, fearful of +departing from them.” + +Whether this was in some part a literary convention--a gesture of +geography--or the expression of an unshakable dread, the sentiment +limited the service of Islam to mankind. The Arab coasting trade had +reached as far as China and as far down the eastern side of Africa +as Zanzibar. But this people, so resourceful on land, never pushed +their coasting adventures around the Cape of Good Hope, as Prince +Henry and his Portuguese successors did from a farther north on the +other side of Africa. Nor did they attempt, as Columbus did, the +crossing of a great sea. Nor did they essay, as Magellan did, to prove +by a circumnavigation the rotundity of the earth on which their own +geographers had spoken with the clearest voices of the Middle Ages. + +A group of remarkable legends illustrates the later annals of the +western ocean and carries them on to the Columbian adventure. Idrisi +tells a story of the eight Deluded Folk, or Lisbon Wanderers, who went +out to sea when the wind blew from the east and for more than a month +were carried before it. They reached an island supposed to be one of +the Canaries, where they found a people who spoke Arabic and who sent +them back when a wind arose from the west. St. Brendan voyaged for +seven years among seven islands of the west, according to a story +widely circulated in the eleventh century. The tenth-century tale of +the island of the Seven Spanish Bishops who had left Spain to escape +Moslem rule was revived by a Portuguese ship captain who claimed to +have reached the island; but when Prince Henry bade him go back for +proofs, the romancer took refuge in flight. + +It may have been that the Phœnicians made atonement at last for the +fables of paralyzing fear which they had spread abroad, and on the +outer verge of the Old World in the days of their decline left their +secret as a legacy for the bold to profit from. The scene is Corvo, +westernmost of the Islands of the Sun, as the Azores were called; +and the passage, though from a Portuguese writer of the seventeenth +century, refers to events a generation before the Columbian discovery. +Says Manoel de Faria y Souza: “On the summit of a mountain called +the Crow was found the statue of a man on horseback, without saddle, +bareheaded, the left hand on the horse’s mane, the right pointing to +the west. It stood on a slab of the same stone as itself; beneath it, +on a rock, were engraved some letters in an unknown language.” + +One explanation of the legend is given by a traveler of the last +century, who said that the superstitious folk of the island fancied +they saw in a promontory which reaches far into the sea the semblance +of a person with his hand stretched out toward the New World. This, +they declared, was the work of Providence, and Columbus read the sign +aright. But the tale may not so easily be interpreted and dismissed. +A hoard of Carthaginian coins, so runs a report which Humboldt +accepts, was discovered in Corvo in 1749; and there are other stories +of equestrian statues of Carthaginian design erected upon Atlantic +islands. Against the utter drama of the legend--the parting gesture of +good will of a bold and subtle race of ancient time--may be set another +legend, more in keeping with the superstition and fears of the Middle +Ages. This was no equestrian statue pointing westward, if the Pizzani +map of 1367 was to be believed. It was the figure of a saint with his +back to the sunset and his outstretched hand warning mariners away from +the unnavigable seas behind him. + +The monkish monument was the parable of a twilight time. To the +fifteenth century the deep was an eerie domain where the creatures of +pagan and Christian story couched upon the ocean floor, showed their +unholy shapes among the waves, chattered on desert island strands, +and wove their enchantments in the mists. In the north the witches of +Lapland raised storms and wrecked the ships that passed their shores. +To the south none might sail beyond Cape Bojador on the African Gold +Coast. Who did so was turned from white to black, and never came +back. There the flaming sword of the sun was laid across the paths of +the sea. What was beyond it was boiling brine and air heated into a +flame--a landless firmament of water and a starless firmament of sky. + +Looking westward, men cowered before visions of the Hand of Satan, +thrust upward from far horizons to drag ships into the depths. Or “the +wind that blows between the worlds” might carry mariners away on a +journey from which was no returning. Or currents, setting always in one +direction, might sweep them into illimitable space. If the world was +flat, one might sail off its edge. If it was round, its very rotundity +would present a sort of mountain up which no ship could climb on the +backward voyage. As to the Atlantic races, the mediæval maps told +one what to expect. What chance of succor, or agreeable converse, +or a profitable traffic from spouting monsters, satyrs, sirens and +conch-blowing tritons? Could one warm his hands at the witch-fires of +the sea? + +Out of these gray forebodings the ships of Columbus, with one stout +heart and many questioning ones aboard, sailed into the unknown, as +vessels move through the sluggish dark before the dawn breeze springs +up and the sky reddens toward sunrise. Ere long the caravels were +steering among isles fanned by soft breezes and bathed in tropical +sunshine, and naked, kindly peoples were hailing the mariners as +visitors from the skies. Morning had broken at last upon the western +ocean, and in its level rays a path lay sparkling clear across the +sea--the path of enterprise, of conquest, of gold, the path of +victorious dreams. Along that highway hardy spirits soon would press +on great adventures. In the stead of ghost-ridden hearth-keepers, +mumblers of old fable, shrinkers from the outer surges, there were +men who dared go round the earth in flimsy barks and lead a handful of +followers against the haughty empires of the Cordilleras. + +Terror was dead upon the deep. Somewhat of fable remained. + + + + +Chapter XIX. The Sargasso Sea + + +If there were no Sargasso Sea there would still have been a legend of +one to satisfy the demand of the mind, in a world of change and motion, +for a place where there was neither. Conscious of the flight of time, +noting the flow of rivers, the wind’s wandering, and the climbing and +falling of the waves of the ocean, the mind has created realms where +time stands still, countries of morning calm and afternoon sunshine, +and spaces where the pulse of the sea is asleep. Peace there was in +the grave, but what was sought was a paradox--something alive and +yet motionless in time and space. There were stagnant pools in the +imagination, grotesqueries, junk heaps, a sense of silences and of slow +decay that was no decay at all but the serenity of noon in a swamp. The +outward symbol of these moods men would have in the world about them. + +For uncounted ages that symbol had been a fact of the mid-Atlantic. +People must have known of the Sargasso thousands of years ago, though +the memory of the voyages in which they learned of it is no more, and +the tales that seem to speak of it are not accepted as facts. Plato +had told of the thick waters that rolled over the sunken Atlantis, +preventing the passage of ships. When Columbus entered this sea and +saw tunny fish playing about his caravels, he remembered a story of +Aristotle that certain ships of the Semites, coasting beyond the +Pillars of Hercules, were driven before a gale from the east until they +reached a weedy sea, resembling sunken islands, among which were tunny +fish. On his voyage to Britain Himilco reported that he found vast +fields of floating weeds which retarded his vessels and brought them to +danger. + +The ancient view of the Atlantic was that it was a region of baffling +calms and shallow water and mud and seaweed. This was based on Punic +reports, and the Carthaginians told such tales of the open seas +as would frighten other nations from them. Yet their distorted +statements had so much of truth intermixed with error that it is hard +to believe they intended altogether falsely, and were vindicated only +by coincidence when a grassy sea, greater than their dominions at their +widest, was found west of the Azores. With flagrant exaggeration, +however, they had spoken of sea grasses with needle-like tops, a sort +of marine wheat with stalks as close together as in sheaves of grain. +In B.C. 300 Theophrastus had written of wide-leaved weeds that drifted +from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean. In his poetic account of +the African west coast Festus Avienus described in detail the weedy +impediments to navigation, using, so he says, the journals of Punic +ships. Scylax recited that the sea beyond Cerne on the coast of +Mauretania could not be navigated “in consequence of its shallowness, +its muddiness, and its sea grass.” With easy exuberance of fancy Lucian +had told in his _True History_ of encountering a floating forest in +the sea and of sailing right over the tops of the trees toward “that +continent which we supposed lies opposite our own”--a reference which +gains in significance from its casual character. + +Though most of them have been lost, there were strange Sargasso +legends in the ancient world, based on reports of floating seaweed and +the claims of captains that this had put them in hazard. What weedy +growths could do in restless water men knew by observing their effects +in rivers, notably on the upper Nile. The envoys of Nero had been +halted there by a sea of floating vegetation; a long line of travelers +thereafter had a like experience, and a tragedy of this floating +greenery is of our own time. By the blocking of the Nile channel in +1880 Gessi was held prisoner for three months with five companies of +soldiers and a multitude of freed slaves, and most of them died before +help came. + +The burden of these old fables was of a stagnant death in silent spaces +of the sea where nothing ever happened. The weedy continent was a trap +which closed in upon ships and suffered no escape, even though with +double banks of oars the rowers strove. Death claimed the crew, and +slowly the sea claimed the galleys. Marine plants crept over bow and +stern and writhed into the cabins and climbed the masts and swathed all +in a green decay; and silently, as the timbers parted below and the +weight of vegetation massed above, the vessel sank, perhaps into some +harbor of the lost Atlantis. + +A prison for lost souls, the St. Brendan legend calls the grassy sea +of the west. The ferment was working in men’s imaginations. There must +be a spectral haven in the sea, a place into which vessels might come, +out of which they could not go. For a while in the waters of the east +this was the Island of Lodestone, which drew and held to itself all +craft that had iron in their timbers. In Maundeville the legend of +the Sargasso Sea is full blown, though with him it is truth--travel +truth--of a magnetic rock. + +“I myself,” he said, “have seen afar off in that Sea as though it had +been a great Isle full of Trees and Bush, full of Thorns and Briars, +great Plenty. And the Shipmen told us, that all that was of Ships that +were drawn thither by the Adamants, for the Iron that was in them. And +from the Rottenness and other Things that were within the Ships, grew +such Bush, and Thorns and Briars and green Grass and such manner of +Things, and from the Masts and the Sail-yards it seemed a great Wood or +a Grove. And such Rocks be in many Places thereabouts. And therefore +dare not the Merchants pass there, but if they know well the Passages, +or else that they have good Pilots. And also they dread the long Way +more far by many dreadful Days’ journeys than Cathay.” + +Thus the Port of Missing Ships came into view as the creation of +classic and mediæval legend, to which modern exploration had given a +sure place in the sea. It fulfilled a stagnant something in the souls +of men. It offered harbor to certain of their dreams. It yielded a +last resting place to derelicts that had wandered far, among them the +derelicts of fancy. It gave reply to questions that arose whenever +the argosies went out and did not come back. Against the eternal +restlessness and fated journeyings of the Flying Dutchman it summoned +up the picture of a fated and eternal calm. It added to the terrors of +the sea a horror that was half poetry. This became poetry altogether +when men had ceased to believe and yet wanted to believe, and in their +art evoked the vision of ruinous hulks of Tyrian, Roman, and Spanish +ships side by side upon a spectral main, silent witnesses of all the +maritime adventures of mankind. + +The actuality behind the mask of legend, a vast expanse of sea in the +Atlantic, in many places resembling an inundated meadow, Columbus +discovered on his first voyage, when for three weeks he traversed it. +But instead of having misgivings, he rejoiced at what he conceived to +be evidence that land was not far distant. On one of the floating weed +masses he saw a white tropical bird of a kind that does not sleep upon +the sea. His journal speaks little of the apprehensions of the sailors, +but his son Fernando recites these--their fears that the weeds, which +plainly retarded the ships, would halt them altogether; that the +marine growths might conceal the lurking rocks, shoals and quicksands +of a shallowing ocean; and that, run aground or fatally entangled in +gulfweed, the ships might rot and fall apart far from any shore or any +hope of aid. Memories of the Atlantis legend raised in their minds the +menace of drowned lands and the monumental ruins of a lost continent. + +To Columbus, however, the Sargasso Sea stood, not for a lost continent, +but for the boundary between the worlds. Where it began, west of the +Azores, the New World began also, and the Old World ended. This was +no theoretical meridian, he thought, but a true physical line of +demarcation drawn by nature between the hemispheres. He could sense a +difference in climatic conditions in crossing the line, and the compass +seemed to show magnetic deviations. On his return he believed that he +could determine his longitude by observing the first floating masses +of tangled seaweed. So persuasive was his imaginative force, so great +his influence in Europe, that soon after his arrival there the eastern +boundary of the weedy sea became the globe’s first, and last, political +boundary of an all-embracing kind. Title to newly discovered lands +east of it was awarded by a papal bull to Portugal. Title to newly +discovered lands west of it was awarded to Spain. + +Oviedo gave this expanse the name of Sargasso Sea, from Sargaço, the +Portuguese word for seaweed. It was freely traversed by the explorers +who followed Columbus. The world-rounding expedition of Drake reports +that for five days “wee sayled through the sea of Weedes, about the +space of one hundred leagues, being under the Tropicke of Cancer.” The +size and exact location of the sea were long a matter of conjecture. +Varenius, for example, placed its northern limit opposite the +mid-Sahara and its southern opposite the Cape of Good Hope. The note +of Humboldt in his _Views of Nature_, published near the middle of +the nineteenth century, is the first scientific account of it. This +was based on rather scanty observations of English and Dutch sailing +vessels which took a course through it from the West Indies to Europe. +Humboldt thought the Sargasso Sea comprised two weed banks, the larger +one west of the Azores, the smaller between the Bermudas and Bahamas, +with a transverse band connecting them. Fuller reports, since made by +steamers, with the careful records of the German Hydrographic Office, +have enabled scientists, and particularly Doctor Krümmel, to correct +these conclusions and plot the true outlines of the sea. + +The Equatorial Current sets west from the coast of Africa. The Gulf +Stream sets north and east from the Straits of Florida--still following +the direction, Donnelly ingeniously contended, that was given it by the +lost continent of Atlantis, around which it flowed. The two currents, +moving in nearly opposite directions, impart a circular motion to +the waters that lie between, so that all things adrift over an area +of millions of square miles, seaweed, driftwood, and hulks of ships +are drawn toward a common center, which may be called the floating +storehouse of the North Atlantic. Banks of weed are found as far west +as the Bermudas, and this outer grassy sea covers an expanse of about +three million square miles, or as much as continental United States. +But the true Sargasso Sea of dead waters, where gulfweed is found +thickly, covers an area of about one million two hundred thousand +square miles, or the size of the Mississippi Valley. It is an ellipse +with the Tropic of Cancer as its longer axis. The sea stretches through +fifteen degrees of latitude and more than twenty-five degrees of +longitude, the two foci of the ellipse being near 45° and 70° west. + +With the shift of winds and calms the weedy sea itself shifts somewhat, +but its mean location remains unchanged. Humboldt was convinced that in +his time it was precisely where Columbus had found it three and a half +centuries before, and Maury’s study of marine observations leads to the +conclusion that there has been no change in the last fifty years. Of +all the larger aspects of nature this is perhaps the only one that is +just as it was in the time of Columbus. During thousands of years, when +the ocean was battering at the coasts of the continents, breaking down +or building up the shore; when earthquakes and volcanoes were causing +islands to appear and disappear; when the wind and rain were at their +unending tasks of bearing everything terrestrial into the deeps; and +when races of men were remodeling some small portions of the earth’s +surface with roads and ports and bridges, the Sargasso Sea may have +been the only thing immune from change. This eternal vortex might well +be called the true Navel of the World. + +Even now, when many ships ply these waters, and after the records +of centuries seem to have assured that there are no reefs or shoals +under their greenery, travelers admit a sense of uneasiness as their +craft plunges into what seems a sunken meadow. Nearer view, however, +discloses that the patches of vegetation are discontinuous. The larger +single masses may be several acres in extent, or may not be more than a +hundred feet across. The weeds commonly lie in long parallel rows that +tail to the prevailing winds. By noting the rows, the mariner can tell +whether the wind has been blowing steadily, or has recently shifted, +and in which direction. The lines are sometimes so near together as to +seem one mass, or they may be as far apart as two hundred feet. In some +places the weeds in them barely touch, in others they are so crowded +that their tops are thrust a little distance above the water. + +A distinctive fauna, sparse in species but unnumbered in individuals, +has been developed among these masses. The floating berries are thickly +incrusted with white polyzoa. About sixty animal species peculiar +to the area have been noted, among them small fish, shrimps, crabs, +molluscs, gastropods, and one insect. The fishes have developed a +strong protective resemblance to the shapeless weeds among which they +feed. Strangest of these is the _Antennarius marmoratus_, a little +creature not more than four inches long and indistinguishable from a +plant spray. It seems half adapted for walking; its fins, which suggest +the extremities of four-footed creatures, have real toes, and the front +fins have the form of arms with elbows and fingered hands. + +The Prince of Monaco conducted a scientific expedition into these +waters in 1905, and in 1911 the United States Hydrographic Service sent +a party of scientists for a three months’ study of them; but adequate +knowledge is still wanting. + +There is a Sargasso question: How does the weed get into the sea? The +old theory was that it is a true oceanic plant. To those who held to +the belief in a sunken continent the grassy domain was a sort of canopy +suspended over it, the flying banners of the lost Atlantis. There is +still good scientific opinion of which the French are the leaders, that +the weed grows in the area where it is found, reproducing itself by +fissure, the parent stem throwing off branches which multiply in turn. +The bulk of scientific opinion outside of France is that these meadows +of the sea are the spoil of the neighboring islands and continents. The +gulfweed which covers them, it is held, has been torn from the shores +of northern Brazil, of the West Indies, and of North America as far as +Cape Cod, and has drifted into this vortex--a journey that may take +almost half a year. The French contend that even without these admitted +contributions from America there would still be a weedy sea about the +Tropic of the Crab. + +From time to time commercial enterprise has canvassed the possibilities +of a Sargasso adventure. It may be that a profitable fishery will +yet be established there with the Azores for its base, and that the +kelp will be converted into potash for fertilizer or for gunpowder. +Thus would the arts of war and peace draw support from the sea, that, +if legend speaks truly, sleeps over the continent which spread them +through the antediluvian world. + + + + +Chapter XX. Atlantis + + +Under the Sargasso Sea, if a few accomplished thinkers, a somewhat +larger number of speculative scientists, and a host of dreamers are +right, lies the lost Atlantis. This legend of a continent beyond the +Pillars of Hercules, which reached a high level of civilization, +extended its rule along both shores of the Mediterranean, sent its +armies to battle with Egypt and Athens, and “in a day and a fatal +night” sank beneath the sea eleven thousand years ago, is the most +haunting and poignant thing that has come down from antiquity. + +The story derives from Plato, who attributes it to his relative, Solon, +who had it from a priest of Egypt. It is told briefly and completely +in the _Timæus_ and with much greater detail in the _Critias_; +unfortunately, the latter portion of this work is wanting and the +narrative ends abruptly, before recounting the cataclysm outlined in +the earlier work. Both are built upon the conversation between Solon +and the Egyptian priest. Discoursing on the ignorance of the Greeks +concerning their own history, the priest said that they knew nothing +of a thing which was preserved in the sacred books of the temple at +Sais--that, nine thousand years before, the Athenians had repelled an +invading force which threatened the conquest of Europe and Asia. This +force had come in through the Straits of Gibraltar from the Atlantic +Sea, “which was at that time navigable.” + +Beyond the Straits, according to the _Timæus_, lay the island of +Atlantis, greater than Libya and Asia (Minor) together. Other islands +surrounded it, and farther west was a continent. Between Atlantis and +this continent rolled an ocean so great that, compared with it, the +land-locked Mediterranean was merely a harbor. A powerful dynasty of +kings arose on the island, subjugated the surrounding archipelagoes +and a part of the unnamed continent beyond, and in the Old World +swayed Libya up to Egypt and the northern shore of the Mediterranean +as far as Tuscany. They undertook to complete their conquest of the +Mediterranean coasts, but the Athenians, though deserted by their +allies, beat off their ships. While the fleet from beyond the Straits +was still in the Inland Sea, it would seem, the island of Atlantis was +sunk, and the earthquakes that submerged it and the monstrous waves +that followed spread ruin all along the Mediterranean shores. + +Here is the passage in which Plato records the concluding words of +the priest of Solon: “But after (the battle) there occurred violent +earthquakes and floods, and in a single day and night of rain all your +warlike men in a body sunk into the earth, and the island of Atlantis +in like manner disappeared and was sunk beneath the sea. And that is +the reason why the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, +because there is such a quantity of shallow mud in the way; and this +was caused by the subsidence of the island.... There are remaining in +small islets only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be called, +all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the +mere skeleton of the country being left.” + +The longer account in the _Critias_ describes the civilization of +Atlantis. It begins, as all chronicles used to do, with the affairs of +the gods, and their amorous interest in the daughters of men (_Gen._ +vi: 2). The sea god Poseidon fell in love with Cleito, a mortal island +maiden, and she bore him five sets of twins. The ten sons became kings, +each ruler of a tenth part of Atlantis, but all subject to the eldest +son, Atlas. The capital of the island became his abode, as it had been +his mother’s before him. Poseidon himself had laid out the palace +compound, making alternate zones of sea and land; “there were two of +land and three of water which he turned as with a lathe out of the +center of the island.” + +At this point in the account, the divine figures disappear and it +becomes seemingly a straight historical narrative. Its picture of +the capital is more exact in its topographical, architectural, and +engineering detail than many that have come down to us of the older +capitals of Asia, or than any biblical picture of Jerusalem. The laws, +religion, and arts of the people are all adequately noticed. + +There was a barrier of lofty mountains around the shores of the +island, their flanks sloping precipitously to the sea. In the upland +valleys were rich and populous villages. The middle of the island was +a great and fertile plain surrounded by a ditch one hundred feet deep. +Abundant rivers coursed the plain and the moisture of the rainy season +was supplemented in the summer by a system of aqueducts. In the center +of the plain was a magnificent city. + +Assuming that this is no dream geography, it is necessary to determine +the size of Atlantis, and in doing so to reconcile a conflict of +statements in Plato’s story. He speaks of it as a large island, though +small as compared with a land domain west of it, which “may be most +truly called a continent”; yet he says Atlantis was larger than Libya +and Asia combined. The tale becomes incredible if Libya receives its +common Greek extension as the whole of Africa, and if Asia is taken in +the larger sense; for such an island there would not be room in the +Atlantic. The passage is brought into harmony with the context if other +ancient definitions are followed, so that Libya is made to mean the +district immediately west of Egypt and Asia to mean Asia Minor. This +would give the legendary Atlantis a territory of perhaps three hundred +thousand square miles, or about twice that of the state of California. + +There are precise figures for the great central plain and they +harmonize with such an estimate of the island area. The plain was +three hundred and forty miles long by two hundred and thirty wide--in +other words, exactly the size of the state of Washington, but with +its greater dimension from south to north. The topography of the +whole island suggests that of California, although its shape was more +compact. Its central plain lay within its mountain barriers as the San +Joaquin and Sacramento valleys lie between the Sierras and the Coast +Range. And in its mineral riches, its mild climate, its system of +irrigation, and in the products of its fields, orchards, and vineyards +it was very like the Pacific coast state. + +“Whatever fragrant things there are in the earth,” says Plato, “whether +roots or herbage or woods, grew and thrived in that land.” He mentions +melons--“fruits with a hard rind”--chestnuts, and “the pleasant kinds +of dessert which console us after dinner when we are full and tired of +eating,” which may mean, among other things, grapes and oranges; and +all these “the sacred island lying beneath the sun brought forth fair +and wondrous in infinite abundance.” In this picture there is but one +unfamiliar figure. Herds of elephants roved there, where California can +show only the fossil remains of the mastodon. + +In the account of the capital city it is illuminating to recur to the +Pacific state, for the metropolis of Atlantis lay in the midst of a +mountain-girdled plain, and yet, like Sacramento, had access to the +sea, in this case by a ship canal perhaps connecting with a river. +If one can imagine the buildings and grounds of the Panama-Pacific +Exposition of 1915 with the wharves and commerce of San Francisco +removed to Sacramento, one may glimpse the legendary metropolis. In +the center of the city, on an artificial island, were temples and +palaces like those of the exposition, but of a barbaric splendor. +Greatest of these was the temple to Poseidon, a structure about as +large as one of the palaces surrounding the Court of the Universe at +the exposition, and doubtless of no greater height, for this was a +region of earthquake, and within the temple was one statue that reached +quite to the roof. Its walls were silvered, with gilded pinnacles, +and under the ivory roof the interior blazed with gold and silver and +“orichalcum”--copper, or an alloy of it, and esteemed next to gold. + +The wall that encircled this inner island or citadel “flashed with the +red light of orichalcum.” There was a broad canal around it, and then +an encircling zone of land, about which was a wall sheeted with tin. +Around this was still another canal encircled by another land zone, and +here was a wall coated with brass, beside which ran a racecourse two +hundred yards wide where horses contended. Encircling this again was +the outermost canal. Beyond it lay the city. + +The buildings of the outer city, as well as those of its sacred +citadel, were of stones in three colors--white, black and red--which, +with all the minerals useful to man, were taken from the bosom of the +island. There were hot and cold springs, with baths and with pools +for horses and cattle; the surplus water was conveyed by aqueducts to +the grove of Poseidon. Around the harbor front were docks, triremes, +and naval stores. Back of them the plain was densely crowded with +habitations. The harbors were full of vessels, and merchants coming +from all parts who from their numbers kept up “a multitudinous sound of +human voices and din of all sorts night and day.” + +A copper column stood in the temple of Poseidon, on which the laws of +the land were graven. The chief of these were that the people should +not take up arms against one another, and that they should all come +to the rescue if anyone in any city attempted to overthrow the royal +house. On the plain and in the populous mountain valleys there was +a system of military service by districts and chiefs of districts, +somewhat like that of ancient Peru; and when Atlantis went to war ten +thousand chariots moved in front of its armies, and twelve hundred +vessels swept the sea lanes east and west. It was a powerful nation and +a happy--so long as the divine nature of their founder retained its +force among the people. Says Plato: + +“They despised everything but virtue, not caring for their present +state of life and thinking lightly on the possession of gold and +other property which seemed only a burden to them; neither were +they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their +self-control; but they were sober and saw clearly that all these goods +are increased by virtuous friendship with one another, and that by +excessive zeal for them, and honor of them, the good of them is lost +and friendship perishes with them.” + +At length, however, the divine nature in the Atlantines became diluted +by mortal admixture. They were filled with avarice, pride, the lusts +of the flesh; and “the fairest of their precious gifts” departed from +them. Base to men of insight, they still appeared to others as glorious +and blessed. In order to effect their chastisement and correction, +says Plato, returning to the mythological vein, a council of the gods +was called, and Zeus “spoke as follows.” What the Olympian said will +never be known, for here the _Critias_ ends, and for the fate of the +Atlantines one must recur to the _Timæus_. + +The mythical prologue and epilogue excepted, the whole account +reads as if the author believed it himself. It is singularly free +from fantasy--this is no Cloud-Cuckoo Land of an Aristophanes. The +transcriber of the legend was perhaps the largest mind of antiquity +and a man of unblemished character; and “strange but altogether true” +he calls his own story. He was, however, a constructive dreamer, and +in his _Republic_ he has given a detailed sketch of an ideal state. +Was this another essay of a like nature? Might not the narrative +carry further if it came from a man of less imaginative sweep--from +the contemporary Xenophon, or from Plutarch, both of them vivacious +chroniclers with their eyes on facts? Phædrus had said to Socrates, +“You can easily invent a tale of Egypt.” Has the great disciple of +Socrates done this? + +These questions are asked still, and antiquity asked them. Proclus in +his commentary on the _Timæus_ assumed that the legend was a symbol +of the contest between the primeval forces and the spirit of art and +science; he recites that Crantor, the first commentator, accepted it +as literal history and was ridiculed for it. Strabo and Pliny barely +mention the story. Thus Plutarch sets down the circumstances of its +relation: “Solon attempted in verse a large description, or rather +fabulous account of the Atlantic Island, which he had learned from the +wise men of Sais; but by reason of his age he did not go through with +it. Plato laid out magnificent courts and inclosures, and erected a +grand entrance to it, such as no other story, fable, or poem ever had. +But he began it late, he ended his life before the work, so that the +more the reader is delighted with the part that is written, the more +regret he has to find it unfinished.” + +There is evidence that at any rate the legend is not an invention +of Plato. It was claimed by Plato himself that the victory of the +Athenians over the Atlantines was depicted on one of the ceremonial +tunics which were borne in the midsummer festival of the Panathenæa. +Diodorus has a reference to this war. Ælian says that Theopompus heard +a similar story in Phrygia, in which, however, the island was called +Meropis. Proclus quotes from the _Æthiopica_ of Marcellus a tale of ten +islands in the outer sea, the inhabitants of which preserved the memory +of a large island that had ruled over the archipelago and was sacred to +Poseidon. + +The following are the main explanations, ancient and modern, of the +legend: 1. Atlantis was no island, but a part of either Europe or +Africa--the Iberian peninsula, or Senegal, for example--so remote from +Egypt as to seem an island to mariners who reached it after beating +about beyond the Straits. 2. Atlantis was Minoan Crete, resembling +Plato’s island in its configuration if not in its site; the ancient +Cretan civilization was destroyed about B.C. 1500, almost as completely +as if by a submergence in the sea. 3. “Atlantis is too obviously an +earlier and equally colossal Persia, western instead of eastern.” +4. Atlantis is pure fiction, arising, like the tales of Homer and +Hesiod, in the belief that the abodes of the heroes were in the extreme +west. 5. Atlantis is a variant of the old tradition of a Golden Age. +6. Atlantis and the Fortunate Islands and the Azores are one, but +tradition placed them too near the Straits, and the legend of a great +sunken island arose when no land was found where people thought land +should be. 7. Atlantis is another form of the solar myth--the setting +of the sun in the red ruin of evening, and the coming of dark upon the +deep. 8. Atlantis and the Republic are companion realms, the one no +less imaginary than the other, and each intended to illustrate Plato’s +conception of ideal polity. + +These are the conjectures of a skepticism which properly refuses to +believe that so great a thing has happened and left such slight traces +in monuments or in tradition. Yet there are some details in Plato’s +story not so easily disposed of, and they appear more distinctly when +Atlantis itself is erased from it. These are the islands on both sides +of the legendary continent, the impassable sea that covers its site, +the great ocean beyond it, and the continent in the west which hems in +that ocean. None of these things the men of Plato’s time knew of, but, +to give them their modern names, they seem to be Madeira, the Canaries, +the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores on the one side of the Sargasso +Sea, the West Indies on the other, the Sargasso Sea itself, the open +Atlantic, and the American continent. + +If the classic world had few and faint traditions of a sunken +continent and ignored them or dismissed them as idle tales, it had one +overmastering feeling that could not be called a superstition because +it never took a tangible form. The feeling was a blind terror of the +Atlantic Ocean, as if something dreadful had happened there, but so +long before that nobody knew what it was. + +Nothing has developed in Europe itself that makes Plato’s story of a +lost continent a whit more probable or less plausible than it was when +he wrote it; but there have been contributions to the legend from the +ocean floor and from the New World. The variations, and in a measure +the shifts, of opinion on the Atlantis story in the last hundred years +are represented by three names--Humboldt, Ignatius Donnelly, and +Pierre Termier. Writing in 1826, the German savant noted evidences +of an external influence in the historical monuments of Central +America. In his book, _Atlantis: The Antediluvian World_, Donnelly +boldly contended that a continent had disappeared in the mid-Atlantic, +that this sunken domain had been the cradle of civilization, and +that the widespread traditions of a deluge were race memories of its +disappearance. This writer’s identification with the Baconian cipher +theory, and his espousal of fanciful beliefs and lost causes, political +or other, together with his credulity and his snap judgments, obscured +the industry, the wide range of information, and the real gift of +generalization to which his book bore witness. It came with something +like a shock to the scientific world when the French scholar, Prof. +Pierre Termier, Director of the Geological Survey of France, read his +paper on Atlantis before the Oceanographic Institute of France in +1912. This was published at Monaco in the Bulletin of the Institute of +Oceanography in 1913, and a translation, included in the annual report +of the Smithsonian Institution for 1915, provoked a discussion among +geographers in America that continued for several years. + +“It seems more and more evident,” concluded Termier, “that a vast +region, continental or made up of great islands, has collapsed west +of the Pillars of Hercules, and that its collapse occurred in the not +distant past.” + +In support of this inference Termier arrays the evidence of the +Atlantic’s surface and of the floor which its waters conceal. A ship +sailing due west from the Straits of Gibraltar four thousand miles +to Cape Hatteras would meet with no land. But if it lengthened its +course a little by making a detour, first toward the southwest, then +toward the northwest, then again toward the southwest, it would bring +in view Madeira, the more southern Azores, and the Bermudas. And if it +took soundings it would discover that, the marine depths over which it +was passing were strangely unequal. If the ocean were drained dry, +what would be seen would be a long elevated region lying between the +Old and New Worlds, separated from both by two enormous valleys, the +wider and deeper one on the American side. This is the revelation of +oceanography--a hidden continent in the Atlantic basin with the islands +named above as its mountain peaks. + +Geology adds that the eastern region of the Atlantic over all its +length and probably from pole to pole is a great volcanic zone. +“Everywhere,” says the French geologist, “earthquakes are frequent, +here and there islets may spring up abruptly from the sea, or rocks +long known may disappear.” The ocean may conceal the continuity of +these changes, but to geological science they are incontestable and +they affect a zone which reaches from Iceland to the Cape Verde Islands +and is about 1,875 miles broad. + +When a ship was laying the cable between Brest and Cape Cod in 1898, +the cable broke and was recovered by grappling. The grappling irons +encountered various submerged rocks with hard points and sharp edges, +and brought to the surface fragments of the vitreous lava called +tachylyte. These “precious fragments,” as Termier calls them, are +in the Museum of the School of Mines in Paris. The significance of +their structure is that if they had solidified under water they would +have been composed of confused crystals. In the form in which they +were found they must have cooled when they were still above the sea’s +surface. The sharp edges of the marine rocks, whence these fragments +came, argue that the region collapsed suddenly and recently. Had they +remained after the volcanic disturbance a long time above the sea, they +would have been smoothed by atmospheric erosion. Had they been a long +time under the sea, they would have been smoothed by marine abrasion. +The inference is that “the entire region north of the Azores and +perhaps the very region of the Azores, of which they may be only the +visible ruins, was very recently submerged, probably during the epoch +which the geologists call the present, because it is so recent, and +which for us, the living beings of to-day, is the same as yesterday.” + +The evidence of zoölogy has been arrayed by another French scholar, M. +Louis Germain, briefly as follows: The present fauna of the Azores, +Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape Verde Islands originated in Africa; the +Quaternary formations of the Canaries resemble those of Mauretania and +inclose the same species of mollusca. Therefore these archipelagoes +were connected with Africa up to an epoch near our own, at the very +least until toward the end of the Tertiary. Among the present mollusca +of the archipelagoes are some species which seem to be survivors of the +European Tertiary. Therefore there was a bond between the islands and +Spain which was severed during the Pliocene. The _Pulmonata mollusca_, +called oleacinidæ, are found only in Central America, the West Indies, +the Mediterranean Basin, and the Canaries, Madeira, and the Azores, +and are larger in America than in these other regions. Therefore the +continent which included these islands had extended to the West Indies +at the beginning of the Miocene, but had been separated from them +during the Miocene. Fifteen species of marine mollusca lived at the +same time both in the West Indies and on the coast of Senegal, and +nowhere else. Therefore until very near the present time a maritime +shore extended from the West Indies to Senegal. + +The arguments of geology and zoölogy may be combined. Termier is of +those geologists who believe the ancient alignment of continents was +east and west instead of north and south. There was a North Atlantic +continent comprising Russia, Scandinavia, Great Britain, Greenland and +Canada, and later a large part of central and western Europe and of the +United States. There was also a South Atlantic or African-Brazilian +continent extending northward to the Atlas, eastward to the Persian +Gulf, westward to the Andes. Between the two continents was the +Mediterranean depression, the ancient maritime furrow still marked in +the present Mediterranean and Caribbean seas. These continents were +broken up by foldings and collapses and a new design appeared, the +general direction of which is from north to south. + +M. Germain, confining himself mainly to the middle region between these +two supposed continental areas, infers the existence of an Atlantic +continent connected with Spain and Morocco and prolonging itself so far +south as to take in regions of desert climate. During the Miocene this +continent reaches the West Indies. It is then broken up and portioned +off, at first in the direction of the West Indies; then in the south, +by the establishment of a marine shore which reaches Senegal; then in +the east, probably during the Pliocene, along the coast of Africa. “The +last great fragment, finally engulfed and no longer having left any +further vestiges than the four archipelagoes, would be the Atlantis of +Plato,” says Termier, himself reviewing the conclusions of Germain. + +Thus the geological and zoölogical arguments correspond very closely. +To Termier there is no doubt at all that until an epoch near our own +there was a continental domain in the Atlantic west of the Pillars +of Hercules, and that it was sunk in a cataclysm. There is only one +question left: “Did men then live who could withstand the reaction +and transmit the memory of it?” Geology and zoölogy have perhaps told +all they could tell by way of answer. “It is from anthropology, from +ethnography, and lastly from oceanography,” says Termier, “that I am +now awaiting the final answer.” + +Anthropology and ethnography have provided some hints, such as they +are. Men of scientific or of speculative cast have noted cranial and +other correspondences in the subtropics on both sides of the Atlantic, +and what seemed to be African influences in the civilizations of +Central and South America. Quatrefages named five races of American +Indians which seemed to him “true negroes.” Le Plongeon remarked the +thick lips and woolly hair of certain sculptured figures at Chichen +Itza. Retzius thought there were the same form of skull and the same +reddish-brown complexion in the Carib Islands and in the Canaries. +Elephant heads with trunk and tusks have been discovered in the friezes +of ruined temples in Yucatan. Wiener contends, on the evidence of +philology, that yams, manioc, peanuts and tobacco came to America from +Africa before Columbus rather than went out from America afterward. + +In ancient times the people of the Old World and the New were in +contact. The belief has been that this was across the Pacific, but the +traditions of Mexico and its neighbors point in a different direction. + +Two dominant notes are struck in the legends of the races fronting on +the Caribbean. One is the belief that civilization was brought to them +by white, bearded strangers who came over the sea from the east. The +other is the tradition of a deluge or related cataclysm. And sometimes +the two stories are grouped; the beneficent strangers are refugees from +the disastrous something that had happened upon the sea. Cataclysm has +been called the pivot of Central American myth and the basis of the +Mexican calendar. + +The legendary founder of the oldest Mexican civilization, the Toltec, +was Quetzalcoatl, who was worshiped as a god, but was reputed to +have been a bearded white man who came from the east with a band +of colonists and instructed the natives in the arts and sciences; +his symbol was a boat. The story was that he was driven out by the +witch doctors, but promised to return. Aztec belief that the Cortes +expedition was the return visit made easier the Spanish conquest. Among +the Mayas the divine stranger was known as Kukulcan, and his title +was Lord of the Hollow Tree (the ark?). Coming from “Valum Chvim,” he +founded the ancient city of Palenque. His company was described as +wearing black mantles with short sleeves; the Mayas called them “men +with petticoats.” + +Native legends of tropic America, some of which Spence has marshaled, +present a panorama of flood, fire, hilltops of refuge, arks, survivors. +According to the Arawaks of Guiana the world was smitten by fire, from +which men hid themselves in caverns; and then by flood, from which +a leader and his followers saved themselves in canoes. In the Carib +deluge myth men escaped to the mountain tops. In the Tupi-Guarani myth +the Creator scourged the world with fire but a great magician put it +out with a rainstorm and men took to trees (boats?). In the Karaya +myth an evil spirit invoked the deluge and sent fish to pull the +survivors down from the hill Tupimare. Various hills in Mexico and the +American southwest are pointed out as the Ararats of flood refugees. +There is even an account in the Nahuatl language of the building of an +ark. According to early Spanish writers there were similar stories of +oceanic upheaval among the natives of the Antilles. + +All the New World flood myths, the Chaldean, Aramæan, and Iranian, the +Hebrew story of Noah, and the Greek story of Deucalion, as well as the +indicated ending of Plato’s tale of Atlantis, agree in their main +lines--that a malevolent spirit sought to drown all men, or that an +angered divinity sought by a deluge to punish their lusts and pride, +and that a few righteous or lucky men escaped. One of these stories, +recited in the sacred book of the Quiche Indians of Guatemala, was +believed by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg to be an account of the +disaster to Atlantis. As the briefest of the flood myths, and not the +worst, it may be repeated: + +“They did not think or speak of the Creator who had created them, and +who had caused their birth. They were drowned, and thick resin fell +from heaven. + +“The bird Xecotcovach tore out their eyes; the bird Camulatz cut +off their heads; the bird Cotzbalam devoured their flesh; the bird +Tecumbalam broke their bones and sinews and ground them into powder. + +“Because they had not thought of their mother and father, the Heart of +Heaven whose name is Hurakan, therefore the face of the earth grew dark +and a pouring rain commenced, raining by day, raining by night. + +“Then all sorts of beings, little and great, gathered together to abuse +the men to their faces; and all spoke, their millstones, their plates, +their cups, their dogs, their hens,” denouncing them and railing at +them. + +These traditions of disaster, survival, and immigration are the +collateral support of native American myth to Plato’s narrative of +Atlantis. The monumental ruins of Central America yield some evidence +which in no wise confirms the traditions, but into which they fit. +The Maya civilization has been described as immigrant from a region +unknown. Its palaces and temples and columns, and the figures and +inscriptions upon them, represent an art that seemingly had reached +its maturity when the earliest of them was made. There are no local +evidences of the slow evolution of skill and taste, such as would be +expected in an indigenous culture. The resemblances to the monuments of +Burmah and Siam are superficial. The evidences of a European influence +are practically _nil_. The indications of a civilization remarkable +along certain lines are convincing; the Mexican calendar, the Maya +astronomy, betray a knowledge of the movements of the heavenly bodies +which was equal to that of Europe in the Columbian period, and yet +independent of it. + +The Maya monuments have one singularity which has challenged +speculation. “It has been found,” says Spence, “that the starting +point of all the dates found on the monuments, save two, is the same. +Thus all Maya reckoning dates from one definite day in the past, a +day 3,000 years prior to the first date in Maya history which can be +described as contemporary with the monument upon which it is found. +Upon this practically all Maya scholars of repute are agreed.” It has +been conjectured that this normal date of the Mayas is the date of a +cataclysm, somewhat as the people of San Francisco, with the memory of +their earthquake and conflagration strong in them, date many events in +their conversation as since the Fire. It has also been conjectured that +this date, and a developed civilization, were brought to the Mayas by +the survivors of the cataclysm. + +Such is the case for Atlantis as it has been made up by men with some +rank as students or specialists. The bold guesses of Donnelly, from +whose work several of these citations have been taken, must be added. +His most interesting contention, perhaps, is that the Bronze Age in +Europe must have been preceded by a Copper Age, since bronze is an +alloy of copper and tin; but that there is no evidence of a Copper Age +in Europe. There was, however, a Copper Age in America, from Bolivia to +Lake Superior, and therefore Atlantis was the bridge between the Copper +Age of America and the Bronze Age of Europe. + +With a characteristic sweep of statement Donnelly announces his +conclusions. The people of Atlantis “were the founders of nearly +all our arts and sciences; they were the parents of our fundamental +beliefs; they were the first civilizers, the first navigators, the +first merchants, the first colonizers of the earth; their civilization +was old when Egypt was young, and they had passed away thousands of +years before Babylon, Rome, or London was dreamed of. This lost people +were our ancestors, their blood flows in our veins; the words we use +every day were heard, in the primitive form, in their cities, courts, +temples. Every line of race and thought, of blood and belief, leads +back to them.” + +For every fact, tradition, or coincidence which seems to point toward +the disappearance of a continent in the Atlantic sea, there are other +explanations with authoritative names behind them. The old dread of the +Western Ocean is attributed to the teaching of primitive religions that +there was the land of shades, and to the colossal trickery of Phœnician +mariners who wanted no competitors beyond the Pillars. The American +legends of bright-faced strangers coming over the water from the east +are declared to be still another form of the sun myth. The world-wide +tradition of a deluge may represent the independent thinking of various +races of men who found fossil shells on their hillsides and reasoned +that at some time a sea had covered them. It is asserted that Termier +assumed too much for his specific evidence of a recent submersion--the +fragments of tachylyte dredged from the ocean floor--when he declared +that vitreous lava could not form under the sea. Accepting, as many +geographers do, that a great land domain has sunk near the coast of +Africa, they say that this was not a historic, nor a prehistoric, but a +geologic event. + +The controversy reduces itself, at last, to a question of time: Did +the large island which Plato called Atlantis disappear after men came +upon the earth? Termier does not assert this, but thinks it possible, +and in some measure the wish is father to the thought. As an American +geographer puts it, “It is well known that Professor Termier is not +only a good geologist, but also a great lover of the beautiful and +much given to the poetic in speaking and writing.” This passage in the +Termier address is in point: + +“Meanwhile not only will science, most modern science, not make it a +crime for all lovers of beautiful legends to believe in Plato’s story +of Atlantis, but science herself through my voice calls their attention +to it. Science herself, taking them by the hand and leading them +along the wreck-strewn ocean shores, spreads before their eyes, with +thousands of disabled ships, the continents submerged or reduced to +remnants, and the isles without number enshrouded in the abyss.” + +Beyond the appeal to poetry the Atlantis legend has another--an appeal +which is also a temptation. It explains much, perhaps too much. There +are gaps in the story of human origins, and in the history of the arts +and sciences, that are as wide as the black voids the astronomer sees +in the skies. Atlantis fills them all. Science has sought to fill +them by assumptions--the origin of man in a drowned continent of the +Pacific called Lemuria, of which Australia is a fragment; the origin of +civilization on the Mediterranean floor when it was dry land. These are +assumptions without a tradition behind them. Paradoxically enough, the +point of attack upon the Atlantis theory is that a legend supports it, +and other legends fit into it. The whole matches into an ingenious and +simple design, and are the affairs of nature and man ever so simple? + +It is not for anyone to answer yet, perhaps ever. But one has license +from Termier to speculate, and, if one will, to dream. If in substance +Plato’s tale was true, it needs no effort of imagination to picture the +empire of Atlantis as it was eleven thousand years ago, for all its +drama save the dreadful end has been repeated. The British Isles, with +their sea-borne commerce, their Mediterranean and Caribbean garrisons, +their mines and metal workings, their ancient Druidical religion +and costume, even their addiction to horse-racing, reproduce in the +northern seas the story of this vanished island dominion south and west +of Gibraltar. + +The outlines of the crowning calamity of history--if history it +was--have already been drawn by legend, and there are authentic human +experiences on a lesser scale, and in other times and places, to +fill in the canvas. In the European port nearest the supposed site +of Atlantis, on the first day of November, 1775, a sound of thunder +was heard underground, and in an earthquake that shook twelve million +miles of sea and land the city of Lisbon fell in ruins, burying sixty +thousand persons beneath it. + +“About one o’clock in the afternoon”--it is Pliny the Younger speaking, +the place is near Pompeii, and the time August 24th, A.D. 79--“a vast +and singular cloud was seen to elevate itself in the atmosphere. +It spread horizontally, in form like the branches of the pine, and +precipitated the burning materials with which it was charged upon the +many lovely but ill-fated villages which stood upon this delightful +coast.... Multitudes crowded toward the beach, but the boisterous +agitation of the sea, alternately rolling on the shore and thrown back +by the convulsive motion of the earth, precluded every possibility of +escape.... Now were heard the shrieks of women, screams of children, +clamors of men, all accursing their fate and imploring death, the +deliverance they feared, with outstretched hands to the gods whom many +thought about to be involved together with themselves in the last +eternal night.” + +Let the biblical account of the deluge speak the closing word upon +Atlantis: “And all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were +covered, and the waters prevailed upon the earth.” + +One turns from the convulsion and welter of the deep, and the beautiful +and dreadful thing that lay beneath it, and fixes the gaze on archaic +ships, laden with strangely robed men and women, riding the long +billows of the Caribbean toward a quiet shore. There--if the dreamers +are right--they built another civilization, which flourished and in +turn vanished, with its temples and palaces, beneath the green mantle +of the tropic forest. If the dreamers are right. + + + + +Chapter XXI. The Gilded Man + + +The high plateau of Cundinamarca in the interior of Colombia was once +an inland sea. Its vestiges remain in small lakes which the Indians +held sacred, and into which they cast offerings of emeralds and golden +ornaments. There was a special ceremony at Lake Guatavitá. When a +cacique died and another was chosen, a long procession moved down to +the shore. At the head went mourners, nude and wailing, their bodies +stained with red ochre. Behind them were other groups in jaguar skins, +their hair dressed with feathers, their limbs agleam with barbaric +jewelwork. Amid the joyful tumult of horns and pipes followed the +priests in tall black caps and long black robes. In the rear came high +priests and nobles carrying a barrow hung with disks of gold. Upon the +barrow rode El Dorado--the Gilded Man--newly chosen chief of an obscure +native tribe, and destined to become, through no quality of his own, +the elusive central figure in the most singular chapter in exploration, +above all others the figure of fate in South America. + +He was well named, with the poetry wherewith Spain had invested the +very headlands and harbors that her sons had found in the west. Like +the mourners, the Gilded Man was naked, and yet he was clad. His body +had been rubbed with fragrant gums, and priests with tubes had blown +gold dust over him, until he gleamed like the god of day incarnate. +Arrived at the shore, the enameled chief went upon a raft with his +cortège and was ferried to the middle of the lake. There he plunged +in and laved himself while the people shouted and the trumpets brayed +on the beach. The golden dust that had covered him glimmered down +through the water as an offering to its deity. In its wake followed the +bracelets and brooches which the attendant lords flung into the pool. +So the ceremony ended. + +This rite, beautiful and significant, is history, and not baseless +legend. Golden ornaments have been uncovered in the lake, which was +drained by modern treasure-seekers; among them was a piece wrought with +some art which seems to be a representation of the sacred raft and its +passengers. Humboldt thinks that the rite came from warmer regions and +that the nude figures and coronation bath are alien to the climate of +the tableland. But the fatal feature of the ceremony is that it was +already history when the Spaniards heard of it. The Muysca Indians of +the Bogota region subjugated the Muysca Indians of the Guatavitá region +about the time of the discovery of America. The custom of bathing a +gilded cacique passed with this small tribal conquest. The memory of it +remained. Unique among the customs of the continent, it was talked of +along the coasts of the Caribbean when the Spaniards came. There were +rumors of it in Peru, and even farther south. + +“Let us go in search of that gilded Indian,” said Belalcazar when a +native of the north brought the first news of him to Quito, which had +fallen to Pizarro a few years before. The Spaniards went, and found +all there was to find--the deep waters of Guatavitá. But this did not +content them. The Gilded Man was a symbol. He stood for something +larger than a rite that might take place once in a generation. He stood +for the very arrogance and folly of a royal and a priestly wealth that +must be beyond measure. Every sunrise the body of the haughty savage +was covered afresh with glittering dust. Every sunset, so the Spaniards +fabled, he cleansed himself in a pool, the bottom of which had slowly +paved itself with gold, as generation after generation of his dynasty +performed their ablutions. Only a mighty nation and a rich could have +so prodigal a king; and so El Dorado came to mean not so much a man as +a golden city in a gilded land. The altars and ewers and basins of its +temples, the furnishings and plate of its palaces, the jewels and table +service of its nobles--here was promise of a booty to match the loot of +Mexico and Peru. + +In seeking it Spain spent more lives and sank more treasure than in all +its conquests in the New World. + +Somehow the land that held it seemed to recede as the exploring columns +advanced. It was sought in Colombia, in Venezuela, in eastern Peru, +in northwestern Brazil, in Bolivia, and from Paraguay. Over a great +inverted triangle the base of which was a line nearly a thousand +miles long drawn east from the Cordilleras of Colombia nearly to +the mouth of the Orinoco, and the apex of which was in Paraguay two +thousand miles to the south, ceaselessly marched the expeditions. The +El Dorado country of the exploring parties--the region which knew +their tread--was thus a territory of about a million square miles. +It repeated the general lines of the continent itself, an enclave of +illusion surrounded by the realities of mountain and coast. + +Into this triangle from all sides struck the Spanish columns. They +moved east, north, and south from Quito, south from the Caribbean, +south and west from Trinidad, north from Asuncion. They climbed +mountains, forded rivers, penetrated deserts. They froze in the passes +of the Andes, sickened in the flooded, fever-haunted valley of the +Amazon, died of hunger in the pathless plains; and everywhere the +poisoned Indian arrows found their targets. Three of the columns, one +of which had been on the road for five years, entered the plateau +of Cundinamarca at the same time--a coincidence without parallel in +history. Germans and Englishmen also essayed the adventure. As for +Spain, when de Silva appealed for funds and followers, the country +could have been depopulated, says Padre Simon, so strong was the belief +in the Gilded Land. + +Under the fable of the Gilded King ran other delusions. It was thought +that the northern part of South America was rich in the precious +metals. It was thought that the auriferous steeps of Peru and New +Granada swept eastward almost to the mouth of the Orinoco. There was +no comprehension of the continental extent of intertribal trade, and +the presence of gold among Indian tribes was thought to be proof that +it could be had in their country, even when this was flat prairie or +inundated forest. Native traders followed their own path from the Andes +to the Caribbean; it is significant that the site of the legendary city +moved along it through successive generations almost from end to end. + +The search for it falls into four chapters--the quest of El Dorado of +Cundinamarca; the quest of El Dorado of Canelas; the quest of El Dorado +of the Omaguas; the quest of El Dorado of Manoa. + +By the chance meeting of three expeditions, already noted, the end of +the quest for El Dorado of Cundinamarca is sheer pageantry. Belalcazar, +lieutenant of Pizarro and governor of Quito, had sent his captains in +1535 to discover what he conceived to be a golden valley between Pasto +and Popayan in the Cordilleras of southern Colombia, not far from the +South Sea. The following year he undertook the search in person and +pushed it farther north to the plateau of Bogota. There he found two +other expeditions already in contact. Quesada had started from Santa +Marta with eight hundred men and a hundred horses. With this command +he had subjugated the Chibcha nation, numbering a million persons if +the chroniclers are right, and dispersed an army of twenty thousand men +which they had put in the field. After difficult marching and fighting +he brought a handful of men--a hundred foot and sixty horse--to the +neighborhood of Bogota. Soon he saw approach the remnants of an +expedition which had left the coast of Venezuela five years before. The +German, Federmann, brought to the plateau a hundred ragged men out of +the four hundred well-equipped soldiers with whom he had started. + +The three commands bivouacked almost within striking distance of each +other. They presented a spectacular contrast, for the men from Peru +were in Spanish steel and scarlet, those from Santa Marta wore Indian +fabrics, while the men from Venezuela were clad in the skins of wild +animals. The clergy labored feverishly to avert the expected appeal to +arms, and for once in the history of New World exploration resolute men +of the Iberian strain settled their differences without fighting. The +three captains went back to Spain together where each laid his claim +to the governorship of New Granada before the throne. Only Belalcazar +was recognized and he only with the post of Adelantado in the Popayan +region. + +The quest of El Dorado of Canelas is the story of the expedition +of Gonzalo Pizarro and the secession therefrom of his lieutenant, +Orellana. Across all the history of Spanish exploration flashes the +treacherous and brilliant deed of Orellana, somewhat as the “moving +equator”--the Amazon--which he discovered, cuts across the meridians +of longitude between the Andes and the Atlantic. Canelas was the Land +of Cinnamon, and here, and here only upon the soil of America, the +two leading motives of exploration--the search for gold, the search +for spices--were interwoven. Pizarro had heard of a fabled spiceland +hard by the territories of the Gilded King, and this was his avowed +objective. But his imagination roved further. In the valley of the +Napo, a stream which for a space forms the boundary between Ecuador and +modern Colombia, there were plains where the inhabitants wore armor of +“massy gold.” Gonzalo would have a look at this armor. He set forth +with 500 Spaniards, 4,000 Indians, 150 horses, 1,000 dogs, and 5,000 +swine and “Peruvian sheep.” + +While threading the passes at the very threshold of the journey a +tremendous earthquake rocked the mountains under his feet, and an +Indian village with hundreds of houses sank out of sight. Followed +the tempests, and for six weeks tropical rainstorms with incessant +thunder and lightning beat upon the men. It was a prelude in keeping +with the disasters to come. The Land of Cinnamon was found, and left +behind as too remote to offer present profit. A brigantine was built +on the Napo, and Orellana was sent ahead with it to gather supplies in +the Indian settlements. The party never came back, but swept down the +Amazon in a wild adventure to the Atlantic sea, whence their tales of +the mighty river, its warrior women, its still stranger peoples, and +its temples roofed with gold, set Spain on fire. Gonzalo waited for +months, but he was of the strain of the Pizarros--all hero as well as +all scoundrel--and did not succumb when he knew he had been betrayed. +In a march of over a year he led the remnant of his command back to +Quito. All his Indians had died or deserted, and only eighty Spaniards +remained. When they entered the City of the Line in June 1542, it +seemed, says Prescott, as if the charnel-house had given up its dead. + +El Dorado of the Omaguas had many seekers, and in some measure unveiled +itself before the eyes of Philip Von Hutten. After him, the Gilded +Land had for a time a place certain on the map. It was the region +between the Guaviare and Caqueta rivers in southeastern Colombia and +northwestern Brazil--the territory of the Omaguas, a rich and numerous +Indian nation. + +Von Hutten was a relative of the Welsers, the Augsburg bankers to whom +Charles V had ceded a large tract in Tierra-firma, and who had already +sent out Federmann for the adventure of Cundinamarca. The second German +expedition began almost humbly. Von Hutten had only 130 men, and when +he found that Quesada was ahead of him with 250 men, he was content to +follow in his tracks, hoping to share the rewards of discovery. But +when Quesada reached the headwaters of the Caqueta, he had seen enough, +and Von Hutten pushed ahead into the unknown. + +His Indian guide told him of a populous city called Macatoa in a +country rich with gold, and he even displayed small golden apples which +came from there. The winter rains overtook the command on its road to +this halfway house to El Dorado, and, marooned on high ground, the men +subsisted on maize and ants, and on grubs, beetles, and roots. Their +very hair and beards fell off, but at length they reached Macatoa, and +went on to the land of the Omaguas. + +From a hill they saw at last the city they sought. It stretched beyond +the utmost range of the vision--long streets and densely clustered +houses, and a temple. In the temple, the guide said, were idols of +gold as tall as small children, and one golden statue as tall as a +woman, with other treasures above price. Beyond, he assured them, lay +still richer cities. What they saw and what they heard were enough +for Von Hutten and his band. There were only forty left of them, and +within the city, they were told, was a large force of native warriors. +The adventurers clapt spurs to their horses and dashed in--and then +dashed out again, their leader wounded and fifteen thousand Indians +in pursuit. The figures are their own, as well as the statement that +they beat off the attacking force and retired. Afterward Von Hutten was +murdered by his men. + +To die on the march, to be stabbed by one’s companions, or to be +beheaded by one’s king, seemed the lot predestined for captains who +sought the Gilded Devil. + +As was proved again when the Spaniards quested for Cibola, an Indian +town is a deceptive thing when seen at a distance. What Von Hutten +really saw was probably a collection of closely grouped villages, and +among them a council house or temple, larger than the others but no +more imposing than the bark communal houses under which at that time +Algonquins were living upon Manhattan Island. Yet the bruit of his +discovery launched expedition after expedition from New World and Old. +Martin de Proveda, starting from Peru, reached the country of the +Omaguas and went on to Bogota. Pedro de Silva brought a party of six +hundred out of Spain, and in a six months’ journey across the llanos of +Venezuela saw all but thirty die or desert. He tried again with another +party of 170 Spaniards going up the Orinoco. Famine, disease, and +Indian arrows accounted for every member of his party save one. + +There is evidence that unruly spirits were encouraged to seek El +Dorado in order to rid the settled places of the New World of their +turbulence. Such was the expedition which Pedro de Ursua led out of +Peru in 1559. A rabble of lawless adventurers had been attracted +thither by the civil wars which followed the conquest. The viceroy was +glad to commission this young officer and see him depart with these +“Gentlemen and old souldiers of Peru” as Lopez Vaz called them. When +they reached the Indian villages of Omagua the expected happened. +The men murdered their leader, and the command fell to Aguirre, who +told them that whoever spoke further of El Dorado should die. With +his followers he set forth to reach the Atlantic and return by way of +Panama to Peru, where he purposed to seize “riches, bread, wine, flesh, +and faire women also.” His men murdered him in turn, but not until he +had done an amazing thing. Starting down the Amazon, his boats won the +sea by way of the Orinoco, having used the Cassiquiare to cross from +one river system to the other. + +The Omagua chapter ends with the great and tragic expedition of +Gonsalo Ximenes de Quesada, conqueror of New Granada, and one of the +largest figures among the conquistadors, brother of the Quesada who +had sunk his means in a like search eighteen years before. With 350 +Spanish soldiers, 1,500 Indians, a number of negro slaves, and a train +of cattle and swine, Ximenes left Bogota in 1579. Torrential rains, +inundated lands, prairie fires, mosquitoes, Indian warfare, disease, +famine--the disastrous routine of other expeditions--were repeated on a +larger canvas. Quesada got as far as the confluence of the Guaviare and +Orinoco, and then had to return. He brought back seventy-four Spaniards +and four Indians, and he left behind with his dead a fortune of two +million dollars scattered along the trails of the wilderness. + +The quest of El Dorado of Manoa lowers a curtain, rich and somber +and yet of fantastic design, upon the career of the most remarkable +Englishman of the Elizabethan age. In this last phase of a long +delusion other explorers led their thousands to die in the jungles +of the Orinoco, but their endeavor does not so engage attention as +that of Raleigh, who lost little save his own fortune and head. There +are two names, and then the Elizabethan. Antonio de Berreo, married +to Quesada’s niece, came from New Granada down the Meta and part way +down the Orinoco for three years of dark futility. He came again and +founded towns at the confluence of the Caroni and the Orinoco, and in +the island of Trinidad at the Orinoco’s mouth. His lieutenant, Domingo +de Vera, went on to Spain and came back with a fleet and two thousand +men. These perished, all but a few, in the two towns de Berreo had +founded, or in the leagues of turbulent river that rolled between them, +or in the fever-wasted jungles into which they set forth to find Manoa. +De Berreo himself fell a prisoner to Raleigh, who had set sail from +England about the same time that de Vera embarked from Spain. + +This time the Gilded Phantom, in order to make sure of victims in an +age about to grow weary of long quests and wary of far horizons, had +come almost across the continent to entrap them. Not in the eastern +foothills of the Andes, but along the lower reaches of the Orinoco +where the Atlantic tides still throbbed, the snare was spread. In the +mighty empire of Guiana, it was said there was a lake of salt water +almost as great as the Caspian Sea, and upon it the largest, the +fairest, and the richest city of the world. A fugitive Inca had come +down from the Andes, and the nobles and merchants had followed him, +and long trains of llamas had borne their possessions through the +wilderness, and an armed host went before. They “conquered, reedified +and inlarged” Manoa, says Raleigh. + +So vast was the city that when the Spaniard, Juan Martinez, was brought +into it blindfold at noon, and his face then uncovered, he moved +through it all that afternoon and night, and the next day from sun +rising to sun setting, before he came to the palace of the emigrant +Inca. At the feasts of this emperor, so de Berreo told his captor, +when he “carouseth with his captaines, tributaries and governours,” +the company stripped and were anointed with balsam and dusted off with +finely powdered gold, blown through hollow canes. So they sat, in +radiant drunkenness, for six or seven days together. + +Thus the striking inaugural ceremony of a vanquished Indian tribe +on the tableland of Bogota had become in the lowlands of Venezuela +the symbol of a luxurious and sensual court, and of an intolerable +splendor. Not one man, once in a lifetime, but a host of drunken +sybarites, carousing in repeated revels, wore the golden coat; the raft +on a tarn of the western plateau had become a palace and a city greater +than any other, and seated in the eastern wilderness on a lake that was +an inland sea. Upon the mythical estate and possessions of the Gilded +King had been piled the fugitive prestige and riches of the Incas. +The magnificent and yet sordid culmination of a century of splendid +dreams and desperate endeavor, with cupidities, basenesses and heroisms +uncounted, it needed for its final victim one who embodied in signal +fashion the strength and the weaknesses of the age. It found him in Sir +Walter Raleigh. + +Raleigh was the most accomplished man of his time, and every fiber of +him was Elizabethan. On the scaffold he said, “I have been a soldier, +a sailor, and a courtier, all of them courses of wickedness and vice.” +Let it be added that in them he excelled most other men. He learned +soldiering under Coligny, fighting the battles of the Huguenots. As a +sailor he took prizes of Spanish treasure ships, captured Fayal, led +the attack on the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, contributed to the strategy +that threw back the Armada; with him, as with Drake and his companions, +the ruling passion was to singe the beard of the king of Spain. As a +courtier he had his place among the vivacious friendships of the Virgin +Queen, and he was rewarded and rebuked in turn with honors, monopolies, +rustication, exile. + +Raleigh introduced the use of tobacco in England and the culture of +the potato in Ireland. He founded two short-lived colonies in North +Carolina, which has honored his memory in the name of the state +capital. He aided the colonizing ventures of his stepbrother, Sir +Humphrey Gilbert, and came to North America with him. He encouraged +and aided the poet Spenser. He assisted Richard Hakluyt in bringing +out his remarkable collection of explorers’ manuscripts. It falls in +with the picture that Raleigh was skilled in brewing new drinks, one of +which bore his name; in the Tower of London he divided the time between +his library and a small distillery he had set up in a hen-house. + +Like his great contemporaries, Raleigh was both a man of action +and a man of affairs--compound of statesman, _condottiere_, and +merchant-adventurer. He was also a writer of noble gifts. Instead of +moping in his long years of confinement in the Tower, he wrote there +his _History of the World_. And he made beautiful poems. “If all the +world and love were young” is his line. His is the epigram, “The +shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.” In one mood he could pen the +invocation beginning, “O eloquent, just and mightie Death,” and in +another carol, + + If she undervalue me, + What care I how fair she be? + +His best-known line, “Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall,” +graven by him on a windowpane for the eye of Elizabeth, was least +characteristic of Raleigh. If always he sought to climb the heights +of adventure, he had little fear to fall. This record concerns his +strangest adventure and his final fall. In most part it is the +story as recounted in his book, _The discoverie of the large, rich, +and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and +golden citie of Manoa, which the Spaniards call El Dorado_. It is a +fascinating book, for seldom before or since has pen so gifted set +down a travel tale; but there is tragedy in the very title, which is +the memorial of a vain dream. Let the historian Bancroft recite the +justification, or the excuse, for the illusion of a worldly-wise man +who was also an Elizabethan: “If Elizabeth had hoped for a hyperborean +Peru in the arctic seas of America, why might not Raleigh expect to +find the city of gold on the banks of the Orinoco?” + +The bare narrative of Raleigh’s first quest of El Dorado of Manoa +need not long detain, for this skillful administrator, intrepid +explorer, and subtle diplomat found no golden city, lost no men in +the wilderness, and had no trouble with the Indians, whom his engaging +bearing and politic address won to his side. He had sent a ship to +reconnoiter in 1594, and after his own expedition came and went in +1595, he sent another ship in 1596 to continue the exploration, while +he himself took command of the squadron that dashed in upon the Spanish +shipping at Cadiz. Raleigh’s Guiana flotilla of the year before +consisted of five ships, one of them from the British Admiralty. That +there might be no enemy behind him, he seized the Spanish settlement at +Trinidad, capturing de Berreo; anchoring his ships there, he set off in +barges with a hundred men up the stubborn current of the Orinoco. Six +months after he sailed from England, he was back again with some Indian +hostages, some pieces of golden ore, and the marvelous stories with +which his _Discovery_ is adorned. + +His travel narrative lays its scenes in “the insular regions and broken +world” of Guiana, which then included a good part of Venezuela. Through +its pages flows “the great rage and increase” of the swollen Orinoco. +Through them flit “birds of all colours, some carnation, some crimson, +orange-tawny, and purple,” so that “it was unto us a great good passing +of the time to behold them.” “I never saw a more beautifull countrey, +nor more lively prospects,” exclaims Raleigh. From afar off he gazed on +a “mountaine of Christall.” “There falleth over it,” he says, “a mighty +river which toucheth no part of the side of the mountaine, but rusheth +over the toppe of it, and falleth to the ground with so terrible a +noyse and clamour, as if a thousand great bels were knockt one against +another.” Enters the note of gold and of politics: In Guiana, it +seemed, “every stone that we stouped to take up, promised either golde +or silver by his complexion.” For “health, good ayre, pleasure and +riches,” he concludes, “this country hath no equal, East or West.” It +would be easy for the English to defend it, for the woods are so thick +along the rivers that “a mouse cannot sit in a boat unhit from the +banke.” + +The book holds also the statement of the large national aims of +Raleigh, into which, as he assured himself, the gold hunt fitted. Not +for him were mere “journeys of picory,” nor “to go long voyages, to lie +hard, to fare worse, to be parched and withered,” solely to “cozen +myselfe.” Here was “a better Indies for her Majestie than the King of +Spaine hath any.” With the gold of western America Spain bade fair +to dominate the world. Only by tapping the Indian treasure-house of +eastern America could the balance of power be restored. In a notable +passage Raleigh enunciates a theory of international politics that +would sound familiar to modern ears, if for the gold lust there were +substituted the lust of markets. + +“If we consider,” he says, “the affaires of the Spanish king, what +territories he hath purchased, what he hath added to the acts of his +predecessors, how many kingdoms he hath indangered, how many armies, +garrisons & navies he hath and doth mainteine, the great losses +which he hath repaired, as in 88 above 100 saile of great ships with +their artillery, & that no yeere is lesse unfortunate but that many +vessels, treasures, and people are devoured, and yet notwithstanding +he beginneth againe like a storme to threaten shipwrack to us all: we +shall find that these abilities rise not from the trades of sacks, and +Sivil oringes, nor from ought else that either Spaine, Portugal, or any +of his other provinces produce: it is his Indian gold that indangereth +and disturbeth all the nations of Europe, it purchaseth intelligence, +creepeth into counsels, and setteth bound loyaltie at libertie, in the +greatest Monarchies of Europe.” + +This enterprise of matching gold with gold, Guiana against Peru, +Raleigh hoped would be intrusted to him, and he must have pictured +himself as viceroy, under England, of such another India as Englishmen +of later centuries were to attain. Yet the _Discovery_ is a defense, +as well as a political tract and a collection of mirabilia. Raleigh’s +return, empty-handed, had aroused the resentment of some who had put +money into his venture, and the ridicule and censure of more. It was +alleged that he had procured his golden ore in Barbary, and naught +better than marcasite from Guiana. It was even noised abroad that he +had not been with the fleet at all, but had been concealed in Cornwall +while his ships were away. The dreaming adventurer had his enemies. + +After his second voyage to Guiana they were able to destroy him. +Twenty-one years had elapsed since the first expedition. Twelve of +these Raleigh had spent in the Tower, imprisoned on one of the +charges of treason which in those days meant little save that a man +was disliked by the royal favorites of the moment. At sixty-four years +of age he was paroled and went to Guiana with a squadron of fourteen +vessels and the coveted commission of governor of the country. He spoke +now of a wonderful mine and little of a thing that was in the back of +his head, for still he dreamed of Manoa’s golden towers, which, as many +men would have it, were nowhere on earth. + +The expedition turned out disastrously. King James had submitted to +Spain through its ambassador at London a detailed copy of Raleigh’s +plans and had received what was represented to Raleigh to be a pledge +of unmolested passage to the up-river country claimed by him by right +of discovery. He found the Spaniards fortified against him. There were +clashes in which his own son lost his life and also the governor of a +river town, kinsman of the Spanish ambassador. + +Raleigh returned to face his fate, and in effect it was Spain’s +own hand that wrote the decree of death, for the two royal houses +were about to be united by marriage, and the Stuart was studiously +complaisant to the Hapsburg. Sir Walter was tried on a charge of +masking, under a project to discover a mine, a piratical raid on the +Spanish settlements--a charge which the national contacts of a hundred +years invested with a grim humor. But he was executed on a more +serviceable pretext, the long-suspended sentence for treason; nor did +it avail him to urge that the king’s commission for his voyage was in +itself a grant of pardon. The night before his death on the scaffold he +wrote these lines: + + E’en such is Time, who takes in trust + Our youth and joys and all we have, + And pays us but with age and dust. + +Thus the great Elizabethan faced and dismissed two vanities. Equally +so he had found life itself and the mocking parable of his New World +quest--for hopes, frustration; dross for gold. + +With Raleigh ended the larger expeditions to find El Dorado. There is +a little more to say. Some years before, two parties had sought the +Gilded City, starting from far south. One came from Buenos Aires in +1537, all the colonists leaving that ill-fated city, and passing up +the river in the hope either of finding El Dorado or of reaching the +Spanish settlements on Lake Titicaca. A detachment of this party halted +on the Paraguay and founded Asuncion. Another detachment, numbering two +hundred persons, pushed on into Bolivia, where the Indians ambushed and +killed them all. A later party which was led by De Chaves left Asuncion +in 1560, wandered northwest into Bolivia and there disbanded. + +The imaginary lake of Manoa, sometimes called Mar Eldorado or the +Golden Sea, was delineated on maps of South America for nearly three +centuries after the time of Columbus. Periodical overflows of the +Orinoco tributaries, which cover wide regions with standing water, +serve to explain the origin and persistence of the lake legend. For the +shift of the basic legend from Colombia to Guiana, Humboldt suggests an +explanation in a custom of native tribes in the latter country. Instead +of tattooing themselves, the Indians anointed their bodies with turtle +fat and stuck spangles of mica with a metallic luster, white as silver +and red as copper, upon their skins, so that at a distance they seemed +to wear laced clothes. + +In 1740 Don Manuel Centurion, the Spanish governor of Santa Thome del +Agostina, made further search for the fabled lake of Manoa and the +city washed by its waters. The popular imagination was inflamed by the +reports of an Indian who came down the river Caroni. In the southern +sky he showed the natives the dim radiance of the Clouds of Magellan. +This he said was the reflection of golden ore on an island in the lake +of legend. So may one leave the city of illusion where it belongs, in +cloudland. + + + + +Chapter XXII. The Dream Quests of Spain + + +The search for El Dorado was the greatest of the dream quests of Spain. +It was not the first, it was not the last. Along with lesser ventures +without number Spain sought certain grand objects. These included the +Fountain of Youth, the Earthly Paradise, the Temple of the Sun, the +Cradle of Gold, the Country of Cinnamon, the Enchanted City of the +Cæsars, the Islands of Solomon, El Gran Moxo, El Gran Paititi, the +Sepulchres of Zenu, the Temple of Dobayba, the Seven Cities of Cibola, +Quivera the prairie capital. And Spain sought also buried cities and +phantom lakes and craters abrim with liquid gold. + +Through most of these quests is the flow of delusive water. It sparkles +in the youth-conferring spring which De Leon failed to find. It moves +in the River Jordan, for which red man and white hunted in Florida. +It sweeps past the mythical Quivera, bearing huge canoes with prows +of gold. It shines on the far horizon of Cibola, and on it there are +barks of Cathay. It glimmers in the tarn of Guatavitá. In the legendary +sea of Manoa it reflects the fugitive gold of El Dorado. It laves the +enchanted City of the Cæsars hard by the lake of Nahuelhuapi. In the +Laguna de los Xarayes it ripples around the island home of El Gran +Moxo. It flashes on the beaches of fabled islands west of the southern +continent. + +There were reasons for the illusory lakes of Spanish adventure. The +City of Mexico was seated in a lake with causeways crossing it and +canals reaching the heart of the city. The Empire of Peru held Lake +Titicaca as sacred. The scarcely less remarkable civilization of the +Chibchas of Colombia rendered homage to the lakes of the central +plateau. So the Spaniards thought that when they sought other golden +cities in the wilderness they would find them on the shores of inland +seas. + +The periodic inundations of the Orinoco, the Amazon, the Paraguay, +and the tributaries of these streams deceived and disturbed men with +appearances which they could not understand. One explorer would come +upon a vast sheet of still water, and in due time it would get upon the +maps. Another would lead his column dry shod over the same place, and +men were slow to realize that each had made correct report of what he +saw. For example, the legendary lake of Xarayas, long supposed to be +the source of the Paraguay, is merely a seasonal inundation; but during +high water this transitory sea extends three hundred and fifty miles +north and south and one hundred and fifty miles east and west. + +The things of the spirit--religion, romance, pure fantasy--animated +Spain in some of the quests it followed beside the still waters of the +lakes of dream. Its rude chivalry could serve the ideal with a whole +heart. But for the most part cavalier and muleteer sought gold alone. +Gems, spices, pepper, dyewoods, grain fields, raw materials, rubber, +bananas, coffee--these are objects of ancient or modern enterprise in +strange lands. They meant little to the Spaniard. Nor was his deepest +interest in metal that was still underground. He was looking for the +gold that for generation after generation Indian civilizations had +brought to the surface and stored in their capital cities. The rewards +of savage toil he would seize for himself who better knew their value, +or thought he did. + +That is why the visionary expeditions of Spain are in the main a search +for cities, or, failing these, projects to loot temples and rifle +graves. Neither the digging nor the assembling of the golden treasure +was in the scheme. The purpose was to take the central treasure houses. +So Spain had already done in Peru. The captive Inca Atahuallpa had +himself suggested a kindred thing. For ransom he offered to fill his +prison chamber, a room seventeen feet wide and twenty-two feet long, +with gold to the depth of nine feet, or as high as the reach of the +tallest cavalier. When the bargain was made, gold began to pour in from +all corners of the empire--statues, vases, vessels, utensils, plaques, +disks, chains, temple ornaments, nuggets, and golden dust. Of course +his captors killed the Inca, and rushed on to seek the sources whence +flowed the maddening stream; and what they found did not satisfy. Much +of the treasure of the Incas had disappeared. Nor has it been uncovered +since. + +Those vain enterprises of Spain, with which a great part of the New +World’s sixteenth century was filled, were attempts of adventurers to +lay hold of the gold which had escaped the conquistadors in Mexico and +Peru, or which it was imagined had escaped them. It was supposed that +the descendants of the Montezumas, taking rich treasures with them, had +retreated northward to Cibola or to Quivera, and there renewed their +state. It was reported, and with some basis of fact, that princes of +the Inca blood had gone north, south, or east from Cuzco and set up new +cities in the wilderness. The basis of fact was the flight of Manco +Capac, called the Last of the Incas. This prince raised the country +against its conquerors, flung an army of two hundred thousand warriors +against the Spanish garrison in Cuzco, and before night settled on the +empire of the Andes gave proof on the battlefield that there was valor +in the Quichua blood. At the mountain fortress of Choquequirau, the +Cradle of Gold, six thousand feet above the valley of the Apurimac, +Peruvian geographers believe the Last of the Incas made his seat. + + +_The Fountain of Youth_ + +It is best to begin the recital of the dream quests of Spain with the +dream of all ages--the search for lost youth. It was the first of those +adventures in the New World in which the sons of Spain were to show +they were different from other men, in that when they imagined a vain +thing their imagination rushed on to action. + +In an unfinished poem Heine sketches the beginning of this quest. Ponce +de Leon, the veteran ex-governor of Porto Rico, lies in his hammock +and an old Indian servant sings to him of the Bahama island of Bimini +with its bird song and undying flowers, and of its interesting tenants. +These were old men restored by a magic spring to riotous youth and +beldames who had drunk of its waters and regained girlhood’s bloom; +they were afraid to return home because of the scandal their shamefully +youthful appearance would work among their friends. Poetic license +carries this sketch only a little beyond the credulity of the period, +for Peter Martyr had written at length to the bishop of Rome of an +island with a youth-restoring spring some three hundred leagues north +of Hispaniola. + +[Illustration: _The Things of the Spirit Animated Spain in Some of the +Quests It Followed Beside the Still Waters of the Lakes of Dream_] + +The Spanish cavalier set sail with three ships in 1512, in search of +Bimini. There were nearly seven hundred islands and islets in the +Bahamas and his journey was through a labyrinth. For a part of the +voyage he had the strangest, and perhaps the most fitting, of pilots. +To a clump of islands near the Lucayos he gave the name of La Vieja +or the Old Woman group because he found them without inhabitants save +one ancient woman. Her he took aboard to help guide him through the +sea passages. He found Florida, but he did not find Bimini, which was +discovered later by his captain, Juan Perez de Ortubia, the sagacious +old woman directing him to its shore. The water there was like any +other water. Ponce de Leon, however, escaped the disabilities of age. A +poisoned Indian arrow launched from a Florida bow did for him when he +was about sixty-one. + +Before his death, the quest for a fountain from which one might quaff +the draught of youth had been broadened to include a River Jordan of +rejuvenating baths. This was somewhere on the peninsula of Florida, +where for half a century red men and white searched for it, bathing +in every stream, lagoon, and swamp they found, in the hope that the +magic water, in some sudden transformation scene, might betray its +whereabouts. + +Though they did not know it, the Spaniards themselves brought to the +New World the legend of the fountain of youth and the name of Bimini, +as well as that of the River Jordan. Wiener has traced each step. In +1493, a year before the Pope made the line of demarcation between the +Spanish and Portuguese discoveries, he had given to Spain the newly +discovered lands on condition that the natives should be baptized +in the Catholic faith. Amerigo Vespucci falsely reported that, in +compliance therewith, a fountain of baptism had been placed on an +island in the Gulf of Mexico. Peter Martyr in his _Decade of 1511_ +called this the _fonte perenni_, but the cartographer misread his +Latin, and on the map attached to his work a coast line north of Cuba +is called _isla de beimeni parte_. Thus the perennial fountain became +Bimini, and the fiction of a Christian baptismal font revived a pagan +myth. + + +_The Enchanted City of the Cæsars_ + +The quest of the Enchanted City of the Cæsars was the southernmost +adventure of the dreaming mind of Spain. It was prosecuted along the +slopes of the southern Andes and the Patagonian plains beyond--that +mysterious and desolate region which made so deep an impression upon +Darwin. Over the remote prairies, peopled only by huanacos and roving +bands of tall savages, Spanish commands hunted for a capital which the +natives called Trapalanda, and which, according to the oath of those +who said they had seen it, was as great as ancient Nineveh and as +populous as Peking. + +Outbound to the Moluccas, the story ran, a vessel belonging to the +bishop of Palancia was shipwrecked in the Straits of Magellan. The +captain of the stranded craft, Sebastian de Arguello, found himself on +the Patagonian coast with three thousand miles of mountain and plain +between his little band and the outpost of Spanish power at Cuzco. +Followed by about two hundred soldiers and sailors, thirty adventurers, +twenty-three married women, and three priests, he struck boldly into +the heart of the pampas, moving northward. When the company reached +a region of lakes and meadows rimmed by snowy summits resolution was +taken to found there an independent state aloof from the perturbations +of the world. Other fugitives had reached this inviting spot before the +Spaniards--a numerous native people flying from the wreck of Peru. + +It would seem from the rapid growth of the city which was said to +have arisen upon the shore of Lake Nahuelhuapi that red men and white +mingled their blood. The first report of the austral capital reached +Concepcion in Chile, in 1557. + +The Spanish settlements were led to picture a great, rich city in the +south. A strong wall ran around it, and over it the roving Indians +of the prairies could see reddish roofs that gleamed as with gold. +The houses were of cut stone and those who had been within them +spoke of beds, chairs, and table service made of precious ores. The +central edifice in the capital was a noble church roofed with silver, +and from it were decreed and regulated the pompous festivals of the +ecclesiastical year. + +Wishing to keep their isolation inviolate, its inhabitants had an +understanding with the Indians that the secret of the city should be +told to none. But when it received the name of _La Ciudad encantada +de los Cæsares_ (the enchanted City of the Cæsars), it was a presage +that from all the Spanish settlements of the south, expeditions should +go forth to seek it out, for the very words were a challenge to the +imagination. + +It was called the city of the Cæsars because the men who founded it had +been subjects of Charles V of Spain, whom men had styled the Cæsar in +recognition of his world-wide dominion. It was called enchanted because +of the beauty of its lake setting and the splendors within its walls. +Soon its people became known as the Cæsars, and the men who conducted +expeditions to reach them as the Cæsaristas. + +There were other motives for the quest beside the golden treasure +to be found there and the wish to visit a clime so fair that none +died save of old age. Here were a kindred people, cut off from their +fellows, and, it might be, lapsing decade after decade into a splendid +barbarism. The purity of their Christian faith was in danger of +corruption from every sort of heathen error. Civilization and religion +were both concerned in the rescue of this fascinating creole capital, +which had done so well by itself and yet needed to renew its contacts +with the world. So said the Spaniard wherever fortune had placed +him--in the homeland, in Mexico, in the Philippines, and most of all in +the colonies of the southern Cordilleras and the eastern plains. + +There were a number of small expeditions to seek the legendary city, +and three of importance. Diego Flores de Leon reached Lake Nahuelhuapi +from the Pacific side, heard of savage armies massed on his front, and +went no further. Half a century later came the Jesuit father, Nicolas +Mascardi. Fearing that the southern capital might have forgotten the +mother tongue of Spain, he collaborated with another churchman in +a letter which was translated into seven languages--Greek, Latin, +Spanish, Italian, Chilean, Puelche, and Poya. The letter was sent +ahead by an Indian courier after he reached the shores of Nahuelhuapi. +Hearing a report that the site of the city was near the Atlantic, he +crossed the continent, and then turned southward toward the Straits of +Magellan, falling at last to an Indian arrow. This was in 1673. More +than a century afterward the Franciscan friar, Menendez, was sent out +by the viceroy of Peru, but found no city beside Nahuelhuapi. + +Thereafter faith in the fable died, save among the imaginative and the +credulous. Of the former was Charles III of Spain, who died believing +it in 1788. Of the latter are the common people of Chile and Argentina, +who see in the streams of lava and volcanic sand at the foot of Osorno +the roads of a hidden people, and who still hear in the noise of the +avalanches upon Tronador the thunder of artillery along enchanted +battlements. + + +_The Seven Cities of Cibola_ + +In the quest of the Seven Cities of Cibola Spain dreamed northward, +and again deluded itself by the magic and sonority of a name. When +the fable was full blown it was of a city as great as the capital of +the Montezumas and ruled by a fugitive prince of that house. Lesser +cities surrounded it, as they surrounded Tenochtitlan on the plateau +of Anahuac. It stood beside a great inland sea out of which flowed the +Colorado, and on the coasts of this land were ships from China. + +The inhabitants of the plains were cattle of deformed shape and +ferocious aspect, which the Spaniards called the kine of Cibola. The +inhabitants of the seven cities, says Friar Marcos, who saw them at a +distance, were a people “somewhat white,” clad in cotton garments and +dwelling in stone houses with flat roofs. The Franciscan continues: +“They have emeralds and other jewels, although they esteem none as much +as turquoises, wherewith they adorn the walls and porches of their +houses, and their apparel and vessels, and they use them instead of +money through all the country. They use vessels of gold and silver, +for they have no other metal, whereof there is greater avail and more +abundance than in Peru.” + +This capital of the buffalo country was located within the limits of +the present United States. Somewhat shrunken from the dimensions of +legend, it is still in existence and the descendants of the men fabled +to traffic with Cathay go about its streets. Their skins are darker +than Marcos reported them, but they have the features and expression of +white men. + +Here is another myth of a gilded land and a refugee king, but overlaid +with material of a strange texture brought from afar. Its scene is +inland where buffalo are feeding; yet one of its windows commands the +Pacific with slanting Chinese sails upon it, and into the other comes +an old tale of the open Atlantic. The Seven Cities of Cibola are the +legendary seven cities of Antilia, founded by seven Spanish bishops +who fled the Moor, and they are the seven caves out of which came the +Aztecs. But they are also seven towns, the remains of which, waste or +tenanted, are to be found in New Mexico near the Arizona line. The vice +of the legend is that they are small towns, and poor. + +There are names of consequence in the quest of the Seven Cities of +Cibola, but a broad blotch of buffoonery is smeared across it. Alone of +all the visionary searches of Spain, it invites the treatment of ironic +burlesque. Yet there is heroism in the story and a great chapter of +geography. + +The first of these names is that of the luckless but stout-hearted +Cabeza de Vaca who left a trail of wandering mishap clear across the +continent of North America, and who was yet to break new paths through +the forests and savannas of South America where he founded the capital +of the Silver Republic. In 1536 the outposts of Melchior Diaz, who +commanded in the northern Mexican district of Culiacan, came upon a +strange party--a white man, nearly naked, with matted hair and beard, +a negro, and eleven Indians. The white man spoke in Spanish and with +such joyful agitation as to arouse a momentary suspicion. It was Cabeza +de Vaca. His negro companion was named Estivanico. There were three +other Spaniards a day’s march behind. In what was to follow, singularly +enough, the negro is the central figure; in what had gone before the +story is the Spanish captain’s. + +In 1527 he had sailed for Florida as treasurer of an expedition with +five vessels and six hundred men, in search of the Golden Apalache, one +of the minor dream quests of Spain. Quitting the fleet in a Florida +bay, three hundred men marched inland to their objective. What they +found was a collection of forty wigwams on the Suwanee River and a +rude people that engaged them in daily skirmishes at arms. So they +marched on, became entangled in the swamps and bayous along the coasts +of Alabama and Louisiana, made one fatal attempt to build rafts and +cross the Gulf to the Mexican coast, and then succumbed by degrees +to the wilderness. All but four of the Spaniards perished and these +were buffeted from tribe to tribe in an aimless drift westward. They +had almost reached the Gulf of California when they met the Spanish +outpost, and in eight years they had wandered from Atlantic to Pacific. + +What they told launched the search for the Seven Cities of Cibola. +Farther north they had found tribes of sedentary Indians living in +stone houses, wearing cotton garments and turquoise ornaments, and +with indications of stores of gold to draw upon. Francisco Vasquez +Coronado, governor of Northwest Mexico, was commissioned by Mendoza, +Viceroy of New Spain, to explore in that direction. Distrusting +the reports of Cabeza de Vaca, his first step was a reconnaissance +under the Franciscan, Fray Marcos. As guide and attendant the negro +Estevanico went with him, and a party of Pima Indians accompanied them. +They started northward from Culiacan in 1539, following the coast. In +Sonora the friar committed the folly of sending the negro ahead with +instructions to report to him at intervals by messenger. If he found +a mean thing he was to send a cross a hand’s length long; if a larger +matter, a cross two hands’ long; if the negro found a country better +than New Spain he was to send back a great cross. + +That was the last Fray Marcos saw of the negro, but he heard from him, +and from time to time he heard about him. Four days after his departure +an Indian came back bearing a wooden cross as high as a man and the +word of Estevanico that thirty days’ march ahead were seven cities +abounding in pearls and gold, and all subject to one lord. The houses +were of stone and mortar, one, two, and three stories high, and the +chief’s house was of four stories. One of the cities was named Cibola. +As the friar proceeded, the natives brought tales which seemed to +confirm the reports, and used place names that suggested grandeur. He +heard of a province called Totoneac, of the city of Ahacus, and of the +kingdoms of Hacus and Marata. + +Meanwhile Africa was blazing a trail far ahead into Darkest America. +It was broad, dusty with the feet of an accumulating multitude, and +finger-posted by avarice and imposture. The negro had taken the +adventure out of the hands of the too-trusting monk. In his wanderings +with Cabeza de Vaca he had won assurance, some knowledge of the +Indian nature, and a gourd rattle. He moved with the state and tumult +of a medicine-man, this clapper his potent emblem of authority. The +superstitious natives met all his demands, and he demanded much--more +food than he could use, gold, green stones, women. The monk followed, +several journeys behind, in a sort of anti-climax. + +The procession of the black Bacchus had its inevitable ending. Marcos +learned it while he was still some days from his goal. He met a number +of the Indians who had been with Estevanico, and they were flying +toward Mexico. They told of entering Cibola with the negro, where his +arrogance and folly mounted to new levels. Noting the lowering looks +of the sedentary Indians, several of these plains Indians went outside +and, hiding themselves, awaited the finish they foresaw. One day they +beheld their companions running from the town with men in pursuit. The +negro was not with them. His hosts had killed him. + +With two of the Indians Marcos went on to a hill from which he looked +down upon a valley dotted with villages. The nearest of these and not +the largest was Cibola. To Marcos it seemed “as large as the City of +Mexico.” It is situate, he says, “on a plain at the foot of a round +hill, and maketh shew to be a fair city, and is better seated than any +that I have seen in these parts. The houses are builded in order, all +made of stone with divers storeys and flat roofs.” Then he adds from +hearsay details of golden vessels and turquoise-studded porches. + +Setting up a wooden cross, Marcos hastened back, rejoicing, to make his +report to the viceroy. Out of what he told, and the far-sounding names +of provinces and kingdoms which he had heard, the Spanish mind made a +thing too rich for the haggard realities of the American southwest. It +seemed to call for a well-appointed expedition, and Coronado urged this +on the viceroy. + +With Marcos as his guide he was dispatched with a land force of +three hundred and twenty Spaniards, three hundred native allies, +and a thousand Indian and negro camp followers. He left San Miguel +in February, 1540, and in May a fleet under Alarcon was sent from +Acapulco to act in concert with him along the coast of the Gulf of +California. Alarcon went to the head of the gulf with his ships, and up +the Colorado, but, learning from natives that white men had already +entered Cibola, he returned with his fleet to Acapulco. + +What Coronado had entered was the Indian pueblo of Zuñi and its +attendant villages in northwestern New Mexico. As soon as his soldiers +beheld these little settlements, writes Castaneda, who went with the +expedition, they “broke out in curses against Fray Marcos.” They +accused him of deceiving them, and in fear of his life he was glad +to go back with the courier who bore to the viceroy the report of +Coronado. “I can assure your honour,” says the report, “the friar said +the truth in nothing that he reported, saving only the names of the +cities and great houses of stone; for although they be not wrought with +turquoises, nor with lime nor brick, yet are they very excellent houses +of three or four or five lofts high, wherein are good lodgings and fair +chambers. The seven cities are seven small towns, and they stand all +within four leagues together, and none of them is called Cibola, but +altogether they are called Cibola.” + +In his scholarly account of this expedition Bandelier defends the +credulous monk, and urges that the Spaniards had tricked out his story +with their own imaginings. He argues that the comparison with the City +of Mexico was not with the old Aztec capital, but with the new Spanish +town which, as Fray Marcos knew it in 1539, may not have had as many +as a thousand inhabitants. As to the statement that the citizens of +Cibola embellished their houses with green stones or turquoises, it +has been learned that it was an old custom in Zuñi to decorate the +roof hatches by which the people descended to their chambers with +turquoise, malachite, phosphate of copper and other stones or ores +of green and blue. This was truthful detail, although lending itself +to exaggeration. But the golden vessels, which most concerned the +Spaniard, were fable, and the Coronado expedition had cost $250,000. + +Despite the forthright words of Coronado, one conquistador who would +look facts in the face, his countrymen were unwilling to surrender the +vision all at once. The English merchant, Henry Hawks, spent five years +in Mexico and in 1572 made this report: “The Spanyards have notice of +seven cities which old men of the Indians shew them should lie towards +the northwest from Mexico. They have used and use dayly much diligence +in seeking of them, but they cannot find any one of them. They say that +the witchcraft of the Indians is such, that when they come by these +townes they cast a mist upon them, so that they cannot see them.” + +Zuñi lies south of the great Navaho reservation, and is a pueblo +of the same type as Taos, Acoma, Laguna, and the Hopi towns. Its +identification with the Seven Cities of Cibola rests on the reports +of the explorers themselves, on an examination of their routes, and +especially on the researches of Frank H. Cushing, commissioner of the +American Bureau of Ethnology, who became a member of this Indian tribe +in 1880 and lived with it four years while he studied its traditions. +At that time Zuñi had sixteen hundred inhabitants. + +These people called their home Shivano (Spanish, Civano). Cushing +found that the sonorous Marata and Tontoneac were not kingdoms or +provinces, but directions, and that one of the distant “cities” named +by the natives was Acoma, which lies near the Mesa Encantada. While the +Spaniards had denied that Marcos and Estevanico really made a journey +to the north, Cushing heard from the Zuñi story-tellers that a “black +Mexican” had come among them and had been killed for his rudeness to +their women. Soon afterwards the first “white Mexicans” they had seen +entered their land as conquerors. + + +_Quivera_ + +Coronado was not content to bring back his costly expedition, +empty-handed, from the fiasco of Cibola. Again he dreamed northward, +and the name of his dream is Quivera. Between this city of illusion in +the Mississippi Valley, and the city of enchantment which the Cæsars +had reared on the edge of the Patagonian plain, it is six thousand +miles in a straight line. These two capitals of the mirage are the +farthest north and farthest south of Spanish fantasy. + +The conqueror of Cibola drifted into the Quivera adventure by degrees. +There must be richer pueblos east of the seven towns, he thought, and +went in search of them, discovering and occupying many. But he found +New Mexico a sterile land. He became interested in the great buffalo +herds that roamed the plains to the north and sent his lieutenant, +Alvarado, on a hunt to secure meat. Alvarado took with him as a guide +an Indian from somewhere far to the east whom he found living with +the Pecos tribe and who figures in Spanish writings as El Turco, “the +Turk,” which was what he looked like. The Spaniard did not stay long +among the buffalos, for the homesick Turk had an exciting tale to tell. +With it, Alvarado hastened back to his chief, and soon, with El Turco +as pathfinder, the columns started toward the northeast and Quivera. + +This was another golden city in a prosperous land. Through the land ran +a river two leagues wide in which swam fish as large as horses. There +were great canoes upon the river, with as many as forty men to drive +them, and these had golden eagles for figureheads. The native sovereign +slumbered in the afternoons beneath a tree the branches of which were +hung with golden bells, where the wind made music. The houses of +Quivera were built of stone and were like those of the pueblos of New +Mexico, but larger and fairer. The meats and drinks of its citizens +were served in vessels of precious metals. + +Of this land the Turk himself was a native. But there was another +Indian exile with the party. His name was Ysopete, and he, too, spoke +of Quivera. It seemed to be a different place farther north. + +With one guide bent on leading him northward and the other eastward, +the expedition which Coronado conducted toward Quivera moved like a man +lost in the wilderness. It traveled to the right for thirty-seven days +and partly returned on its tracks. Soon the Spaniards became confused +and ill at ease. In the vast monotony of the staked plains they saw +no marks by which they could guide themselves forward or find the way +back. A sense of helplessness stole over them. The very bison that +grazed around them excited a sort of fear. Their horses went wild with +terror when for the first time they saw these huge, misshapen beasts, +whose glowing eyes and hollow bellowing were calculated to inspire awe +even in men. + +The wanderers were in latitudes less kindly to illusion than those +where other men were seeking the Gilded King, and a glimmer of the +scientific and reasoning spirit which weighs motives and scrutinizes +facts was born in them. Was not this story of Quivera the Golden just +a tale told by the settled Indians in order to get rid of them? Had +not El Turco been instigated to lure them by confused trails into the +wilderness and leave them to perish there? Had not one of them detected +him talking to the devil in a pitcher of water? + +While they harbored these distrustful forebodings the Spaniards fell +in with a party of plains Indians who knew Quivera. It was forty days’ +march ahead, they said, and the columns would die for lack of food +and water upon the way. Stone buildings and plentiful provisions in +precious vessels at the end of the way? The prairie nomads knew of none +of these things. They spoke of an encampment where the houses were +made of straw and skins, and a little maize in them, naught else. The +shifty Turk changed his story. He had not told the truth, he admitted, +as to the houses of Quivera, but it had a numerous population and a +store of precious metals. In anger the Spaniards put shackles upon +him. They were ready to go back, but Coronado was determined, without +risking too many lives, at least to see for himself what lay at the end +of the trail. He took twenty-nine horsemen, the manacled El Turco, and +Ysopete, and rode northward with the plains Indians. + +After thirty days of hard riding through a great treeless plain dotted +with buffalo herds and watered by a number of small streams, Coronado +reached Quivera, where he stayed twenty-five days. He describes the +region about it as a rich land in which grew plums like those of Spain, +mulberries, and well-flavored grapes. But the settlement itself was +merely the summer camp of an Indian horde that followed the buffalo and +supplemented a beef diet with corn cakes, made from maize grown in the +river bottoms. + +The explorer tells the story with rough candor. “I had been told,” he +says, “that the houses were made of stone and were several stories; +they are only of straw, and the inhabitants are as savage as any that I +have seen. They have no clothes, nor cotton to make them out of; they +simply tan the hides of the cows which they hunt, and which pasture +around their village and in the neighborhood of a large river. They +eat their meat raw, and are enemies to one another and war among one +another. All these men look alike.” + +As Estevanico had met his fate at Cibola, so the Turk met his at +Quivera. Its people did not know him, but they welcomed Ysopete, and +for his sake the Spaniards. El Turco sought to lay the blame on the New +Mexican Indians, who, he said, had engaged him to lead the Spaniards to +their fate on the prairies. This tale failing to help his credit, he +tried to raise Quivera against his masters, who incontinently hanged +him. + +Before turning southward to rejoin his command and take it back +to Mexico, Coronado set up a wooden cross which bore a soldierly +inscription, “Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, leader of a campaign, came +to this place.” + +Four states claim Quivera, and the blind wanderings of the Spaniards +give conjecture a broad field to work in. One thing certain is that +La Gran Quivera, the new Mexican mission, established after the +suppression of the Indian uprisings in 1580, does not stand on its +site. Bandelier thinks the site was in central Kansas about a hundred +miles north of the Arkansas River. It has severally been contended that +Quivera was a camp of the Wichita Indians; that it was in Nebraska not +far from the state capital; and that the place the Spaniards reached +was in the southwest corner of Missouri. Cyrus Thomas, who supports +the latter view, holds that El Turco came from some tribe near the +confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi, that the great stream of +which he spoke was the latter river and Quivera a town on its banks, +while the place seen by Coronado was simply the homeland of Ysopete. +Whatever the region, it would be as vain to seek the site as to look +for the camping ground in the desert where some forgotten Arab tribe +pitched its tents for a night, and struck them at sunrise. + + +_The Islands of Solomon_ + +There came a time when the New World was too small to hold the visions +of Spain. North and south the conquistadors had marched, seeking what +they did not find. So they dreamed westward over the sea. They had +plunged their hands in gold. They might yet bathe in it at the Baths of +Sunset. + +As always, there were stories of islands in near-by waters where the +superstition or simplicity of the natives had heaped up treasure +that more deserving men might seize. The Spaniards went after it, at +first from Mexico. Then from the harbors of Peru ships began to sail +westward, and fantasies spread over the deep. + +These voyages add two titles to the dream quests of Spain--the +Enchanted Islands and the Isles of Solomon--and the names may stand +for one reality. About six hundred miles west of the mainland of South +America, and on the line of the equator, lie the Galapagos, comprising +five large and ten smaller islands. From the Peruvians the Spaniards +learned of them, but for a while they could not find them. They were +vaguely called the Islas Encantadas because they seemed to elude the +search. The buccaneers used them later as sallyports from which to +attack the Peruvian plate fleet. Still later whalers resorted thither, +but not until 1832 did Ecuador occupy the group. + +This archipelago of the west may have been the basis of the legend that +grew up among the seafaring folk of Peru. It was told that the Inca +Tupac Yupanqui had made a voyage and come upon two islands which were +called Nina-chumpi and Hahua-chumpi, or Fire Island and Outer Island. +He brought back gold and silver, a throne of copper, black slaves, and +the skin of an animal like a horse. Another account said the islands +were distant a journey of two months, and one was so large it might be +a continent. There were sheep, llamas and deer upon it and a bareheaded +people who wore cotton and woolen garments. Although their king dwelt +in a palace with mud walls, a frieze of gold ran around it. + +A later legend, purporting to tell of a Spanish discovery, is very +definite: A long time before, a ship from Chile had been driven out +of its course to a large island, which it coasted for fifty days. One +of the seamen, Juan Montanes, went ashore and found a race of tall, +bearded Indians and women whose braided hair reached to their ankles. +They lived in communal houses four hundred feet long by one hundred +feet wide. Numerous rafts and sumptuously decorated canoes thronged +with people plied along the coasts. Because of his beard, the natives +treated the Spaniard kindly and pressed a gold plate and emeralds upon +him. + +The account continues with the exactness of a seaman’s chart: “These +islands must be reached from Puerto de Arica, taking the volcano in the +bay as a landmark, such being the custom of the Indians who come and +go thither. As soon as the said volcano disappears, the desert islands +are reached. Going in among them, after two days the large island which +seems to be a continent is sighted, and what lies to the west is still +to be discovered.” + +There are elements in this story, such as the communal houses and the +ornate canoes, borrowed from actual expeditions to the South Seas which +the earlier legend itself had launched. What these expeditions had +set out to find was a continent about two thousand miles to the west, +which stretched northward for three thousand miles from the latitude +of Tierra del Fuego to 15 degrees south, or almost on a line with +Callao; a domain about the size of that afterward discovered and named +Australia, but lying on the near side of the Pacific. Rumors of such a +continent passed from tavern gossip to palace conferences. Sarmiento +de Gamboa had gathered and analyzed Inca traditions of Pacific islands +and the learned men of the colony assumed that a continental mass lay +behind them. So in 1567 the governor of Peru dispatched two small ships +with one hundred and fifty men and put his youthful nephew, Alvarado de +Mendana, in command. + +An incredible thing happened. These frail vessels, provisioned for a +voyage of two thousand miles, drove westward without sighting land +for seven thousand miles. In two months they crossed the width of the +Pacific, making their land-fall in the East Indies. For six months the +crews explored the capes, creeks, and jungles of a group of islands +flanking New Guinea on the east. Then the ships started back and were +off Callao twenty months after they had left it. They brought no +gold, but stories of “a naked, cheerful people of a bright reddish +colour”--in reality, head-hunting cannibals, to this day the most +savage of men. + +Nearly thirty years went by before another expedition was undertaken, +and meanwhile legend was at work. It gave the distant group the name +it bears upon the map. These were called the Isles of Solomon, says +Lopez Vaz, “to the ende that the Spaniards, supposing them to bee +those Isles from whence Solomon fetched gold to adorne the temple at +Jerusalem, might bee the more desirous to goe and inhabit the same.” +But the Portuguese writer adds that because Drake and other raiders +had entered the South Seas, it was determined not to settle them, so +that interloping vessels Molucca-bound might have no succor on the way. + +In 1595 Mendana, now middle aged, undertook to colonize the islands, +going out with four ships and 368 emigrants--men, women and children, +his own wife among them. Then another amazing thing happened. The +Spaniards could not find the Solomons. They discovered the Marquesas, +and in the island of Santa Cruz founded a short-lived colony where +Mendana died and whence the expedition went forth again to disaster. +Quiros, Mendana’s great lieutenant, returning to Peru, represented to +the viceroy that the islands come upon by his chief must screen an +unknown continent, as in fact they did. In 1605 he was sent out to find +them. He discovered the Society Islands, the Duff group and the New +Hebrides, but nowhere was there trace of the Isles of Solomon. + +Dissolved into fable, for two centuries they were lost to geography. In +the waterside taverns of Peru, people still talked of them. But it had +become a maxim of the viceroys to treat the discovery as a romance, and +learned men concurred. The group was erased from the maps of the world. +Although it includes ten great islands stretching for six hundred +miles in an almost unbroken barrier across the track of navigators, +and although the first Spanish expedition brought back information +so detailed that every headland and harbor which Mendana passed has +since been identified, yet for two hundred years nobody could find the +archipelago. When it was rediscovered it was from the other direction. +Carteret and Bougainville, rounding Africa and entering the South Seas +in the latter part of the eighteenth century, came upon islands which +were found to be the lost lands of Spain. + + +_The Sepulchers of Zenu_ + +There are significant words in Raleigh’s _Discovery of Guiana_. Here, +he says, “commanders that shoot at honour and abundance shall find +more temples adorned with golden images, more sepulchres filled with +treasure, than either Cortez found in Mexico or Pizarro in Peru.” +Moreover, it is virgin soil: “the graves have not bene opened for +golde, nor the Images puld downe out of their temples.” Spain’s hunger +for gold pursued the Indians into their sanctuaries, and even into +their graves. + +The Bachelor Enciso and Balboa, each in turn commander of Darien, +sought golden treasures, which, as report ran, Indian piety had heaped +in the wilderness. + +Enciso went forth to sack the Sepulchers of Zenu. This province lay +some twenty leagues west of Cartagena. From its steeps the rains washed +gold down in such profusion that the natives caught in nets nuggets +as big as eggs. Zenu was also the cemetery for all the tribes of the +country. For ages they had brought their dead thither for burial, and +deposited golden ornaments with the bodies in the tombs. The soil, the +Spanish lawyer thought, must have become incredibly rich from this long +accumulation. It was no sacrilege to plunder the dead, for were these +not pagans, buried according to the rites of an idolatrous faith? + +Landing on the coast of Zenu, Enciso found an army under two caciques +drawn up to oppose him. The lawyer in him prompted him to put his +opponents in the wrong before appealing to arms. So he had a formal +statement read to the two chiefs. The colloquy which followed, and +which he reports himself, is one of the most interesting incidents in +all the contacts of white men with savages. The statement recited that +there was one God who ruled in heaven, that in the Pope He had a vicar +who ruled on earth, and that the latter had awarded Zenu to the King of +Spain. The Indians replied that they accepted the sovereignty of God in +heaven, but nothing further. The Pope, they said, must have been drunk, +to give away what did not belong to him, and the King somewhat mad, to +ask of him what was not his to give. If the King came to take it, they +would cut off his head and set it on a stake; and they pointed to other +stakes on which heads were set. + +Whereupon there was fighting, in which, Enciso says, the Indians had +the worse of it. But two of his men, slightly wounded by poisoned +arrows, died raving; the country was hostile beyond what he had +anticipated, and his force small. He went away without rifling the +sepulchers. + + +_The Temple of Dobayba_ + +Balboa, succeeding Enciso at Darien, heard of a province called Dobayba +forty leagues away on the banks of the Atrato. It was named either +from a goddess or from an Indian princess to whom, after death, divine +honors were paid. Her worship was conducted in a great temple, whither +natives came with their offerings. At stated times the caciques of +remote provinces sent a golden tribute, together with slaves for +sacrifice. + +Superstition and fear piled up treasure at this shrine. At one time its +worship had been neglected. Then a great drought fell upon the land, +the springs and rivers dried up, and a scourge of death was visited +upon the neglectful nations. The survivors renewed their zeal and +redoubled their offerings of slaves and gold. Thus from generation to +generation the wealth of many peoples drained into the blood-stained +temple. The prospect of spoiling a heathen shrine profaned by human +sacrifice and piled high with idolatrous gold presented itself not as a +desecration but as a duty. + +On his first journey Balboa mistook a deserted frontier village for the +temple town. When he went again, it was at the behest of Pedrarias, +who had been made governor of the colony, and whose jealousy prompted +him to set Balboa a task that might bring disgrace. The quest of +Dobayba was now deemed an enterprise of romantic promise but of high +hazard. The way thither led through tribes of bold and crafty savages. +In the dreary fens lurked animals to be dreaded, including monstrous +importations from classic myth. Clouds of mosquitoes swarmed above +the stagnant water, sinister lizards crawled on the banks, crocodiles +haunted the ooze. Dragons couched there, so said report, and huge bats +flitted by on vampire errands. Peter Martyr even mentions two harpies. +A later age was to discover the enigmatic White Indians. Rather than +enter this accursed region, the coast natives were wont to shun the +direct routes and travel the steep paths of the mountains. + +Balboa was to win neither gold nor glory upon his forbidding mission. +Passing up the Gulf of Oraba and into the river Atrato with a fleet +of canoes, the expedition was ambushed by Indian canoes, losing half +its number. Its leader, wounded, made shore with the remainder and at +sunset began a crestfallen retreat to Darien. + +The temple of Dobayba--if there was a temple--was left inviolate, to +receive the gold and shed the blood of heathen until the tropical +forest swept in and buried it in a green oblivion. + + +_Other Quests_ + +Of certain other Spanish quests less has been recorded, because they +were incidental to larger undertakings or were conducted by small +parties of adventurers, monks, or treasure-seekers, rather than by +columns of troops sent out by provincial governments. Pious men sought +the Terrestrial Paradise toward the headwaters of the Orinoco. From +all points of the compass explorers hunted for the Kingdom of Women. +Sometimes the conquistadors reiterated their own exploits, as when +Federmann looked for the House of the Sun in the Colombian Andes, +although under the name of the Temple of the Sun it had already fallen +to Pizarro. The adventure of the Golden Chain was attempted on several +occasions, parties of Spaniards undertaking to drain the crater lake of +Urcos, into which, tradition said, had been flung a massive chain of +gold long enough to encircle the great square at Cuzco. + +The quest of the Cradle of Gold is of the last century, and here the +magic of a name again wrought its spell, two hundred years after the +feet of the conquistadors had passed. Bingham, who climbed to this +ruined mountain fortress a dozen years ago, believes that Choquequirau +is just a name of Indian poetry, misunderstood. Seen from a distance, +the ridge on which it lies resembles a hammock, and its only gold may +be that which the setting sun flings upon it. But the name itself, and +the vagueness of knowledge as to its last defenders, led to various +attempts to reach the ruin from the valley below. One party brought +back reports of rock-built “palaces, paved squares, temples, prisons +and baths.” The prefect of the Peruvian department of Apurimac, using +a company of soldiers and Indian carriers, built a way across the +rocky gorges and up the steep mountain side to Choquequirau. This, it +is thought, was the eyrie of the last Inca--neither temple town nor +treasure house, but a frontier fortress of the long ago. + +The legendary Laguna de los Xarayes was indicated on the early maps +of South America as lying at the sources of the Paraguay. In it was +the splendid island home of El Gran Moxo. The imagery of the Hebrew +prophets was borrowed to describe his palace with its golden and +silvern vessels, its doors of bronze where living lions in chains of +gold kept guard, its cloud-like tower where a disk of silver, in shape +like the moon, shed light over the waters. + +Explorers sought this island magnificence in vain. When they came in +the dry season, they could not find even the lake in which it swam, for +what seemed to be a vast lagoon was merely high water on the Paraguay. + +One of the golden visions of Spain recoiled upon its head. The +Spaniards would not have it that with a single blow they had struck +down the power of the Incas and laid hold of all their riches. It +seemed to them they had merely precipitated a dispersal and an +exodus--the going out of Indian princes and property to found new seats +elsewhere. One of these was the great city of Paytiti, also called +the White House, which had risen near the confluence of the Huallaga +and Marañon in the forests of Peru. The legend which the conqueror +propagated of a fugitive dynasty grown strong in exile was cherished by +the humbled Quichuas, and twice it roused them to arms. + +In 1740 Juan Santos assumed the name of Atahuallpa, raised an army from +the uncivilized members of various tribes, drove out the missionaries, +and for a space made the name and power of Paytiti a fact on the +borders of Peru. Again, in 1780, Tupac-Amaru, a descendant of the +Incas, appealed to the legend, aroused the country, abolished enforced +mine service and ecclesiastical dues, and became master of most of +the Peruvian plateau. The insurrection was put down and its leader +executed, but the injustices he had fought were never restored in full +vigor, and passed altogether when Peru rose against Spain in the War of +Independence. The dream of Paytiti had become a vision of liberation. + + + + +Chapter XXIII. The Fabric of Illusion + + +The traditional world, like the modern world, is a fabric woven of many +stuffs and colors, and patched with strange materials, some old, some +almost new. If one wonders how it was all thrown together, one must +consider that the type of mind which collects and analyzes facts, which +experiments in order to discard error, which defines terms and reasons +from them, did not appear until late in the world’s history and even +now is not common. Aristotle, the chief scientist of antiquity, debated +why a dead kingfisher, suspended from a string, should foretell the +direction of the winds by turning its bill toward that corner of the +heavens whence they were to come. Sir Thomas Browne hung a kingfisher +on a string, and found that it did not do this thing. + +Except when directed to its immediate problems of food and shelter, +the antique mind thought in images, rather than in definite terms. Its +processes were akin to dreams, in which one takes strange things for +granted, nor seeks to verify anything. Save when they drove a bargain, +men took one another’s statements for granted. Much the same thing is +true of the savage to-day. + +The realms and races of prodigy form the main burden of travel tale. +Except when travels took the form of commercial voyagings, or military +expeditions, and with a few other exceptions, such as the journeys +of Pytheas the Massilian and Marco the Venetian, their theme, almost +until modern times, was wonder. Home-keeping folks wanted to hear, as +still they do, of countries and customs, and men and animals, that were +different. The myths of geography have come out of the contacts of the +dreaming mind of savagery and early civilization with the unknown. They +represent men in the process of getting acquainted with the world about +them. + +For primitive man they began at the very boundary of his district. +Mystery was there, and forbidding things were suspected; and if waste +lands lay beyond, these got themselves uncouth populations. The +stranger that crossed the boundary was dreaded and hated as something +not quite human, or at least as wielder of a magic that might work +harm. It is said of wild tribesmen in Borneo that when they meet a +stranger they turn their backs and hide their faces because the sight +of him makes them dizzy. “The stranger is for the wolf,” is an Arab +saying, and the early rule of the world was that he must die in the +interest of those upon whom he had thrust himself. “He had salt water +in his eyes,” was the Fiji formula when castaways were clubbed to +death. Many tribes call themselves by names which mean simply “men,” +as distinguished from all other peoples, whose human nature is not +conceded. + +But the cruel host of to-day might be the helpless guest of to-morrow. +There came a time of toleration, the limited toleration recorded in +the Slavic proverb, “A guest and a fish smell on the third day.” As +men crossed and recrossed the tribal boundary its weird legends were +shifted to remoter horizons, became things to gossip about rather than +act upon, and might mellow into genial report. Even historical peoples +living at a distance were swathed in horizon haze. The justice of the +Indians, their freedom from bodily ailments, and their contempt of +death are favorite themes of Ctesias. Herodotus spoke of the Egyptians +as later ages have spoken of the Chinese. Adam of Bremen gave a +fantastic picture of the peoples of the far north--small, sinister +Finns, whose magic could wreck passing ships and draw the very fish +out of the sea; cruel islanders colored bluish green by salt water, +and the “most noble” Northmen, bravest, most loyal, most temperate of +men. Above all other races in consideration, so the west agreed for +some centuries of unwonted humility, were the Chinese. Among them, says +Purchas, “is reported to be neither Thiefe nor Whore, nor Murtherer, +nor Hailes, nor Pestilence, nor such like Plagues.” And they live to be +two hundred years old. + +Travelers were the agents of distance, bringing the woof which the +stay-at-home worked into the warp of his fancy. Until very recent times +they were the world’s telegraph, mails and newspapers, all in one. +Their coming was an event, and their going was remarked upon. Over +rough ways, through countries where inns were not, among peoples who +had instinctive dislike of a stranger and deemed it no fault to despoil +or enslave him, the wanderer pursued his uncertain fates as merchant, +pilgrim or mendicant. He paid his fare by the stories he took with +him--winning a precarious hospitality in strange lands and an eager +welcome when he reached home. The more curious the tale he told, the +more kindly he was entreated--Ulysses repaid royal hospitality with +royal guerdon--and in the ancient world so little was known that one +might tell almost any tale he pleased. There was no means of checking +up a report. Of course there were skeptics here and there, and there +was, and is, a suspicion that old men and wanderers use rather more +than the truth. The Ancient Mariner, being both old and traveled, had a +great tale to tell. + +Whole races wandered as well as single individuals. The migrations of +peoples, and most if not all of them have had a nomad period, have +had something to do with bringing the more beautiful of their legends +into being--the tales of ideal lands, abodes of the blest where their +dead are, or whither their heroes are translated without dying. The +journeys of the sun are tracked upon them and human wistfulness has +builded there, but so has memory. The homeland which the ancestors of +a people abandoned long before, driven out, it may be, by an invading +host, lives in its legends as a region desirable above all others. The +hardships of the exodus are remembered also, and tradition magnifies +the cruel height of the mountains, the swiftness of deep, unfordable +rivers, the terror of moonless trails and all the heavinesses of the +way. When the dead go home, or the heroes pass to rest, the path of +souls which they travel back is the path their forefathers followed +and the one journey ends where the other began, in a land that is a +province of the Golden Age. + +This hypothesis, which is Herbert Spencer’s, may not explain all the +elysiums that a yearning fancy has created. Yet in the South Seas they +lie in the direction whence the islanders came; the Hindu legend of +the blissful Uttarakarus of the north is thought to hold the memory of +a migration southward from some Himalayan valley; while the curious +Persian legend of the enclosed garden of Yima, where was neither +deformity nor iniquity, may be a note on the early movement of the +Iranians from their cold ancestral home to the Azerbaijan region, and a +halt there before renewing their march toward the sun and the sea. + +Though seldom we may follow the process, religion, and symbolism, +which is its handmaiden, and magic, which is its elder brother, +traced the outlines of most of the fabulous animals and peculiar +peoples; human forgetfulness, savage logic and hearsay have filled +them in. The natural history of the traditional world was in good +part the contribution of the religions of Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and +India. The tribes of grotesque peoples, the dog-faced generations, +the satyrs, the demons of the waste, the fowls with woman faces, the +women with fish-tails, the winged quadrupeds, all seem more like the +carven creatures which populate the walls and towers of mediæval +cathedrals than breathing tenants of fields and waters. The seeming +is significant. When the hunchback, Quasimodo, was on the roof of +Notre Dame at night, “then said the women of the neighborhood, the +whole church took on something fantastic, supernatural, horrible; +eyes and mouths were opened here and there; one heard the dogs, the +monsters, and the gargoyles of stone, which keep watch night and day, +with outstretched necks and open jaws, around the monstrous cathedral, +barking.” When the edifice took fire, continues Hugo, “there were +griffins which had the air of laughing, gargoyles which one fancied one +heard yelping, salamanders which puffed at the fire, tarasques which +sneezed in the smoke.” + +In the temples of the Middle Ages the fabulous birds of the traditional +world came home to their roosts, and the fabulous animals to their +dens. They had been taken from the temples of earlier religions and +they found their way back through the medium of an art which did not +know where these creatures came from. Nor did ancient travelers and +geographers. These, they supposed, were real races of men, real beasts +and birds. They had never seen them, for they roamed the outer spaces, +but everywhere they saw their effigies--in the porches of palaces, upon +the columns of imperial courts, and on the monuments of princes, as +well as within the shrines of strange gods. + +Creatures of allegory these were, religious symbols, survivals of +totemistic worship of beasts. Yet the entablatures on which their +outlines were graven were mistaken for illustrated natural history, +accepted as literal records of fact, like the columns which companioned +them and which kings set up along the highways of the east to proclaim +that hither they had come and here they had prevailed in battle. + +The imagery of all religions musters them. Eskimo mythology is a +witch-haunted shore, Aztec mythology a charnel-house, Chilean mythology +a forbidding menagerie. The Chiriqui of Panama have an alligator, a +jaguar, and a parrot god, all with human bodies. In Egyptian myth one +reads of the watch-dog of Osiris in the underworld--the Swallower +of the West, mixture of crocodile, lion, and hippopotamus. On a +man’s shoulders Anubis carried a jackal head; and half human were +the bull-gods, hawk-gods, goat-gods, vulture-gods, cat-gods. The +Ægean pantheon shows human figures with the heads of asses, lions, +bulls, and birds. The god Brhaspati of Hindu myth was seven-mouthed +and seven-rayed, beautiful-tongued, sharp-horned, blue-backed, and +hundred-winged. Hanuman was a monkey-god. The goddess Kali was a +dark-blue female with four arms and three eyes. Siva himself had four +faces, which appeared in turn when a ravishing nymph created by Brahma +walked quite around him to tempt him. + +The evolution of these divine beast-men, ancestors of the fabulous +races of geography, begins with the annual sacrifice of a sacred animal +and the preservation of its skin for the ensuing year. At first this +was stored, then stuffed, then drawn over a wooden or stone image, +to which, as worship lost its primal grossness, the human form was +imparted. The result might be an ass- or goat-god, a centaur or satyr. +Yet, with religious symbolism shaping it, evolution has operated also +in reverse, dowering anthropomorphic deities with animal parts to +signify typical qualities. This is seen even in Christian story. On +the choir stalls of a Rhine church begging friars were depicted with +the cowled head of a monk, but with a pig’s body and fox tail, while +a Bible of the tenth century shows the evangelists as beast-headed +men, and the four gospels as a four-headed composite animal called the +tetramorph. + +[Illustration: THE GARGOYLES OF STONE WHICH KEPT WATCH DAY AND NIGHT] + +Out of the magic dances of men, as out of their temples, the races of +fable have come trooping. By donning the heads and perhaps the tails +of horses, bulls, asses, and goats, and treading certain measures, +ritual mummers became, in the thought of the time, horse-demons, +ox-demons, ass-demons, and goat-demons, and as such semidivine. They +danced to bring fertility to the flocks and herds, while the god--it +is Pindar speaking--“laughed aloud to see the romping license of the +monstrous beasts.” The masks of wild animals and of reptiles and birds +were worn also, and the motions of these creatures were repeated in +other dances, as they are to-day, in order to propitiate dangerous +beasts, or bring luck in the chase, or constrain heat and cold, sun +and rain, through animals that were their symbols. Possibly the First +People of Indian myth, equally with the satyrs of the classics, derive +from rites in which dancers simulated beasts, and seemed, therefore, +both human and bestial. Belief that ritual dancers donned the animal +nature with their masks; travelers’ reports; the ambiguous records +of pictograph and frieze, and tribal forgetfulness of the meaning of +long-abandoned rites--all were avenues by which the mummers passed out +of the atmosphere of a naïve township magic into the spacious precincts +of marvel. Greek tragedy and Greek comedy grew up in their steps, +flourished for some splendid moments, and died out. But the ritual +mime, whence these came, is still danced by peasants clad in skins. + +If, as pragmatism claims, the intellectual world is “pervaded and +perverted by errors, lies, fictions, and illusions”--things real only +in the sense that they can be talked about--it could not be otherwise +than that the folk-mind would throng the galleries of fable with its +cruder creations. Was it not a slighter thing to picture “gorgons, +hydras, and chimæras dire” than to give the wood its guardian deity, or +to reach the poetry of Indian belief that the echo is the Lizard-Man +telling back? The night terrors of the savage, the dream figures of an +age when dreams were very real, the hallucinations of medicine-men, +the deep reactions of the imagination to what seems abnormal but +is merely strange, even the easy success of the alarming masks and +deforming paraphernalia of tribesmen on the warpath--all contributed +to the fabulous populations. In the house of the mind, one chamber is +a museum where it strives to improve on nature’s handiwork. It invents +no new thing, but it shifts familiar combinations, exaggerating, +deforming, recombining. The product is either a caricature or a +composite, a grotesque or a chimæra. Nature itself has set a pattern +in the bat, which the Persians say is compounded of bird, dog, and +muskrat, since it flies like a bird, has dog teeth and lives in holes +like a muskrat. + +By his own handiwork has man been misled, or led away into curious +valleys of vision. Savage art seems constrained by some obscure law +of the mind to give its subjects, be they god, man, or beast, a +grotesque delineation. It may be that primitive drawing was evolved +inversely from the drawing of children, whose first animals are usually +horizontal human beings; the first men pictured by the cave artists +were more like erect animals. Paleolithic man, so Luquet thinks, +learned how to represent animals before he did men, and gave the latter +beast countenances and misshapen members in his early attempts to +represent them. The stuff of myth is in the rock drawings. In sculpture +itself its influence is clearly marked. + +On the evidence of broken statues, desert peoples based tales of +forgotten races that had been turned into stone. On the evidence +of wooden idols, snow-mantled in the land of the Samoyeds, their +neighbors based tales of a northern nation frozen into immobility with +each recurring winter and thawed out by the sun’s return. There were +sculptures and bas-reliefs in Egypt which ministered to the pride of +kings by picturing them several times as large as their subjects and +vassals; and these were evidence to the stranger that he had come +into a country which held both giants and dwarfs. Primitive drawings +betray ignorance of perspective, and this archaic style was retained by +religious conservatism after art had found itself. The sculptures that +show Egyptian countenances in profile, with eyes as long as in the full +face, also show profiles of quadrupeds having but two legs and a single +horn. Here, and not in “the wild, white, fierce, chaste moon, whose +two horns are indissolubly twisted into one,” may be the secret of the +unicorn. + +The power to evoke myths of the living has been in marble statues and +wooden images from the beginning, for in the beginning they were +wrought in the thought that life would enter them. A passage in _The +Flame of Life_ reveals the creative quality in D’Annunzio reacting +to their spell: “In the fruit orchards, in the vineyards, among the +vegetables, among the pastures, rose the surviving statues. They +were numberless like a dispersed people. Some still white, some gray +or yellow with lichens or greenish with moss, or spotted; in all +attitudes, with all gestures, goddesses, heroes, nymphs, seasons, +hours, with their bows, with their arrows, their garlands, their +cornucopias, their torches, with all the emblems of their riches, +power, and pleasure, exiled from fountains, grottos, labyrinths, +harbors, porticos; friends of the evergreen, box, and myrtle, +protectors of passing loves, witnesses of eternal vows, figures of a +dream far older than the hands that had formed them and the eyes that +had seen them in the ravaged gardens.” + +Sovereign reason itself has sent emissaries to the courts of fable. +Science is tolerant and until it knows it speaks the language of +Montaigne, “It is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that +for false, which unto us seemeth to beare no show of likelihood or +truth.” Empedocles, precursor of physical scientists, and perhaps first +to glimpse the doctrine of evolution, provided the classic world with +a working explanation of the prodigious animals and peoples and gave +a law to the menageries of myth. He thought that the various parts of +men and animals were separately created by the elements, which were +his deities. There were heads without necks, arms without shoulders, +eyes without sockets; and as they wandered about in space these members +united, forming man-headed beasts, beast-headed men, and various +bizarre beings which because of their maladjustment did not survive in +competition with normal men and animals. The doctrine has been echoed +in modern times in the contention that the composite creatures of +fable--part reptile, part bird, and part beast--represent intermediate +forms, experiments which nature inaugurated and abandoned in evolving +higher types of life. The marsupial kangaroo, the duck-billed platypus, +and the flying lizard are surviving testimony to such experiment. + +A kindred philosophy may be discerned here and there in the folklore +of aboriginal Americans. In the deluge legend of the Pimas, Fox and +Sister, escaping in two arks, set to work to fashion a new world of +men out of mud; Fox molds manikins with one arm, one leg, one eye, but +Sister derides these and tells him to put his journeyman’s product +away behind the ocean in another world; then she breathes into her own +better handiwork the breath of life; these deformed folk are still +living somewhere, the Pimas think. The haunting Indian myth of a First +People, who had the human form but the beast nature, and from whom +the animals derive, and the companion myth of a First People who had +the brute form, but discarded it for the human, are things with the +Empedoclean quality, but reach deeper; and a true note of observation +is in them. Somewhere in every man one catches a glimpse of some +animal. All created things are reflected in his form, his gait, his +face. “Somewhat of me down there?” was the question of Emerson when he +caught a dog’s understanding glance; and in men’s countenances he had +seen, he thought, “the features of the mink, of the bull, of the rat, +and the barnyard fowl.” + +Thus the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid take on a tinge of plausibility. +“What keeps these wild tales in circulation for thousands of years?” +asks Emerson. “What but the wild fact to which they suggest some +approximation of theory!” In lighter vein in _Penguin Island_ Anatole +France sketches the metamorphosis of birds into men: “Immediately the +penguins were transformed. Their foreheads enlarged and their heads +grew round like the dome of St. Maria Rotunda in Rome. Their oval eyes +opened more widely on the universe; a fleshy nose clothed the two +clefts of their nostrils; their beaks were changed into mouths, and +from their mouths went forth speech; their necks grew short and thick; +their wings became arms and their claws legs; a restless soul dwelt +within the breast of each of them. However, there remained with them +some traces of their first nature. They were inclined to look sideways; +they balanced themselves on their short thighs; their bodies were +covered with fine down.” + +There is good terrestrial history as well as the dreams and guesses of +the mind hidden in travel tales, and in them are embalmed some of the +oldest memories of mankind. Paleolithic man found various subraces of +men in Europe when he came there, savage prowlers from whose skeletal +remains modern science has restored the outlines of squat, ape-necked, +beetle-browed human beings, crudely formed as a heathen idol. Against +these he waged the relentless war of one species against another--a +war of extermination. The memory of their odious appearance would +survive longest in the stories told to entertain or frighten children. +As Sir Harry Johnston has suggested, “the dim racial remembrance of +such gorilla-like monsters, with cunning brains, shambling gait, hairy +bodies, strong teeth, and possibly cannibalistic tendencies, may be the +germ of the ogre in folklore.” + +It is certain that folklore shows the traces of other and less +frightful races of men who in turn were driven off the European +scene. The giants of nursery tales are identified by Tylor with Stone +Age heathen, shy of the conquering tribes of men, loathing their +agriculture and the sound of their church bells. When the Scandinavian +sagas speak of dwarfs, furtive and cunning, garbed in reindeer kirtle +and colored cap, hiding in caves, and armed with bone-tipped arrows, +they are picturing the persecuted and once widely spread Lapp race. + +It may be that a vague recollection of now extinct animals has survived +in legend. There is an Iroquois story recorded by Father Charlevoix of +a great elk which stood so high that eight feet of snow did not impede +his movements, and with “a sort of arm which comes out of his shoulder +and which he uses as we do ours.” Kaska tribesmen speak of a large, +hairy, tusked animal which roamed their land long ago. The Indians +of North America must at some time have seen living members of the +elephant family. It has been suggested that the tortoises of Hindu myth +which bear the world on their backs are a memory of the huge Himalayan +tortoise. + +There are legends that are true myths of observation, exercises not +of memory, but of primitive logic. They disclose man pondering the +ruinous records of the past and satisfying the necessity for a theory +that shall explain them. The diminutive burial cysts and dolmens made +by departed races and scattered over the world were thought to be the +graves of dwarfs, or their houses, or their treasure places. Fossil +bones have produced a veritable cycle of these philosophic myths. The +frozen mammoths and fossil bones of Siberia have been known to man +from earliest times and have produced a stock of legends as well as +an immemorial trade in ivory. Some of these, reciting the battles of +prehistoric animals with one another and with men, have almost the +dignity of epics. + +The mistaken logic that produced the creatures of legend has had +at various points a sort of whimsical confirmation. Save for his +fiery breath, the dragon of fable mirrors the leathern-winged, +serpent-tailed, crocodile-bellied saurians that haunted the marshes of +the ancient world and passed from the scene ages before man is supposed +to have come upon it. There are living things as weird of aspect as +any created by the unbridled imagination of man, but most of them are +small. Such are the vampire bat, the dragon fly, and the so-called +fiend fly, the black face and curved horns of which gave it in the +Middle Ages a diabolic name. Seas and fresh-water streams and marshes +all contain creatures which so much resemble, and so much differ from, +the familiar land animals as to seem the product of a conscious venture +into the grotesque. With a fish net and microscope one might bring to +view an array of animals that in everything save size would rival the +exhibits of fable. The wildest dream of man has not pictured anything +so beautiful and strange as the life-drama of the little creature that +is first a larva, then a chrysalis, and then the butterfly of a single +summer. + +There are words in which the germinal idea has been so enveloped in +wrappers of metaphor and inference, so incased in concentric shells of +rationalization, so burdened with borrowed significances, so freighted +by sentiment and reflection, and so enriched by art and historical +accretion that they may be called microcosms of the world of fable; the +proper noun, Babylon, is one of these. In large measure the peoples of +prodigy and in some measure the lands of legend owe their being to a +search for causes confined within the domain of etymology. They may be +called a literary phenomenon, a product of words and the ways of words, +and a by-product of libraries. Words breed myths. Given a Rome, people +will invent a Romulus. Given the ancient Britons and Celts, people will +invent a Britannus and a Celtus, their eponymous chiefs. The theory of +totemism--supposed descent from an animal ancestor--arose, as Spencer +thinks, from the efforts of savages to explain the animal names which +they bore. + +When the meaning of words becomes forgotten or their form corrupted, a +myth follows. Mediæval Spain, for example, believed that Jews were born +with tails, confusing the word rabbi with rubo (a tail). Château Vert +in England has become Shotover, and peasants have it that Little John +shot over a high hill near by. Maid Marian of the Robin Hood ballad +cycle is the Mad Morion of the Morris dance, a boy who whirled through +its measures wearing a morion or helmet. + +How names can become corrupted the public-house signs of England will +attest. The Bag O’Nails should be the Bacchanals; the Bully Ruffian +should be the ship Bellerophon; the Cat and Wheel should be St. +Catherine’s wheel; the Goat and Compasses should be God Encompasses Us; +the Iron Devil should be Hirondelle (the swallow), and the Queer Door +should be the Cœur Doré (the golden heart). The effigies of bags of +nails, cats, goats, and doors under these uncouth names are pictorial +fables based upon bad etymology. + +In like fashion Pliny confused the name of the Canaries with the Latin +_canis_ (dog) and says these islanders are called thus because, like +dogs, they devour the entrails of wild beasts. Similar confusions +of words have brought legendary islands upon the maps. Avalon, the +Celtic paradise in the west, whither Arthur was ferried unto peace, is +Apple Island of the classics, the place of the golden, dragon-guarded +apples of the Hesperides. Antilia, mystic mediæval island of the +remote Atlantic, is perhaps Ante-ilya, or island off the Portuguese +coast. Milton’s “cold Estotiland” and Estland, islands which held +their place for centuries on the maps of the northern seas, are +probably misreadings for Scotland and Iceland, transferred from faded +sketch-maps to a Venetian chart of the sixteenth century. + +“Not Angles, but angels,” said a punning ecclesiastic when he saw +fair-haired Saxon captives in the slave markets of the Mediterranean. +So the Greeks and Romans gave to savage tribes the names that in their +own tongues sounded most like what these tribes called themselves. A +myth might result--a record of some deformity, or some inhuman custom. +A larger number of myths arose from men’s giving a literal meaning +to figurative terms in their own language. To speak in riddles was +more than a social game with the ancients, is more than a social game +now with various peoples. There were certain things which must not be +named, but only referred to indirectly. There were times when riddles +must be propounded and times when they must not; and riddle-time, says +Frazer, was usually in the presence of a dead body or at a sacrifice. + +What might follow, a glance at a few Finnish riddles will show. One +of them runs, “Beyond the great water a large old man shouts,” and +another, “A cry from the forest and light from the hill.” In each case +thunder is the answer. The sky is described as a blue field strewn with +silver. “A child looks through the hedge” means the sunrise. “A red +cock springs from house to house” means fire. “A small white man was +sowing, he became very mischievous,” means snow. As Müller remarks, +here are elements which in the mind of a poet or a grandmother would +soon create a number of delightful myths. + +In its contacts with enigmatic language the end of literalism is +fable. Speak of fleet horses as children of the wind, and you have the +story of Iberian mares impregnated by the west wind. Speak of swift +runners as shadow-footed, and there appears on the canvas of Ind the +silhouettes of natives asleep under the shade of their gigantic feet. +“We are a people without a head,” said the kingless Turkomans, and the +Headless People shouldered their way into the map of fable. “Their +shoulders are where our heads are,” Indians of Guiana told Raleigh, +describing a tall neighbor race, and artists delineated them with eyes, +noses, and mouths where their breasts ought to be. Sometimes savage +tribes stretch their ears by attaching weights to them; hence, perhaps, +the tale of folk who used one ear as mattress, the other as coverlet. +As to the people whose feet were turned backward, may these not be, +Tylor asks, the Antipodes on the other side of the globe, whose feet, +surely enough, are planted “the opposite way” every time they set them +down? + +The method explains much, although care must be taken that it be +not made to explain too much. The germ of fable is found in such +figurative epithets as bull-browed, long-headed, horse-faced, ox-eyed, +lion-hearted, bird-witted. But for these phrases to fructify in +marvel, it would need that in a time more naïve and among a people who +knew neither the ends of the world nor the ways of speech, men of one +race should use them in telling another the manners and customs of +a third. For cultivated minds these conditions cannot be reproduced +except in the magic and make-believe of poetry. For the unlettered, +alike in lands of culture and of barbarism, they still exist. + +The power of wish and the power of words are chief gods in the world of +fable. + + + + +Chapter XXIV. The Travel Tales of Mankind + + +When the travel stories of mankind were first set down in writing the +list was already nearly complete. Little was added afterward until the +modern age began the systematic collection of a mass of folklore which, +with all its significance, had scant literary backgrounds and less than +the old geographical quality. This is a strange thing. From generation +to generation men increased their stores of knowledge, but from century +to century they neither greatly increased nor greatly reduced their +stock of fables. There were periods when men forgot the wisdom of the +ancient world, but they remembered and repeated its pleasant marvels. + +These have had a long journey down the ages. The Greek had them from +the Persian, Indian, and Egyptian; the Roman had them from the Greek; +the Arab merchant and Christian pilgrim had them from the Roman; +the Celtic monk and the viking had them alike from Roman, Arab, and +Christian; and the Spanish explorer had them from every mediæval +source. In the Spanish Americas of the sixteenth century the Age of +Fable blazed forth again and then grew dark. + +The things added in this journey to the original stock of travel +tales were mainly local legends and variations on older themes. The +grasshoppers in one province chirped or were silent in obedience to +provincial ordinance, the fountains of another had curative properties, +there was an enchanted forest in a third. Celtic glamour passed a wand +over familiar material and it yielded the veiled or sunken islands of +the western ocean. The quest of El Dorado came out of a Spanish dream. +Nearly all other travel tales are found in the earliest literature. It +must be that men told them to one another ages before writing was known. + +Various of the older books record them. They are interwoven with myths +of the supernatural in epic poetry. They are included in accounts of +countries and peoples in histories, encyclopædias, and guide-books. +They decorate the narratives of ancient and mediæval travelers. They +are compiled in volumes of mirabilia. Instances of these several +records are the Odyssey of Homer, the _History_ of Herodotus, the +_Travels_ of Marco Polo, and the _Collecteanea_ of Solinus. + +The special type of letters which travel tales have developed is +the collections of mirabilia. Most, perhaps all, of these have been +library pilferings and borrowings. Photios culled from the _Indika_ +of Ctesias everything that was difficult to believe, and the rest of +this survey of ancient India is lost. Solinus won the name of Pliny’s +Ape by extracting the curious things from the writings of the Roman +encyclopædist and combining them in a work which was standard for a +thousand years. + +The very skepticism of other writers evidences the industry of the +historians of marvel. In his _Attic Nights_, Gellius, a Roman of +the second century A.D., tells of a bundle of musty books which he +bought for a few coppers in Brundusium. “They were all in Greek,” +he says, “and full of wonders and fables, containing relations of +things unheard of and incredible, but written by authors of no small +authority--Aristeas of Proconnesos and Isogonos of Nicæa, and Ctesias +and Onesikritos and Polystephanos and Hegesias.” Swiftly he lists their +races of dog-headed, one-legged, headless, and feathered mortals. +“As we perused them,” says the practical but too-scornful Roman, “we +felt how wearisome a task it is to read worthless books which conduce +neither to adorn nor to improve life.” + +When Huc was ascending a Chinese river in the middle of the last +century his native servant used to go ashore at every stopping place +and bring aboard a stock of pamphlets to read. These products of the +ready pens of the literary class included fantastic stories of various +kinds, some of them very coarsely written. Says Huc: “The Greeks fixed +the abode of their monsters and ephemeral creatures in the east, and +the Chinese have returned the compliment by placing theirs in the west, +beyond the great seas. There dwell their dog-men, their ears long +enough to trail on the ground as they walk; there is the Kingdom of +Women, and of the people with a hole right through them at the breast.” + +Best of all skeptical discussions of prodigy is the _Enquiries into +Vulgar and Common Errors_ (1646), which bears the high name of Sir +Thomas Browne. Its author challenges the entire array of travel +tales, closes his eyes to the truth hidden in many of them, recites +the means by which impostors fabricate imaginary animals, denounces +“saltimbancoes, quacksalvers, charlatans, astrologers, fortune tellers, +jugglers, geomancers and the like incantatory impostors,” and sounds +a warning against Herodotus, Ctesias, Maundeville, Pliny, Ælian, +Solinus, Athenæus, Philes, Tzetzes, and “even holy writers such as +Basil and Ambrose and Isidore, Bishop of Seville, and Albertus, Bishop +of Ratisbone.” Preachers and moralists, he says, have made occasion for +error by using for illustration the fables of the phœnix, salamander, +pelican and basilisk. The root of the matter, he concludes, is the +“deceptible condition” of men, of which Satan took advantage in the +beginning. + +In whatever books one finds these pictures of strange lands and races +they have the effect of cameos, in that they are miniatures, and the +outlines are not subject to change. The description is always brief, +and next to nothing is added to it from age to age. The griffin has +no new habits, the dog-faced men lived under the old law, the pygmies +of the Middle Ages have not yet won the battles with the cranes which +they were waging in the time of Homer. If a traveler sees these strange +creatures he has nothing fresh to say of them. The main thing that +happens is that they shift their places on the map, retiring always +before the advance of knowledge. Æthicus of Istria contributes almost +the only really novel touch in a thousand years. He saw, so he says, +the Amazons in the region north of the Caspian suckling the centaurs +and minotaurs. + +That these fables came down through the centuries unchanged is a +tribute to the hold of tradition, to men’s reverence for the written +word. It is also a revelation of the way natural histories and +encyclopædias were compiled until about the time of Buffon and Cuvier. +When a thing got itself said, it had a good chance of surviving, +provided it was interesting. Other men copied it out of a book without +demanding proofs, authority taking the place of research. The ancient +geographers cited the very poets as authorities. + +Because they passed through endless compilations the fables remained +brief, or became so. Despite its vigor and penetrating quality, even +the _Geography_ of Strabo rests for its main facts on a multitude of +travel books whose statements it abridged. What the Greek writers could +not wholly avoid was too much for the Roman encyclopædists. They were +note-takers, compilers, abridgers, and they tried to make all learning +their province. The encyclopædias of Varro, Verrius, Flaccus, Pliny, +Suetonius, Pompeius Festus, and Nonius Marcellus were the product +not of a staff of experts, but in each case of a single mind. The +editors epitomized everything. They made extracts from books, extracts +from extracts, abridgments of abridgments. The original works they +consulted were lost, and only fragments of the mental inheritance of +the Roman world were transmitted from age to age. Under the modern +system of specialized inquiry the frontiers of knowledge press ever +outward. Under the old encyclopædists they drew inward and the body of +known facts shrank continually. This tendency culminated in Isidore, +Bishop of Seville in the seventh century, last of the Roman, first of +the Christian, encyclopædists. He devotes two sentences to the small +island of Thanet, now a part of Kent. He gives three sentences to Great +Britain; “jet is very common there, and pearls,” he says. + +From works prepared under such conditions one must be content with a +treatise as brief as this in Isidore’s _Etymologies_: “The Cynocephali +are so called because they have dogs’ heads and their very barking +betrays them as beasts rather than men. They are born in India.” + +The ideal lands, the prodigious races, and the fabulous animals were +first made known to the world by the Greeks. Few of the classic travel +tales, however, originated with them. Most of them trace back to Egypt +and India; if their sources are still more remote, the track has been +lost. The mythical peoples and animals dwelt in the deserts of Africa +and the deserts and mountains of Asia. India, even more than Egypt, was +their home. The mighty mountains that bordered it, the multitude of +peoples that inhabited it, the strong touch of the grotesque in their +art and ritual, and their curious sense of kinship with the elephant, +the tiger, the snake, and the jackal made theirs the native soil of +marvel. Many of the singular creatures that peopled the hinterlands of +Africa seem to be emigrants from India and beyond. + +The earliest travel tales in Greek literature are found in Homer’s +Odyssey commingled with accounts of places and peoples that are not +of the earth. These stories of the tenth century before Christ look +westward from Greece. In the poems of Pindar the strange outlines of +eastern marvel appear on the Mediterranean scene and a new aspect +of reality animates them. With the history of Herodotus, written in +the fifth century before Christ, the invasion is well-nigh complete. +Imbedded in the greatest of all histories, passages about the griffin, +the phœnix and kindred creatures are scattered through volumes that +contain the high story of the Persian attempt upon Greece, and the best +accounts which the Mediterranean world had of the back lands of the +earth. Herodotus had heard of so many wonderful things which were true +that he made it a rule to report what he heard even where he doubted +its truth; and to this rule the world owes much. The Halicarnassian +doubted the existence of a sea north of Europe, or of the Tin Islands, +but he gave them a place in his pages. He could not believe that +the Phœnicians had circumnavigated Africa, but his record of their +incredible assertion that as they sailed they “had the sun on their +right” is evidence that the thing was done. + +Herodotus was attacked as untruthful by Ctesias and the +Pseudo-Plutarch, and his monument at Thurium in Italy recites that +he removed thither to escape ridicule; but in the main this was the +ridicule of men who accepted his pleasant stories and doubted his +history, and who were offended because with too candid a pen he +sketched faction and faint-heartedness in the Greek states when Xerxes +led his host across the Hellespont. + +After Herodotus the chief sponsor for antique marvel is Ctesias the +Cnidian, whose work falls in the following generation. If the one +history was the product of travel, the other was the product of +prolonged residence abroad, Ctesias having been stationed as physician +for seventeen years at the Persian court. He gave the Greeks their +first special treatise on India, introduced the Deformed Folk to the +west, and pictured the peninsula as a preserve of curious peoples +and animals. So he made a notable book of his _Indika_, but among +the learned it had small credit. “A writer not to be depended on,” +Aristotle calls the author, and where Herodotus was accused of +credulity, Ctesias was assailed for mendacity. Modern criticism, +however, has identified several of his monstrous races with tribes +still inhabiting Hindostan and partly excused other fables on the +ground that he never saw India and put in his book only what the +Persians told him of their neighbors to the east. When one people tells +another the ways of a third, the theme is marvel. + +What was denied to Ctesias was vouchsafed to Alexander in the next +generation. With his own eyes he saw India. The European race before +which the east unveiled was the most gifted, curious, and imaginative +of all peoples, and the east beheld it personified in the captivating +figure of Alexander. The expedition brought legends back with it, and +left other legends behind. Indian and Afghan and Turkoman and Arab +never forgot the great Macedonian, while the whole literature of the +west was colored by this eastern contact. + +A few other Greek names are linked with the travel tale. Scylax of +Caryanda taxed credulity with his fabric of wonder. Aristotle examined +reports of fabulous creatures, and fables as to actual species, and +rejected most, but not all, of them. The study of anthropology, +developed at Alexandria, found its harvest in the geography of Strabo +and in the survey of the Erythræan Sea by Agatharcides. Both works +contain curious accounts of curious tribes of men. + +Pausanias the Lydian, who lived in the second century of the Christian +era, is better remembered than men with better title to remembrance, +because his work happened to survive. His _Description of Greece_ has +been compared to an old shoe flung high on the beach of time. An old +man wrote it, interested in old things. Pausanias has much to say +of the wonders of sacred grottos, trees, and springs. His method of +taking a road and describing everything along it was copied by pilgrim +writers, who clogged the paths of Palestine with their marvels. Modern +criticism has discovered that he repeats as interviews with natives +statements he had read in local handbooks, and that, betrayed thereby, +he tells of seeing cities as flourishing places which had been in +ruins for centuries. Yet Pausanias was a real traveler, although at +times a luckless compiler. + +Lucian the Samosatan was his contemporary, but his contribution to +marvel is a satire on the credulity of all travelers, among whom he +arraigns Homer, Herodotus, and Ctesias. His _True History_ relates an +imaginary voyage to the moon, and thence to the Fortunate Isles, where +Ulysses entrusts him with a letter to Calypso. In the belly of a whale +nearly two hundred miles long, which had swallowed his ship, he finds +lakes, woods, and strange races of living men. It was the singular +fortune of this travesty to provide material for epics which the Celts +accepted as history and for adventures which were foisted on the +narrative of Baron Munchausen. + +The Latin mind was inferior to the Greek chiefly in that it was +deficient in curiosity. The Romans were content to rule the world +rather than to understand it. It was enough that amber and silk and +incense and spice should come to them from the four corners of the +earth without their following the trade routes back to find what manner +of people sent these things. Yet legend was active among the mariners +and camel-drivers and porters of the races that served the Roman on the +fringes of his empire. The fables of these porter-nations were passed +on to the Arab and are preserved in the _Thousand and One Nights_. + +Rome, however, performed a service to the traditional world by +producing the elder Pliny and his amazing _Natural History_. Pliny has +not the charm, narrative gifts, or historical genius of Herodotus, +but he comes half a millennium afterward and has more to report. He +lacks the comprehensive and penetrating intelligence of Aristotle, but +he knows more--of things that are so, and of things that are not so. +His great work is perhaps the most impressive monument to industry +raised by a single mind. The entire body of learning of the ancient +world passed through his mind and came out again in the volumes which +he calls a natural history but which are in fact an encyclopædia. +These thirty-seven books record twenty thousand matters of importance +collected from about two thousand volumes, only a few of which have +survived. As his nephew, the younger Pliny, recites, it was his maxim +that “there is no book so bad but some good may be got out of it.” + +To get it Pliny made notes, even in the bath. When he traveled, his +secretary was by his side with a book and tablets, and if it was winter +the scribe took dictation with his gloves on. In Rome Pliny never moved +about except in a litter, reading while he was being carried through +the streets. Once he rebuked his nephew for walking and “losing all +those hours.” + +While tracing the courses of the stars, the description of countries, +plants and animals, the anatomy of man, the properties of drugs, the +nature of gems, the uses of metals, the science of farming and the +fine arts, Pliny contrives also to sketch the geography of marvel. “It +is really wonderful,” he declares, “to what a length the credulity of +the Greeks will go.” Yet he draws most of his material from them, and +whatever his own attitude toward the things he recites, the result of +the recital was to give credulity its own text-book for a thousand +years. Cynical as was his point of view, Pliny was yet a lover of +marvel and searched it out and set it forth in his pages whether he +believed it or not. It was enough that it was interesting. + +His was the journalistic angle. The _Natural History_ is in effect +a vast newspaper report of the world of about A.D. 77. The columns +of curious miscellany which newspapers print sometimes under such +headings as “Oddities in the Day’s News” are legacies of his spirit. +The monument to his immense industry and reportorial instinct is a +work which fabulists of all succeeding ages used as a quarry for their +own building materials. Had his been the questing mind of the Greek, +instead of the drag-net intelligence of the journalist of an incurious +but marvel-loving world, the view of the central countries of culture +and of the horizon lands presented in the _Natural History_ would have +less the aspect of a main circus tent surrounded by side shows. + +Solinus, surnamed Polyhistor or the Varied Narrator, distilled the +marvels from Pliny, making some seven hundred extracts, adding to them +from other sources, and producing a work which supplanted the older +writer in the affections of the multitude throughout the Middle Ages. +His _Collecteanea_ appeared in the third or fourth century of the +Christian Era, and although he seems to have been a pagan grammarian, +he had mainly Christian readers. St. Augustine quotes him four times +in his _City of God_, and Isidore uses no less than two hundred +extracts in his _Etymologies_. The pagan’s work was both a symptom and +a cause of the intellectual decline in the Middle Ages. Other men did +as he did, or accepted the results of his labors as sparing them its +pains. What he did, and what Europe did after the breakdown of the old +order of things, was to forget ancient wisdom and hold fast to ancient +wonder. Solinus was spiritual father of the Christian fabulists, mentor +of the Christian pilgrims. + +What Pliny wrote, perhaps with his tongue in his cheek, Solinus copies +with mouth agape. The world is become a playhouse, a curio hall, a +province of faerie. One learns that, like man, the quail suffers from +the falling sickness and that the cranes of Thrace travel southward +in ballast, stuffing their craws with sand and pebbles. In the +Mediterranean islands there is a “sardonic” plant, on eating which +one grins horribly and dies of lockjaw. In Germany are the Hercynian +birds whose feathers give light in the dark. Here also is a mule-like +pastoral beast with so long an upper lip that he “cannot feed except +walking backward.” In Africa are jovial apes which rejoice in the new +of the moon and lament in its wane, and sphinxes and satyrs “easily +taught to forget their wildness, very sweet faced, and full of toying +continually.” There are no snakes in Ireland--and no sense of right and +wrong. + +The _Physiologus_, an Alexandrian compilation, companions the +_Collecteanea_, but introduces a moralizing note and thereby +ushers a rabble of real and fabulous animals into the symbolism of +ecclesiastical architecture. Isidore of Seville is a desiccated +Solinus, dried out by theology and the specialized pursuits of the +grammarian. He wrote at the opening of the seventh century. His +_Etymologies_ has already been cited as that irreducible minimum of +knowledge to which the epitomizing habit of Roman encyclopædists tended +always. It shows also the Roman dependence on authority as a substitute +for research, and the Roman worship of words. Easy it was for early +Christian writers to take up the tradition of the encyclopædists, for +it needed only that the authority of the pagan be replaced by that of a +purer faith. The pagan marvels were accepted almost in a body and many +of them are briefly recited by Isidore. + +How words breed legend is disclosed in the very title of the +_Etymologies_. Carrying a little further the tradition of the Romans, +with whom philology was almost as old as poetry and more important than +natural science, Isidore seemed to think that when he had given the +derivation of a term he had accomplished a complete description of the +thing that bore its name. Words themselves were things transcendental. +Thus he defines Barbarism as “the uttering of a word with an error +in a letter or in a quantity.” _Nox_, the Latin word for night, “is +derived from _nocere_ (to injure) because it injures the eyes.” “_Homo_ +is so named because he is made of _humus_ (earth), as it is told in +_Genesis_.” “_Corpus_ (the body) is so called because being corrupted +it perishes.” + +Isidore writes the texts for the chapter in the history of marvel that +deals with Christian fabulism, pilgriming, and cosmography. It is +Christian only in the sense that Christians of the earlier centuries +tell the tales, make the journeys, and construct the world theories. +Its subject matter is Jewish and pagan, with the two elements sometimes +in an artless, sometimes in a forced, combination; it presents one +side of that contact and conflict between Aryan and Semitic cultures +which is the history of the last nineteen centuries. For the first part +of the period the result of the conflict in the field of geography, +travel, and tradition was what might be expected where simple-witted +peoples, lately emerged from barbarism and not yet nationally minded, +meet a race of ancient culture and intense national spirit. Jewish +conceptions prevailed. It was thought that children, if taught no other +tongue, would naturally speak Hebrew. Europe accepted as a literal +recital of fact the Sumerian legend preserved in Hebrew Scriptures +that the human race began with Adam--“the mean, toolless and frivolous +Adam,” as Andrew Lang calls him--and his consort in the Garden of Eden; +and from Hebrew chronology it figured that the earth must be about +four thousand years old. It made over its geography to conform to Old +Testament texts, and, discarding the world-knowledge of the classic +civilizations, it made over its maps to show Jerusalem in the center of +a flat earth. + +When pilgrims to Palestine had visited the scenes of the birth and +passion of Christ they proceeded to explore the Jewish background for +memorials of Old Testament history, with side trips into the realm of +pagan marvel. All of them looked for the pillar of salt by the Dead +Sea in which Lot’s wife was entombed; for centuries this column comes +and goes in their narratives. Silvia of Aquitaine, whose journey falls +in the fourth century, says there was no pillar there--the sea had +engulfed it--but others saw it later. Theodosius says it waxed and +waned with the phases of the moon. Antoninus denies the report that +pasturing sheep had diminished its size by licking it. A fragment of +this marvel is in the Library of Congress at Washington, together with +the report of an American traveler who measured the pillar and found it +sixty feet high and forty feet around, larger than he believed Lot’s +wife could have been. + +Other of the earlier pilgrims are said to have gone into Arabia to see +the dunghill where Job contended with his comforters. The pyramids, +some thought, were the barns of Joseph. The Apples of Adam still showed +the marks of his teeth. The Jordan halted its waters at the time of +the Epiphany. Devils were seen on Mount Gilboa. The torments of hell +lay under the Sea of Sodom and Abbott Daniel had a whiff of them from +its surface. In Samaria, Paula, friend of Saint Jerome, saw “devils +writhing and yelling in different kinds of torture, and men before the +tombs of the saints, howling like wolves, barking like dogs, roaring +like lions, hissing like serpents, bellowing like bulls.” One pilgrim +writer copied another, few took any note of the natural features of +Palestine, most of them were of primitive culture, and the women had a +wider outlook than the men. + +The Jew, Rabbi Moses Petachia, made a pilgrimage, reporting among other +things that the wind which blew from the shallow parts of the Sea of +Azov, the Stagnant Sea of old geography, was fatal to passers-by; he +saw on the Euphrates a flying camel which could go a mile in a second. +Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela undertook a remarkable journey in the twelfth +century to learn the condition of the Jewish communities of the east. +He brought back valuable information, but said he could not approach +the vast ruins of Babylon because of the scorpions and serpents that +haunted them, located mythical Jewish states in the deserts of Arabia, +and repeated numerous fables on hearsay. If he ever took this journey, +says the elder Disraeli, it must have been with his nightcap on. + +How the new peoples of the west lost the sense of historical +perspective under the Jewish impact is shown in the long speculation +over the whereabouts of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Classic learning +was dismissed as “windy babble.” The fate of the peoples of the +great monarchies of antiquity aroused no curiosity. But everywhere +were sought the footsteps of the vanished Israelites. They were +imprisoned in the Caucasus, they had become Afghan mountaineers, they +were privileged subjects of Prester John, they were settled in the +Canaries, they had reached China, they had colonized Peru, they were +the progenitors of the British and American peoples, they were the +ancestors of the North American Indian, and the first Mormons. + +While Europe was curious about the shrines, landmarks, and legends of +Asia, and held it to be the continent of wonder, Asia did not return +the interest. It had few travel tales to tell of the peoples of the +west, few reports of any kind. The Chinese saw little of note in +the Roman Empire, “Great China,” save that it had good jugglers and +asbestos cloth and that the eastern gate of Constantinople was covered +with shining gold leaf and was two hundred feet high. India ignored the +sea, and was self-contained in its life and legends; the fabulous and +felicitous peoples of the Puranas dwell in trans-Himalayan valleys. +Arab sailors were carriers of Indian fables and may have taught them to +the Chinese; a large part of Chinese marvel has a quality suggesting +importation. Yet the superior historical sense of the Chinese, +preserving almost intact marvel tales that were brought to them, made +the rest of the world their debtor. Their encyclopædias and classics +are quite in the style of Pliny, as, for example, the _Shan Hai King_, +or _Wonders by Land and Sea_, to which the dates of B.C. 2700, 2205, +and 222 have been severally ascribed, and which is also alleged to be a +Taoist forgery of the fourth century A.D. Monster peoples and animals +are in this work, and one of its early prefaces relates the journey of +a king to the Halls of the Giants in the east, to the mansions of the +Fairy Queen in the west, across a bridge of tortoises in the south and +over streets made of feathers in the north. It is also recited that by +imperial decree nine urns were set up in various parts of China on +which, to the fear of the people, the common and the strange animals of +each region were pictured. + +Religious fervor at length set the feet of Chinese upon paths along +which wonder grew. Buddhist priests and scholars went east to teach and +west to learn. If the annals of the Middle Kingdom are to be credited, +a fair interpretation of the record is that the Chinese reached the +coast of North America in A.D. 499 and again in 502 and 556. They +found countries which they described as the Land of Marked Bodies and +the Great Han country. The natives of the former had horses and draft +deer with great horns (reindeer) and esteemed copper more than gold. A +thousand furlongs east was the Kingdom of Women--erect, white-skinned, +hairy, timorous, subsisting on a salt plant like wormwood. The +residents of the Land of Marked Bodies, supposed to be the Aleutian +Islands, were tattooed, joyous, rich in gold and silver. Eastward was +Great Han, possibly British Columbia, the wild beasts of which devoured +guilty criminals, but spared persons falsely accused. There was also a +country of dog-headed men. + +These lands have been identified with regions of northeastern Asia, +and because of their climate and products with American regions as far +south as California and Mexico. + +The westward journeys of Buddhist scholars are historical and +important. They went to India at various periods from the beginning of +the fifth to the latter part of the seventh century of our era to study +the Law of Buddha, to visit the sites associated with Sakya Muni and +to collect sacred books and relics. One Chinese work has a record of +fifty-six of these worthies. The Buddhist pilgrims were men of higher +intelligence and still greater credulity than those who at about the +same time were journeying out of Europe to the shrines of Palestine. +Their largest figure, and one of the world’s greatest travelers, is +Hiouen Thsang, who left China in A.D. 629 and returned seventeen years +later. + +In the desert of Gobi, Hiouen saw spectral armies charging down upon +him and at night the flare of spectral torches, but at a word of +scripture the glamour faded. In the T’sung-ling mountains Fa-hien found +poison dragons that spat the storm and avalanche; here, says Hiouen, +one should not wear red garments nor carry loud-sounding calabashes. +The pass of Varasena was so high that birds could not fly over it, +but crossed the summit afoot. Report had it that in the deserts of +Turkestan a sandstorm covered in a single day as many cities as there +were days in the year. + +The India that Hiouen traversed was a land of ruins and marvels. +He tells of demon women and miracle gold and wonder-working Buddha +teeth; of a shepherd that became a dragon; of a roe that brought forth +a beautiful girl with deer feet; of a risha that could fly until a +princess touched him, and thereafter he merely walked; of a holy man +whose sanctity made light in a dark wood. There are elephants in his +pages that tend shrines with flowers and perfumes, and wild asses +that protect an altar, and desert ants as large as hedgehogs. There +are dragon domains and serpent palaces underground, and aboveground a +Buddhist tower made of cows’ dung. There is a City of Hump-backed Women +and on a distant island the Kingdom of Western Women who traffic in +gems with Byzantium and accept lovers from there. + +Most of these things of Chinese report the west knows also from +Herodotus and Pliny and Polo. Out of India, marvel. + +The Nestorian chapter in the joint history of religion and wonder bears +a twelfth-century date, but deals with the inheritance of classic +fable. Although the mediæval legend of a powerful Christian monarch +named Prester John, who reigned amid pagan enemies somewhere in the +heart of Asia, was based on rumors of the eastward spread of the +Nestorian faith, the Christian element in it is weighted with all the +pagan wonders of an earlier time. The realm of Presbyter John is the +range of strange animals and stranger men. Thus the apocryphal letter +bearing his signature which reached the west declares: “Our land is the +home of elephants, dromedaries, camels, crocodiles, meta-collinarum, +cametennus, tensevetes, wild asses, white and red lions, white bears, +white merles, crickets, griffins, tigers, lamias, hyenas, wild horses, +wild oxen, and wild men, men with horns, one-eyed men, men with eyes +before and behind, centaurs, fauns, satyrs, pygmies, forty-ell high +giants, cyclopes, and similar women; it is the home, too, of the +phœnix, and of nearly all living animals.” + +Here, continues the royal letter writer, are the accursed Gog and +Magog, and the Lost Israelites, and the worm Salamander, and Amazons +and Brahmans, and paradise and pearls and pepper. And when John goes +to war a million and a half soldiers follow him. The epistle is pagan +marvel’s broadest gesture over lands unknown. + +With differences of Oriental temperament and cast of thought, Arab +geography and travel parallel every phase of the west except the Age of +Ignorance. The Arabs escaped a Lactantius and a Cosmas, but they had +their Plinies and Ptolemies, their own sea epic, and in Ibn Batuta a +traveler second only to Marco Polo. Until the Middle Ages were ending +the centers of world culture were at Bagdad and Cordoba. If Christendom +accepted the ancient fables and rejected the ancient learning, Islam +embraced both. + +The great Arab geographers blended in their works the methods of +Ptolemy and Pliny, together with a story-telling strain from the +coffee-houses of the east. The very titles of their works suggest +this--Aljahedh’s _Book of the Cities and Marvels of Countries_, +Massoudy’s _Meadows of Gold and Mines of Precious Stones_, Al +Istakhri’s _Book of Climates_, Ibn Haukal’s _Book of Roads and +Kingdoms_, Ibn Khordadbeh’s _Principal Trade Routes_, Abulfeda’s +_Encyclopædia_, and Idrisi’s _The Delight of Those Who Seek to Wander +Through the Regions of the World_. These are treatises such as would +be expected from a race which had found its destinies in trade routes, +which had pitched its tents in the seats of the ancient culture, and +which took its ease in coffee-houses. They show Ptolemy’s sense of +distances and measurements, Pliny’s note-taking habits and appetite for +marvel, the bazar instinct for entertaining stories, and the Arab’s +poetic fancy. Massoudy’s is the typical product of his race. It is a +vast and glittering collection of history, science, travel, and legend, +thrown together by an imagination to which the varied and shifting +shows of life and nature were perpetual delight. What mainly it and +its companion works lack is the Greek sense of form and capacity for +precise thinking. + +Arab geography and marvel are best to be studied in the seven voyages +of Sindbad the Sailor. These are true travels, tricked out with +legendary travel tales, taken by a number of men, notably the Two +Mussulman Travelers of the ninth century, and all ascribed to one man +in order to give them the epic quality. Sindbad is the Arab Ulysses and +this the Arab Odyssey. The theater of the eastern epic is the Indian +Sea, rather than the Mediterranean, it is well-nigh free from myths of +the supernatural, and its geographical notes, although disguised, are +definite. One can trace, and Beazley has done so, the itineraries of +the much-buffeted merchant-wanderer, and identify the material of many +of his adventures. + +Wak-wak, the destination of the first voyage, is perhaps Japan; the +island of mysterious nightly music is an echo of Solinus; the adventure +of the whale’s back is repeated by St. Brendan’s companions, and the +owl-headed fish are borrowed from Khordadbeh. The accounts of the roc +of Zanzibar and the Indian valley of diamonds in the second voyage are +to be found also in the _Travels_ of Marco Polo. The third voyage is +lifted from Homer; the hairy, ugly little dwarfs are the pygmies of the +Iliad, and the one-eyed giant who ate Sindbad’s companions is a negro +Polyphemus out of the Odyssey. The fourth voyage, with its incidents +of cannibal ghouls and their reason-destroying herbs, the burial of +Sindbad alive with his deceased native wife, and his encounter with +pepper-gatherers, is a distorted narrative of Indian races, customs, +and products. The Old Man of the Sea, or Sheikh of the Seaboard, in the +fifth voyage is the orang-utan of Sumatra. The sixth voyage is mainly a +description of Ceylon. In the seventh voyage the account of elephants +that transported Sindbad to their cemetery, where without killing them +he could have all the ivory he required, is about as Pliny would have +written it. + +Into this east of glowing sorceries came two men of the west in the +thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the one to traverse Asia from end +to end, and see more of wonder than any man had seen before, the other +to roam still farther, for his journeys were in his imagination and +had only its limits. The _Book of Diversities_ of Marco Polo is the +greatest of all narratives of wanderings. The _Marvellous Adventures +of Sir John Maundeville_ is the wildest of all romances that purport +to be fact. The two works may be considered together if for no other +reason than the ironic comment they afford on popular judgments before +time redresses them. The facts of Polo were long treated as fables. +The fables of Maundeville were accepted as facts. Sir John’s book was +translated into every European tongue and passed through hundreds of +editions. Because of his reports on the wealth of Kublai Khan, Marco +was nicknamed Il Milioni; he was asked on his deathbed if he would +not recant some of the things he had said, and after his death there +figured in Venetian masques a comic character who told unbelievable +tales to guffawing street crowds and was called Marco Milioni. + +The Venetian spent twenty-four years in Asia, most of the time in the +service of the philosopher-monarch, Kublai Khan, and returned to his +native city in 1295. There are fables in his book, hearsay statements +usually reported as such; but their effect of illusion is slight +compared with the staggering and splendid realities which the narrative +unfolded before eyes unprepared for them. Marco drew aside the curtain +of Asia. It was as if the spectators in some provincial theater, +used only to the antics of vagrant mountebanks and the crudities of +folk-drama, saw for the first time one of those extravaganzas of +music, movement, and color, built around a tale of the Orient, which +tax even the dramatic resources of world capitals to produce. Sitting +in their own darkness, the simpler peoples of the west saw on a stage +hung with costly draperies and dim with clouds of incense, a stage of +vast spaces and long perspectives, the civilizations of the venerable +east--India, dreaming in the sun with its jeweled rajahs and naked +fakirs; China, with its teeming populations, its immense inland fleets, +its wisdom and its riches; Burma, serene amid the clang of its temple +bells; the golden roofs of Japan rising out of cherry blossoms; Tibet, +wrapped in a vision; the Indian Archipelago, with its spices, pearls, +and cannibals. Other figures less clearly defined appeared in the +background--nomads of the steppes, fur-hunting Samoyeds of the tundras, +mountain tribes that pressed their women upon stranger guests; glimpses +even of farthest Africa, of a Christian Ethiopia, of the Zanzibar of +negroes, ivory, and ambergris, and of Madagascar, past which the sea +bore relentlessly southward. + +Of many of these things Europe heard for the first time from Marco, +of all of them his was the first illuminating report, and most of them +his own eyes had seen. Here Truth is the stuff of Illusion. Though +Marco speaks of dog-faced Andamanese, and islands of Amazons, and Lop +with its evil spirits, and the storm-raising witches of Socotra, and +the roc, it is not on these, but on his verities, that wonder waits. +The center of the wonder is Kublai Khan, who built the pleasure-dome +in Xanadu. Greatly is he beholden to the traveler, who came to him +one morning out of the unknown. But for Marco, as Masefield finely +says, this lord of lords, ruler of so many cities, so many gardens, so +many fish pools, would be only a name, an image covered by the sands. +Remembrance is with those who see, and write. + +Though he did not see, Maundeville wrote. The author of the volume +that bears this name may have seen Syria, but he claims to have been +everywhere. He served the Sultan of Egypt against the Bedouins and +declined his daughter’s hand in marriage. He drank of the Well of +Youth. He served the emperor of China in his war against Mancy. He took +astronomical observations in the Indian Ocean. He traversed Russia, +Livonia, Asia Minor, Amazonia, Persia, India, Tartary, China, Arabia, +Libya, Ethiopia. One great thing his humility forbade him to essay, and +that was the Terrestrial Paradise. “I was not worthy,” he says. + +The fabricator of the Maundeville narrative seems to have been Jean de +Bourgogne, a physician of Liège, who died there in 1373, long enough +after his book appeared for it already to have won reputation; on his +deathbed he was proud to avow his authorship, though not his imposture. +It is to be inferred that he appropriated his pen name of Maundeville, +knight of St. Albans in England, from the title of a romantic satire +by Jean du Pin published a few years before, in which the writer is +conducted in a dream through a world of allegory by a knight named +Mandevie whose home was on a white mountain--Mons Albus or St. Albans, +as has been suggested. Where the adventures of Maundeville came from is +not in doubt. Friar Odoric, a great but credulous traveler, had spent +fourteen years in Asia, largely in India and Cathay, and had written +out his story on his return to Italy in 1330. Maundeville, whose book +is perhaps of twenty years later, looted his predecessor so thoroughly +that the friar was deemed the copyist of the knight; Samuel Purchas +thought that “some later fabler,” like Odoric, had stuffed the knight’s +tale. Maundeville raided also the fables of Solinus, the forged letter +of Prester John, the travels of King Hayton of Armenia, and the varied +lore and legend of all lands and times collected in the preceding +century by the great encyclopædist of the Middle Ages, Vincent of +Beauvais. Apparently he never heard of Polo. + +The bogus knight won a wide and fascinated audience by throwing his +marvels into a tale of which he is the hero. His own adventures, his +travels from land to land, his comments on countries and peoples, give +his book unity, movement, and the narrative interest which is lacking +in the works of Ctesias, Pliny, Solinus, and their school. Ctesias +writes of India, but never professes to have been there, and Pliny and +Solinus sit afar and look over the world. Maundeville comes out of +the library and crosses the earth, staff in hand, in an earlier, and +unhallowed, _Pilgrim’s Progress_. His is the method, and his almost was +the vogue, of the Odyssey and of the Sindbad saga. The classic brevity +and sterility in recounting mirabilia, he escapes in some measure, +robbing several fables to enrich one. It happened that an early +rendering of his work into English was done when the island tongue was +in a fluid state, and done with such sense of idiom that he has been +called, although falsely, the father of English prose. + +Maundeville is most interesting when he is most audacious, or when +he stumbles most. At Joppa he transposes the figures of a classic +myth, and reports seeing a rib forty feet long of “Andromeda a great +giant,” chained there before Noah’s flood. The chameleon (chamois?) is +“a little Beast, as a Goat.” In Pathen the giant tortoise of Odoric +becomes “a kind of Snails that be so great that many Persons may lodge +them in their Shells.” The rats in the Isle of Charia are “as great as +Hounds here.” There are wool-bearing hens in Mancy. The manna in the +Land of Job “cleanseth the Blood and putteth out Melancholy.” Chaldea +is a country of fair men and evil women. In the Pepper Country “the +Women shave their Beards and the Men not.” + +The author scatters his mythical islands even over the mainland of +Asia. Yet his sense of the shape and rotundity of the earth was far +in advance of his time. In the midst of romancings, one finds this, +the clearest word of his century, and in the field of exploration the +most constructive: “I say to you certainly that Men may environ all the +Earth of all the World, as well underneath as above, and return again +to their Country, if that they had Company and Shipping and Conduct; +and always they should find Men, Lands and Isles, as well as in this +Country.” For this declaration, for the vision of the Valley of the +Shadow of Death which Bunyan took from him and he from Odoric, for +the delight that his fictitious narrative still conveys, and for the +English prose which is its vehicle, one may half forgive the physician +of Liege his pose of a gouty English knight, dictating the true story +of adventurous years to ease hours of broken rest, and ending it with a +benediction, followed, anthem-wise, by a chorus of amens. + +The remainder of the story of marvel, so far as it is a literary +phenomenon, is a sea tale told by men of the west, for Prince Henry +the Navigator was born a few years after Jean de Bourgogne died, and +with his manhood there opens the era of maritime discovery. Meanwhile +the northwest of Europe had entered the record with Norse and Irish +chapters. Though maps of the early Middle Ages placed the griffins and +the cynocephali in the north of Europe, the north knew them not. Giants +and trolls it knew, and the Iceland sagas tell of vampires that hid in +heaps of stockfish, and monster men, dragons, and bulls that guarded a +haunted shore. The inevitable compilations came later. The history of +Norway written by Pontoppidan in the eighteenth century is a brief for +Scandinavian waters as the habitat of prodigious things. + +The Celts neither robbed nor traded on the sea, and the very ports of +Ireland were opened by Northmen; yet one of the three great epics of +the deep, the _Voyage of St. Brendan_, is Irish, and monks are its +heroes. The five Irish _Imrama_ or sea tales, of which this is the +chief, weave a spell beyond any other woven upon the deep, because they +look westward toward hidden continents that presently were to loom +through the mists, and track with spectral craft the very seas that +foamed erelong around the prows of Spain. Working with bits of old +beliefs, as a craftsman with bits of broken glass, the Celt fashioned +an oriel window through which he glimpsed the lands of dream. It was +magic like that of Gwyn ab Nudd, King of Faerie, who spread before St. +Collen the semblance of a feast in a great court. “I will not eat the +leaves of trees,” said the saint, and flung holy water about him, and +“there was neither castle, nor troops, nor maidens, nor music, nor the +appearance of any thing whatever, but the green hillocks.” + +Fables of old time which had smoldered through the later Middle Ages, +and which were rekindled by fresh contacts with classic marvel in the +revival of letters, blazed into fierce life in the age of discovery. +When new continents swam into ken, and hidden empires showed themselves +for a moment on distant mountain sides, only to crash down at the onset +of a handful of adventurous men, nothing seemed incredible. A world +which had denied its own shape awoke to the fact of antipodal lands and +peoples and was prepared to believe anything. The extravagant things +it credited--and herein is palliation for its credulity--were yet +small beside the wonders with which reality smote it in the face. The +prodigious races of antiquity that had retreated before the traveler +seemed at last to have been run to cover in those parts of the New +World whither Spanish explorers penetrated. South America presented +itself as a fulfillment of classic wonder and a proof of the unity of +the human story. + +Mythical America was in part a projection of the dreaming mind of +Spain upon the sensitive consciousness of savages. There are stories +that have a way of taking root as soon as they are transplanted, and +by the incorporation of native elements of accommodating themselves +so completely to new surroundings as to deceive the very men who had +loosed them. Hence the mingling of Old and New World elements in +the tales of giants, pygmies, Amazons, satyrs, and acephalites. The +conquistadors put leading questions, and had the answers they wanted. +If they were deceived, yet there was more of the scientific spirit in +the men who set out in search of Paradise or El Dorado, than in all the +generations of encyclopædists who copied down incredible things and +never went forth to find them. + +One may trace the outlines of Mythical America in the journals of +Columbus; in the writings of Peter Martyr and Garcilaso de la Vega; +in the monographs of conquistadors like Coronado; in the _History of +the Indies_ by Oviedo, which Las Casas unjustly declares is “as full +of lies almost as pages,” and in Hakluyt’s _Principal Voyages_, justly +called the English prose epic. For the most fabulous and fascinating +picture one turns to Raleigh’s account of his expedition to Guiana in +1595. It is at once a collection of mirabilia, a story of adventure, a +courtly address to the “Lady of Ladies” (Queen Elizabeth), a commercial +prospectus, and the brief of a man on the defensive. In its pages the +southern coasts of the Caribbean are as rich in marvel as the southern +coasts of the Mediterranean in the pages of Pliny. + +Earlier travelers had found it well to secure specimens of ores, +plants, and savages as vouchers for their credit among skeptical +stay-at-homes, and the Spaniards took the precaution of carrying +notaries in their ships to attest their statements. In the eighteenth +century a more effective check was developed for travel tales. +The science of criticism superseded the habit of compilation. The +reports of travelers were examined, sifted, and compared by closet +philosophers. French savants like Buache, Delisle, and Fleurieu +challenged the realms of prodigy and had no answer from them. +Humboldt’s great journey into Spanish America at the end of the century +is the recessional. Through the lands of legend he wends his way, a +patient, sometimes a pensive, observer, and puts Atlantis, El Dorado, +the Amazons and the wild men of the woods to the question. His report +is the most tolerant, suggestive, and illuminating document in the +literature of marvel. Soon afterward began the scientific study of +European folklore with the brothers Grimm as pioneers. + +The remarkable things which the North American Indian had to tell, +most of them, were not assayed until after Humboldt’s time. Save where +the Spaniard had been, they have the undiluted aboriginal quality; +yet a bookish note, which has been imputed to Viking influence before +Columbus, is in eastern Algonquin and Eskimo sea lore and giant lore. +These tales of the northern continent did not launch expeditions, nor +enter the great narratives of travel, and they have yet to win their +indicated place in literature. There is wonder in them, and poetry, and +the deep reflection of untutored minds; though crude the backgrounds +and the figures that animate them, they parallel almost the entire +array of legendary lands and peoples which the classic world assembled. +Skillful old story-tellers--“delight-makers” they were called--told +them at night about a dim fire in the ceremonial roundhouses. Winter +was the time, for then, says Schoolcraft, the strange beings that might +be underground or in the lakes and streams could not hear through the +frozen surfaces the merry tales that the Indian dared tell about them, +and the laughter of the roundhouse. + +Rude are these records of a people whose trickster-hero might be the +obscene and ofttimes ridiculous coyote instead of Ulysses; who spoke +of caribou back-fat and not of the lotus, and who had “the sacred +groaning stick” rather than the lyre of Hermes. Their myth-figures, no +demigods of marble perfection, are the coyote, the buzzard, the hare, +the loon, the lizard--in reality the Indian in his nakedness; and their +evil beings are flint people and awesome rolling skulls. Yet they could +see in the stars the light of lodge fires, speak of the rainbow as the +road of the dead, picture the whirlwind as the dance of a ghost, find +a relation between a gust and the flutter of a moth’s wings, trace the +drift of spirits down the wind, and catch on the throat of the humming +bird a gleam of the fire it stole in a Promethean adventure. No weary +Titan upholds the Indian sky, but in Tlingit story an old woman stands +under the earth with a mighty post and supports it. + +Shape-shifting is at the basis of North American myth, and the +substantial identity of men and animals is proclaimed by it. “Baalam’s +ass,” says Leland, “spoke once for every Christian; every animal spoke +once for the Indian.” + +If one marvels how the fabric of fable held together so long alike +in classic and savage lands, one has only to make some change in a +familiar bedtime story told to children. Their protest is instant; they +want the tale as they have heard it. So do men. + + + + +Chapter XXV. The Gains of Fable + + +It has been well for men that they have been citizens of two +worlds--the traditional world and the world of reality. Whatever harm +they have suffered in either has come from but two things. These things +are fear and selfishness, wherein are all the frustrations and all the +cruelties. The rest has been good. + +The myths of fear kept men from sailing west and south. Until a few +centuries ago the imaginary terrors of the Atlantic and of the tropics +hid from them the knowledge that men like unto themselves lived in +all parts of the earth, and that the winds would waft them to these +along smooth pathways of the sea. The myths of selfishness--the tales +that maritime nations told of evil things in waters and upon coasts +which they would close to the enterprise of others--wrought the same +mischiefs that greed and falsehood work anywhere. They retarded the +advance of learning, restrained the intercourse of nations, and +recoiled at last on the heads of those who invented them. + +The gains of fable are writ large in the history of modern exploration. +Error was the guiding star of discovery. A vain fancy was the most +precious cargo of the caravels, as it was the keenest weapon of the +conquistadors. The coasting voyages around Africa into the eastern +world would have been longer deferred if men had known that the Dark +Continent reached so far to the south. The discovery of America was due +to three stupendous mistakes--the belief that Asia stretched thousands +of miles farther eastward than it does; the belief that Japan was +a thousand miles farther from Asia than it is; the belief that the +circumference of the earth was three thousand miles less than its true +dimension. The total of these mistakes was so great that the whole of +the New World lay concealed within it. Had Columbus known that he must +sail due west for nearly twelve thousand miles to reach Cathay, he +would have foregone his enterprise. + +Because the Spaniards made marvels the text for launching expeditions +instead of telling or compiling stories, their delusions as to the +Americas of the sixteenth century constitute the strangest chapter of +travel tale. But “he that would bring home the wealth of the Indies +must carry the wealth of the Indies with him”; the illusory expeditions +of Spain had results that were denied to the more pedestrian +adventuring of other nations. One of these led Cabeza de Vaca across +the territory of the United States from Atlantic to Pacific, as early +as 1539. It was not until 1805, in the Lewis and Clark expedition, +that the cooler advance of the Anglo-Saxon matched this feat. In their +search for illusive golden cities the countrymen of the Cid explored +the mountains and savannas of South America, the American Southwest, +and even the South Seas, and did it all so far ahead of the English +and American penetration of the northern continent that the story of +their adventures was an old tale before the Saxon had entered the Great +Plains, or climbed the Great Divide, or dropped down to the Pacific. + +Such is the service of dreams. They fire the mind and make the feet of +young men restless. The province of wonder has been to rescue men from +their heaviness. They settle down in one place, and their children and +chattels tie them there, but the nomad in them droops within unchanging +horizons and sickens down in dullness. No report of other lands like +their own and other peoples like themselves will arouse them. They want +to hear of marvels, and every tale of them is a pleasant tale even if +it is of one-eyed cannibal giants, or malignant dwarfs, or headless +men, or the storm-winged roc, or the Swallower of the West. At least +it opens new vistas, and peoples them with creatures such as cannot be +seen at home. So it was that William of Wykeham instructed the scholars +of New College, Oxford, to occupy the long winter evenings in the +Middle Ages with “singing, or reciting poetry, or with the chronicles +of the different kingdoms, or with the wonders of the world.” + +The spirit that leads men to seek distant markets, or dig for gold in +mines, or search for raw materials on the other side of the earth, is +modern, and still only a few have it. Through most of the story of man +it has seemed a better thing to hunt for hidden treasure, to seek for +the Golden Fleece or a golden city, to set out for the Terrestrial +Paradise, to win to the back of the north wind. Even now, report that a +prehistoric monster haunts a lake in Patagonia, or that an expedition +will hunt pirate gold on an island of the Pacific, stirs pulses +that would not respond to the news that a great coal field had been +uncovered in Alaska or China. + +Imagination and curiosity, whence have come most of the travel tales, +have builded where building was needed to fill in empty places whereon +men refused to rear the structures of reality, or to replace what +they tore down. In their passages from age to age and in their long +migrations, men have been constantly forgetting things, carrying over +long stretches of the sea such memorials of the heliolithic culture as +a particular process of mummification, but not the arts and sciences +that had gone with it. They have discovered lands only to lose track +of them. Authentic notes of distant countries and customs they would +not credit; there has been ignorant incredulity as well as ignorant +credulity. The true things in geography to which men have shut their +eyes are no more than countervailed by the vain things they thought +they saw. The tales of afternoon lands and the singular peoples of +the mountains and deserts widen, if only with the shifting contours +of legend, horizons which had been narrowed by forgetfulness and a +perverse refusal to believe. + +Nor have even these tales been enough to satisfy with their close +likeness to realities. Men have played with the thought of other +countries above the clouds or in far-off seas, imagining things which +none was expected to believe, and yet which copyists repeated and +literal-minded men accepted sometimes as having basis of fact. Such +are Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Campanella’s City of the Sun. +Aristophanes pictured a Cloud-Cuckoo Town, which the birds built +between earth and heaven to bring the gods to terms, and filled it +with the trillings and pipings of feathered creatures. The satirist +who wrote of Lilliput, Brobdingnag and Laputa had read Lucian’s _True +History_. In Ariosto’s Limbo of the Moon were stored such treasures as +time misspent in play, vain efforts, good intentions, unpaid vows, the +promises of princes, and deathbed alms. + +Three of these imaginary countries were sketched with such fidelity to +detail, poetic or grotesque, that they lived in the thought of men +with almost a sense of the actual. Scobellum was a fruitful land, the +people of which went beyond the cannibals in cruelty, the Egyptians in +luxury, the Persians in pride, the Cretans in falsehood, the Germans in +drunken license. Whereupon the gods turned the drunkards into swine, +the lecherers into goats, the gamblers into asses, the idle women +into milch cows, and the misers into moles. The Land of Cockaigne was +a country of luxury and high feeding where the houses were built of +barley sugar and the streets were paved with pastry and goods were free +in the shops. Fiddler’s Green is a place where always the fiddlers are +fiddling and the pipers piping, and the dancers dancing; it lies on the +other side of hell. + +Travel tales that purport to be true have a way of rebuking unbelief +with their half triumphs. Noting only the impossible items in a +tradition, learned skepticism has opened itself to discomfiture by +rejecting the whole. The two outstanding figures of fable, the pygmy +and the Amazon, point the moral. In the more grotesque forms may be +found notes on forgotten history and on palæontology. Those tales for +which no basis of fact can be discerned are yet projections of the +minds of primitive men on the clouds, seen after the men themselves +have dropped below the horizon, like the red in the sky after sunset. +At least their colors illumine the manuscript of antiquity and the rude +scroll of savagery. + +Though fantastic fables were bred thereof, it has been loss and not +gain that the old sense of kinship with the fowls of the air and the +beasts of the field is no more. There were compassions and tolerances +in this imagined relation, with just a hint of deep insight. Before the +brotherhood of man became so much as a phrase, the brotherhood of all +created things was a fact. Killing for the mere stupid sake of killing +had no place in a world in which men believed that the first men were +ants; in which they made the hare, the coyote, and the raven heroic +figures of their epics; in which they celebrated the piety of the oryx, +the elephant, and the llama; in which they acclaimed the strength of +the lion, the keen sight of the eagle, and the sagacity of the fox, +and in which they spared the bear, the deer, and the parrot because +it seemed to them that these were ancestral folk. Were these savages +farther from the truth than men of the present day whose interest is +not in the lives but in the deaths of beasts, and who rob the woods and +fields of half their beauty and significance by their senseless pursuit +of the pathetic, defenseless, and yet kindred beings that harbor there? +“My sister the swallow” is the chant of St. Francis. In a better time +when wild life will be cherished and not hunted, it will be remembered +that the dawn-peoples had a vision which was not all vanity. + +The world of reality wears a rich garb that was woven for it by the +world of tradition ages ago. Shifting lands of legend have become solid +ground. There was no island of Brasil, but the country of Brazil bears +its name. There was perhaps no Antilia, domain of the Seven Bishops, +but the Antilles stretch their veritable ramparts across the Caribbean. +The Amazons are commemorated by the earth’s greatest river. There are +beasts and birds which perpetuate the names of the dragon, the harpy, +the sea horse, the unicorn, the satyr. The pity of the pelican lives +in Christian symbolism. The wisdom of the brute runs through Æsopian +fables and mediæval bestiaries. The creatures of classic prodigy--the +griffins, the phœnix, the dragon--animate the blazons of heraldry. +The ideal lands and marvelous peoples of ancient story lend a strange +beauty to the romances of chivalry. Half of the appeal of cathedrals is +in the monstrous figures--bestial, grotesque, devilish--which proclaim +from their roofs and buttresses and sculptured walls a paradox which +is no paradox at all, that the sanctuaries of the spirit are set among +the perilous ways of the world. The old credulities are enshrined in +the language of every people, in the imagery of the arts, and in the +bedtime tales that follow the settings of the sun from station to +station around the earth. + +These things have spoken neither the last nor the greatest word they +are to utter. The fruitful use of the collections of savage myth and +peasant lore is yet to come, when classic legend will take its place as +but a chapter in the volume of fantasy. What will be revealed therein +is the mind of man in the presence of the spectacle of beauty and +terror which is the world. Here the themes of poetry, painting, and +the plastic arts await a new treatment. Not so much the councils of +the gods, the myths of creation and of natural forces, as the simpler +travel tales that are close to the soil will be drawn upon. Olympus +towers afar with its divinities. Nearer to the earth, for example, is +the mountain of San Francisco in Arizona, which the Navahos say was +“bound with a sunbeam, decked with haliotis shell, clouds, he-rain, +yellow maize, and animals, nested with eggs of the yellow warbler, +spread with yellow cloud and made the home of White-Corn Boy and +Yellow-Corn Girl.” However high their spirit soars, men’s feet are +on the ground. If it is the limitation of their nature it is the +liberation of their art that their interest is more in quests of the +Terrestrial Paradise than in myths of things unearthly. + +It was the first belief of man that with a thought he could change +the outer world. What was it, indeed, but the projection of his +own soul--the demons that were his evil thoughts, “the savage and +voluptuous beasts that were the emblems of his folly,” the ideal lands +that were the dawn and afterglow of his own days? The beginning of art +was magic, alike in the chants of rainmakers, the cave paintings of the +Dordogne, and the sculptures of Egypt; and magic is its end. Still may +the artist soul of man fashion its own realities. + +While he builds the pleasant marvels of his yesterdays into habitations +of fancy, he will rear other structures of the like insubstantial stuff +and deem them the abiding places of reality. The shows of nature are +a pageant through which man moves in a dream of his own making. The +piling and passing of the clouds, the fog’s oblivion, the sunset, the +night and the stars, work their spells about him, masking, concealing, +revealing. With the harmless revel of fireflies in the dew and dusk, +fairy locks unbolt for him. He cannot look upon life save as a drama or +an allegory, with the earth as the stage and the sky for its hangings. +By the law of his being he must be maker of myths. + +Only a divine animal could question what was behind the hills, win the +vision of unconjectured oceans, hear the note of eternity in the sound +of running water, and, flashing into a brief ecstasy, sink back again +with the cry of Eheu Fugaces. The brute-gods of his myths, are they +not man himself with his animal routine and his divine moments? When +he crosses the barrier of dreams, when he sits at the gates of memory, +when contemplation holds him motionless “like a flame in a windless +spot,” in his Dionysian intoxications, in the very dances wherein he +merges the god and the brute, he creates worlds that ensphere his every +mood. The Iranian who calls the abode of the blest the House of Song, +and the Mongol whose official scrolls speak of the continents as the +Golden Surface have made a new heaven and a new earth. + +It is not given man to envisage reality. His is the greater gift to +brood over Chaos and shape it as he will. + + + + +Bibliography + + +In preparing this book the works most frequently consulted have been +Pliny’s _Natural History_, Browne’s _Enquiries into Vulgar and Common +Errors_, Beazley’s _Dawn of Modern Geography_, Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, +Tylor’s _Primitive Culture_, Hakluyt’s _Principal Voyages of the +English Nation_, and Pinkerton’s _Collection of Voyages and Travels_. +Both the Hakluyt and Pinkerton collections are libraries in themselves, +each with some hundreds of titles, and the travel narratives they +contain will not be separately listed here. + +Following are the main sources drawn upon for the materials of this +study: + + ABERCROMBY, JOHN. _The Pre- and Proto-historic Finns._ + + AELIAN. _De Natura Animalium._ + + ADAMS, CYRUS C. “The Sargasso Sea,” in _Harper’s Monthly_ for 1907. + + ALBERTUS MAGNUS. _Egyptian Secrets._ + + ALDROVANDI. _Opera Omnia._ + + ALLEN, PAUL. _History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition._ + + ALEXANDER, HARTLEY BURR. _North American Mythology_; _Latin-American + Mythology_. + + “ARABIAN NIGHTS.” Burton Edition. + + ANUTSCHIN. Interpretation of old Russian manuscript on “_The Unknown + Peoples of the East_,” translated by Dr. H. Mirchow in proceedings of + the Anthropological Society of Vienna, 1910. + + + BABCOCK, WILLIAM H. _Legendary Islands of the Atlantic_; “Atlantis and + Antillia,” in _Geographic Review_ for 1917. + + BALCH, EDWIN SWIFT. “Atlantis, or Minoan Crete,” in _Geographic + Review_ for 1917. + + BANDELIER, A. F. _The Gilded Man._ + + BATES, HENRY WALTER. _The Naturalist on the River Amazons._ + + BEAZLEY, C. RAYMOND. _The Dawn of Modern Geography._ + + BEDDARD, FRANK EVARS. _A Book of Whales._ + + BINGHAM, HIRAM. _Across South America._ + + “BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE” for 1904. “Heraldry.” + + BOTCHKAREVA, MARIA. _Yashka; My Life as Peasant, Officer and Exile._ + + BRADLEY, HENRY. _Ptolemy’s Geography of the British Isles._ + + BREHAUT, ERNEST. _An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages; Isidore of + Seville._ + + BREWER, E. COBHAM. _Dictionary of Phrase and Fable._ + + BROOKS, NOAH. _First Across the Continent._ + + BROWNE, SIR THOMAS. _Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors._ + + BUDDHIST _Records of the Western World_. Truebner’s Oriental Series. + + BUFFON, GEORGE LOUIS L. _Natural History._ + + BULFINCH, THOMAS. _Legends of Charlemagne_; _The Age of Fable_. + + BUNBURY, E. H. _History of Ancient Geography._ + + BURTON, SIR RICHARD F. _A Mission to Gélélé, King of Dahome._ + + BURCKHARDT, JOHN LEWIS. _Travels in Arabia._ + + + CARLYLE, THOMAS. _The French Revolution._ + + CARNOY, ALBERT J. _Iranian Mythology._ + + CAXTON, WILLIAM. _History of Reynard the Fox._ + + CHAMBERLAIN, ALEXANDER F. “Recent Literature on the South American + Amazons,” in _Journal of American Folk-Lore_, 1911. + + CHAMBERS, W. & R. _The Book of Days._ + + “CHAMBERS JOURNAL,” for 1844. “The Dwarf Nation Idea.” + + CHARNAY, DÉSIRÉ. _The Ancient Cities of the New World._ + + CHURCHWARD, ALBERT. _The Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man._ + + COOK, CAPTAIN JAMES. _Voyages of Discovery._ + + CORONADO. _His Journey as Told by Himself and His Followers_, + translated by George Parker Winship. + + COX, SIR GEORGE W. _An Introduction to the Science of Comparative + Mythology and Folklore._ + + CTESIAS, _Indika_. Translation by John W. McCrindle. + + CUVIER, GEORGES. _Animal Kingdom._ + + + DALTON, LEONARD D. _Venezuela._ + + DIODORUS SICULUS. _The Historical Library._ + + DISRAELI, ISAAC. _Curiosities of Literature._ + + DIXON, ROLAND B. _Oceanic Mythology._ + + DONNELLY, IGNATIUS. _Atlantis: The Antediluvian World._ + + DOUGHTY, CHARLES M. _Travels in Arabia Deserta._ + + + “ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA.” _Ninth and eleventh editions._ + + “ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION AND ETHICS.” + + EVANS, E. P. _Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture_; _The + Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals._ + + + FISHER, RUTH B. _On the Borders of Pigmy Land._ + + FISKE, JOHN. _Myths and Myth Makers._ + + FOUQUÉ, DE LA MOTTE. _Undine._ + + FOX, WILLIAM SHERWOOD. _Greek and Roman Mythology._ + + FRANCE, ANATOLE. _Penguin Island._ + + FRAZER, J. G. _The Golden Bough; Folk-Lore in the Old Testament._ + + FREUD, SIGMUND. _Totem and Taboo._ + + + “GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW” for 1917. “Proposed Expedition to New Guinea.” + + GERINI, COL. G. E. _Researches on Ptolemy’s Geography of Eastern Asia._ + + GESNER, KONRAD. _History of Animals._ + + GOULD, CHARLES. _Mythical Monsters._ + + GOULD, S. BARING. _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages._ + + GRAY, LOUIS HERBERT. _North American Mythology._ + + GRIBBLE, FRANCIS. _The Early Mountaineers._ + + GROOME, FRANCIS H. _Gipsy Folk-Tales._ + + GROTE, GEORGE. _History of Greece._ + + GUERBER, H. A. _Myths and Legends of the Middle Ages._ + + GUILLIM, JOHN. _A Display of Heraldry._ + + + HAKLUYT, RICHARD. _Principal Voyages of the English Nation._ + + “HARPER’S BOOK OF FACTS.” + + HARRISON, J. E. “Satyrs” and “Silenoi,” in _Encyclopedia of Religion + and Ethics_, vol. xi. + + HEDIN, SVEN. _Through Asia_; _Central Asia_. + + HERODOTUS. _History._ + + HOMER. _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, Pope’s Translation. + + HUGO, VICTOR. _Notre Dame de Paris._ + + HUMBOLDT, ALEXANDER VON. _Personal Narrative of Travels to the + Equinoctial Regions of America_; _Views of Nature_; _Researches + Concerning the Institutions and Monuments of the Ancient Inhabitants + of America_. + + HYAMSON, ALBERT H. “Sambatyon,” in _Encyclopedia of Religion and + Ethics_, vol. xi. + + + IBANEZ, V. BLASCO. _Mexico in Revolution._ + + IRVING, WASHINGTON. _Tour of the Prairies_; _Life and Voyages of + Christopher Columbus_; _Voyages and Discoveries of Companions of + Columbus_. + + + JACOBS, JOSEPH. _The Story of Geographical Discovery._ + + JOHNSTON, SIR HARRY H. _British Central Africa._ + + JOSEPHUS. _Antiquities of the Jews_. + + JOHNSON, WILLIAM HENRY. _The World’s Discoverers._ + + “JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLK-LORE,” 1901 to date. + + JOYCE, THOMAS A. _Mexican Archæology._ + + + KEANE, JOHN. _The Evolution of Geography._ + + KEANE, A. H. _The Gold of Ophir_; _Man, Past and Present_. + + KEITH, A. BERRIEDALE. _Indian Mythology._ + + KINGSLEY, CHARLES. _The Hermits._ + + KNAPP, PHILIP COOMBS. “Crete and Atlantis,” in _Geographic Review_ for + 1919. + + + LANDRIN, M. ARMAND. _Les Monstres Marins._ + + LANG, ANDREW. _Custom and Myth_; _Modern Mythology._ + + LANKESTER, E. 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D. _The Pygmies._ + + QUINN, DANIEL. “In Arkadia,” in _Catholic University Bulletin_ for + 1900. + + + RECLUS, ELISÉE. _The Earth and Its Inhabitants._ + + REDDALL, HENRY FREDERIC. _Fact, Fancy, and Fable._ + + REDWAY, JACQUES W. _The New Basis of Geography._ + + REICH, EMIL. _Woman Through the Ages._ + + REID, MAYNE. _Odd People._ + + ROTHERY, GUY CADOGAN. _The Amazons in Antiquity and Modern Times_; _A + B C of Heraldry_. + + + ST. 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P. “A Nubian Highway,” in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ + for 1907. + + WELLS, H. G. _The Outline of History._ + + WESTROPP, THOMAS J. “Brasil and the Legendary Atlantic Islands,” in + _Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy_ for 1912. + + WHEELER, WILLIAM A. _Familiar Allusions._ + + WIENER, LEO. _Africa and the Discovery of America._ + + WILLIAMS, ARCHIBALD. _The Romance of Early Exploration._ + + WILLIAMS, HENRY S. _The Historians’ History of the World._ + + + XENOPHON. _Anabasis._ + + + ZAHM, J. A. _Along the Andes and Down the Amazon_; _The Quest of + Eldorado_; _Up the Orinoco and Down the Magdalena_; _Through South + America’s Southland_. + + + + +Index + + + A + + Aaf Mountains, 207 + + Abarimon, 114 + + Abbadie, 130 + + Abchaz, 220 + + Abdallah of the Land, 3 + + Abdallah of the Sea, 3 + + Aberdeen Almanac, 102 + + Abodes of the Blest, 257-261, 262, 336-337 + + Abomey, 180, 183, 188 + + Absalom, 188 + + _Abu baraquish_, 60 + + Abul Abbas, 61 + + Abulfeda, 362 + + Abyssinia, 38, 54, 74, 75, 76, 130, 178, 239 + + _Academy of Armory_, 66 + + Acephalites, 109, 346, 349, 368, 372 + + Acheron River, 262 + + Achilles, 152, 153 + + Acoloro, island of, 158 + + Acoma, 323 + + “Acorn-eaters,” 247 + + Acridophagi, 198-199 + + Acroconopes, the, 103 + + Actæon, 28 + + Actium, 97 + + Adam assayed, 357 + + Adam of Bremen, 160, 268, 335 + + Adam’s footprint, 8 + + Adam’s Peak, 8 + + Addison, Launcelot, 42 + + Aden, 267; + Gulf of, 233 + + Adriatic Sea, 249 + + Ægean Sea, 186, 187 + + Ægipans, 206 + + Ælian, 39, 53, 55, 56, 81, 96, 123, 286, 350 + + Æneas, 76 + + _Æneid_, 75 + + Æschylus, 96, 194, 202, 207 + + Æsculapius, 84 + + Æsop’s fables, 375 + + Ætas, the, 137, 148 + + Æthicus of Istria, 138 + + _Æthiopica_ of Marcellus, 286 + + _Æthiopis_, 152 + + Afer, Dionysius, 8 + + Afghans, 353, 359 + + Africa, 2, 49, 78, 105, 122, 125, 134, 143, 145, 147, 153, 196, 199, + 206, 207, 211, 263, 270, 351, 364 + + Africa’s warrior women, 178-184 + + Age of Fable, 348 + + Agate, 24 + + Agatharcides, 199, 353 + + Age of Ignorance, 362 + + Agira, 163 + + Agostina, 174 + + Agriophagi, 199 + + Aguirre, 304 + + Ahacus, 320 + + Aigamuxa, 115 + + Aigiarm, 170 + + Aikeambenanos, 166 + + Ajasson, 90 + + Akbar, 237 + + Akkas, the, 132, 144, 145, 147, 149 + + Alabama, 319 + + Aladdin, 72, 73, 218 + + Alani, the, 193 + + Alarcon, 321 + + Albany, land of, 194 + + Albatross, 74 + + Albertus Magnus, 140, 350 + + Albinos, 193-194 + + Alciphron, 60 + + Aldrovandi, 79, 140, 212 + + Aleutian Islands, 106, 255, 360 + + Alexander, 19, 63, 81, 91, 232, 235, 236, 237, 259, 353 + + Alexandria, 223, 353, 354 + + Algonquins, 81, 118, 119, 303, 369 + + Al Istakhri, 362 + + Aljahedh, 362 + + Allerion, 66 + + Alligator god, 338 + + Alps, the, 80, 191, 203 + + Altai Mountains, 55, 117 + + Alton, 80 + + Alvarado, 323, 324 + + Alvares, Father, 178 + + Amazons, 2, 84, 118, 151-189, 207, 237, 362, 365, 368, 369, 375 + + Amazon march, 177 + + Amazon stone, 24 + + Amazons, River of the, 161, 300, 304, 312 + + _Amazuni_, 167 + + Amber, 105, 201, 229, 264 + + Ambergris, 364 + + Ambrose, 350 + + America, dragon in, 85; + Lucian’s reference to, 275; + Plato’s reference to, 287; + claim that St. Brendan discovered it, 259; + Chinese Buddhists reached it, 360; + Norse discovery of, 267; + discovery of by Columbus, 272-3, 371 + + American Bureau of Ethnology, 323 + + American Indian myths, 65, 117-120, 368-370 + + American Museum of Natural History, 146 + + American southwest, Ararats in, 292 + + Amerigo Vespucci, 191, 315 + + Amethyst, 24 + + Amiens, cathedral at, 47 + + Ammon, Abbot, 45 + + Amoy, 244 + + Amycteres, the, 108 + + Anahuac, plateau of, 318 + + Anamba Islands, 129 + + _A’nasa_, 54 + + Ancient Mariner, 336 + + Andaman Islanders, 106, 147, 148, 365 + + Andari, 144 + + Andes Mountains, 139, 149, 192, 290, 300, 305, 316, 332 + + “Andromeda, a great giant,” 366 + + Angola, 102, 125, 179 + + Anguilla, 96 + + Animal kingdom, 27-48 + + Animals, Avenue of, 54 + + Animals, criminal trials of, 31 + + Animals, their names borne by men, 29; + taking human form, 29; + politics of, 42 + + Annam, 149, 199 + + Annwfir, 260 + + Ant, 42, 43, 217, 253, 303, 361; + gold-guarding, 62-64 + + _Antennarius marmoratus_, 279 + + Anthropology, 291, 353 + + Anthropophagi, 114, 117, 128, 196, 207, 237 + + Antichrist, 239 + + Antigon, 28 + + Antilia, 252, 345, 375 + + Antilles, the, 163, 292, 296, 375 + + Antiope, 153 + + Antipodes, 9-10, 346 + + Antoninus, 358 + + Antony, Mark, 97, 246 + + Anubis, 338 + + Anuradhapura, 214 + + Anutschin, 115 + + Ape, 48, 121, 356 + + Aphrodisiacs, 20, 22 + + Apollo, 201, 203 + + Apple Island, 345 + + Apples of Adam, 358 + + Apurimac, valley of the, 314 + + Arab geography, 269, 362-363 + + Arabia, 1, 2, 50, 69, 95, 104, 171, 195, 224, 229, 231, 234, 245, + 358, 365 + + _Arabian Nights_, 3, 16, 63, 74, 110, 159, 251, 354 + + Arabian Sea, 261 + + Araby the Happy, 232 + + Arachne, 28 + + Arapahoes, the, 139 + + Arawaks, the, 292 + + Arcadia, 1, 77, 246-248 + + Arctic night, 221 + + Arctinus, 151, 152 + + Ardnainiq, the, 112 + + Aretias, island of, 77 + + Argensola, 206 + + Argonauts, 75, 77 + + Argos, 174 + + Ariana, 197 + + Arimaspians, 55, 107 + + Arinadillo, 218 + + Ariosto, 373 + + Aristeas of Proconesus, 107, 349 + + Aristophanes, 285, 373 + + Aristotle, 12, 16, 39, 50, 51, 59, 135, 334, 353, 354 + + Arjuna, Rajah, 156, 157 + + Ark, 87, 292 + + Arkansas River, 326 + + Armada, the, 306 + + Armenia, 60, 100, 113, 151, 171, 185, 195, 238, 258 + + Aromatic Cape, 10, 231 + + Arngrim, 92 + + Arrian, 154, 196, 197, 225 + + Artemidorus, 81, 195 + + Artemis Stymphalia, 77 + + Arthur, King, 64, 256, 259 + + Art’s beginning in magic, 376 + + Aryan culture, 357 + + Asafœtida, 94 + + Asesa, 143 + + Asia, 1, 2, 109, 135, 136, 148, 196, 211, 212, 213, 267, 351, 364 + + Asia Minor, 135, 153, 169, 186, 281, 283, 365 + + Ass, 46, 48, 122, 338, 361, 374; + Feast of the, 48; + Baalam’s, 370 + + Ass-bittern, 67 + + Assuan, 143 + + Assyria, 56, 66, 169 + + Astarte, 186, 187 + + Astolpho, home of, 76 + + Astomi, the, 107-108 + + Astrakhan, 237 + + Astronomy, Maya, 293, 294 + + Asuang, 111 + + Asuncion, 300, 311 + + Aswamedha quest, 156, 157 + + Atahnallpa, Inca, 313, 333 + + Atbara River, 199 + + Athenæus, 350 + + Athens, 83, 281, 286 + + Athos, Mount, 193 + + Atlantes, 194 + + Atlantic Ocean, 1, 104, 252, 256, 261, 262-273, 277, 278, 287, + 289, 291 + + Atlantis, 1, 252, 254, 255, 266, 274, 276, 277, 278, 280, 281-297, 369 + + _Atlantis: The Antediluvian World_, 288 + + Atlas Mountains, 140, 206, 264, 282, 290 + + Atrato River, 331 + + Attica, 122, 152, 153, 154 + + _Attic Nights_, 349 + + Augustus, 90, 96, 236 + + Aurochs, 55 + + Aurungzebe, 170 + + “Austin the monk,” 128 + + Australia, 11, 255, 328, 329 + + Autolycus, 249 + + Avalon, isle of, 259, 345 + + Avernus, lake of, 262 + + Ayamanes, 139 + + Azerbaijan, 337 + + Azores, the, 12-13, 255, 271, 275, 277, 280, 287, 288, 289, 290 + + Azov, Sea of, 154, 156, 358 + + Aztecs, 189, 204, 292, 338 + + + B + + Baalam, 53 + + Baalim, 185 + + Baboons, fear of, 126 + + Babylon, 122, 204, 238, 260, 358 + + Babylonia, 85, 87 + + Bacchus, 203 + + Bactrians, 55 + + Badger’s legs, 44 + + Bagdad, 362 + + Bagrada River, 37 + + Bahama Islands, 278, 314 + + Bailey, 128 + + Baker, Sir Samuel, 36, 135 + + Ba-Kwamba tribe, 130 + + Balasses, 244 + + Balboa, 76, 330, 331-332 + + Balm of Gilead, 230 + + Baltic Sea, 100, 114, 151, 160, 254 + + _Bamboo Books_, 71 + + Bancroft, 307 + + Banda, 206 + + Bandelier, 322, 326 + + Bangkok, 177 + + Banshee, 99 + + Bantam, 177, 184 + + Bantu, the, 149 + + Barbarism defined, 357 + + Barbarossa, Frederick, 220 + + Barcelona, 174 + + Barentz, 41 + + Barns of Joseph, 358 + + Basil, 20, 350 + + Basilisk, 2, 78 + + Bassorah, Hassan el, 159 + + Bastards of the Kalahari Desert, 146 + + Bat, 76, 77, 217, 245, 331, 340, 344 + + Bates, 75, 76, 126 + + Battalion of Death, 154, 156, 174-177 + + Batu, 106 + + Batwas, the, 145 + + Baurded, Treasurer, 143 + + Bears, 43, 65, 118, 128, 374; + as men bewitched, 29 + + Beasts, fabulous, 49-67 + + Beasts of Revelation, 65 + + Beazley, 363 + + Becket, Thomas à, 128 + + Bede, 6 + + Bedouins, 365 + + Bedtime stories, 370, 375 + + Bee, 44 + + Beelzebub, the fly god, 30 + + Beetle, 217, 218, 303 + + Beeton, 193 + + Behrs, the, 184 + + Belalcazar, 299, 301 + + Bellerophon, 152 + + Belloc, 216 + + Belzoni, 18 + + Benjamin of Tudela, 108, 238, 243, 358 + + Bennu, 70 + + Benzom, gum, 230 + + Berber rock-towns, 195 + + Bermuda Islands, 101, 278, 288 + + Bernier, 170 + + Bertinoro, 17 + + Beryl, 25 + + Bes, 150 + + Bestiaries, 46, 375 + + Bezoar, 24, 38 + + Bible, 83, 86, 122, 185, 192, 213, 338 + + Bibliography, 378-383 + + Bielovodye, 222 + + Big-footed men, 2 + + Billdad, 66 + + Bimini, 314, 315 + + Bird of paradise, 43 + + Birds, 373 + + Birthstone, 24 + + Bishop-fish, 100 + + Black River, 136 + + Black Sea, 135, 151, 153, 187, 268 + + Black Side of Cathedral, 204 + + “Black Virgin,” 171 + + Bladder as sky, 119 + + “Blameless” peoples, 203 + + Brazil, 95, 123, 126, 188, 193, 218, 299, 375 + + Blefkens, 133 + + Blemmyes, the, 109 + + Blessed Islands, 258-261, 262 + + Bloodstone, 24 + + Blue-land, 268 + + Boadicea, 169 + + Boccias Islands, 102 + + Bogaz Keni, 186 + + Bogota, 301, 304 + + Bohemia, 171, 248-250 + + Bokhara, 240 + + Bolivia, 294, 299, 311 + + Bongo tribe, 129 + + _Book of the Cities and Marvels of Countries_, 362 + + _Book of Climates_, 362 + + _Book of Diversities_, 363 + + _Book of Roads and Kingdoms_, 362 + + Books, virtue in all, 354 + + Borneo, 94, 129, 158, 159, 335 + + Bororo Indians, 27 + + Bosman, 179 + + Bossewell, 66 + + Boston Linnæan Society, 94 + + _Botanic Garden_, 58 + + Botchkareva, Maria, 156, 174-177 + + Bothnia, Gulf of, 93 + + Bo-tree, Sacred, 216 + + Bottle-imps, 22 + + Bouchey, Margaret, 23 + + Bougainville, 138, 329 + + Boundary between Old and New World, 277 + + Bounteous Isle, 253 + + Bourbourg, Abbé Brasseur de, 293 + + Bourgogne, Jean de, 365, 367 + + Boys, maiming of, 172 + + Bradamante, 172 + + Bragman, isle of, 260 + + Brahma, 205, 338 + + Bran, 89 + + Breadfruit, 260 + + Breezes, generative, 50 + + Brest, 289 + + Brhaspati, 338 + + Bridge of tortoises, 359 + + Bridinno, dwarf land of, 138 + + Britannus, 344 + + British Columbia, 360 + + British Isles, 9, 203, 254, 263, 264, 274, 290, 296, 351 + + Brittany, 256 + + Brobdingnag, 373 + + Bronze Age, 294 + + Browne, Sir Thomas, 23, 39, 44, 53, 69, 78, 99, 140, 334, 350 + + Bruce, 71 + + Brundusium, 349 + + Brushwood Town, 128 + + Brusilov, 175 + + Brynhild, 79 + + Buache, 369 + + Bucephali, 103 + + Buchanan, 125 + + Buddha, 215, 361 + + Buddhism, 188, 240, 261, 360 + + Buenos Aires, 311 + + Buffalo, 6, 318, 319, 323, 324, 325; + Caffrarian, 56 + + Buffon, 33, 35, 43, 77, 111, 140, 141, 192, 350 + + Bull, 81, 338, 342, 367 + + Bulotu, 260 + + Bunyan, 262, 367 + + Bunyan, Paul, 66 + + Bunyip, 95 + + Buried cities, 213-215 + + Burma, 269, 293, 364 + + Burrowing creatures, 218 + + Burton, Lady, 180 + + Burton, Sir Richard, 159, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183 + + Busbequins, 63 + + Bushmen, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 227 + + Bustard, 210 + + Butterfly, 344 + + Buzzard, 370 + + Byssus silk, 59 + + Byzantium, 361 + + + C + + Cabeza, de Vaca, 319, 372 + + Cabul, 62 + + Cadiz, 224, 306, 308 + + Cæsaristas, the, 317 + + Cæsars of South America, 317 + + Calabash, 159, 321, 361 + + Caldilhe, 58 + + Caliban, 104 + + California Indians, 8 + + California, island of, 158 + + California, State of, 127, 283, 360 + + Callao, 328 + + Calypso, 354 + + Cambodia, 195, 269 + + Cambyses, 15 + + Camel, 42, 50, 62, 63, 81, 210, 232, 361; + flying, 358 + + Cametennus, 361 + + Campanella, 373 + + Camulatz, the bird, 293 + + Canada, 290 + + Canary Islands, 258, 265, 270, 287, 290, 345, 359 + + Canelas, 300, 301 + + Cape Bojador, 272 + + Cape Cod, 289 + + Cape of Good Hope, 270, 278 + + Cape Guardafui, 10, 156, 231 + + Cape Hatteras, 288 + + Cape Santa Elena, 192 + + Cape of Spices, 231 + + Cape Verde Islands, 287, 289, 290 + + Cappadocia, 185, 186, 195 + + Capricorn, 67 + + Caqueta River, 302, 303 + + Carbuncle, 24 + + Carchemish, 185 + + Cardan, 140 + + Cardinal Points, 203-205 + + Caribbean Sea, 160, 290, 291, 296, 299, 300, 369 + + Carib, island of, 160 + + Caribs, the, 166, 217, 291, 292 + + Caribou, 29 + + Carlyle, 172 + + Caroline Islands, 158 + + Caroni River, 305, 311 + + Carp, 81 + + Carpini, 104, 106, 113, 194, 258 + + Cartagena, 330 + + Carteret, 329 + + Carthage, 123, 263, 264, 271, 274 + + Cartooning humanity, 103 + + Caspian Sea, 237 + + Cassia, 231, 233, 234, 243 + + Cassiquiare River, 304 + + Cassiterides, the, 263 + + Castaneda, 322 + + Castelnau, 125, 130 + + Castor, 94 + + Cat, 253, 338 + + Cataclysm in New World myth, 292, 294 + + Catalan map, 90, 160 + + Cat-fish, 6, 67 + + Cathay, 106, 113, 222, 240, 312, 365 + + Cathedrals, animal symbolism in, 46-48, 375 + + Catoblepas, 36 + + Caucasus Mountains, 72, 114, 153, 171, 193, 194, 195, 207, 235, 237 + + Cave drawings, 340 + + Celtic glamour, 256, 348 + + Celts, 83, 367 + + Central America, 77, 291-294, 297 + + Celebes, 242 + + Cellar strain in human nature, 217 + + Cellini, Benvenuto, 38 + + Centaur, 66, 114, 361 + + Central point of earth, 7 + + Cephalopod, 95 + + Cercopes, the, 125 + + Cerne, 275 + + Ceylon, 42, 157, 160, 258, 363 + + Chalcedony, 25 + + Chaldea, 98, 159, 366 + + Chambers’ _Journal_, 142 + + Chameleon, 366 + + Chamlakhu, 127 + + Chains of Indo-China, 31 + + Chao Fu-Kua, 137 + + Chaos, 86 + + Chardin, 171 + + Charia, Isle of, 366 + + Charlemagne cycle, 56, 75, 76, 95 + + Charles III of Spain, 318 + + Charles V of Spain, 317 + + Charlevoix, Father, 343 + + Charon’s ferry, 262 + + Chassenée as rat advocate, 31 + + Chatan, pygmy city of, 138 + + Chelonophagi, the, 96, 198 + + Chenoos, the, 119 + + Cherokees, the, 217 + + Chestnuts, 283 + + Chiau Yau, 136 + + Chibcha Indians, 301, 312 + + Chichen Itza, 291 + + Childbirth, a means of promoting, 24 + + Chilean mythology, 338 + + Chimæra, 66 + + China, 59, 60, 72, 73, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 113, 137, 147, 203, 218, + 230, 259, 267, 269, 318, 335, 349, 359, 360, 364, 365 + + China seas, 74 + + Chinese discovery of North America, 360 + + _Chinese Encyclopedia_, 57, 107 + + Chinese wall, 139, 237 + + Chiquitos, the, 139 + + Chiriqui Indians, 338 + + Choquequirau, 314, 332 + + Choromandæ, the, 104 + + Chrism, devil’s, 78 + + Christ symbolized by unicorn, 53; + called the phœnix, 69 + + Christian fabulists, 356 + + Christian pilgrims, 356, 357-358 + + Christian symbolism, 375 + + _Chronicle of the Cid_, 177 + + Chrysolite, 25, 207 + + Chrysoprase, 24 + + Churchward, 149 + + Cibola, 303, 312, 314, 318-323 + + Ciconian coast, 228 + + Cilician pirates, 265 + + Cimarron republics, 165 + + Cimbri, the, 3 + + Cinnabar, 33 + + Cinnamon, 231, 233, 234, 243; + Land of, 301, 312 + + City of Brass, 110 + + City of God, 356 + + City of Hump-backed Women, 361 + + City of Mexico, 312, 321, 322 + + City of the Sun, 2, 69, 373 + + Classic myth, 375 + + Claudius, 69 + + Closet philosophers, 369 + + Clothing, origin of, 87 + + Cloud-centaurs, 103 + + Cloud-Cuckoo Town, 285, 373 + + Clouds of Magellan, 311 + + Cloves, 230, 243, 245 + + Coast Range, 283 + + Coata, 124 + + Cobra, 112 + + Cochin-China, 137, 243 + + Cock, 30, 44 + + Cockaigne, Land of, 374 + + Cockatrice, 66, 77-78 + + Cock’s egg, 78 + + Cocytus River, 262 + + Cod, 96 + + Colic, a cure for, 24 + + Coligny, 306 + + _Collecteanea_, 355, 356 + + Colombia, 207, 300, 301, 302, 311, 312 + + Colorado River, 318, 321 + + Columbus, 10, 12, 102, 130, 151, 160, 161, 167, 242, 258, 270, 271, + 274, 277, 279, 368, 371 + + Comedy, Greek, 339 + + Commercial subtlety, 244 + + Communal houses, 303, 327 + + Comorin, Cape, 149 + + Compass, 7 + + Composite creatures, doctrine of, 341 + + Concepcion, 316 + + Condor, 74 + + “Conflict between Horus and Set,” 86 + + Confucius on jade, 24 + + Congo, 178, 179 + + Conquistadors, 299-333, 368, 369 + + Constantinople, 359 + + Constellations, animal forms of, 30 + + Conway, 206 + + Cook, Capt., 124 + + Cool Lake, 7 + + Coos Bay giants, 192 + + Copper, 327; + Age, 294; + Mountains, 207 + + Coptic Christians, 239 + + Cordilleras, 207, 273, 300, 301 + + Cordoba, 60, 362 + + Corentyne River, 167 + + Cornelius Nepos, 228 + + Corn spirit, 30 + + Cornwall, 255, 263, 309 + + Coromandel Coast, 196 + + Coronado, 320, 321-326, 368 + + Corsali, 74 + + Cortez, 188, 292, 329 + + Corvo, 271 + + Cosmas, 6, 34, 52, 362 + + Cossack colonel a woman, 177 + + Costa Rica, 127 + + Cotton-plant, 59 + + Cotzbalam, the bird, 293 + + Cougnantainsecouima, the, 164 + + Council of Virgins, 172 + + _Country of the Dwarfs_, 142 + + Country of Widows, 158 + + Country of Women, 156 + + Court of the Universe, 284 + + Cow, 257, 374 + + Cowry shell, 87 + + Coyote, 106, 118, 370, 374 + + Crab, 30, 43, 61, 97 + + Cradle of Gold, 312, 332 + + Cramps, a cure for, 24 + + Crane, 2, 42, 118, 350; + war with pygmies, 141 + + Crantor, 286 + + Crayfish, 245 + + Creative caricature, 340 + + Credulity of Greeks, 353 + + Crete, 287 + + Cricket, 81, 361 + + Crimean war, 171 + + Criminal courts of birds, 42 + + _Critias_, the, 281, 282, 285 + + Crocker Land, 255 + + Crocodile, 36-37, 45, 47, 338, 361 + + Cromagnons, the, 190 + + Crow Indians, 139 + + Crusaders, 186 + + Ctesias, characterized, 352-353; + cited, 18, 19, 25, 35, 37, 51, 52, 55, 57, 63, 105, 106, 109, 113, + 133, 135, 191, 193, 335, 349, 350, 352, 353, 354, 366 + + Cuatas, the, 123 + + Cuba, 130 + + Cuchiviro, Rio, 166 + + Cuckoo, 44 + + Cundinamarca, plateau of, 298, 300, 301 + + Cupidity, a cure for, 24 + + Curupira, 126, 127 + + Cush, 17 + + Cushing, 323 + + “Customs” of Dahomey, 179 + + Cuttlefish, men mistaken for, 27 + + Cuvier, 36, 54, 140, 141, 142, 144, 350 + + Cuzco, 314, 316, 332 + + Cybele, 186 + + Cyclopes, 253, 361 + + Cyme, 153, 187 + + Cynocephali, 105, 351, 367 + + Cyrenaica, 212 + + Cyrene, 78, 134 + + Cyrne, 193 + + Cyrus the Great, 169 + + Czecho-Slovakia, 248 + + + D + + Da Gama, 242, 244 + + Dahomey, 179-183 + + Dahut, Princess, 256 + + Dalay River, 138 + + Damastes, 202 + + Dampier, 77, 198, 245 + + Dance macabre, 47 + + Dancing negresses, 182 + + Dandini, 25 + + Daniel, Abbott, 358 + + D’Annunzio, 341 + + Danube River, 153, 203 + + Dardæ, 63 + + Darkness, legends as to, 220-221 + + Darwin, Charles, 112, 316 + + Darwin, Erasmus, 58 + + David, 226 + + Davy, 102 + + De Acunha, Father, 163 + + Dead Sea, 358 + + Deadly upas tree, 20 + + De Arguello, 316 + + Death-watch, 44 + + De Berreo, 305, 306, 308 + + Deccan, 177 + + De Chaves, 311 + + Dee, River, 102 + + Deer, 81, 127, 327, 374 + + Deformed Folk, 352 + + De Gamboa, 328 + + De la Mare, 255 + + De Leon, Diego Flores, 317 + + De Leon, Ponce, 314, 315 + + Delicious Isle, 253 + + Delight-makers, 370 + + _Delight of Those Who Seek to Wander Through the Regions of the + World_, 362 + + Delisle, 369 + + Delos, 201 + + Delphi, 201 + + Deluded Folk, eight, 270 + + Deluge, 87, 292, 297 + + Delusive water, 312 + + De Maillet, 89 + + Demons, 376 + + De Ortribia, 315 + + De Proveda, 304 + + Derbent, 237 + + Derceto, 98, 186 + + Descouret, 130 + + _Description of Greece_, 353 + + Desert, 2, 199, 209-215 + + De Silva, 300, 304 + + “Destruction of Mankind,” 86 + + Deucalion, 292 + + De Urreta, 15 + + De Ursua, 304 + + Devil, cult of in Florida, 4 + + Devil-fish, 67 + + Devil-mask of the Jurupary, 163 + + De Weltheim, 64 + + Diable Borteux, 126 + + Diamond, 24, 87, 244 + + Diana of the Ephesians, 186 + + Diana in Autun, 215 + + Dicuil, 8 + + Digby, Sir Kenelm, 212 + + Dinosaur, 82 + + Diodorus Siculus, 25, 35, 43, 49, 77, 96, 153, 165, 185, 197, 198, + 199, 202 + + Dionysus, 122 + + Disappearing Islands, 1, 256-257 + + Disraeli, 359 + + Ditter, island of, 251 + + Dobayba, temple of, 76 + + Dodona, oak of, 215 + + Dog, 30, 49, 56, 64, 89, 293, 340; + husbands, 29 + + Dogfish, 87 + + Dog-headed people, 105-107, 349, 351, 360, 367 + + Dog-ribs, the, 106 + + Dog Star, 14, 233 + + Dolmen, 343 + + Dolphin, 90-91, 103 + + Dondun, 109 + + Donnelly, Ignatius, 278, 294 + + Don steppes, 156 + + D’Orbigny, 139 + + Dordogne cave paintings, 376 + + Dos Santos, 35, 73 + + Doughty, 210 + + Doul-Karnain, 236 + + Dove, 47 + + Dowarnenez, Bay of, 256 + + Dragon, 2, 32, 45, 47, 53, 56, 58, 65, 66, 79-88, 98, 268, 331, 344, + 360, 361, 367, 375 + + Dragonfly, 217, 344 + + Dragon-tyger, 67 + + Dragon-wolf, 67 + + Drake, 3, 245, 277, 306, 329 + + Dravidians, 146 + + Drawings, Primitive, 340 + + Dread of thick foliage, 216 + + Dream Quests of Spain, 312-333 + + Dreams, 339, 372 + + Dromedary, 361 + + Druids, 257, 265, 296 + + Drums, magic, 241 + + Drunkards, 374 + + Dryads, 216 + + Du Chaillu, 142 + + Duck, 30 + + Duff Islands, 329 + + Duirs, the, 129 + + Dumb-barter, 15, 104 + + Dunashki, 137 + + Du Pin, Jean, 365 + + Dutch East India Company, 245 + + Dwarf-gods of Egypt and Phœnicia, 150 + + Dwarfs, 268, 343, 363, 372 + + Dyaks, the, 36 + + + E + + Eagle, 47, 56, 81, 374 + + Eagle-stone, 24 + + Earth, size and shape of, 5-13 + + Earth-holders, 6, 30, 370 + + East, 204-205 + + East African islands, 96 + + Easter Island, 255 + + Eastern Roman Empire, 239, 265 + + East Indies, 79, 328 + + Ecbatana, 238 + + Ecclesiastical suits against vermin, 31-32 + + Echo, the, 339 + + Eclipses, 30 + + Ecuador, 13, 302 + + Edam, 100 + + Eden, 87, 257, 258, 357 + + Eden, Richard, 241 + + Edom, land of, 224, 226 + + Eel, 43, 96; + “eel-mother,” 96 + + Eel-like men, 112 + + Egede, Hans, 94 + + Egypt, 2, 69, 85, 142, 143, 144, 169, 186, 204, 210, 230, 281, 286, + 340, 351, 365 + + Emmet valley, 63 + + Elbe River, 248 + + Elders, Animal, 65 + + El Dorado, 161, 298-310, 348, 369 + + Elephant, 32-34, 43, 46, 51, 57, 109, 284, 291, 343, 351, 361, 374; + tower, 33 + + Elephantine, 143 + + Elephantophagi, 199 + + Eleusinian mystery, 184 + + El Gran Moxo, 312, 333 + + El Gran Paititi, 312, 333 + + Elixir of life, 88 + + Elizabethan age, 305 + + Elizabeth, Queen, 306, 307, 369 + + Elm’s refreshing shadow, 19 + + El Turco, 324, 325, 326 + + Elysium, 217, 220, 257-261, 262 + + Emerald, 24, 318 + + Emerson, 342 + + Empedocles, 341 + + Enchanted City of the Cæsars, 312, 316-318 + + Enchanted Islands, 327 + + Enchantments, a defense against, 24 + + Enciso, Bachelor, 330 + + Encyclopædia Britannica, 79, 144, 242 + + Encyclopædists, 350, 351, 356 + + Engano, 158 + + English Channel a ferry of souls, 266 + + Englishmen, tailed, 128 + + Enmities of birds, 44 + + Enotocoitae, the, 109 + + _Enquiries of Browne_, 350 + + Ephesus, 153, 186, 187 + + Epilepsy, treatment of, 24, 56 + + Epiphany, 358 + + Equatorial Current, 278 + + Equestrian statues, Carthaginian, 271 + + Eratosthenes, 10, 263 + + Ericson, Thorwald, 113 + + Eriphia, 20 + + Error the guiding star of discovery, 371 + + Erythræ, 63 + + Erythræan Sea, 353 + + _Esdras_, books of, 11 + + Eskimos, 4, 106, 108, 110, 112, 141, 145, 338, 369 + + Essay-writing, a dragon diet for, 81 + + Estevanico, 319, 320, 321, 323 + + _Esther_, book of, 187 + + Estland, 345 + + Estotiland, 345 + + Etearchus, 134, 135 + + Ethnography, 291 + + Ethiopia, 68, 104, 108, 113, 178, 193, 203, 235, 364, 365 + + Etymology as source of myths, 344-347 + + Eudoxus, 113 + + Euphrates River, 7, 185, 358 + + Euripides, 263 + + Europe, 106, 202, 264 + + Evangelists as beast-headed men, 339 + + Evans, 47 + + Eve, 84, 87, 112 + + Evolution of divine beast-men, 338 + + Evolution of the Dragon, 84 + + Ewaipanoma, 110 + + Expedition Island, 255 + + _Ezekiel_, book of, 235, 236 + + Ezion-geber, 224, 227 + + + F + + Fabric of Illusion, 334-347 + + Fabulous winged creatures, 68-78 + + Fa-hien, 360 + + Fairies, 150; + queen of, 359 + + Falcon-fish, 67 + + Falcon-man, 159 + + Falconry, 133 + + Familiars, 99 + + Fang-chang, 82 + + Farissol, Abraham, 17 + + Faroes, the, 93 + + Fatephur Sikri, 33 + + Father John, bird called, 71 + + Faun, 122, 361 + + Fayal, 306 + + Fear, myths of, 371 + + Feast of Reason, 173 + + Feast of the Valiant Women, 174 + + Feathered men, 349 + + Febrifuge, a, 24 + + Federmann, 301, 303, 332 + + Felfel Mountain, 206 + + _Fen-shu_, 57 + + Female Crusade, 172 + + Female incense, 233 + + Fertility emblems, 30 + + Festus Avienus, 275 + + Fezzan, 195 + + Fiddlers’ Green, 374 + + Fiend fly, 344 + + Fijis, 335 + + Filipinos, 127 + + Finland, 240, 335 + + Finn-folk, 242 + + Finnish magic songs, 241; + riddles, 346 + + First People, Indian, 28, 118, 119, 339, 342 + + Fish, a polygamous, 43 + + Fish-eating races, 196-198 + + Flaccus, 351 + + _Flame of Life_, 341 + + Flavianus, 90 + + Fleurieu, 369 + + Flint people, 370 + + Florida, 53, 102, 315, 319 + + Flying Dutchman, 276 + + Foersch, 20 + + Folk of Tradition, 190-200 + + _Fonte perenni_, 315 + + Forest, beliefs as to, 215-217 + + Formosa, 129 + + Fortunate Isles, 257-261, 262, 354 + + Fossils as source of myths, 295, 343, 344 + + Fountain of the Sun, 18 + + Fountain of Youth, 15, 312, 314-315, 365 + + Fouqué, 99 + + Fox, 29, 47, 342, 374 + + Fragrant Mountains, 7 + + France, 249, 255 + + France, Anatole, 342 + + Frankincense, 231 + + Franks, the, 266 + + Frazer, 187, 346 + + French Amazons, 172-174 + + Friar-fish, 67 + + Friars, begging, 338 + + Friedemann, 139 + + Friendly Islanders, 260 + + Friendships of birds, 44 + + Friesland, West, 100 + + Frobisher, 52 + + Frog, 30, 118 + + Fu-lin, 61 + + _Fung-wang_, 70 + + Furies, the, 265 + + + G + + Gadarenes, country of the, 44 + + Gaditanian Sea, 92 + + Gains of Fable, 371-377 + + Galen, 24 + + Galvano, 129 + + Gambia River, 263 + + Gamblers, 374 + + Gamphasantes, the, 199 + + Ganges River, 7, 203, 267 + + Garcias ab Horto, 53 + + Garcilaso de la Vega, 212 + + Gargoyles, 337 + + Garnet, 24, 244 + + Garuda, 134 + + Gaul, 9, 90, 203, 265 + + Geese, wild, 41-42 + + Gélélé, King, 179 + + Gellius, 349 + + _Genesis_, book of, 7, 22, 83, 224, 235, 282 + + Genghis Khan, 237, 239 + + Geographers, ancient, 350 + + Geography of Scents, 230-231 + + Gerini, 17, 129, 136, 269 + + Germain, Louis, 289, 290, 291 + + German Hydrographic Office, 278 + + Germany, 83, 96, 97, 99, 156, 356, 374 + + Gesner, 79 + + Gessi, 275 + + Getæ, the, 3 + + Ghauts, the, 149 + + Ghosts, merriment of, 4 + + Ghouls, 363; + isle of, 251 + + Giants, 190-193, 257, 268, 343, 361, 367, 368, 372; + stone, 117, 119 + + Gibbon, 240 + + Gibraltar, 1; + Straits of, 265, 267, 287, 288 + + Gihon, 7 + + Gila Canyon, 139 + + Gilbert, 306 + + Gilboa, Mount, 358 + + Gilded Man, the, 298-310 + + Gindanes, land of the, 227 + + Ginger, 243 + + Ginseng, 22, 23 + + Giraldus Cambrensis, 217 + + Glistening Heath, 79 + + Glooskap, 91, 119 + + Glow-worms, 245 + + Gnomes, 150 + + Gnu, 36 + + Goat, 30, 43, 122, 235, 338, 374 + + Gobi, Desert of, 2, 214, 360 + + Goddess of Liberty, 173 + + God-man, 188 + + God’s land of the Celts, 217 + + Gog and Magog, 1, 9, 207, 235-238, 362 + + Gold, 229, 244, 284, 327; + origin of use as money, 87; + Spanish quest of, 298-333 + + Gold Coast, 272 + + Golden Age, 208, 287, 336 + + Golden Apalache, 319 + + _Golden Bough_, 187 + + Golden Chain, adventure of, 332 + + Golden Chersonese, 12, 224, 230 + + Golden Fleece, 372 + + Golden Surface, the, 377 + + Goliath, 192 + + Good intentions, 373 + + Goodwin Sands, 255 + + Goose, 30 + + Gonges, Olympede, 173 + + Gorgons, 153, 212, 213 + + Gorilla, 123 + + Goths, 169 + + Gould, Baring, 98, 130 + + Gould, Charles, 54, 82 + + Gradlon, King, 256 + + Grand Lama of Tibet, 187 + + Grapes, 284 + + Grasshoppers, 38, 348 + + Grasshopper-eaters, 198 + + “Grasshopper warriors,” 144 + + Gravelly Sea, 211 + + “Great China,” 359 + + Great Han Country, 360 + + Great Mother, 186, 188 + + Great Saracen Land, 268 + + Great Syrtis, 194 + + Great toe, peculiar formation of, 199 + + Great Year, 70 + + Greece, 90, 100, 246, 247, 262, 352 + + Greenland, 94, 106, 133, 290 + + Green Sea of Gloom, 1, 269 + + Grenada, island of, 245 + + Gribble, 80 + + Griffin, 2, 55-56, 63, 64, 66, 67, 152, 253, 337, 350, 361, 367, 375 + + Grimm Brothers, 22, 193, 369 + + Guacaris, the, 163 + + Guadeloupe, 160 + + Guatemala, 118, 127, 293 + + Guatavita, Lake, 298, 299 + + Guaviare River, 302, 304 + + Guiana, 3, 110, 163, 292, 309, 310, 311, 346 + + Guillim, 52, 66 + + Gulf of California, 320, 321 + + Gulf of Mexico, 315, 319 + + Gulf of Oraba, 331 + + Gulf of Paria, 13 + + Gulf Stream, 278 + + Gulfweed, 280 + + Gumberoo, 66 + + Gum camphor, 20 + + Gum-tree country, 260 + + Gunhild, 241 + + Gwenland, 160 + + Gwyn ab Nudd, 368 + + Gymnetæ, the, 193 + + Gypsies, 222, 248, 249 + + + H + + Hacus, 320 + + Hadam, Eldad, 17 + + Hahua-chumpi, island of, 327 + + Haida, 6 + + “Hairy ones,” 122 + + Haiti, 260 + + Hakluyt, 3, 20, 34, 37, 101, 251, 307, 369 + + Halcyon, 43 + + Half-men, 111-112 + + Halls of the Giants, 359 + + Hamam Meskouteen, 212 + + Haman, 187 + + Hand of Satan, 272 + + Hanno, 123, 263 + + Hannum, 187 + + Hanuman, 124, 338 + + Hanyson, 220 + + Happy hunting grounds, 217 + + Harald Hardrada, 268 + + Hardouin, 70 + + Hare, 81, 374 + + Harem of a queen, 179 + + Harpies, 2, 66, 75-77, 375 + + Hart, 47 + + Hathor, 85, 87 + + Hatusapur, 156 + + Havaika, 260 + + Hav-fruen, 101 + + Havilah, 1, 7, 9, 223, 224, 225, 226 + + Hav-manden, 101 + + Hawk, 78, 338 + + Hawkins, 52, 252 + + Hawks, Henry, 322 + + Hayton, King, 106 + + Headless People, 109, 346, 349, 368, 372 + + Hebrew the natural speech, 357 + + Hecatæus, 202 + + Hedgehog, 47 + + Hedin, 208, 214 + + Hedjaz, 138 + + Hegesias, 349 + + Heifer, 28 + + _Heimskringla_, 267 + + Heine, 314 + + Helicon, Island of, 251 + + Heliogabalus, 69 + + Heliolithic culture, 373 + + Heliopolis, 69, 70 + + Hellebore, 204 + + Hellespont, 352 + + Hell-way, 204 + + Helyon, 52 + + Hen, 27, 245, 293, 366 + + Henry VII, 99 + + Henry the Navigator, Prince, 199, 225, 270, 271, 367 + + Heraldry, 2, 66-67 + + Herbenstein, 102 + + Hercules, 38, 77, 132, 152, 153, 202, 205 + + Hercynian birds, 356 + + Herkhuf, 143 + + Hermes, 96, 246 + + Hermits, beasts of, 45 + + Herodotus, characterized, 352; + cited, 14, 26, 55, 62, 63, 71, 72, 77, 104, 107, 123, 132, 134, + 151, 154, 155, 193, 194, 195, 196, 202, 207, 228, 230, 231, + 233, 234, 335, 349, 350, 353, 354, 361 + + Heroes of beast epics, 29 + + Heron, 70 + + Herrera, 191 + + Hesiod, 75, 202, 263, 287 + + Hesperides, the, 345 + + Hibernating Samoyeds, 116-117 + + Hiddekel, 7 + + Hierro, island of, 20 + + _Hill and Sea Classic_, 136 + + Hill of Little Devils, 208 + + Himalayas, the, 135, 149, 336, 343 + + Himantopodes, the, 114 + + Himilco, 263, 274 + + Himyarites, the, 226 + + Hionen Thsang, 157, 219, 360, 361 + + Hippocampus, 67 + + Hippo Diarrhytus, 90 + + Hippogrif, 56 + + Hippogypi, the, 103 + + Hippolyte, 153 + + Hippopotamus, 34-35, 338 + + Hiram of Tyre, 223 + + _History of the Indies_, 369 + + Hittites, 185-187 + + Ho-lao-lo-kia, vanished city of, 214 + + Holland, 245 + + Holme, 66 + + Holstein coast, 254 + + Holy Roman Empire, 99, 220, 248 + + Homer, 5, 7, 22, 132, 133, 140, 141, 199, 202, 227, 252, 287, 349, + 352, 354, 363 + + Homocane, 67 + + Homunculus, 22 + + Hopi towns, 323 + + Horizon Lands, 201-222 + + Horned hogs, 245 + + Horned men, 361 + + Horneman, 130 + + Horse, 30, 51, 56, 122, 156, 157, 324 + + Hörselberg, 219 + + Horus, 86 + + Hospitality, proverb on, 335 + + Hottentots, 131, 146, 225, 227; + “click” of, 105 + + House of Song, 377 + + Houses of the Sun, 161, 332 + + Huallaga River, 333 + + Huanacos, 316 + + Huc, 115, 349 + + Hudson Bay Company, 221 + + Hugag, 66 + + Hugo, Victor, 249, 337 + + Huguenots, 306 + + Humboldt, characterized, 369; + cited, 26, 42, 126, 165, 166, 207, 271, 278, 288, 311 + + Humming bird, 30, 370 + + Hungarian Plain, 156 + + Huns, 154, 239 + + Hurakan, 293 + + Hyderabad, 177 + + Hydra, 66 + + Hyena, 35-36, 361 + + Hyparkhos River, 105 + + Hyperboreans, 201-203, 261 + + + I + + Ibanez, 169 + + Iberia, 203, 286 + + Ibis, 43, 71 + + Ibn Batuta, 42, 95, 106, 196, 243, 269, 362 + + Ibn Haukal, 362 + + Ibn Khaldun, 269 + + Ibn Khordadbeh, 137, 206, 362, 363 + + Iceland, 101, 289, 345 + + Ichthyophagi, 196-198 + + Ideal lands, 2, 257-261, 336-337, 351 + + Ideal states, 251 + + Idrisi, 8, 137, 270 + + Ignatius, 81 + + Iguanodon, 81 + + Iliad, 81, 133, 152, 363 + + Illampu, peak of, 207 + + Imaus, Mount, 114 + + Immaculate Conception, 42 + + _Imrama_, 258, 367 + + Im Thurn, 207 + + Incas, fugitive, 305, 333 + + Incense Country, the, 1, 229-235; + Route, 233; + battles, 230 + + Incontinency, how discovered, 24 + + India, 9, 55, 57, 64, 85, 104, 105, 106, 109, 113, 122, 124, 128, + 133, 136, 141, 148, 188, 193, 203, 216, 219, 230, 261, 269, + 351, 353, 359, 361, 364, 365 + + Indian Archipelago, 364 + + Indian Ocean, 1, 89, 91, 93, 196, 226, 231, 255, 263, 363, 365 + + _Indika_, 349, 353 + + Indo-China, 106, 136, 267 + + Indonesia, 135 + + Indus River, 7, 224 + + Inis Fitæ, 255 + + Inishbofin, 257 + + Insanity, a cure for, 24 + + Institute of Oceanography, 288 + + _Insula de ben faminill_, 160 + + _Insula mulierum_, 160 + + _Insula virorum_, 160 + + Insurrection of Women, 172 + + Intoxication, a preventive of, 24 + + Io, 28 + + Iran, 214, 337, 377 + + Ireland, 95, 99, 254 + + Irijo River, 165 + + Irish sea epics, 65, 252-253, 258, 367 + + Iron city, 157 + + Iroquois, 119, 343 + + Irving, 26 + + Is, sunken city of, 255-256 + + _Isaiah_, book of, 30, 77, 122 + + Isidore, characterized, 356-357; + cited, 121, 350, 351, 356 + + Iskander’s wall, 237 + + _Isla de beimeni parte_, 315 + + _Isla de Mugeres_, 160 + + Islam, 171, 233, 269, 270 + + Island of Death, 261 + + Island of Females, 158 + + Island of Life, 261 + + Island of Males, 158 + + Island of the Seven Cities, or of the Seven Bishops, 252, 259, 271, + 319, 375 + + Islands, number of, 8 + + Islands of Enchantment, 251-261 + + Islands of the Sun, 271 + + Islas Encantadas, 327 + + Isle of the Blessed, 91 + + Isle of the Double Towers, 253 + + Isle of Finn, 253 + + Isle of Fire, 252 + + Isle of Flowers, 252 + + Isle of Gems, 158 + + Isle of Laughter, 253 + + Isle of a Saint, 253 + + Isle of Sheep, 253 + + Isle of Shouting, 252 + + Isle of witches, 253 + + Isogonus, 193, 349 + + Israel, 207, 226 + + Issedones, the, 107, 196 + + Istakhri, 60 + + Ister, the, 26 + + Istria, 249 + + Italy, 9, 129 + + Itys, 28 + + Ivan the Terrible, 241 + + Ivory, 57, 364 + + Ivory, apes and peacocks, 224 + + Ivory Coast, 179 + + + J + + Jacinth, 244 + + Jackal, 29, 338, 351 + + Jade, 23-24, 87, 162, 164; + Gate, 24 + + Jaguar god, 338 + + Jaitwas, 124 + + Janaidar, 208 + + Japan, 12, 97, 148, 259, 363, 364, 371 + + Jasconius, 91 + + Jason, 75 + + Jasper, 24 + + Java, 106, 158, 230, 242, 244, 260 + + Jehovah, 125, 236 + + Jenkinson, Anthony, 212 + + Jerba, 229 + + Jerusalem, 125, 238, 267, 282, 328, 357; + center of the earth, 7 + + Jesuits, 102, 317 + + Jet, 351 + + Jews, 47, 185, 244, 357, 358; + legendary kingdoms of, 18, 238; + with tails, 345; + black pygmy, 138 + + Jew’s-harps, 110 + + Jinga, Queen, 179 + + Joan of Arc, 169; + and bottle imp, 23 + + Job, 46; + his dunghill, 358 + + _Job_, book of, 223 + + John of Herse, 52 + + Johnson, Doctor, 50 + + Johnston, Sir Harry, 126, 150, 343 + + Joliet, 80 + + Joppa, 366 + + Jordan, River, 315, 358 + + Jordanus, 104 + + Josephus, 7, 17, 22, 71 + + Judas on his rock, 253 + + Judy, the, 100 + + Jujube, 229 + + Julian, Emperor, 22 + + Julius Cæsar, 236, 246, 265 + + Juno, temple of, 123 + + Jupiter Ammon, oasis of, 18 + + Juruena River, 124 + + “Just” peoples, 203 + + Justin, 165 + + + K + + Kabyles, the, 206 + + Kadesh, 186 + + Kaidu, 170 + + Kali, 338 + + Kalm, 40 + + Kanakas, the, 260 + + Kangaroo, 341 + + Kansas, 326 + + Karabel, Pass of, 186 + + Kara-Khitai, the, 113 + + Karaya myth, 292 + + Karelian, 149 + + Kasil, island of, 206 + + Kaska tribesmen, 343 + + _Kataphugia_, 195 + + Kathkuri, 124 + + Kazwini, 60, 104, 114 + + Keane, 199, 226 + + Kent, 128 + + Kerensky, 175 + + Kerner, Justinus, 25 + + Kibu, island of, 260 + + _Ki-lin_, 54 + + Kilsapheen, Lost, 256 + + Kine of Cibola, 318 + + King of Faerie, 368 + + Kingdom of Dogs, 107 + + Kingdom of Women, 349, 360, 361 + + Kingsley, 45 + + Kinship with animals, 374-375 + + Kirata, the, 134, 136 + + Kirghiz, the, 208 + + Klebermeer, 16 + + Kobolds, 150 + + Kohistan, 211 + + Koliwan, Lake, 117 + + Kollman, 148, 150 + + Komana, 186 + + Koran, 235, 236, 269 + + Kordofan, 54 + + Korean tradition of inhabited lands, 8 + + Kors Trold, 92 + + Korwars, the, 200 + + Kraken, 2, 92-93 + + Krokottas, 35 + + Krümmel, 278 + + Kublai Khan, 12, 73, 364, 365 + + Kukulcan, 292 + + Kurdistan, 171, 240 + + Kwan-lun hill, 81 + + Kyffhäuser Berg, 220 + + + L + + _Lachryma Crocodili_, 37 + + La Condamine, 164, 165, 166 + + Lactantius, 10, 362 + + Ladanum, 231, 234 + + Ladrones, the, 158 + + Lafitan, Père, 121 + + La Gran Quivera, 326 + + Laguna, 323 + + Lahore, 177 + + La Maillard, 173 + + Lamary, land of, 124 + + Lamb of Revelation, 59 + + Lamberti, 171 + + Lambri, 128 + + Lamias, 361 + + Lamprey, 44 + + Lampridius, 55 + + Lamya, 67 + + Land of Darkness, 221 + + Land of Fair Women, 259 + + Land of Ghosts, 143 + + Land of Job, 366 + + Lands of Legend, 223-250 + + Land of Marked Bodies, 360 + + Land of the Living, 259 + + Land of Promise, 253, 259 + + Land of Truth, 259 + + Lane, 159 + + Lang, 357 + + Lanuvium, 81 + + Laos, 136 + + Lapis lazuli, 24 + + Lapland, 101, 141, 145, 147, 149, 272, 343 + + Laputa, 373 + + Large-eared men, 2 + + Las Casas, 369 + + Las Jurdes, 147 + + Lassen, 25 + + Last of the Incas, 314 + + Latin mind, 354 + + Laufer, Berthold, 59 + + Laurel-tree and lightning, 19 + + La Vieja Islands, 315 + + Lecherers, 374 + + Leems, Knud, 101 + + Legion’s winter camp, 30 + + Leigh, 78 + + Leland, 118, 149, 370 + + Le Maire, 191 + + Lemuria, 1, 296 + + Lenin, 177 + + Leopard, 49, 65 + + Le Plongeon, 291 + + Leptus, 213 + + Lesiy, the, 127 + + _Les Merveilleuses_, 173 + + Lestai, the, 195 + + Lethe, fountain of, 18 + + Leuke, isle of, 153 + + Leviathan, 91 + + Levine, 174 + + Lewis and Clark expedition, 372 + + Lhasa, 188 + + Library of Congress, 358 + + Libussa, 171 + + Libya, 2, 134, 135, 153, 235, 281, 283, 365 + + Liège, 365, 367 + + Lilliput, 373 + + Limbo of the Moon, 373 + + Limpopo River, 225, 226 + + Linnæus, 43 + + Lion, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 51, 55, 58, 65, 66, 338, 361, 374 + + Lipo district, 128 + + Lisbon earthquake, 296 + + Lisbon Wanderers, 270 + + Little Black Men, 145 + + Livonians, 3, 365 + + Lizard, 82, 118, 341, 370 + + Lizard-Man, 339 + + Llama, 302, 305, 327, 374 + + Lliuga, Princess, 178 + + Lobo, 38, 54 + + Locris, 38 + + Locusts, 44, 65 + + Lodestone, Mountain of, 16-17, 276 + + Lofoden, 93 + + Logic, Indian, 330 + + Lok, John, 32, 104, 199 + + _London Graphic_, 142 + + Long, 146 + + Loon, 370 + + Lop, desert of, 210, 365 + + Lopez, 179 + + Lord of the Hollow Tree, 292 + + Lord of the Two Horns, 236 + + Lords of the Field, 61 + + Lotophagi, 199, 227, 229 + + Lot’s wife, 358 + + Lotus-land, 227-229 + + Louhiatar, 241 + + Louisiana, 319 + + Lucan, 81 + + Lucayos, the, 315 + + Lucca, Gaudentio di, 211 + + Lucerne, 80, 190, 209 + + Lucian characterized, 354; + cited, 103, 252, 258, 275 + + Lucknow, 177 + + Lucky-stone in toad’s head, 44 + + Ludolf, 37 + + Lumberjack legends, 65-66 + + Lusignan, house of, 99 + + Lusitania, 50, 263 + + Lust, ritual, 187 + + Luxembourg family, 99 + + Lydia, 186 + + Lynn, vessels from, 269 + + Lyonesse, 255 + + Lyon-poisson, 66 + + + M + + Macassar poison, 20 + + Macatoa, 303 + + McCrindle, 64 + + Mace, 244 + + Macrobians, the, 193 + + MacGregor, 214 + + Madagascar, 73, 74, 106, 138, 159, 225, 227, 364 + + Madanino, 160 + + Madeira Islands, 252, 258, 287, 288 + + Mældune, 89 + + Maelstrom, 93 + + Magellan, 138, 191, 242, 270 + + Magh Mell, 259 + + Magic dances as sources of the races of fable, 339 + + Magic Food, 259 + + _Mahabharata_, 156 + + Maid Marian, 345 + + Maidu Indians, 127 + + Maimonides, 238 + + Majorca, 174 + + Malabar, 112, 125, 233, 243 + + Malacca, 149, 159 + + Malatu, Sea of, 158 + + Malays, 9, 57, 129, 145, 244 + + Malay Peninsula, 124, 145, 147, 149, 199, 224, 260, 269 + + Maldive Islands, 95 + + Male incense, 233 + + Male infants, killing of, 178 + + Malory, 64 + + Mambuti, 144 + + Mammoths, frozen, 344 + + Mamore River, 139 + + Manannan, 89 + + Manatee, 102 + + Manco Capac, 314 + + Mancy, 365 + + Mandrake myth, 21-23, 87 + + Mangi, 130 + + Mangou, 130 + + Manhattan Island, 304 + + Manikins, 122, 342 + + Manioc, 291 + + Manlius, 69 + + Manoa, 300, 305, 307, 310, 311 + + Man of the Mountain, 61, 62 + + Manticora, 57 + + Maps, mediæval, 11 + + Mara River, 52 + + Maranon River, 333 + + Marata, 320, 323 + + Marcasite, 309 + + Marcellus, 286 + + Marco Milioni, 151, 364 + + Marcos, Friar, 318, 320, 321, 322, 323 + + Mare, 50, 221, 346 + + Mareb, 125 + + Mar Eldorado, 311 + + Marignolli, 8, 244 + + Marining animals, 67 + + Market of the Sea, 89 + + Markets, Night, 200 + + Marquesans, the, 260 + + Marquette, 80 + + Marseilles, 216 + + Martikhora, 57-58 + + Martinez, 305 + + Martlet, 66 + + Martyr, Peter, 331, 368 + + _Marvellous Adventures of Sir John Maundeville_, 363 + + Mascardi, 317 + + Masefield, 365 + + Mashona region, 225 + + Massagetæ, the, 169 + + Massoudy, 269, 362 + + Masu, Mountains of, 260 + + Matabele region, 225 + + Mather, Increase, 190 + + Matriarchate, 185 + + Matrimonio, island of, 161 + + Ma Tuan-Len, 128 + + Maundeville, characterized, 365-367; + cited, 19, 25, 55, 58, 61, 63, 68, 104, 108, 109, 110, 113, 114, + 115, 119, 124, 130, 133, 138, 151, 159, 191, 211, 220, 237, + 251, 258, 259, 276, 350, 363, 364 + + Mauretania, 275 + + Mayas, the, 292, 293, 294 + + May Day, 187, 188 + + Mead, 259 + + _Meadows of Gold and Mines of Precious Stones_, 362 + + Mecca, 138, 233 + + Mediæval Trade, 243 + + Medicine bag, 30 + + Medicine men, 321 + + Medina, 233 + + Mediterranean Sea, 89, 90, 93, 199, 227, 251, 263, 267, 281, 282, + 290, 296, 356, 369 + + Megasthenes, 108, 109, 114, 133, 184 + + Mergui archipelago, 158 + + Megon, plain of, 221 + + Meir, Rabbi, 621 + + Mekong River, 136 + + Mekran, 196 + + Melanesia, 148 + + Melons, 283 + + Melusina, 99 + + Memphis, 143 + + Mendana, 328, 329 + + Menendez, 318 + + _Mercurius Politicus_, 212 + + Merfolk, 89, 98-102, 257 + + Mericourt, Theroigne de, 172, 173 + + Merles, 361 + + Mermaids, 2, 66 + + Merodach, 187 + + Merolla, 101, 105 + + Meropis, island of, 286 + + _Merveilles de L’Inde_, 128 + + Mesa Encantada, 323 + + Mesha, 223, 225, 226 + + Mesopotamia, 169 + + Meta-collinarum, 361 + + _Metamorphoses_, 125, 342 + + Metamorphosis, 28 + + Meta River, 305 + + Mewan Indians, 74, 118 + + Mexico, 83, 160, 188, 291, 360; + calendar of, 292 + + Mezzoramia, 211 + + Miami River, 102 + + Miaotze, 128 + + Micmacs, the, 118 + + Middle Comedy, 247 + + Midgard serpent, 83 + + Midian country, 224 + + Midsummer Eve, 187 + + Miletus, 152 + + Miltiades, 171 + + Milton, 345 + + Minæans, the, 226, 233 + + Mincoupies, 148 + + Mindanao Island, 242 + + Mingrelia, 171 + + Ming tombs, 54 + + Mink, 342 + + Minocane, 67 + + Minotaur, 152 + + Mirabeau, 172 + + Mirabilia, 349 + + Mirage, 199, 210 + + Misers, 374 + + Mississippi River, 326 + + Missouri, 326 + + Mistletoe, 19-20, 216 + + Mnemosyne, fountain of, 18 + + Mock king, 85, 188 + + Mole, 374 + + Molucca Islands, 1, 206, 242-245, 316 + + Moly, 20 + + Monaco, Prince of, 280 + + Mongolia, 113, 222, 236, 237, 239, 269, 377 + + Monoceros, 51 + + Monocoli, the, 113 + + Monomatti, the, 107 + + Monomotapa, 179 + + Montaigne, 341 + + Montana, 139 + + Montanes, 327 + + Montegre, 57 + + Montserrat, island of, 160 + + Montygre, 66 + + Moon goddess, 98 + + Moon, voyage to, 354 + + Moorish warrior queen, 178 + + Mordecai, 187 + + More, 373 + + Morea, the, 2, 247 + + Morgan le Fay, 256 + + Mormons, 359 + + Morocco, 140, 290 + + Morris, 75 + + Moscha, 225, 226 + + Moses and an Ethiopian princess, 71 + + Moslems, 138, 140, 238, 271 + + Mount of Eden, 8 + + Mount Ida, 25 + + Mount Sion, 62 + + Mountains, beliefs relating to, 205-209; + lights on, 2, 206, 207 + + Mountains of the Moon, 207 + + Mouse-Apollo, 30 + + Moving Isle, 253 + + Müller, Max, 205, 346 + + Müller, von, 54 + + Mummification, 87, 373 + + Munchausen, 354 + + Munster, a lake in, 261 + + Munza, King, 144 + + Murder, ritual, 158 + + Murger, 250 + + Muscovites, 58 + + Musk, 230, 234 + + Mustaghata, Mount, 208 + + Myrina, 153, 187 + + Myrrh, 231 + + _Mythical Monsters_, 82 + + Myths of observation, 343-344 + + Muysca Indians, 299 + + + N + + Nabatheans, 233 + + Nagas, 112, 217 + + Nahuatl ark legend, 292 + + Nahuelhuapi, Lake, 312, 316, 317 + + Nairs, the, 125 + + Nanling Mountains, 128 + + Narwhal, 51, 53 + + Nasamonian youths, 134 + + Natural histories, 350 + + _Natural History of Norway_, 92, 93 + + _Natural History, Pliny’s_, 354-355 + + Nature a pageant for man, 376 + + Nausicaa, 99 + + Navahos, 83, 95, 164, 204, 208, 217, 323, 376 + + Navel of the World, 279 + + Nearchus, 63, 91, 196 + + Nebraska, 326 + + Necho, 263 + + Necromancers, 218 + + Negrillos, 145 + + Negritos, 145 + + Negritos del Monte, 145 + + Negro Indians, 291 + + Negroland, 179 + + Negro, Rio, 161 + + Nekhbet, 75 + + Nephrite, 24 + + Nereids, 90, 197 + + Nergal, 55 + + Nero, 169, 230, 275 + + Nesnas, 111 + + Nestorians, 239-240, 361 + + Nestorius, 240 + + New Calabar, 98 + + New Granada, 300, 301, 304 + + New Guinea, 106, 145, 147, 148, 242, 328 + + New Hebrides Islands, 329 + + New Mexico, 62, 139 + + New Towns, 144 + + New York, 256 + + Niam-Niams, the, 130 + + Nicander, 39 + + Nicobar Islands, 17, 106 + + Niebuhr, 156, 198 + + Niger, 135 + + Nightingale, 28 + + Nile River, 85, 86, 87, 132, 135, 148, 195, 207, 275 + + Nina-chumpi, island of, 327 + + Ninth wave, 14 + + Nixie, 99 + + Njogel, 97 + + Noah, 292 + + Nomad spirit, the, 372 + + Nonius Marcellus, 351 + + Nordland, 93 + + North, 204 + + North Atlantic continent, 290 + + North Atlantic, floating storehouse of, 278 + + North Brother Island, 167 + + North Carolina, 306 + + Northmen, 267-268, 335 + + North Pole, 268 + + North Sea, 94 + + North wind, 56, 201, 202 + + Northern Lights, 4 + + Norva Sound, 267 + + Norway, 240 + + Nosala, island of, 197 + + Noseless nations, 108 + + Notaries on shipboard, 369 + + Nova Zembla, 101 + + Novgorod manuscript, 115, 116, 117 + + Nubian Highway, 144 + + Nulo Mountain, 114 + + Numantranus, 9 + + Number of peoples, provinces, rivers, and towns, 8 + + Numidia, 212 + + Nutmegs, 243, 245 + + Nysæan shore, 203 + + + O + + Obongos, the, 142 + + O Brasile, 256, 375 + + O’Brien, Frederick, 260 + + Oceania, 145 + + Ocean Stream, 8, 11, 203, 207, 262 + + Odoric, 58, 61, 96, 137, 243, 365, 366, 367 + + Odyssey, 81, 228, 252, 352, 363, 366 + + Ogier the Dane, 16 + + Ogre, 343 + + Ojibwas, the, 106 + + Olaus Magnus, 92, 93 + + Old Man of the Sea, 102, 363 + + Old Man of the Woods, 216 + + Old men’s tales, 336 + + Old Woman Islands, 315 + + Oleacinidæ, 290 + + Olisipo, 50, 90 + + Olive, 19, 202 + + Olympus, 7, 376 + + Omaguas, the, 300, 302, 303 + + Onesicritus, 191, 349 + + Onoscileas, the, 103 + + Ophiophagi, the, 199 + + Ophir, 1, 223-227 + + Opinicus, 66 + + Oraisan, 259 + + Oranges, 284 + + Orang-utan, 363 + + Orc, 2, 95 + + Orellana, 151, 161, 163, 167 + + Orgy of death, Amazon, 183 + + Orichalcum, 284 + + Orinoco, River, 110, 258, 304, 305, 308, 311, 312, 332 + + Orkney Islands, 241 + + Orlando, 95 + + Ormuz, 25 + + Orontes River, 186 + + Orsæan Indians, 51 + + Ory, 51, 55, 374 + + Osiris, 85, 86, 338 + + Osorno, 318 + + Ostrich, 43, 50, 114 + + Othman, 237 + + Otter-men, 117 + + Otto of Freisingen, 238 + + Ottokar, 249 + + Ottoman empire, 185 + + Otway, 256 + + Ovid, 121, 125, 342 + + Oviedo, 277, 369 + + Owl, 47, 237 + + Ox, 47, 58, 361; + burrowing, 57 + + Oxus River, 7 + + Oysters, government of, 42 + + + P + + Pacific Ocean, 260, 296; + lost continent in, 255; + island traditions of, 327, 328 + + Padua, 96 + + Pajarito plateau, 62 + + Palenque, 292 + + Paleolithic artists, 340 + + Palestine, 353 + + Palomides, 65 + + Palos, 242 + + Palus Mœotis, 154 + + Pamirs, the, 208 + + Pamphagi, 199 + + Pan, 2, 122, 127, 215, 216, 246 + + Panama, 304, 338 + + Panama-Pacific Exposition, 284 + + Panathenæa, 286 + + Pandavas, 146 + + Pandore, 109 + + Panther, 42, 47 + + Paracelsus, 6 + + Parade, negro Amazon, 182-183 + + Paradise and pearls and pepper, 362 + + Paraguay, 299, 300 + + Paraguay River, 139, 312, 313 + + Paranunta, Rani, 156 + + Pard, 49 + + Parik, 100 + + Paris, 250 + + Paris, Island of, 251 + + Parroquet, 89 + + Parrot, 338, 374 + + Partridge, 47 + + Pasto, 301 + + Pastoral song, 246 + + Patagonia, 316 + + Pathen, 366 + + Paula, 358 + + Pausanias, characterized, 353-354; + cited, 77, 129 + + Peacock, 44, 60 + + Peanuts, 291 + + Pear, earth shaped like, 12 + + Pearl, 87, 98, 351, 364 + + Peary, 255 + + Pedrarias, 331 + + Pegasus, 66, 68, 152 + + Pegu, 34 + + Pelican, 44, 350, 375 + + Pellinore, 64-65 + + Peloponnesus, 246 + + Peltry, Siberian, 221 + + _Penguin Island_, 342 + + Penang, island of, 245 + + Peoples of Prodigy, 2, 103-120, 351 + + Pepper, 363; + Pepper Country, 366; + Pepper “forests,” 243; + pepper wars, 244 + + Pepy II, Letter of, 143 + + Perforated people, 349 + + Periplus of Erythræan Sea, 266 + + Perotti, 40 + + Persia, 63, 82, 111, 230, 235, 240, 287, 352, 365 + + Persian Gulf, 59, 91, 290 + + _Persica_, 63 + + Peru, 139, 285, 299, 300, 304, 309, 316, 327, 328, 333 + + Petachia, Rabbi Moses, 358 + + Peter Martyr, 314, 315 + + Petra, 231, 233 + + Petrified cities, 211-213 + + Petrifying river, 261 + + Petrograd snipers, 176 + + Phædrus, 286 + + Phæacia, 99 + + Pharaoh’s Red Sea hosts, 102 + + Pheasant, 28, 78 + + Philes, 350 + + Philippines, 111, 138, 145 + + Philology, 291 + + Philomela, 28 + + Phineus, King, 75 + + Phlegethon, 262 + + Phœnicians, 98, 226, 263, 264, 295 + + Phœnix, 2, 60, 68-70, 71, 350, 361, 375 + + Phong, the, 136 + + Photios, 349 + + Phrygian cap, 186 + + _Physiologus_, 46, 91 + + Piasa petroglyph, 81 + + Piedras hijades, 162 + + Pigafetta, 138, 191 + + Pigeon, 44 + + Pig of the ocean, 67 + + _Pih T’an_, 89 + + Pike, 97 + + Pilate, Swiss legend of, 209 + + Pilatus, Mount, 209 + + Pillar of salt, 358 + + Pillars of Hercules, 129, 203, 264, 274, 281 + + Pima deluge myth, 342 + + Pindar, 202, 263, 339, 352 + + Pinkerton, 4, 102 + + Pinna, 59, 61 + + Pippilika, 64 + + Pison, 7 + + Pizzani, 271 + + Pizarro, the brothers, 161, 299, 301, 302 + + Plague, a remedy for, 24 + + Plato, 15, 266, 274, 281, 282, 283, 285, 286, 287, 293, 295 + + Platypus, 341 + + Pliny, characterized, 354-355; + cited, 10, 16, 17, 18, 19, 26, 27, 32, 34, 35, 37, 39, 43, 49, 50, + 51, 53, 55, 68, 72, 78, 90, 91, 92, 96, 97, 104, 108, 109, + 111, 113, 114, 115, 128, 133, 135, 141, 193, 194, 199, 202, + 206, 228, 229, 230, 232, 286, 345, 349, 350, 351, 359, 361, + 362, 363, 366, 369 + + Pliny’s Ape, 349 + + Pliny the Younger, 296, 354 + + Plutarch, 36, 43, 69, 174, 265, 286 + + Poetry, magic of, 347 + + Pohjola, 241 + + Poland, 100, 154, 156 + + Polish women fighters, 177 + + Polo, Marco, characterized, 363-365; + cited, 8, 12, 19, 34, 72, 73, 106, 128, 138, 158, 160, 167, 170, + 204, 210, 221, 239, 244, 334, 349, 361, 362 + + Polybius, 264, 265 + + Polyhistor, 355 + + _Polyphem ein Gorilla_, 192 + + Polyphemus, 90, 228, 363 + + Polystephanos, 349 + + Pompeii, 296 + + Pompeius Festus, 351 + + Pompey, 246 + + Pomponius, 199 + + Pontoppidan, 42, 92, 93, 94, 100, 102, 367 + + Pontus, 153 + + Popayan, 301 + + Pope, Alexander, 108 + + Pope Alexander III, 239 + + Popinjays, in the deserts, 105 + + Popol Nuh, 118 + + Popos, 183 + + Porcupines, 43 + + Pork, 259 + + Porter-nations, fables of, 354 + + Port of Missing Ships, 276 + + Porto Rico, 314 + + Portugal, 112, 162, 178, 225, 243, 244, 277 + + Portus Nobilis, 225 + + Poseidon, 282, 283, 285 + + Potato, 306 + + Pottery, animal outlines of, 30 + + _Prabhâsakhanda_, 106 + + Prague, 172, 248 + + Prasias, Lake, 196 + + Precious stones in Christian symbolism, 24-25 + + Prejevalski, 54 + + Prescott, 302 + + Prester John, 1, 12, 17, 63, 211, 238-240, 359, 361, 362, 366 + + Priestesses, armed, 184 + + Priest-king, 85 + + _Primum mobile_, 9 + + _Principal Trade Routes_, 362 + + _Principal Voyages_, 369 + + Prison for lost souls, 276 + + Proclus, 286 + + Procopius, 60, 265, 266 + + Progne, 28 + + _Prometheus Bound_, 207 + + Promises of princes, 373 + + Prophecy: how the gift is conferred, 24 + + Prospero’s isle, 206 + + Psalm-singing birds, 253 + + Pseudo-Plutarch, 352 + + Psylli, the, 194 + + Psyllotoxotæ, the, 103 + + Pterodactyl, 79 + + Ptolemy, 9, 10, 11, 16, 17, 129, 195, 207, 225, 362 + + Public-house signs, 345 + + Pueblo Indians, 204 + + Puerto de Arica, 327 + + Pu-lu tribe, 136 + + Punt, 143, 224, 231, 233, 234 + + _Puranas_, 269, 359 + + Purchas, 3, 42, 53, 74, 199, 335 + + Purgative, a, 24 + + Pygmies, 2, 108, 117, 132-150, 208, 350, 361, 368 + + Pygmy Highway, 144 + + Pyramids, 358 + + Pyrenees Mountains, 56, 203 + + Pytheas of Massilia, 264, 334 + + + Q + + Quail, 44, 356 + + Quatrefages, 146 + + Queen Bee, 186 + + Queen of Sheba, 224, 226 + + Quesada, 301 + + Quesada, Ximenes, 304 + + Questing beast, 64-65 + + Quetelet, 192 + + Quetzalcoatl, 161, 292 + + Quichna Indians, 314, 333 + + Quimper, 256 + + Quiros, 329 + + Quito, 299, 300, 301, 302 + + Quivera, 312, 314, 323-326 + + Quoyas Morrov, 125 + + + R + + Rabbit, 29, 127 + + Race-course, 253, 284, 296 + + Rainbow, 370 + + Rain trees, 20-21 + + Rajputana, 124 + + Rakshasis, 156, 157 + + Raleigh, 3, 36, 110, 111, 151, 152, 162, 163, 166, 305-310, 329, + 346, 369 + + Ram, 47 + + Ram-eagle, 67 + + Rami, the, 137 + + Ramni, 104 + + Ramus, Jonas, 41 + + Ras Sem, petrified village of, 212, 213 + + Rat, 342, 366; + worship of, 30-31; + monster, 57 + + Rath, 100 + + Raven, 42, 43, 374 + + Raw materials, search for, 372 + + Rawlinson, 184, 228 + + Realm of Big Women, 222 + + Red River, 136 + + Red Sea, 1, 195, 196, 199, 226, 227 + + _Regio feminarum_, 160 + + Region of Darkness, 221 + + Reig Rawan, Desert of, 211 + + Reindeer, 240 + + Remora, 97 + + Repose, regions of, 251 + + _Republic_, Plato’s, 286, 287, 373 + + Retreat of the Ten Thousand, 195 + + Retzius, 291 + + _Revelation_, book of, 236; + Horsemen of, 62 + + Regnard, 40 + + Reynard the fox, 47 + + Rhegium, 38 + + Rhine maidens, 99 + + Rhinoceros, 34, 46; + of the air, 74-75; + horn for detecting poison, 34 + + Rhizophagi, the, 199 + + Rhodesia, ancient, 1, 225, 226 + + Rhodope Mountains, 100 + + Rhone River, 209 + + Ribbon fish, 95 + + Ribeiro, 125, 166 + + Ricold of Monte Croce, 237 + + Riddles, 346 + + Rights of Women, 173 + + Riphæan Rocks, 202, 203 + + Ritual mimes, 339 + + Ritual murder, 85 + + River of China, 7 + + River that flows by the Throne of God, 262 + + Robin Hood cycle, 345 + + Roc, 72-74, 363, 365 + + Rock crystal, 24 + + Rock Tibboos, 195 + + Rocky Mountains, 207 + + Rodriguez, Barboza, 164 + + Rodzianko, 175 + + Roebuck, 43 + + Roger, King of Sicily, 270 + + Rogero, 95 + + Rohan, family, 99 + + Roman pharmacopeia, animal items in, 27 + + Rome, 90, 96, 230, 247, 258, 262, 265, 349, 354 + + Romulus, 344 + + Root-eaters, 199 + + Roraima, Mount, 208 + + Rothery, 163, 179 + + Rotundity of the earth, 272, 366-367 + + Roulin, 141 + + Roundhouses, ceremonial, 370 + + Royal Irish Society, 256 + + Ruad, 100 + + Rubruquis, 113, 222, 239 + + Ruby, 24, 244 + + Ruskin, 216 + + Russia, 154, 240, 290, 365; + fighting women of, 174-177; + strange peoples of, 115-117 + + + S + + Saba, 232, 233 + + Sabæans, the, 226, 231, 232, 233 + + Sacramento, 284; + Valley, 283 + + “Sacred groaning stick,” 370 + + Sacred Promontory, 10 + + Saffron as magic diet, 217 + + Sagittary, 66 + + Sago tree, 138 + + St. Augustine, 355 + + St. Bernard, 47, 172 + + St. Brendan, 91, 259, 271, 276, 363; + island of, 252 + + St. Clement, 69 + + St. Collen, 368 + + St. Colodoc, 45 + + St. Costinian, 45 + + St. Francis, 375 + + St. Gerasimus, 45 + + St. Guthlac, 45 + + St. Helenus, 45 + + St. Jerome, 237, 358 + + St. John, 65 + + St. John’s Eve, 188 + + St. Leonor, 45 + + St. Maria Rotunda, 342 + + St. Mark, treasure of, 53 + + St. Sulpicius, 45 + + St. Vitus dance, 39, 40 + + Sais, temple at, 281 + + Saint, statue of a, 271 + + Salamanca, 147; + Council of, 10 + + Salamander, 38-39, 47, 70, 337, 350 + + Salmon, 89 + + Salt fish diet, 243 + + Salvaje, 126 + + Samar, 158 + + Samarcand, 170 + + Samaria, 358 + + Sambation, the river, 17-18 + + Samoan Islands, 260 + + Samoyeds, 56, 57, 74, 115, 116, 117, 364 + + Sanazzaro, 247 + + Sandalwood, 230, 233 + + Sandrokotos, 184 + + San Joao River, 124 + + San Francisco, 294 + + San Francisco, mountain of, 376 + + San Joaquin Valley, 283 + + Santa Cruz, island of, 329 + + Santa Marta, 301 + + Santa Thome del Agostina, 311 + + San Thome River, 124 + + Santom aborigines, 136 + + Santos, Juan, 333 + + Sapphar Metropolis, the, 225 + + Sapphire, 24, 25 + + Saragossa, feminine defense of, 174 + + Sardinia, 96, 264; + pygmy survivals in, 147 + + Sardonic plant, 356 + + Sargasso Sea, 274-280, 281, 287 + + Sarmatians, 156 + + Sassafras, 242 + + Satan, 112, 204, 236, 350 + + Satyr-fish, 67 + + Satyrs, 2, 66, 121-131, 206, 272, 356, 361, 375; + Satyr Islands, 129 + + Saures, 221 + + Savaii, 260 + + Sayce, 185, 186 + + Sayf Al-Muluk, 251 + + Scaliger, 58, 112, 140 + + Scalping, 120 + + Scandinavia, 290 + + Scapegoat, 187 + + Scarab, 218 + + Scarecrows as tribal ancestors, 200 + + _Scenes de la Vie de Bohème_, 250 + + Schenchzer, 80 + + Schomburgk, 167 + + Schoolcraft, 119, 370 + + Schorodomachi, the, 103 + + Schweinfurth, 142, 144, 147 + + Sciapodes, the, 113 + + Scilly Islands, 255, 263, 265 + + Scipio, 265 + + Scobellum, 374 + + Scorpion men, 260 + + Scotland, tide myth of, 9, 345 + + Scrofula, animal remedies for, 27 + + Scylax, 275, 353 + + Scyritæ, the, 108, 114 + + Scythia, 82, 107, 141, 154, 155, 156, 196, 235, 236, 237 + + Scythian lamb, 58-62 + + Sea a symbol of eternity, 262 + + Sea creatures, 89-102; + named after land animals, as sea-dragons, hares, horses, kites, + lions, mice, oxen, spiders, 89 + + Sea serpent, 2, 93-95 + + Sea of Clarified Butter, 269 + + Sea of Curds or Whey, 269 + + Sea of Glass, 252 + + Sea of Milk, 261, 269 + + Sea of Salt Water, 269 + + Sea of Sugar Cane Juice, 269 + + Sea of Wine, 269 + + Seal, 42, 89 + + Seal-men, 117, 242, 257 + + Sebo, 77 + + Sedentary Indians, 320 + + Selfishness, myths of, 371 + + Semangs, the, 147, 260 + + Semiramis, 18, 169 + + Semites, commercial fictions of, 9; + culture of, 357 + + Seneca, 252 + + Senegal, 286, 290, 291 + + Senegal River, 263 + + Sephar, Mount, 223 + + Sepulchers of Zenu, 312, 329-330 + + Seres, 191, 193, 230 + + Serrano, 244 + + Sertorius, 264, 265 + + Set, 86, 87 + + Seven Cities of Cibola, 312, 318-323 + + Seven Seas, 269 + + “Shadow-footed,” 346 + + Shagamaw, 66 + + Shakespeare, 109, 248 + + _Shan Hai King_, 359 + + Shantung, 89, 137 + + Shape-shifting, 28, 370 + + Shark, 87, 95, 97-98, 260 + + Shaw, 212 + + Sheep, 257, 327, 358 + + Sheikh of the Seaboard, 363 + + Shetland Islands, 97, 241 + + Shikh, 111 + + Shoshones, the, 6 + + Shrewmouse, 43 + + _Shu-king_, 71 + + Siam, 33, 34, 137, 240, 269, 293 + + Siberia, 115, 116, 117, 344; + women fighters of, 177 + + Sicily, 147, 246 + + Sid, the, 217 + + Sidney, Sir Philip, 247 + + Sierras, the, 283 + + Sigismund, King, 101 + + _Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man_, 149 + + Silent Isle, 252 + + Silver, 284, 327 + + Silvia of Aquitaine, 358 + + Simeon, Rabbi, 62 + + Simhala, 157, 158 + + Simon, Padre, 300 + + Sinai, 143 + + Sind, 158 + + Sindbad, 3, 33, 72, 91, 137, 206, 234, 362, 363, 366 + + Singular speech, 104-105 + + Sinmenkpen, 183 + + Siptakhora tree, 105 + + Sirens, 48, 89, 90, 197, 272 + + Siva, 338 + + Skeletons, animated, 117 + + Skin-shifting, 28 + + Skogfrau, 216 + + Skulls as drinking cups, 196; + talking, 117; + rolling, 119, 120, 370 + + Slave Coast, 179 + + Slavs, 100, 248, 261 + + Sliabh Daidche, 252 + + Sluggish Sea, 264 + + Smith, Grafton Elliot, 84, 87 + + Smithsonian Institution, report of, 288 + + Smyrna, 153, 187 + + Snails, 366 + + Snake, 30, 37-38, 43, 45, 64, 78, 79, 81, 84, 112, 351, 361 + + Snake-eaters, 199 + + Snakes in Ireland, no, 356 + + Snoligoster, 66 + + Snowy Mountains, 7 + + Society Islands, 329 + + Socotra, island of, 226, 365 + + Socrates, 286 + + Soe-Drawl, 92 + + Soe-Ormen, 94 + + Sofala, 225 + + Solar mythology, 83, 287, 295 + + Solinus, characterized, 356; + cited, 9, 35, 38, 42, 53, 206, 349, 350, 363, 366 + + Solomon, 125, 185, 223, 224, 226, 227 + + Solomon Islands, 260, 312, 327-329 + + Solon, 281 + + Somaliland, 1, 234 + + Sombreron, 127 + + Sorcerers that took hyena form, 36 + + South, 9, 204 + + South America, 2, 3, 65, 126, 291, 298 + + South Atlantic continent, 290 + + South Arabs, 226 + + South Brother Island, 167 + + South Dakota, 208 + + South Seas, 203, 258, 336 + + Southern hemisphere noblest, 9 + + Souza, 271 + + Soviets, 156 + + Spain, 9, 161, 162, 224, 243, 264, 277, 290, 299, 300, 309, 333, + 368, 372; + treasure ships of, 306, 309 + + Sparta, 246 + + _Speculum Regale_, 101 + + Spence, 292 + + Spencer, 336, 345 + + Spenser, 306 + + Sphinx, 66, 356 + + Spice Islands, 1, 12, 90, 225, 242-245 + + Spices, 302, 364 + + Spider, 28 + + Spitzbergen, 41 + + Splinter cat, 66 + + Springs, magical, 18, 353 + + Spurred men, 245 + + Squid, 95 + + Squonk, 66 + + Stag, 28, 45, 48, 51 + + Stagnant Sea, 358 + + Staked plains, 324 + + Stanley, 132, 144, 145 + + Star of the Archers, 178 + + Statues as source of myths, 340, 341 + + Stone Age heathen, 343 + + Stone giants, 207 + + “Stone of the eyes,” 26 + + Storax, 232 + + Stork, 28, 42, 44 + + “Story of the Winged Disk,” 86 + + Strabo, 3, 8, 9, 25, 38, 55, 107, 135, 140, 154, 197, 198, 228, 264, + 286, 351, 353 + + Straits of Florida, 278 + + Straits of Magellan, 316 + + Street of feathers, 359 + + Streets of women, 209 + + Struthocameli, 50 + + Struthophagi, the, 199 + + Struthopodes, the, 113 + + Struys, 129 + + Stygian Pool, 262 + + Stymphalian birds, 2, 77 + + Subraces, 342 + + Suffolk, 101 + + Sukhavati, 261 + + Sumatra, 128, 129, 137, 159, 240, 363 + + Sun-haters, 194 + + Sun, track of the, 205 + + Sunamukha, the, 106 + + Sun-Carrier, 6-7 + + Sunda Islands, 148, 269 + + _Sung Geography_, 128 + + Sunken Lands, 254-257 + + Sunset, hissing sound at, 14 + + Superior, Lake, 294 + + Suwanee River, 319 + + Svetadvipa, 261 + + Swallow, 28, 40-41, 45, 81, 375 + + Swallower of the West, 338, 372 + + Swan song, 44, 202 + + Sweden, 240; + the Great, 268 + + Swine, 30, 44, 48, 87, 127, 253, 260, 338, 374 + + Symmetry, sense of cosmic, 7 + + Symons, 250 + + Sympathetic magic, 187 + + Syria, 61, 169, 186, 195 + + Syrian lamb, 61 + + Syrtic district, 228 + + + T + + Tabernacle form of earth, 6 + + Table of the Sun, 14-15 + + Tachnin River, 102 + + Tachylyte, 289, 295 + + Tae-Ping women fighters, 177 + + Tagus River, 50 + + Tahetan tide myth, 9 + + Tahiti, 260 + + Tailed men, 121-131 + + Takla-makan, dead city of, 215 + + Talmud, 60, 61, 91, 204 + + Tamerlane, 237 + + Tanganyika country, 145 + + Tangi, 97 + + Tannhäuser, 219, 220 + + Taos, 323 + + Tapio, 128 + + Tapirs, king of the, 127 + + Taprobane, 10, 63 + + Taranto, 39, 59 + + Tarantula, 39-40 + + Tarascon, shield of, 66 + + Tarask, 66, 337 + + Tartars, 108, 130, 147, 154, 170, 221, 237, 365 + + Tariessus, 224 + + Tatius, 37 + + Tauron, 104 + + Taurus Mountains, 186 + + Tawny Moors, 199 + + Tchad, Lake, 135 + + Tchudi, the, 117 + + Tecumbalam, the bird, 293 + + Tembandumba, 178 + + Tempe, 201 + + _Tempest, The_, 103 + + Tempests, how to avert, 24 + + Temple harlots, 184 + + Temple of Dobayba, 312, 331-332 + + Temple of the Sun, 332 + + Ten Lost Tribes, 17, 138, 237, 359, 362 + + Tennyson, 227, 252, 255 + + Tenochtitlan, 318 + + Tensevetes, 361 + + Terhetar, 241 + + Termeh, 153 + + Termier, 288, 289, 290, 291, 295, 296 + + Ternate, 244 + + Terra Australis Incognita, 11 + + Terrestrial Paradise, 7, 8, 117, 158, 239, 312, 365, 368, 373, 376 + + Terrible Ocean, 262-273 + + Tetramorph, 338 + + Texera, 163 + + Teyma, 211 + + Thalestris, 154 + + Thanet, island of, 351 + + Tharshish, 224, 225, 226, 227 + + Thebaid, 148 + + Theocritus, 246 + + Theodor, Bishop, 117 + + Theodosius, 358 + + Theophrastus, 275 + + Theopompus, 286 + + Thermiscyra, 186 + + Thermodon River, 153 + + Theseus, 152, 153 + + Thevet, 53 + + Thirty Years’ War, 248 + + Thomas, 326 + + Thoreau, 204 + + Thorne, 244 + + Thought, fancied omnipotence of, 376 + + Thrace, 135 + + Thule, 10, 264 + + Thunberg, 34 + + Thunder bird, 81 + + Thunderbolts, 26 + + Thuringia, 220 + + Thurium, 352 + + Tiber River, 209 + + Tiberius, 19, 90 + + Tibet, 54, 64, 124, 187, 188, 196, 240, 364 + + Tides, 9 + + Tidor, 244 + + Tierra del Fuego, 328 + + Tierra-firma, 13, 303 + + Tig-balang, 127 + + Tiger, 49, 57, 81, 351, 361 + + Tigris River, 238 + + _Timæus_, the, 281, 285, 286 + + Tin, 284 + + Tin Islands, 263, 265, 352 + + Titan, 370 + + Tithonus, 38 + + Titicaca, Lake, 312 + + Tityrus, 66 + + Tlingit myths, 29, 370 + + Toad, 78 + + Tobacco, 306 + + Toltecs, 292 + + Tomyris, 169 + + Tonga, 260 + + Topago, province of, 162 + + Topaz, 24 + + Topographical legends, 14 + + Topsell, 51 + + Topsy-turvy, law of, 3 + + Torca, island of, 255 + + Torres Straits, 260 + + Tortoise, 6, 47, 96, 343 + + Toscanelli, map of, 12 + + Totemism, 29 + + Totoneac, 320, 323 + + Toucan, 42 + + Tower of London, 307 + + Traconda, island of, 104 + + Tragedy, Greek, 339 + + Trapalanda, 316 + + Travel Tales of Mankind, 348-370 + + _Travels in Barbary_, 212 + + Travelers, Lot of, 335-336 + + Travelers’ Trunk, earth like a, 6 + + Trebizond, 153 + + Tree of the Sun, 19 + + Trees, 19-21, 353 + + Trickster-hero, 370 + + Trinidad, 300, 305, 308 + + Trinity, the earliest, 85, 86 + + Tritons, 89, 90, 272 + + Troglodytes, 2, 25, 106, 109, 138, 158, 194-195 + + Troll, 367 + + Tronador, 318 + + Tropic of Cancer, 277, 278, 280 + + Trotzky, 177 + + Troubadours, 47 + + Troy, 75, 133, 152 + + _True History_, 103, 275, 354 + + Tsheremis, 107 + + T’sung-ling Mountains, 360 + + Tuanaki, island of, 255 + + Tuatha Dé Danann, 217 + + Tumbleweed, 120 + + Tupac-Amaru, 333 + + Tupac Yupanqui, Inca, 327 + + Tupi-Guarani myth, 292 + + Tupimare, the hill, 292 + + Turanians, 151, 185 + + Turkestan, 87, 214, 361 + + Turkey, 108, 154, 170, 237 + + Turkomans, 186, 346, 353 + + Turja Fells, 241 + + Turquoise, 24, 318 + + Turtle, 81, 119 + + Turtle-eaters, 198 + + Tuscany, 282 + + Twelfth Day, 31 + + Two Mussulman Travelers, 363 + + Two Sisters, isles of, 158 + + Tylor, 123, 343, 346 + + Tzetzes, 109, 350 + + + U + + Udyana, 259 + + Ulloa, 21, 38 + + Ulysses, 99, 205, 228, 229, 336, 354 + + Underground, beliefs as to, 217-220 + + _Undine_, 99 + + Ung-Khan, 239 + + Unicorn, 2, 50-55, 66, 67, 340, 375; + horn of, antidote for poison, 51 + + Unicorn bird, 75 + + Uniped, 113 + + United States, 290 + + Universe an egg, 6 + + Unpaid vows, 373 + + Ural Mountains, 107, 202 + + Urcos, lake of, 332 + + Urdu-begani, 177 + + Utopia, 373 + + Uttarakarns, the, 261, 336 + + + V + + Vaikuntha, 261 + + Vain efforts, 373 + + Valasca, 172 + + Valencia, 178 + + “Valentines,” Amazon, 152, 162 + + Vale Perilous, 191 + + Valley of Apes, 125 + + Valley of Diamonds, 73 + + Valley of the Shadow of Death, 367 + + Valum Chvim, 292 + + Vampires, 367 + + Vancouver Island, 28 + + Van Diemen’s Land, 95 + + Van Noort, 191 + + Varasena, Pass of, 361 + + Varenius, 278 + + Varro, 351 + + Varthema, 138 + + Vartomannus, 53 + + Vashti, 187 + + Vassals of the beasts, men as, 28 + + Vaz, Lopez, 163, 304, 328 + + Veddahs, the, 148 + + Vegetable lamb, 58-62 + + Venetus, Paulus, 53 + + Venezuela, 126, 207, 301, 304, 306 + + Venice, lion of, 66 + + Venus, 219 + + Venus, Mandragorolis, 22 + + Vergil, Polydore, 128 + + Vermin, a diet against, 193 + + Verrius, 351 + + Versailles, march on, 172 + + Vicarious sacrifice, 86 + + _Views of Nature_, 278 + + Viking names, 267 + + Villon, 249 + + Vilna unit of girl soldiers, 177 + + Vincent of Beauvais, 366 + + Vine, 19 + + Vineta, legendary city of, 254 + + Vine-women, 103 + + Virgil, 75, 247 + + Virgin gift-bearers, 201 + + Virgin Mary, 240 + + Virtues and vices pictured, 47 + + Vishnu, 134 + + Vitruvius, 204 + + Vokearos, the, 166 + + Volcano Island, 137 + + Volga River, 107 + + Von Hutten, 302, 303 + + Votiaks, the, 29 + + Voyage of Maldune, 252 + + _Voyage of St. Brendan_, 367 + + Vulture, 43, 338 + + + W + + Wagon homes, 155 + + Wak-wak, 111, 159, 261, 363 + + Wales, legend of, 255 + + Wallerius, 41 + + Walnut tree, 19 + + Walton, Isaac, 43 + + Wandering arts, 249 + + Wapaloosie, 66 + + Wars over women, Indian, 162-163 + + Wartburg, 219 + + Water gods of northern Europe, 97 + + Water horse, 97, 242 + + Water sheep, 60 + + Weddell, 102 + + Weigall, 143 + + Welsers, the, 302 + + West, 204-205; + as home of marvel, 349 + + West African Rain Forest, 132, 148 + + West Indies, 287, 290, 291 + + Westropp, 256 + + West wind, 262 + + Whale, 3, 47, 94, 354, 363; + bones of for dwellings, 197 + + Wheel-shaped maps, 7 + + Whirlwind the dance of a ghost, 370 + + White-Corn Boy, 376 + + White House, 333 + + White Indians, 4, 331 + + White Nile, 184 + + Whitman, Walt, 193 + + Whore of Babylon, 65 + + Whydah, 179, 183 + + Wichita Indians, 326 + + Wiener, 291, 315 + + Wild Women, 216 + + William of Wykeham, 372 + + Wind-egg, 50 + + Winged serpents, 70, 233 + + _Winter’s Tale_, 249 + + Wish, power of, 347 + + Witchcraft, 78, 204, 218, 240-242, 272, 292, 365 + + Witch Realm of Lapland, 240-242 + + Wolf, 28, 30, 43, 45, 48, 58 + + Wolf, Dr., 130 + + Woman of the Thicket, 216 + + Women for guests, 364 + + Women in Mexican revolutions, 169-170 + + World, a living being, 6 + + Woodpecker, 29 + + Words, power of, 347 + + World summit, theory of, 12-13 + + Woruisamocos, the, 167 + + Wu-lung-li-tan, village of, 129 + + Wyvern, 66 + + + X + + Xanadu, 365 + + Xarayes, Laguna de los, 312, 313, 333 + + Xecotcovach, the bird, 293 + + Xenophon, 195, 286 + + Xerxes, 352 + + + Y + + Yacu-mama, 95 + + Yakuts, the, 57 + + Yams, 260, 291 + + Yangste Kiang, the, 137 + + Yao, the, 128 + + _Yashka_, 174 + + Yazd, 214 + + Yazel, Abraham, 17 + + Yedua, 60, 62 + + Yellow-Corn Girl, 376 + + Yellow Sea, 259 + + Yemen, 196 + + _Yen-men_, 57 + + Yima, garden of, 337 + + Yoruba, 179 + + Ysopete, 324, 325, 326 + + Yucatan, 204 + + Yule, Colonel, 129 + + Yunnan, 128, 136 + + + Z + + Zahm, 207 + + Zambesi River, 225, 226 + + Zanzibar, 3, 245, 270, 363, 364 + + Zell, 192 + + Zenobia, 169 + + Zephyria, 50 + + Zipangu, 12 + + Zulus, 111, 125 + + Zuñi, 322, 323 + + Zuyder Zee, 254 + + +THE END + + + + +_Distinguished Books_ + + + BARE SOULS BY GAMALIEL BRADFORD + +This volume goes beyond the geographical limits of Mr. Bradford’s +successful “Damaged Souls,” and includes a group of the world’s most +mysteriously fascinating personalities. Under Mr. Bradford’s magic +touch they spring to life as self-revealing human beings. His subjects +include John Keats, Thomas Gray, Flaubert, Voltaire, Edward Fitzgerald, +Charles Lamb and Horace Walpole. + + + LEVIATHAN BY WILLIAM BOLITHO + +“If you are a discriminating reader you will have marked William +Bolitho as a man whose stuff you will follow anywhere, for he stands +out from the hordes of excellent and gentle essayists as boldly as +does a woodcut when placed next a half-tone engraving.”--_Laurence +Stallings_ in the New York _World_. + + + THE LIFE OF THE BAT BY CHARLES DERENNES + +An exciting personal narrative is told in this book--the life story of +the bat, much of it threaded on the life experiences of a captive bat +called Noctu. He very soon develops a strong personality, and through +his story we learn the life history of bats generally,--their apparent +pastimes,--as in their aerial ballets--their mating, their search +for food and the whole fascinating range of their daily and nightly +activities. + + + AT A VENTURE BY CHARLES A. BENNETT + _Illustrated by Clarence Day, Jr._ + +“How delightful to run across a new writer of such subtle penetration +combined with a light and lazy humor. Mr. Bennett has a fine sense of +satire, of character, of life, and is a master of the luminous phrase. +He discusses live subjects, and his papers cover all sorts of topics +from advertising to zebra-raising, written with ease, elegance and +grace. The pictures are priceless, all movement, irony and grin.”--_W. +E. Woodward_ in the _Nation_. + + +HARPER & BROTHERS + + + + +_A Miscellany_ + + + THE BIBLE AND COMMON SENSE BY BASIL KING + +Here is a book in which honest people of every communion, groping +their way through the storms of controversy, will find fresh light to +guide them. Mr. King tells eloquently what the Bible means to him as +an individual, and frankly and fearlessly discusses such topics as the +Virgin Birth, the divinity of Christ, and the effect of scientific +criticism on the Bible. His tone is always constructive, always +reverent, always inspiring. + + + THE MYSTERY OF RELIGION BY EVERETT DEAN MARTIN + +What is religion? Has it any real bearing on morality and the +unescapable facts of human relationship? The author of “The Behavior +of Crowds” here scientifically analyzes, in the light of social +psychology, the ceremonials and taboos of religion, and the fundamental +meaning and cause of group religion as a universal human need. + + + THE SEVEN LIVELY ARTS BY GILBERT SELDES + +A spirited and entertaining discussion of the “low-brow” arts and +artists of comic stage and screen, of song and dance and newspaper +humor, by a “high-brow” young critic who sees in them the flourishing +germ of a native American expression. + + + A MAGICIAN AMONG THE SPIRITS BY HOUDINI + +A master magician here reveals the results of years of careful study +of noted mediums and of spiritualistic phenomena of all kinds. This +account of his adventures during his investigations, and the striking +conclusions to which he has been forced form an important--and +entertaining--chapter in the crusade for truth. + + + THE AMERICAN MIND IN ACTION + BY HARVEY O’HIGGINS and DR. E. H. REEDE + +A keen analysis of the typical American attitude, as exemplified in the +lives and personalities of a dozen outstanding Americans. “The work is +absorbingly interesting, holding the reader as with a magic spell from +beginning to end. The American reader feels as he follows the analysis +of the American mind that he is gradually penetrating to the mystic +depths of his own soul.”--_Boston Transcript._ + + +HARPER & BROTHERS + + + + + Transcriber's Notes: + + Italics are shown thus: _sloping_. + + Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained. + + Perceived typographical errors have been changed. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75759 *** diff --git a/75759-h/75759-h.htm b/75759-h/75759-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c2cdf93 --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/75759-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,22647 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + The Coasts of Illusion | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 15%; + margin-right: 15%; +} + + h1,h2 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +h1 {font-weight: normal; + font-size: 160%; + margin-top: 0em; + margin-bottom: 0em; 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+} +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3em;} +.poetry .indent1 {text-indent: -2em;} +.poetry .indent16 {text-indent: 5em;} + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75759 ***</div> + +<div class="figcenter1"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="cover"> +</div> + +<hr class="r65"> + +<h1>THE COASTS OF ILLUSION</h1> + +<hr class="r65"> + +<div class="figright"> +<img src="images/fig1.jpg" alt="palm"> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter" id="front"> +<img src="images/fig2.jpg" alt="raleigh"> +<p class="caption">THE BOYHOOD OF RALEIGH<br> +<i>By</i> Sir John Millais</p> +</div> + +<hr class="full"> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="c sp"> +<span class="xlarge">THE</span><br> +<span class="xxlarge lsp">COASTS OF ILLUSION</span></p> + +<p class="c sp xlarge"> +A Study of Travel Tales</p> + +<hr class="full"> + +<p class="c less"> +BY</p> + +<p class="c sp large"> +CLARK B. FIRESTONE</p> + +<p class="c sp p2"> +<i>With Drawings by</i></p> + +<p class="c sp more"> +RUTH HAMBIDGE</p> + +<div class="figcenter2"> +<img src="images/fig3.jpg" alt="torch"> +</div> + +<p class="c p2 more"> +“<i>Westward of Valhalla grows a plant called<br> +The mistletoe; it seemed too young to swear.</i>”</p> + +<p class="r less"> +—<span class="smcap">Frigg</span></p> + +<hr class="full"> +</div> + +<p class="c sp lsp large"> +HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS</p> + +<p class="c sp lsp"> +NEW YORK AND LONDON</p> + +<p class="c sp lsp more"> +MCMXXIV +</p> + + + + + +<p class="c sp p6 less"> +THE COASTS OF ILLUSION</p> + +<hr class="r5"> + +<p class="c sp more"> +Copyright, 1924, by Harper & Brothers<br> +Printed in the United States of America</p> + +<hr class="r5"> + +<p class="c sp more"> +<i>First Edition</i> +</p> + +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</span></p> + +<p class="ph2">CONTENTS</p> +</div> + +<table class="large"> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"></td> + <td class="tdr"><span class="min">PAGE</span></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Marco Talks with His Neighbors</span></td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#poem">ix</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Preface</span></td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#pre">xi</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><span class="min">CHAPTER</span></td> + <td class="tdl"></td> + <td class="tdc"></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c1">I</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The World That Was</span></td> + <td class="tdr">1</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c2">II</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Earth Itself</span></td> + <td class="tdr">5</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c3">III</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Inanimate Nature</span></td> + <td class="tdr">14</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c4">IV</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Animal Kingdom</span></td> + <td class="tdr">27</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c5">V</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Fabulous Beasts</span></td> + <td class="tdr">49</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c6">VI</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Fable upon Wings</span></td> + <td class="tdr">68</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c7">VII</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Dragon</span></td> + <td class="tdr">79</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c8">VIII</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Denizens of the Deep</span></td> + <td class="tdr">89</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c9">IX</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Peoples of Prodigy</span></td> + <td class="tdr">103</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c10">X</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Satyrs</span></td> + <td class="tdr">121</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c11">XI</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Pygmies</span></td> + <td class="tdr">132</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c12">XII</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Amazons of Legend</span></td> + <td class="tdr">151</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c13">XIII</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Amazons of History</span></td> + <td class="tdr">169</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c14">XIV</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Folk of Tradition</span></td> + <td class="tdr">190</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c15">XV</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Horizon Lands</span></td> + <td class="tdr">201</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c16">XVI</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Lands of Legend</span></td> + <td class="tdr">223</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c17">XVII</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Islands of Enchantment</span></td> + <td class="tdr">251</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c18">XVIII</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Terrible Ocean</span></td> + <td class="tdr">262</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c19">XIX</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Sargasso Sea</span></td> + <td class="tdr">274</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c20">XX</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Atlantis</span></td> + <td class="tdr">281</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c21">XXI</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Gilded Man</span></td> + <td class="tdr">298</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c22">XXII</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Dream Quests of Spain</span></td> + <td class="tdr">312</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c23">XXIII</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Fabric of Illusion</span></td> + <td class="tdr">334</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c24">XXIV</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Travel Tales of Mankind</span></td> + <td class="tdr">348</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#c25">XXV</a></td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Gains of Fable</span></td> + <td class="tdr">371</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdr"></td> + <td class="tdl"><a href="#c26"><span class="smcap">Bibliography</span></a></td> + <td class="tdr">379</td></tr> + + +</table> + +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</span></p> + +<p class="ph2">ILLUSTRATIONS</p> +</div> + + +<table class="large hang"> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Boyhood of Raleigh.</span> <i>By Sir John Millais</i></td> + <td class="tdr"><a href="#front"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"></td> + <td class="tdr"><span class="min">FACING PAGE</span></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Voyage to These Strangely Peopled Countries of +the World’s Yesterdays Would Be a Voyage +Along the Bays, Gulfs, and Promontories of the +Human Mind in Its States of Dream</span></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f6">2</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Christopher Columbus at the Court of Ferdinand +the Catholic and Isabella of Castile.</span> <i>By V. von +Brozik</i> </td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f7">10</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">According to Tradition, a Putrid Stream Flows +from the Roots of the Tree and the Vapors +Thereof Kill</span></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f8">24</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">In Caldilhe There Groweth a Manner of Fruit, and +Men Find Within a Little Beast as Though It +Were a Lamb Without Wool</span></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f9">58</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The First People Engaged in Such Cosmic Adventures +as Warfare Against Stone Giants</span></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f10">116</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Satyr.</span> <i>By Jacob Jordaens</i></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f11">122</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Men Feared Them, as Embodying the Loneliness of +Waste Places</span></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f12">128</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Swarthy Men Called Pygmies</span></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f13">142</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Thusnelda at the Triumphal Entry of Germanicus +into Rome.</span> <i>By C. T. von Piloty</i></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f14">172</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Steeps Overhead Seemed Fit Abode for Giants +and Dwarfs and Griffins—for Cities of Enchantment</span></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f15">206</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Enchanted Woods of Romance with Their +Goblin Glooms and Talking Trees Faded from the +Minds of Men</span></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f16">216</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</span></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">“Build Us, O Doul-Karnain,” They Begged, “A Rampart +Between Us and Them”</span></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f17">236</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">In Islands Men Placed Their Ideal States.... To +Reach Felicity One Must Cross Water</span></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f18">254</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Roaring Forties.</span> <i>By F. J. Waugh</i></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f19">268</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Things of the Spirit Animated Spain in Some of +the Quests It Followed Beside the Still Waters +of the Lakes of Dream</span></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f20">314</a></td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Gargoyles of Stone Which Kept Watch Day +and Night</span></td> + <td class="tdrb"><a href="#f21">338</a></td></tr> + +</table> + + +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="poem">MARCO TALKS WITH HIS NEIGHBORS</h2> +</div> + +<table> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Time</span>: 1295 A.D.</td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Speaker</span>: Marco Polo.</td></tr> + +<tr> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Place</span>: Venice, the Rialto.    </td> + <td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Chorus</span>: Citizens of Venice.</td></tr> + + +</table> + + + + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><span class="dropcap">I</span> <i>FARED,” said Marco, “as far as one may——</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>From Astrakhan to the ports of Cathay,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>And sailed two years on the Pitch Dark Sea;</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>And something I learned of the ways of man.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>There is a place that they call Japan,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>And Russia lies where the north winds be;</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>The plain of Lop is haunted by dragons;</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Dark are the damsels and fierce the flagons</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>In the Thousand Islands of Spicery.”</i></div> + </div><div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Far are these lands and fair is their sheen,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>But tell us, Polo, what have you seen?”</i></div> + </div><div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>“I saw,” said Marco, “the pagans at masses</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>And Tibetan dogs the size of asses,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>And oil from the ground, and black stones, blazing.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>I saw pink pearls from an unknown strand,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>And ten-pound peaches of China-land,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>And bales of silk that were past appraising.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>I saw the Malabar pepper farmers</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>And cannibal sharks subdued by charmers,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>But the grunting ox was most amazing.”</i></div> + </div><div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Much have you seen where the wild capes curve,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>But tell us, Polo, whom did you serve?”</i></div> + </div><div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>“I served,” said Marco, “the Khan of Khans.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>His edict runs with the caravans</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>As far as the east is from the west.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>The Turk and the Hindu hold his charters,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>He sways Cathaians, Persians, and Tartars,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>Yet Kublai welcomes the stranger guest.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>His deeds are writ upon purple pages,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>A shepherd king but a sage of sages,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>And his thousand damsels are Asia’s best.”</i></div> + </div><div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Him must a thousand matters perplex,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>But, Polo, speak yet more of the sex.”</i></div> + </div><div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>“The men of Gobi,” said Marco, “require</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Their dames to sit by the stranger’s fire,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>And make his favor the tribal boast.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Frail are the women in Pin-yang-fu,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>And delicate quin-sai wenches woo</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>Ambassadors from the Pepper Coast.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Though maids with feet as swift as the wind</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>May dance, all bare, for the gods of Ind,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>The women of Persia please the most.”</i></div> + </div><div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Whimsical, Marco, your travel word.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Is there aught else that you saw or heard?”</i></div> + </div><div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>“I heard,” said Marco, “but do not know,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>That Tartar shamans summon the snow,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>And suns shine not for the Samoyed.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>In southern countries its fabled horn</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Means less than its tongue to the unicorn,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>Which licks its victims until they are dead.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Here is a text for songs or sermons:</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>When babes are born to the female Burmans,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>Their foolish husbands hie them to bed.”</i></div> + </div><div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Rose, then, a shout from a hundred lips:</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>“Marco, the tar of a thousand trips,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Marco the man of a million quips,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>Marco, Marco, Milioni!”</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>And they who would hold the East in fee,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Men of the pitiful midland sea,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Nobles and commons, laughed shamelessly.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>“Which the catcher, and who the coney?</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>What I have seen is truly averred,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>But what I have heard is—what I have heard!”</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>Thus to himself, with a secret mirth,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent1"><i>The only man who had seen the earth.</i></div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + + +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="pre">PREFACE</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">The</span> book gives a view of the earth and its inhabitants as +seen through the haze of distance, whether of space or of time. +Its purpose is to present those myths and half-myths of +geography which are loosely and yet significantly called travel +tales. It treats of various countries and races and animals which +are, or were, or might have been. Although their true domain is +the imagination, their supposed domain is, or was, somewhere +on the earth. The Coasts of Illusion, as glimpsed here, are +nowhere the shores of the supernatural.</p> + +<p>Always the two tend to merge and the problem has been to +keep them apart. The travel tales of the race have grown +out of, or become entangled with, myths in which men sought to +figure the creation of the world, the journeys of the sun from +dawn to darkness, the conflicts of light with storm and night +and winter, the high places of the gods and their incarnations +and agents. Yet the tales are touched with reality, while the +myths are unearthly.</p> + +<p>Ulysses tarried among the Phacakians, and these were a cloud +people; but he skirted the land of the lotus-eaters, and these +were a mundane folk. Who were the lotus-eaters? Achilles +fought with Memnon, son of the Dawn, but also with Penthesilea, +the Amazon queen. Who were the Amazons? Hercules was +of the progeny of Olympian Zeus, but wandering on earth he +passed through the land of the pygmies. Who were the pygmies? +What reality lies back of the fabulous animals and Deformed +Folk that peopled the mountains and deserts?</p> + +<p>For thousands of years men accepted the realms and races of +prodigy. It was only about a century ago that these disappeared +from the maps and natural histories. The frontiers of +ignorance had been pushed back so far that the never-never +countries dropped off into the sea. There was no longer room +for the phœnix to flap its wings, the dragon to hiss and roar, +the giants to stalk, the kangaroo-men to hop.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</span></p> + +<p>The countries and creatures of legend passed from the scene +without the parting word that every passing merits, without +even a gesture of farewell. Is it more than a tardy courtesy to +summon them back for a word that shall be both appraisal +and remembrance?</p> + +<p>These are the stories wanderers told in hall when the world +was young; and in out-of-the-way places still they tell them, +and men believe. These are stories the lad Raleigh heard along +wharves where sailors in outlandish garb recited the wonders +of countries below the rim of the sea. If one could recapture +Raleigh’s boyish faith, and the faith of ages of listeners before +him, it might still be possible to behold the King of Is in state +beside the menacing ocean, to traverse the streets of the lost +Atlantis, to win to the cities of gold which Spain could not +find, and to repeople the waste places with their strange inhabitants. +So might one achieve the purpose of these pages and +regain a picture of things as they were supposed to be.</p> + +<p>This is a survey of the world through the stained glass of +men’s imaginings.</p> + +<p class="r2 large">C. B. F.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/fig4.jpg" alt="totem"> +</div> + + +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + +<p class="ph2">THE COASTS OF ILLUSION</p> + + + +<div class="figright"> +<img src="images/fig5.jpg" alt="myth"> +</div> + + +<hr class="full"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c1">Chapter I. The World That Was</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">The</span> geography, anthropology, and natural history of this +volume present a world a little different from that which is +outlined in modern text-books and yet one that is familiar. It +is the traditional world of wonder, which until yesterday was +believed to be the real world. A map of it would show the +same continents, and some of the same races of men and +species of animals that are delineated in any atlas of to-day; +but there would be changes. Asia would bear far away into +the unknown spaces of the East. A shadowy continent would +stretch across the open waters of the Indian Ocean. The clouds +and darkness of supernatural terrors, or dimly remembered +fates, would shroud the Atlantic, the Green Sea of Gloom of +the Arab geographers. Looming vaguely in the mists southwest +of Gibraltar one would discern a lost continent. One would +see there, also, smaller bodies of land which on a second glance +are seen no more.</p> + +<p>Within the contours of continents and islands there would +be countries which seem to belong both to fable and to fact. +The Incense Kingdom would be there on both sides of the Red +Sea, but its sumptuous ritual and swooning odors would suggest +little now to be found in southern Arabia and Somaliland. +The Spice Islands would be there, but wearing the splendor +of a world-desire of which no trace is left to the Moluccas. +There would be seen the haughty realm of Prester John and +the vast pastures of Gog and Magog; but on a modern map of +Asia one does not find the country of the priest king and must +look under other names for the terrifying races of Hebrew +and Moslem legend.</p> + +<p>On the map would appear the gold port of Ophir and the +golden land of Havilah, but the Arab haven was silted up ages +ago, and the abandoned mine-workings of Rhodesia minister +no more to the pride of kings. The Arcadia that it would picture, +of pastoral innocence and bucolic song, has faded from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span> +the central uplands of the Morea, and the rugged mountain land +hears no longer the pipes of Pan. There are other regions of +enchantment—deserts where demon-voices tempted the traveler +from his track, mountains where cymbals clashed and lights +gleamed at night, countries of serene charm which were placed +so far away that few people ever reached them. Of these +regions the modern maps know nothing.</p> + +<p>If the map of the traditional world were pictorial, as such +maps ought to be, it would show strange races of men in Asia, +in Africa, in South America, in the sea-washed islands, and in +the seas themselves. There would be Amazons sweeping down +upon the Mediterranean settlements, pygmies battling with +cranes in Upper Egypt, satyrs pursuing women in African +woodlots, troglodytes of Arabia looking on with indifference +while strangers maltreated their offspring. The vistas of Asia +and Africa would disclose men taking their siestas beneath the +shade of their own gigantic feet, sleeping at night under the +cover of their elephant-like ears, supporting life by smelling +flowers rather than eating food. Sixteenth-century charts of the +Spanish Americas would reveal the unsuspected fact that these +creatures dwelt also in the new world, and that mermaids sang +upon its coasts, as upon those of the old.</p> + +<p>A pictorial map of the traditional world would show that it +was a menagerie of strange animals as well as a museum of +prodigious peoples. The lairs and roosts of heraldry would +return their tenants to its blank spaces. The phœnix would be +seen winging its way from Araby the Blest, or mounting its own +funeral pyre in the City of the Sun in Lower Egypt. The +Desert of Gobi would show the griffin, a formidable guard for +its stores of fabled gold. The unicorn would be sketched doing +the elephant to death in the jungles of Asia and Africa. The +baleful glare of the basilisk would be staged in the recesses +of Libya. The dragon’s breath would poison earth and air and +water alike. The harpies and the Stymphalian birds would +raise their shrill clamor beside the brink of sea or marsh. +Among other creatures in the ocean would be depicted the monstrous +orc, the kraken of the northern deeps, and the ubiquitous, +immemorial, and enigmatic sea serpent. The familiar +animals of natural history would share with the fabled creatures<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span> +the forests, pastures, and waters of the mimic world of the +map, but the text would point out novel things about them.</p> + +<p>A voyage to these strangely peopled countries of the world’s +yesterdays would be a voyage along the bays, gulfs, and promontories +of the human mind in its states of dream.</p> + +<p>There are three chambers in the house of the mind. One of +them is a place where pleasant bedtime stories are told. Another +is the art gallery of hope and memory. The third is a +museum where runs the law of topsy-turvy. The name of the +house is Illusion.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f6"> +<img src="images/fig6.jpg" alt="voyage"> +<p class="caption1"><i>A Voyage to These Strangely Peopled Countries of the World’s Yesterdays +Would Be a Voyage Along the Bays, Gulfs, and Promontories of the +Human Mind in Its States of Dream</i></p> +</div> + +<p>A glance through a few of the older books of travel will +show illusion weaving its careless spells over plain records of +wandering. “We fared on,” says Sindbad, “from sea to sea +and from island to island and city to city in all delight and +contentment, buying and selling wherever we touched, and +taking our solace and our pleasure.” The words prepare the +reader for enchantments. One of the Hakluyt narratives speaks +of “Zanzibar, on the backeside of Africa.” This is geography +somehow touched with magic. When Drake was cruising +around South America, his chronicler recites that on a certain +day “wee had a very sweet smell from off the land.” Simple +as are the words, their quality is dreamlike. The account of +Raleigh’s third voyage to Guiana has this passage: “There +being divers whales playing about our pinnesse, one of them +crossed our stemme and going under, rubbed her backe against +our keele.” The lines unlock the frolic wonder of the sea.</p> + +<p>The same quality illuminates reports of other lands and +peoples taken almost at random. The ancient Cimbri, says +Strabo, explained their wandering life and piracy by the fact +that once they had dwelt on a peninsula and had been driven +out by a very high tide. The ancient Getae wept at births and +laughed at funerals; and in the <i>Arabian Nights</i> Abdallah of the +Sea broke off his friendship with Abdallah of the Land, when +he learned that his people mourned rather than rejoiced over +their dead. Purchas tells of a Livonian people, ignorant but +unashamed, that “aske who learne the Hares in the woods their +prayers.” The same writer declares that Ethiopians hold their +color in such estimation that they paint the saints and angels +black, but “the Divell and wicked persons they paint white.”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span> +Pinkerton describes a tribe of white Indians east of the Andes, +whose naked and beautiful women use a guttural speech and +emphasize every remark by striking their thighs with great +force. The Eskimos attributed the Northern Lights to the +merriment of the ghosts. A Florida tribe made a cult of the +devil because the Spaniards feared him.</p> + +<p>The thing these statements have in common is that perhaps +none of them is quite true, and yet one wishes to believe all of +them.</p> + +<p>The shaping influence in the traditional world is the power of +wish. The poets may seem to use it more than other men, and +children more than grown-ups, but it is the province of mankind.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c2">Chapter II. The Earth Itself</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">Enveloping</span> old stories of legendary lands and peoples as +with an outer husk are beliefs which relate to the world as a +whole. These concern the shape of the earth, the texture of +the heavens, the distribution of land and water, the contours +of continents, and the precise number of islands, countries, and +cities. What they disclose is the instinct of men working +through the apparent confusion of nature toward order. In all +of them is the sense of symmetry, of balance, and because they +are excursions into the unknown, the method of allegory. The +true symmetry of the universe—the great annual journey of the +earth around a sun itself in motion in a firmament so vast that +through the ages the stars seem not to have changed their places—was +not grasped. The result was errors, picturesque sometimes, +sometimes more useful than truth.</p> + +<p>Wherever one stands, the meeting line of the sky and earth +forms a circle of which one is the center. This picture shaped +the primitive geography. The earth was a disk and each people +seemed to itself to be at the central point. In Homer it was a +disk surrounded by a river called the Ocean Stream. The +farther shore of this river supported the brazen dome of heaven, +and earth and heaven were kept apart by the pillars which +Atlas bore on his shoulders. Thales taught that the earth +was a sort of drum floating upright in the wilderness of +waters. The ancient Hebrews thought that the earth was a +rising plain which floated like a lotus flower in the waters. The +Tibetans believed the earth to be cone-shaped. The Chinese +thought that all other lands were grouped as islands about their +own. The Celts thought the earth rested on columns and in the +Irish sea-tales various islands are pictured as standing on pillars. +In North America the plains tribes thought that the Rocky +Mountains supported the sky, the Pacific coast tribes conceived +of the earth as an island swimming in the cosmic waters, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span> +the Southwestern tribes gave it as many stories as the tallest +of their public dwellings. The Shoshones said the vault of the +sky was a dome of ice against which the rainbow-snake rubbed +its back, and the Haida said that the firmament regularly rose +and fell, the clouds striking the mountains with an audible noise. +According to many Western tribes the canopy of heaven was +pierced with holes at the four cardinal points, and these were +constantly opening and closing; a sky-world like the earth was +beyond, into which swans and shamans could pass. All peoples +believed that the earth was immovable, with the sun revolving +around it. Many thought it rested on the back of some animal—a +buffalo, a tortoise, a catfish.</p> + +<p>Sometimes more sophisticated and still more fanciful ideas +were entertained. To one school of Greek thought the world +was a living being and man himself a microcosm, a little world, +as Paracelsus called him. The sun and moon were the two +eyes of the world, the earth its body, the ether its intellect, and +the sky its wings. It was held that the movements of man and +of the world were in exact correspondence; hence astrology, +which interprets the one by the other. To the Venerable Bede +the universe was an egg, the earth its yolk, the water the white +of the egg, the air its membrane, and the encircling fire the shell +or cover of all.</p> + +<p>Cosmas took literally the utterance of St. Paul that the tabernacle +was a figure of the world. In an amazing exercise of +ingenuity he found the oblong design, the walls, roof, and +floor, the candlesticks, the Ark of the Covenant, and the table +of shewbread of this Jewish desert booth all repeated in the +shape and furnishings of the universe. His scheme of things +has been compared to a traveler’s trunk, with its body standing +for the earth, the flat tray for the firmament, and the curved +lid for the arch of upper heaven. The effects of day and night +were produced, Cosmas thought, about as they are on the stage. +There was a tall mountain in the north. When the sun went +behind it darkness fell; when the sun came out from behind +it, there was light. This conception lacks both the intelligence +and the poetry of the American Indian myth where +the Sun-Carrier is pictured as hanging the sun on a peg on +the west wall of his lodge and then unrolling in succession the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span> +robe of dawn, the robe of blue sky, the robe of golden evening +light and the robe of darkness.</p> + +<p>The sense of symmetry demanded that the earth should have +a central point, and each country sought it somewhere in its +own borders. Homer thought that this was on Mount Olympus, +where the Greek gods dwelt. The Hindus thought that it was +on Mount Meru, where their own gods dwelt. The Chinese +fixed it on Mount Sumeru on a circle of gold and with the sun +and moon revolving around it; this was surrounded by the seven +sacred mountains, the seven seas, and the four inhabited continents.</p> + +<p>Christian pilgrims said that Jerusalem was in the center of +the earth, quoting the Psalm, “For God is my King of old, +working salvation in the midst of the earth.” There was a +spot not far from the place of Calvary which the Lord had signified +and measured, and this was called Compas. It was something +pilgrims could see and touch. For eight centuries the +legend was current, and for three centuries, until nearly the time +of Columbus, it dominated European maps of the world, which +were wheel-shaped, with Jerusalem at the hub.</p> + +<p>Among the Eastern nations the sources and courses of rivers +had sometimes a cosmic significance. They flowed from the +center of the earth or from the Terrestrial Paradise. From the +Cool Lake which was in the midst of Asia, to the south of the +Fragrant Mountains and to the north of the Snowy Mountains, +flowed four great rivers, according to the Chinese. The Ganges +issued from the eastern side of the lake through the mouth of +a silver ox, and found the southeastern sea. The Indus issued +from the southern side through the mouth of a golden elephant, +and found the southwestern sea. The Oxus issued from the +western side through the mouth of a horse of lapis lazuli, and +found the northwestern sea. The River of China issued from +the northern side through the mouth of a crystal lion, and found +the northeastern sea.</p> + +<p>In the Genesis story a river goes out of Eden to water the +garden and divides into four—Pison, which compasses the +golden land of Havilah; Gihon, which compasses Ethiopia; Hiddekel, +which goes toward the east of Assyria; and Euphrates. +Josephus, the Romanized Jew, assimilated the Hebrew geography<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span> +with the Greek account of an Ocean Stream that flowed +around the earth. This encircling river, he said, was the source +of the four biblical streams. The Arabs also accepted the rivers +of Eden and showed ingenuity in tracing their courses to the +distant lands where flowed the streams they had identified with +them. So did John Marignolli, the fourteenth-century Franciscan +traveler.</p> + +<p>Paradise, he said, was in Ceylon, about forty miles distant +from Adam’s Peak, which he visited. On this latter peak was +Adam’s footprint and the garden he tilled when expelled from +the abode of innocence. The Mount of Eden overtopped it, +and almost always the mists brooded there, but one could hear +the waters falling from the sacred fount out of which the four +rivers came. These flowed away from the island of Ceylon by +channels under the ocean, the Gihon becoming the Nile, the Pison +passing through India and China, and doubling back through the +deserts to die in the sands and be born again as the Caspian Sea.</p> + +<p>With the greater portion of the earth unknown, a curious +custom obtained of using definite figures in default of definite +facts. Dicuil, the Irish scholar, said that there were 2 seas, 72 +islands, 40 mountains, 65 provinces, 281 towns, 55 rivers, and +116 peoples; he had read this in what he called the cosmography +of Julius Cæsar and Mark Antony. Idrisi declared that there +were 27,000 islands in the Atlantic. Mariners on the Sea of +China told Marco Polo that it contained precisely 7,440 islands, +mostly inhabited. In the Indian Ocean, he said, there were +12,700 islands. The Koreans had an old tradition that there +were fourscore and four thousand several countries upon the +earth, but themselves doubted it. The sun could not warm so +many lands, they thought. Their real belief was that there were +but twelve kingdoms or countries. When the Dutch explorers +named other countries to them they laughed; the visitors must +be talking of towns and villages.</p> + +<p>Sometimes the sense of symmetry, sometimes poetic instinct +and the desire for graphic imagery, led men to give the habitable +world the outlines of animate or inanimate objects. Strabo +likened it to a chlamys, or soldier’s cloak. Dionysius Afer +said it was like a sling. The California Indians said it was +like a mat with the long way north and south. Massoudy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span> +likened it to a bird. The head of the bird was at Mecca and +Medina, Africa was its tail, Irak and India its right wing, and +the land of Gog and Magog its left wing. Other writers pictured +the earth in the semblance of a man, with the head in the +southern hemisphere, and the feet or under part in the northern; +the right hand was the east, whence began the movement of the +<i>primum mobile</i>, and the left the west, whither it trended. +As the head was the noblest part, governing the rest of the body, +so Ptolemy thought, the southern hemisphere was nobler than +the other parts of the earth, and the stars above it were more +resplendent and of greater virtue than those of the northern.</p> + +<p>The tides were the breath of the living earth, Solinus thought. +A large man on the beach of the ocean gets up and sits down +twice a day, said the Tahltan Indians of Canada; twice a day +a colossal crab comes out of and goes back to its cave at the foot +of the world-tree, said the Malays; for six hours a serpent at +the rim of the world draws in its breath and for six hours +lets it out, said the Scotch islanders—wherefore the tides ebb +and flow. The Gauls endowed them with life and attacked them +with weapons.</p> + +<p>Ptolemy pictured Great Britain as a Z written backward. +Strabo compared Spain to an ox hide. Numantianus likened +Italy to an oak leaf. India was thought to be an exact equilateral +triangle.</p> + +<p>There were conflicting views as to the south. Although by the +beginning of the historical period the Sabæans and Phœnicians +had gone down the eastern coast of Africa through the Indian +Ocean some twenty degrees beyond the equator to seek the gold +of Havilah, these ventures into the zone of torrid heat were not +for the Atlantic and the peoples of the west. The insidious +fictions of the Semitic mariners had awakened their fears. No +man, they thought, could live in the lands of vertical sunlight. +In what lay beyond these, they had as little interest as men have +now in the possible populations of other planets. Europeans +of the early Christian era put aside the notion which enlightened +Greeks had entertained that there might be “opposite peoples of +the south.” Assuming the inhuman heat of the torrid zone, it +was evident that a tropical people could not be of the race of +Adam, and heresy was in the thought of any other lineage.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span></p> + +<p>Lactantius, the Christian Cicero of the third century, is remembered +because he gave popular error rhetorical expression +and because his words were flung at Columbus twelve centuries +afterward, when he appeared before the Council of Salamanca +to justify his theory that one might reach the east by sailing +west. “Can any one be so foolish,” asked Lactantius, “as to +believe that there are men whose feet are higher than their +heads, or places where trees may be growing backward or rain +falling upward? Where is the marvel of the hanging gardens +of Babylon, if we are to allow of a hanging world at the Antipodes?” +Pliny had answered him with another question two +centuries before. “If any one,” he said, “should ask why those +situated opposite to us do not fall, we directly ask in return, +whether those on the opposite side do not wonder that we do not +fall.”</p> + +<p>Even when the ancient world had accepted the theory that the +earth was a sphere, this seemed to it somehow half as long again +from east to west as from north to south, and the belief is preserved +in the two terms, Longitude and Latitude. The limits of +the habitable earth were Thule, or Iceland, to the north; Taprobane, +or Ceylon, to the east; the Aromatic Cape, to the south, +and the Sacred Promontory in Portugal to the west. North of +Thule it was too cold, and south of the Cape of Spices it was too +hot, to support life.</p> + +<p>All that the ancient world knew of geography was gathered +up by Ptolemy and systematized in a scheme which among +learned men was the standard of belief for fourteen centuries +afterward. This great Egyptian of the second century eliminated +errors, corrected reckonings, and brought his science +abreast of facts which traders had gathered. He made, however, +three great errors, each, as it proved, more useful than the truth +would have been. Ptolemy estimated the circumference of the +earth as one-sixth less than the fact, although Eratosthenes had +already reached the correct figure. Thus the true sailing distance +from Spain west to Asia was reduced by about 4,000 miles and +the later venture of Columbus made to seem a task less formidable. +Ptolemy also gave Asia a vast extension eastward, further +reducing the apparent distance of a westward route from Europe +to the Orient.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f7"> +<img src="images/fig7.jpg" alt="columbus"> +<p class="caption">CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS AT THE COURT OF FERDINAND<br> +THE CATHOLIC AND ISABELLA OF CASTILE<br> +<i>By</i> V. von Brozik</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span></p> + +<p>His third error was to assume that another continental mass +joined the southern extension of Africa with a southeastern extension +of Asia, completely landlocking the Indian Ocean. This +was the Terra Australis Incognita of the older charts. It seemed +to be needed to balance the land masses of the northern hemisphere +and satisfy the persistent demand of the mind for symmetry +in the arrangement of the earth. This vast domain has +disappeared from the maps, but its name and part of its area +are preserved in the island continent of Australia. Thus Ptolemy +anticipated the discoveries of the Portuguese, Dutch, and English.</p> + +<p>Much of what Ptolemy knew succeeding ages forgot. The +mediæval conception of the world was that of a T within an O +with the east at the top of the circle because Paradise was there +and deserved the highest place, and Jerusalem as its center. The +lower half of the circle was divided by the Mediterranean +equally between Europe and Africa, while the upper half was +all assigned to Asia. The Ægean and Red seas, branching to +the left and the right from the head of the Mediterranean, divided +the upper and lower halves of the circle, and these three seas +formed the T within the O. Around all flowed the Ocean +Stream.</p> + +<p>Intellectually, this presentation of the habitable earth belongs +in about the ninth century <span class="allsmcap">B. C.</span> rather than the fifteenth century +<span class="allsmcap">A. D.</span>, but the map, like the Ptolemaic geography, was a brief for +discovery. It cut off the south of Africa, and made it seem a +short voyage around it to India, and thereby it encouraged +efforts to open a sea route to the Orient. It immensely extended +Asia to the east, and thereby led Columbus to believe it might +more easily be reached by sailing west. Also, it revived the +reign of fable and made a new world of wonder. There were +blank spaces on the map of Asia. The monkish map-makers +filled them in with pictures of monstrous races and animals +drawn from the classics, from Old Testament imagery, and from +the Arab repertory.</p> + +<p>It seemed at last that all the mistakes of geography were in +conspiracy to unlock the unknown half of the world. The apocryphal +book of Esdras had said that the earth was one part +water and six parts dry land. That three-fourths of its surface<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span> +was sea, nobody surmised. Marco Polo had moved Zipangu +(Japan) a thousand miles east from its real position by giving +its distance from the mainland of Asia as 1,500 miles instead of +1,500 li—a Chinese measure of about one-third of a mile. In +the map of Toscanelli, on which Columbus counted much, the +Asiatic coast was placed where California is. The Azores were +supposed to lie far west of their true position. Columbus did +not dream that 210 degrees of longitude lay between Lisbon and +Japan by the westward route. He believed that by sailing from +the Azores for about 3,100 miles he would find Zipangu, and +not unknown Florida. “<i>El mundo es poco</i>” (“the world is +small”), he exclaimed, and steered confidently toward the setting +sun.</p> + +<p>These great errors made the adventures of the Genoese in the +New World a gorgeous illusion—the vestibule into a past where, +as he thought, other feet had trodden, instead of the threshold +of continents his feet were first to press. To him it seemed only +that he was reading the book of Marco Polo backward. The +gold and aromatics of which he found traces were those of the +Golden Chersonese and the Spice Islands of the East. An +Indian tale of a white-robed cacique aroused his hope of an +interview with Prester John. He dispatched a mission, including +a converted Jew who knew Hebrew, Chaldaic, and a little Arabic, +to a chieftain of Cuba, in the hope that thus he might establish +relations with the princely house of Kublai Khan. Presently he +would sail farther and, leaving the tropical islands behind him, +would round the Malay Peninsula, cross the Bay of Bengal and +the Sea of the Arabs, and make his way by land from Ethiopia +to Jerusalem, and by ship from Joppa back to Spain. It was a +soaring dream, yet its wings beat feebly beneath the pinions of +the tremendous reality the man died without comprehending.</p> + +<p>Columbus added another chapter to one of the oldest beliefs—the +theory of a world summit. Aristotle had thought that the +highest part of the earth was under the antarctic pole, others +that it was under the arctic pole. Columbus held that it was +under the equator. The earth, he thought, had the shape of a +pear instead of an orange. It seemed to him he knew just when +the globe began to swell toward heaven. This was about a +hundred leagues west of the Azores. There the magnetic needle<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span> +swung from northeast to northwest. The airs became more pure +and genial, the sea grew tranquil. From the climate of oppressive +heat and unwholesome air, the explorer ascended the back +of the sea, as one ascends a mountain toward heaven. The culminating +point was on the Tierra Firma of South America, which +might be approached by way of the Gulf of Paria. Thence +flowed the mighty stream of the Orinoco.</p> + +<p>A Spanish historian, excusing this fancy of Columbus, remarks +that mathematicians have since demonstrated that he was +not entirely wrong. The diameter of the earth is twenty-seven +miles greater at the equator than at the poles, and the mountain +country of Ecuador, beyond the headwaters of Orinoco, is the +true world summit, for, of all lands, it lies nearest heaven.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c3">Chapter III. Inanimate Nature</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">The</span> progress of knowledge has been an advance from poetry +to prose. In part it has consisted in forgetting the things that +were not so. Through most of the story of mankind everything +was fabulous. There were no inanimate objects at the beginning. +Sticks and stones had a soul. This belief passed, but +some quality of marvel remained—the rhythm of the moon repeated +in things terrestrial; the loves and antipathies of the +plants; the properties of gems to bring good fortune or ill, to +promote fecundity, to test the continence of men and women. +There was an unwieldy mass of topographical legends. Every +township had its shrine, or wonder-working well, or hill or tree +that broke a law of nature. There were strange cures for aches +and pains. Illusion was everywhere. The lumber rooms of +history are stored with traditions in which is the faint fragrance +of faded wonder.</p> + +<p>Sea and sky had each their part in the drama of life. To +the Celt the voices of the waves carried warning, or sympathy, +or prophecy. The ninth wave was larger than those before it, +and mystery was in it. It was thought that no man or animal +beside the Gallic sea died with a rising tide. The sun sank into +the ocean with a hissing sound, and there were races on both +sides of the world that heard it. The moon, Pliny said, “is +not unjustly regarded as the star of our life.” All seas were +purified when it was full, the Nile waxed and waned with it, +and sap in trees, and even men’s blood, increased or diminished +with its phases. The time of the rising of the Dog Star +was a sort of zero hour for many things in nature and husbandry.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Table of the Sun</i></p> + +<p>There was a Table of the Sun, where the earth itself presided +as host. Herodotus was the first to describe it. He says<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span> +that when Cambyses, the Persian king, was in Egypt, he sent +spies into Ethiopia under the pretense of bearing gifts to court, +but in reality to see if the table were a fact. The spies came +back with various stories—that the Ethiopians drank only milk +and water, that they lived to be one hundred and twenty +years old, that the Fountain of Youth bubbled up in that country, +and that they had seen the Table of the Sun. This was set +by direction of the magistrates in a meadow in the outskirts of +the capital city, and the people of the land said that the earth +itself brought forth the food spread upon the table for all +comers. For a full description one may use with advantage +the idiomatic paraphrase of Purchas:</p> + +<p>“Of the Table of the Sunne thus writeth Friar Luys de Urreta: +that the king in a curious braverie, and sumptuous vanitie, +caused there to bee set by night in a certain field store of white +bread, and the choysest wines; hanged also on the Trees great +varietie of Fowles, rost and boyled, and set on the ground, +Mutton, Lambe, Veale, Beefe, with many other dainties ready +dressed. Travellers and hungry persons which came hither +and found this abundance, seeing no bodie which prepared, or +which kept the same, ascribed it to <i>Jupiter Hospitalis</i> his bounty +and hospitality, shewing himselfe a Protector of poore Travellers, +and called this field the <i>Table of the Sunne</i>. The report +hereof passed through the world, and brought many Pilgrims +from farre Countries, to visit the same. <i>Plato</i> the Prince +of Philosophers entred into Aethiopia, led with desire to see +this renowned <i>Table</i> and to eate of those delicacies. The Aethiopians, +since their Christianity, in zealous detestation of Idolatry, +will not so much as name this field, and these ancient +Rites.”</p> + +<p>It has been suggested that the legend derives from the system +of dumb trading between civilized and savage peoples which in +Africa antedates history. If this be so, the wheat was supplied +by merchants rather than by the king, the magistrates laid down +the rules for the voiceless market, and the natives, coming after +the merchants had withdrawn, left gold in exchange for what +they took away.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span></p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Mountain of Lodestone</i></p> + +<p>Agib, son of a sultan and by his vicissitudes become the Third +Calendar of the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, had embarked with all the royal +fleet on a tour of his provinces. A storm blew them out of their +course, and then by virtue of the iron in the ships they were +drawn irresistibly toward a black mountain or mine of adamant +that loomed before them. They saw upon it a dome of fine brass +and on the dome a brazen horse, carrying a rider who had a +plate of lead on his breast, on which talismanic characters were +graven. Suddenly “all the nails and iron in the ships flew +toward the mountain, where they were fixed, by the violence of +the attraction, with a horrible noise; the ships split asunder, and +their cargoes sunk into the sea,” with all the men save Agib +himself. He gained the shore, climbed to the dome, and slept +there, in his sleep receiving good counsel. The next day he shot +three arrows of lead from a bow of brass at the brazen horse +and its rider. They were toppled over, the sea rose and engulfed +the mountain, and Agib was ferried off to fresh adventures.</p> + +<p>Some Bedouin or Persian story-teller of the bazaars may +have added the detail of the heaven-kissing statue and its overthrow, +but the body of the narrative is one of the oldest of +legends. Men have always been curious about the lodestone. +The tale of the magnetic mountain to which ships built +with iron bolts are drawn is found in Aristotle, Pliny, and +Ptolemy, in the Arab geographies, in Chinese writings, and in +the reports of explorers clear to the close of the mediæval +period. Ogier the Dane in the Charlemagne cycle was wrecked +on such a mountain and like Agib was spared for sensuous +delights. In a twelfth-century poem, when the ship of Duke +Ernst entered the Klebermeer, it was drawn to the rock called +Magnes and found itself among “many a work of keels,” over +which the masts rose like a tangled forest.</p> + +<p>Ptolemy is the most definite of the early writers. “There are +said to be ten islands,” he says, “forming a continuous group +called Maniolai, from which ships with iron nails are said to +be unable to move away, and hence they are built with wooden +bolts. The inhabitants are reputed to be cannibals.” Dampier, +Gemelli-Careri, and many others identify Maniolai with Manila,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span> +and assume that the magnetic islands were the Philippines; +but Gerini, a sagacious editor of Ptolemy’s eastern geography, +believes they were the Nicobars.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The River Sambation</i></p> + +<p>Rising in a pious Jewish fable, first recited in Josephus, the +River Sambation has flowed for eighteen centuries through the +geography of legend. It separated the lost Ten Tribes from +other Jews, or from the subjects of Prester John. Some said it +was in Caucasia, others in Arabia; and from as far east as +China and as far west as Ethiopia it was reported. Josephus +placed it between Raphanea and a district of Agrippa’s kingdom; +it was called the Sabbatic river because it ran only on +Saturdays, its bed being dry the other six days of the week. +Pliny had it, however, that on Saturdays the stream rested. +Much was heard of it in the Middle Ages. Eldad Hadani, a +ninth-century traveler, said it was in the land of Cush. It had +little water, but sand and stones rolled restlessly down its bed +with a noise “like the waves of the sea and a stormy wind”; +on the Sabbath their tumult was stilled and flames surrounded +the river so that none could pass.</p> + +<p>The stream was in India, spice groves bordered it, and quantities +of precious stones went down in its billowing sand to the +sea; so said the letter of Prester John. It was fifty days’ journey +inland from Aden, said the Jewish traveler Obadiah di Bertinoro, +for thus Arab traders had told him. A Jewish geographer, +Abraham Farissol, also of the fifteenth century, identified it +with the Ganges. Abraham Yazel, a Jewish scholar of the next +century, told of a bottle filled with its sand, and save on the +Sabbath the sand was in motion. A Christian whom he quoted +had seen the river in the dominions of the Grand Turk. It was +from one to four miles broad, with plenty of water, but dangerous +to navigate because of the rocks and sand that rolled along +with the current: “ships which venture on it lose their way, and +indeed no ship is yet known to have returned safely from this +river.” An Arabian in Lisbon carried an hour-glass filled with +this uneasy sand on Friday afternoons through a street of shops +run by Jews who had professed Christianity. “Ye Jews,” he +exclaimed, “shut up your shops, for now the Sabbath comes.”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span> +The last word from the Sambation was in 1847, when the governor +of Aden told a messenger seeking aid for Jews of the +Holy Land that there was a great Jewish kingdom forty stages +inland, but that the river was not there; it was in China.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Magical Springs</i></p> + +<p>Classic mythology peopled lakes, rivers, brooks, and springs +with female divinities of a minor rank known as naiads, who +were endowed with prophetic power and were able to inspire +those who drank of these waters. The belief in the nymphs +waned, but a belief in the singular properties of the waters long +persisted. Many stories relate to the mental effects thereof. +If you drink of a pool in the cave of the Clarian Apollo at +Colophon, says Pliny, you will acquire powers of oracle; but +you will not live long. Ctesias tells of an Indian fountain the +waters of which, when drawn, coagulated like a cheese; if a +little of this were triturated and the powder administered in a +potion, anybody who drank of it would become delirious, rave +all that day, and blab out whatever he had done. Therefore +did the king use this water as the modern drug, scopolamin, has +been used, to detect the guilt of persons accused. In Ethiopia, +according to Diodorus, Semiramis discovered a small lake the +sweet red waters of which impelled people who drank of them +to confess their faults. Pliny recites that at the temple of the +god Trophonius in Bœotia near the river Hercynnus are two +fountains, one promoting remembrance and the other forgetfulness; +one is called Mnemosyne, the other Lethe.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Fountain of the Sun</i></p> + +<p>The Fountain of the Sun was rediscovered by a modern +traveler, Belzoni, in the oasis of Jupiter Ammon. He found +that the ruins of the temple of Jupiter Ammon served as a basement +for nearly a whole village, in the vicinity of which was this +famous fountain in a deep well. According to old report it +was warm at midnight and cold at noon. The fact is its temperature +does not vary between night and day, and its apparent +changes are due to the greater or less heat of the surrounding +air, as the day advances or declines.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span></p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Tree of the Sun</i></p> + +<p>Best known of all trees was the Tree of the Sun. This grew +in Persia, and Maundeville says of it: “Within those Deserts +were the Trees of the Sun and of the Moon, that spoke to King +Alexander and warned him of his Death. And Men say that +the Folk that keep those Trees, and eat of the Fruit and of the +Balm that groweth there live well four hundred Year or five +hundred Year, by virtue of the Fruit and of the Balm.” Sir +John said he would have gone toward the trees “full gladly,” +but because of the wild beasts, serpents, and dragons “I trow +that one hundred thousand Men of Arms might not pass the +Deserts safely.” However, Marco Polo passed them safely, +and gives one of his terse descriptions of the tree “called the +tree of the sun and by Christians <i>arbo secco</i>, the dry or fruitless +tree.” It looked like the chestnut, but its husks contained no +fruit, and probably it was the Oriental plane tree. Here Alexander +fought Darius.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Wonder-working Trees</i></p> + +<p>Ctesias has a characteristic traveler’s account of the parebon, +an Indian tree about the size of the olive, but with neither +flowers nor fruit. It has, however, fifteen thick roots, which, +like the diviner’s rod, will attract the precious metals. If a +cubit’s length of root be taken, says the Cnidian, “it attracts +lambs and birds, and with this root most kinds of birds are +caught.” If you cast it into wine, it solidifies the liquor so that +it can be held in your hand like a piece of wax.</p> + +<p>The ancients had much to say of the properties of other trees +and plants. It was thought that the laurel or bay tree was +never struck by lightning, and so the peasants of the Pyrenees +hold to this day; the Emperor Tiberius wore a laurel wreath +during thunderstorms. The oak, planted near the walnut, would +perish. The shadow of the walnut was injurious to men and +productive of headache. The shadow of the elm was refreshing. +The olive, if so much as licked by a she-goat, became barren. +There was a moral feud between the vine and the cabbage, and +between the vine and the radish, so that the latter was prescribed +for drunkenness. The virtue of the mistletoe, says Pliny, was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span> +to resist all poisons and make fruitful any that used it. The +cocoanut and the betel nut were powerful aphrodisiacs. The +gum of the camphor tree bred impotency. The smell of the basil +begat scorpions in the brains of men. Moly would neutralize +sorcery. There was a plant called the eriphia with a hollow +stem, inside of which was a beetle which kept ascending and +descending its narrow home the while it bleated like a kid; this +plant was beneficial to the voice.</p> + +<p>The fable of the deadly upas, or poison tree of Macassar, +Erasmus Darwin’s “hydra tree of death,” is modern. According +to tradition, a putrid stream flows from the roots of the tree, +which grows in Java, and the vapors thereof kill. Foersch, a +Dutch physician who published a book in 1783, is mainly +responsible for the ill repute of this tree. He declares that +“not a tree nor blade of grass is to be found in the valley or +surrounding mountains. Not a bird or beast, reptile or living +thing lives in the vicinity.” He even asserts that “on one occasion +sixteen hundred refugees encamped within fourteen miles +of it, and all but three hundred died within two months.” +Investigation has disproved all of this. The tree grows in a +region where vegetation is luxuriant, men make a garment of +its fiber and walk under its branches, and there birds roost. +The venom known as Macassar poison with which Malays tip +their arrows is, however, made from its gum.</p> + +<p>There grows on the island of Hierro in the Canaries a remarkable +tree, if one may credit Richard Hakluyt and others of his +time. Hierro is six leagues in circuit and produces ample foodstuffs +for its inhabitants and their flocks of goats, although no +rain falls and no springs gush. There is, however, a great stone +cistern standing at the foot of a tree with leaves like the olive’s. +Clouds hover over the tree “and by means thereof,” says Hakluyt, +“the leaves of the sayd tree continually drop water, very +sweet, into the sayd cisterne, which cometh to the sayd tree from +the clouds by attraction.”</p> + +<p>The rain tree of Peru is described as tall, rich in leaves, and +possessed of “the power of collecting the dampness of the atmosphere +and condensing it into a continuous and copious +supply of rain.” “In the dry season,” says a Spanish newspaper +quoted in Walsh’s <i>Handy Book of Curious Information</i>,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span> +“when the rivers are low and heat great, the trees’ power of +condensing seems at the highest and water falls in abundance +from the leaves and oozes from the trunks. The water spreads +around in veritable rivers. These rivers are canalized so as to +regulate the course of the water.” This singular statement +closes with an estimate that a Peruvian rain tree will yield +nine gallons of water a day, and that 10,000 trees producing +daily 385,000 liters of water can be grown on a square kilometer.</p> + +<p>The Weather Bureau at Washington examined (1905) the +facts as to the rain tree, and declared that such a tree never +existed. The American consul-general at Callao reported +(1911) that he could find no rain trees in Peru. Then the Department +of Agriculture made a statement that the rain-tree +legend was centuries old, but had no basis. In partial explanation +thereof an English botanist said that cicada-swarms, settling +upon trees, tap their juices, which fall on the ground.</p> + +<p>Australia has planted many so-called rain trees.</p> + +<p>Ulloa, the Spanish astronomer, brought back to Europe a +related story in 1736. He found at Quito, he said, a species +of cane from thirty-five to fifty feet high and half a foot +thick. Until the canes reach full size most of the tubes contain +a quantity of water, and this rises and falls and is clear or +turbid, according to the phases of the moon.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Mandrake Myth</i></p> + +<p>Legends of the mandrake are perhaps a legacy of the ancient +dark white race whose gloomy imaginings and orgiastic practices +survived to color the brighter religions of Greece and +Rome, and emerged again in the witch-burnings of the Middle +Ages. These legends are widespread, uniformly sinister, often +obscene. Their basis may be in homeopathic magic—the belief +that like cures like, and also may kill like; or it may be in the +sea, where affinities with the pearl myth have been noted. It is +possible that the mandrake of forbidding fable is just a stranded +cowry, the shell which has been called the first deity.</p> + +<p>The mandrake is a member of the potato family growing in +Mediterranean countries. It is an emetic, a purgative, a narcotic +poison. Usually its flesh-colored roots are forked, so that,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span> +like a transplanted carrot or parsnip, it resembles a miniature +human figure. On this resemblance, and on its sleep-producing +properties, men have thought that the legends were based, and in +China, ginseng, which also has man-like roots, has inherited +them. The possessor of the mandrake could win good luck for +himself, bring bad luck to others, sway the passions, and even +in some measure command the elements.</p> + +<p>Hence the popular notions that the mandrake was an aphrodisiac, +that it relieved barrenness and promoted pregnancy, as +in the triangular episode in Genesis in which Jacob, Rachel, and +Leah figured; it was known as the love-apple, and Venus was +called Mandragorotis, while the Emperor Julian wrote Calixenes +that he drank its juices as a love potion. Hence, also, the belief +that it dripped blood when pulled from the earth and, as Homer +says, emitted a deathly shriek fatal to the man who heard it; +according to Josephus it was the custom in a certain Jewish +village to use a dog to pull up the roots, the dog being killed +by the shrieks that followed. Grimm describes this process, +which consisted in Germany of loosening the soil about the root, +tying the root to the dog’s tail, retreating to a safe distance down +the wind, and then decoying the dog with a piece of bread. The +dead canine was buried on the spot with religious honors, +and the root “washed with wine, wrapped in silk, laid in a +casket, bathed every Friday, and clothed in a little new white +smock every new moon. If thus considerately treated, it acts +as a familiar spirit, and every piece of coin laid by it at night +doubles in the morning.”</p> + +<p>Thus the mandrake legend entered its mediæval phase of +devil worship. The root was used as a charm against nightmare, +and against robbers, and to locate buried treasure. It was +supposed to be a living creature “engendered,” as Thomas Newton +says, “under the earth of the seed of some dead person +put to death for murder,” or, as Grimm says, “growing up beneath +the gallows from which a thief is suspended.” Heads +were carved on the mandrakes and these elaborated images went +by the names of manikin and erdman, or earth-man. As much +as twenty-five ducats in gold was paid for them. They were +often carried on the person in bottles, and bottle imps were +credited with the magic powers of homunculi. But if a man<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span> +died with one of these upon his person, the devil owned him +forthwith. Joan of Arc was charged with carrying such an +image about with her, but replied that she did not know what a +mandrake was. Margaret Bouchey was hanged near Orléans +in 1603 on the ground that she kept a living mandrake fiend, +in form of a female ape.</p> + +<p>Mandrake manikins were counterfeited from the root of a +yam-like plant, which had been manipulated into a complete +likeness of the human body. Sir Thomas Browne describes the +process: “The roots which are carried about by imposters to +deceive unfruitful women are made of the roots of canes, briony, +and other plants; for in these, yet fresh and virent, they carve +out the figures of men and women, first sticking therein the +grains of barley or millet where they intend the hair should +grow; then bury them in sand until the grains shoot forth their +roots, which, at the longest, will happen in twenty days; they +afterward clip and trim those tender strings in the fashion of +beards and other hairy teguments. All which, like other impostures, +once discovered, is easily effected, and in the root of white +briony may be practiced every spring.”</p> + +<p>A century ago mandrake images were still seen in French +seaport towns, but now mandragora has lost its vogue even as +a medicine. In Africa and the East, however, it is still used +as a narcotic and anti-spasmodic, while ginseng, which is a +surrogate, maintains its spell in China, where as much as four +hundred dollars has been paid for an ounce of it.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Precious Stones</i></p> + +<p>Among minerals jade held a place as distinct as that of the +mandrake among plants, but its associations were all auspicious. +Its place is the highest among the precious stones, although it is +not a precious stone at all. It is a substance to which heliolithic +culture attached magical power and which it carried quite +around the world before history began, Aryans, Kanakas, and +red Indians holding it in equal regard. Axes and hatchets of +jade or jadeite have been uncovered in the burial grounds of +neolithic Europe, and there are jade celts, cylinders, and amulets +bearing Greek, Babylonian, and Egyptian inscriptions. In a +sense the civilization of China has been built up around this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> +stone. Eighteen centuries before the Christian era the emperors +of the Shang dynasty used it in the state ritual, paying homage +to the east with a green jade tablet, to the south with a red tablet, +to the west with a white tablet, and to the north with a black +tablet. According to Confucius, “its sound, pure and sonorous, +with its peculiarity of ceasing abruptly, is the emblem of music; +its splendor resembles the sky, and its substance, drawn from +mountain and stream, represents the earth.” An ancient caravan +trade in this stone is commemorated by a portal in the +Great Wall called the Jade Gate.</p> + +<p>The Amazon stone which the Spaniards obtained from the +South American Indians was jadeite. By them as well as by +their conquerors it was thought to be a cure for diseases of the +kidneys, hence its name of nephrite. A revived interest in jade +followed American exploration. Historically it has been treasured +as a cure for colic and for diseases of the spleen and loins; +hung against the stomach, Galen believed it a remedy for +cramps. It was a good-luck charm, and, fashioned into drinking +cups, a detector of poisons, which foamed against the brim. +It survives in art and symbolism after having passed out of +magic and medicine.</p> + +<p>Many of the old traditions about stones persist in popular +belief, which holds certain kinds of gems and individual jewels +as lucky or unlucky; and in fashion, which assigns to each +month its appropriate birthstone. It was supposed that the +garnet preserved health, that the ruby was a remedy for plague, +that the turquoise protected from accident, that the eagle-stone +would promote childbirth, that the emerald would prevent epilepsy, +that the topaz would cure insanity, that lapis lazuli was +a purgative, and bezoar antidotal. Jasper was a febrifuge and +rock crystal quenched thirst. An amethyst would prevent intoxication, +a bloodstone would confer the gift of prophecy, a +chrysoprase would cure cupidity, a sapphire would defend +against enchantments, an agate would avert a tempest, a carbuncle +would give light in the dark, an opal would dispel +despondency, an emerald would break if worn in the commerce +of the sexes, and a diamond under a woman’s pillow would +discover her incontinency.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f8"> +<img src="images/fig8.jpg" alt="putrid"> +<p class="caption"><i>According to Tradition, a Putrid Stream Flows from the Roots of the<br> +Tree and the Vapors Thereof Kill</i></p> +</div> + +<p>In Christian symbolism, jasper signified the foundation of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span> +the church, emerald the freshness of piety, beryl the illumination +of the divine spirit. Sapphires typified the heavenly-minded, +chrysolite those who let their light shine in word and +deed, chalcedony those who fast and pray in secret.</p> + +<p>However vain the pagan jewel-lore from which Christian +borrowings were made, the ideas it arrays are older than the +conception of precious stones as mere adornment. These things +were sought and worn at first as life-givers and luck-bringers, +and not because they were beautiful. Justinus Kerner is of +those writers who contend that primitive man was so attuned to +nature that “even the spirit of the stone, now grown dull and +sluggish, was capable of affecting him.” Only when persons +are under the influence of magnetism, says this writer, are they +susceptible to the inherent powers of precious stones; because +that state was in a measure the normal state of early men they +found greater medicinal virtue in gems than in roots and herbs.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Wonders of Countries</i></p> + +<p>The travelers of yesterday found marvel awaiting them in +every land. The sun of India, Ctesias says, appears to be ten +times larger than in other countries, and for four finger-breadths +downward the surrounding seas are so hot that fish cannot come +near the surface. It is so hot in Ormuz, says Maundeville, that +“the Folk lie all naked in Rivers and Waters, Men and Women +together, from nine o’clock of the Day till it be past the Noon.” +In the Persian city of Susis, says Strabo, “lizards and serpents +at midday in summer cannot cross the streets quick enough to +prevent their being burnt to death midway by the heat.” Setting +one thing against another, Diodorus says that in Scythia by the +force of cold even brazen statues are burst asunder, while “in +the utmost coasts of Egypt and the Troglodytes the sun is so +scorching hot at midday that two standing together cannot see +each other by reason of the thickness of the air.”</p> + +<p>Ctesias speaks of a fountain in India which swims every year +with liquid gold, and out of which are drawn a hundred earthen +pitchers filled with the metal—melted ore, suggests Lassen. +There is growing upon Mount Ida in Scandia, says Father +Jerom Dandini, “a herb whose virtue is to gild the teeth of +those animals that eat of it; one may believe, and with good<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span> +reason, that this proceeds from the golden mines which are in +that ground.” Herodotus reports the Thracians as saying that +the country beyond the Ister (Danube) is possessed by bees, +wherefore travelers cannot penetrate it; these may have been +mosquitoes. At the altars of Mucius in the country of the Veii, +and about Tusculum and in the Cimmerian Forest, says Pliny, +there are places in which things that are pushed into the ground +cannot be pulled out again.</p> + +<p>Geographical marvel may be brought down almost to date +with Humboldt’s report on the moving “stone of the eyes” in +South America, which the natives believed to be both stone and +animal; and with Irving’s account of the extinct thunderbolts +which the plains Indians told him they sometimes used for arrow +heads. So armed, a warrior was invincible, but he vanished +if a thunderstorm arose during battle.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c4">Chapter IV. The Animal Kingdom</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">Much</span> of the literature of marvel relates to real animals. +The savage could see no great difference between them and himself; +that their bodies were unlike his did not seem important. +They could reason like him, they could understand what he +said to them, they had souls which, like his own, lived after +death. A beast could assume human shape, a man could become +a beast, and it was totemic theory that some beasts were +ancestors of some men.</p> + +<p>There were tribes that acted as if they were beasts, or birds. +The Bororo Indians identified themselves with gorgeous red +birds that lived in the heart of the Brazilian forest, and treated +them as if they were fellow mortals. Travelers have told of +savages who ate maggots bred in the carcasses of animals, and +on ceremonial occasions thereafter writhed, roared, barked, or +grunted, in keeping with the nature of the snake, lion, jackal, or +hippopotamus whose body had been the table of their feast. The +people of an Alaskan island mistook the first Russian party +that landed there for cuttlefish, because the men had buttons +on their clothes.</p> + +<p>Abundant traces of a belief that animals were beings of a +higher order than men are found in early religion, magic, and +medicine. Many of them were worshiped. Out of a fear that +their spirits might work harm, all of them were propitiated even +when pursued or killed. Portions of their dead bodies were used +as amulets and to work spells. Their brains, blood, entrails, and +excrements were a principal part of the Roman pharmacopœia +in the most brilliant age of the Empire; the witches’ broth in +Macbeth is an Augustan brew. Along with hundreds of like +prescriptions, Pliny recites that a mole’s right foot and the earth +thrown up by ants are remedies for scrofula, that a bat’s heart +is an antidote for ant venom, that a hen’s brains will cure snake +poison and the owlet’s a bee sting, that profuse perspiration may<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span> +be checked by rubbing the body with ashes of burnt goats’ horns +mixed with oil of myrtle, and that catarrh may be relieved by +kissing a mule’s nostrils.</p> + +<p>Curious as these things may seem, they come naturally from +the fact that primitive man had mainly to do with animals. +Outside of his tribal group he knew other men only as enemies. +But all about were furred and feathered and not unfriendly +creatures whose acts had a certainty and finality lifting them +above the doubts and fears that harassed him. He seemed a +late comer and guest in an animal world. So he did what timid +peoples are wont to do. He put himself under the protection +of beings more gifted than himself. He became a vassal of the +beasts. This was the first feudalism.</p> + +<p>The savage was glad to assert his kinship with the brute. In +the Indian west it was through the First People, who had the +human shape but an animal nature, and were transformed into +beasts and birds; a beast or a bird then created the second race +of men. The natives of Vancouver Island thought that when +nobody was about animals laid aside their skins and were people. +In places the tradition lingers that migratory birds become +men when in other lands. A traveler far from home was amazed +when a stranger called him by name and asked about each member +of the family. The mystery was solved when he learned how +this intimate knowledge was gained; the stranger was the stork +that each year built its nest upon his roof.</p> + +<p>Both in skin-shifting and shape-shifting the blood relationship +between man and brute was avowed. In the one, the hero of +savage epic, by donning or doffing an animal skin, put on or put +off the beast nature. In the other, the human or animal actor +strutted for a space on his cousin’s stage. Wizards could transform +themselves, as men thought, into wolves and hyenas; the +world-wide legend of the werewolf traces from the time when +metamorphosis was the alpha and omega of myth. Its survivals +strew the classics. Io became a heifer, Actæon a stag, Antigone +a stork, Arachne a spider, Itys a pheasant, Philomela a nightingale, +and Progne a swallow.</p> + +<p>Animals took on human form to get better acquainted with +men. Indian story tells of a man who unwittingly married a +female buffalo. An Indian woman wedded a stranger who bade<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> +her always throw the bones in a certain place, and whenever +he went out to eat she heard the barking of a dog near the +bone-heap; that was what he was. There are stories from every +continent of the union of women with reptiles that masqueraded +as men. Perhaps because they can assume the erect posture, +bears were often parties to alliances of this kind. It was thought +in Iceland that they were men bewitched and that their progeny +were born human but turned into cubs at a touch of the dam’s +paw. The Votiaks of the American northwest say the bear +traces back to man and knows his speech. When the hide is off, +the California Indians aver that bears are just like people. In +a Coos Indian story a girl married a fine-looking man whom she +met while picking berries; but when he took her to the ancestral +lodge, she found herself in a bear camp. There is a Tlingit +tale of a hunter who was captured by a female grizzly—object, +matrimony.</p> + +<p>The mitigation of these world stories is that they are literalistic +misreadings of old totemistic custom. Yet it is pleasant +enough to learn from a Tahltan tale that caribou “like to be +called people.”</p> + +<p>Under totemism, men chose their elder brothers, the brutes, +for guardians, took their names, deposited their own souls with +them for safekeeping, and, after death, entered their bodies. +Where totemism was unknown it was thought that the larger +prowling animals might be tenanted by demons and that their +weird howls at night were incidents of beast debates which had +the destinies of men as their topic. It was well not to affront +them even by naming them; better to use ingratiating epithets, +such as “blue-foot,” “gold-foot,” “gray-beard,” “broad-brow,” +“flash-eye,” “forest-brother.” The lesser sort were rogue heroes +in the beast epics—among the Hottentots the jackal; among the +Bantus, the rabbit; among the Orientals, the fox; among the +American Indians, the turtle, coyote, and raven.</p> + +<p>As a memorial of the antique relation between man and beast, +three out of every hundred persons in England and America +bear animal names. There is a wealth of detail as to how that +relation was carried down through legend into history. The +woodpecker directed the Aryan migrations, the wolf suckled the +founders of Rome, the nest of the eagle determined the winter<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span> +camps of the legions, the flights of birds fixed the sites of cities, +and their entrails decided for nations the issues of war and +peace. Animal forms range the entire field of early man’s interests. +Deified bulls, rams, crocodiles, hawks, and ibises thronged +the hospitable pantheon of Egypt. In the speculation of various +peoples the snake, the elephant, the whale, the boar, the turtle, +or the catfish supported the world, and when the creature moved +itself earthquake followed. The dove of Hebrew deluge story +found the earth. The larger animals were in the sky as constellations +before history began. When the moon is in eclipse there +are men to believe that it has been swallowed by a snake, a wolf, +a frog, a crab.</p> + +<p>In their primitive judicial processes men took oath in the +name of the sacred animal. In their agriculture they conceived +of the life of the grain as residing in an animal corn spirit—a +horse, a pig, a goat, or a dog, which hid itself in the last clump +of grain to be cut. In their marriage ceremonies, the cock, +duck, goat, or goose was a fertility emblem. Totem beasts are +tattooed on the bodies of savages. Animal outlines, at first as +a strong magic, were used upon pottery, clothes, and weapons, +and as decoration are still used. In animal masks and with +magical intent, dances are performed which mimic the ways of +beasts. Their feet, horns, claws, and teeth enter the medicine +bag of the shaman. When at last death comes to the savage, +perhaps a turkey buzzard or a humming bird convoys his soul to +the other world, or a dog guards the bridge over which it is to +pass to a happier realm, where the hunting of animals begins +anew.</p> + +<p>The reverence paid to the least considered of animals may +serve to show in what regard all of them were held and to explain +the marvels told about them. Scattered through the literature +and folklore of various peoples is a copious mass of +traditions as to vermin worship and to practices just suggested +by the fact that Beelzebub, the devil of Jewish Scripture, is the +Semitic god of flies. There was a classic deity known as the +mouse-Apollo and tame mice were kept in his sanctuary. The +Philistines sent to Israel, with the captured Ark, golden images +of mice. Isaiah bears witness that certain of the Jews met +secretly in gardens and ate swine’s flesh and mice for sacramental<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span> +purposes. In old stories the soul is pictured as issuing +from the mouths of dying or sleeping persons in the form of +a mouse. The Chams of Indo-China erected a pillar to the god +rat. Herodotus tells of the destruction of an Assyrian army +in Egypt by the aid of mice auxiliaries. It is still the custom +in some districts of Europe for peasants to exorcise mice from +the crops by running wildly with lighted torches around the +fields on the eve of Twelfth Day; to put the milk teeth of +children in a rat runway, so that the second teeth shall be as +white and strong as the rodent’s; to treat white mice with kindness +so as to bring luck to the house, and even to post a writing +with a message of good will where rats and mice can see it.</p> + +<p>While domestic animals which had killed or maimed persons +were regularly tried in the criminal courts of ancient Greece and +mediæval Europe, ecclesiastical courts long exercised jurisdiction +over smaller animal offenders. The curse of the Church +was relied upon to reach vermin against which the secular law +knew itself to be powerless; yet anathema was not pronounced +without judicial process. On complaint of ravaged parishes, +field mice, locusts, and beetles were summoned to appear in +court on a certain day and counsel was appointed to defend +them. In defense of accused rats in the diocese of Autun, +Chassenée, the brilliant French advocate of the sixteenth century, +laid the foundations of his fame. He cited biblical and +classical writers, interposed various technical objections, attributed +the failure of his clients to appear to the absence of +safe conducts, and demanded that the plaintiffs give bond that +their cats would not molest the defendant rodents in their journey +to court. On their refusal to give bond the case was adjourned +without day.</p> + +<p>Many such cases were compromised by setting aside a plot +of land to which the accused creatures might repair for sanctuary. +In the suit of Franciscan friars in Brazil in 1713 against +white ants which had invaded their monastery, the compromise +was influenced by the plea of counsel that the defendants not +only had prior possession of the ground, but were more industrious +than the complaining monks. Ecclesiastical suits were +brought at various times against caterpillars, cockchafers, flies, +leeches, moles, snails, slugs, weevils, and worms. From the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span> +ninth to the nineteenth century there is a record of 144 successful +prosecutions of animals, vermin included, and these are +thought to be only a fraction of the total number of such litigations. +The age which brought them was no less sure that +insects had rights, including the right of subsistence, than that +the Church had effectual power over them.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Elephant</i></p> + +<p>About the larger creatures fable has been busy and the foremost +figure is naturally the hugest of the land animals; only with +mediæval and heraldic times did the lion win pre-eminence. +Classic tradition revolves around the elephant’s intelligence, +morality, and social traits. There are stories of its understanding +Greek, and even writing it. As Pliny repeats, “it is sensible +alike of the pleasures of love and glory, and, to a degree that +is rare among men even, possesses notions of honesty, prudence, +and equity; it has a religious respect also for the stars, and a +veneration for the sun and the moon.”</p> + +<p>When surrounded by hunters, report had it that elephants +placed themselves in battle line, with the smaller-tusked animals +in front, so that the enemy might see that the spoil was unworthy +the seeking. When they perceived themselves about to be overcome, +they broke off their teeth against a tree in order to pay +their ransom. While other animals avoided fire, they resisted +and fought it because they saw it destroyed the forests. When +worn out by disease, they have been seen lying on their backs +and casting grass up into the air, “as if deputing the earth to +intercede for them with its prayers.”</p> + +<p>John Lok, in his <i>Voyage to Guinea</i>, paraphrases an ancient +belief as to the feud between the elephant and what he calls +the dragon: “They have continual warre against Dragons, which +desire their blood, because it is very colde; and therefore the +Dragon lying awaite as the Elephant passeth by, windeth his +taile, being of exceeding length, about the hinder legs of the +Elephant, & so staying him, thrusteth his head into his tronke +and exhausteth his breath, or else biteth him in the Eare, whereunto +he cannot reach with his tronke, and when the Elephant +waxeth faint, he falleth downe on the serpent, being now full +of blood, and with the poise of his body breaketh him: so that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span> +his owne blood with the blood of the Elephant runneth out of +him mingled together, which being colde, is congealed into that +substance which the Apothecaries call Sanguis Draconis, (that +is) Dragons blood, otherwise called Cinnabaris, commonly +called Cinoper or Vermilion, which the Painters use in certaine +colours.”</p> + +<p>The elephant is polygamous, although, as Lok says, “Plinie +and Soline write that elephants use none adulterie.” It was +thought that the intercourse of the sexes took place every second +year, in a honeymoon of five days’ length, and that the couples +purified themselves in a river before rejoining the herd. Of +these nuptial journeys Buffon says, “In their march love seems +to precede and modesty to follow them, for they observe the +greatest mystery in their amours.” To this day the East Africans +think that if their wives are unfaithful while they are on an +elephant hunt, themselves will be killed or maimed by their +quarry.</p> + +<p>It was a Roman belief that when elephants met a man who +had lost his way in the woods they would go gently before him +and bring him to a plain path. Sindbad had a kindred experience +on his seventh voyage when a herd conducted him to their +cemetery so that henceforth “I should forbear to kill them, as +now I knew where to get their teeth without inflicting injury on +them.” It is still widely believed that somewhere in Central +Africa, perhaps in a remote valley of the western Sudan, is +an elephant graveyard whither all the aged and ailing pachyderms +of the continent repair, sometimes traveling thousands of +miles in order to die in peace amid the relics of their kind. No +elephants dead of natural causes are ever found, tradition avers, +and from time to time expeditions have sought the vast riches +of this storehouse of mortuary ivory.</p> + +<p>To the elephant various peoples have accorded royal honors. +Akbar, the great Mogul, erected a monument to a favorite +elephant, which still stands near the deserted city of Fatephur +Sikri; it is a tower seventy-two feet high, studded with hundreds +of artificial tusks. At the court of Siam the traditional rank of +the chief white elephant has been next to the queen and before +the heir-apparent. The chief of the Burmese court herd has the +residence and honors of a minister of state. “The king of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span> +Pegu,” says one of the Hakluyt travelers, “is called the King of +the White Elephants. If any other king have one, and will not +send it him, he will make warre with him for it; for he had +rather lose a great part of his kingdome than not to conquere +him.” This was history when penned. In the sixteenth century +a long war was waged between Pegu, Siam, and Aracan, wherein +five kings were killed, in order to obtain possession of one white +elephant. These albinos are regarded as an appurtenance of +royalty and lack of them is an ill omen. Siam is the Land of +the White Elephant.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Rhinoceros</i></p> + +<p>The ancients had less to say of the rhinoceros than of the monoceros +or unicorn, for which fabulous beast it may have provided +the pattern; but they wove legends about the virtues of +its horn and its feud with the elephant. Cosmas Indicopleustes +wrote that when the rhinoceros walked its horn shook, but that +rage tightened it so that the beast was able to uproot trees. Its +skin was four fingers thick, and so hard that from it, instead of +iron, men made plowshares. In later ages the horn was kept +for the cure of diseases and detection of poison. Drinking cups +were made of it on a turner’s lathe, and the mediæval west +accepted the tradition of the east that these would sweat at the +approach of poison. Horns taken from young bull rhinoceroses +which had never coupled with females were preferred. Set in +gold and silver, the goblets were an acceptable present for kings. +Thunberg was one of the first inquirers to put the superstition to +the test by bringing the horn and various poisons together; there +was no chemical reaction.</p> + +<p>The tongue, not the horn, of the rhinoceros was its weapon +of offense, according to old belief. Marco Polo says that this +member, in the Sumatran species, is armed with long sharp +spines, wherewith, after trampling its enemies, it licks them to +death. Pliny has a like story.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Hippopotamus</i></p> + +<p>Of the hippopotamus two travelers’ tales may be noted. Pliny +gives it on hearsay that the river horse enters a cornfield backward, +so that there will be no one waiting to waylay it when it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span> +comes out. The statement of Father Joano dos Santos in his +history of eastern Ethiopia (1506) may best be set down verbatim: +“The hippopotamus is naturally of a sickly constitution, +and subject to gouty paines, which it cures by scratching the +stomach with the left foot; and it has further been noticed, when +it wishes to effect a perfect cure that it falls on the horn of +the hoof of the left foot; this, entering the stomach, appeases +and terminates the pain. Hence the Caffres and Moors make +use of this horn as a remedy for the gout.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Hyena</i></p> + +<p>The foul countenance and abject gaze of the hyena, its misshapen +body, its slinking tread, its affinities with both the wolf +and the cat tribes, have been provocative of legend. It lurks +in caves and ruins by day, it prowls for carrion food at night, +it despoils graveyards of their dead, it roams through unlighted +villages, and its howl when excited has a weird note, as of a +demon’s laughter; so antique fable had much to work upon. “Of +prodigious strength,” Ctesias called the beast under its Indian +name of Krokottas; and, indeed, no animal of its size has jaws +so powerful. He credited it with the courage of the lion, the +speed of the horse, and the strength of the bull. It imitated +the human voice, he said, and, pronouncing their names, called +men out at night, when it fell upon and devoured them. “We +cannot in the least credit this,” is however, the comment of Diodorus +Siculus.</p> + +<p>Pliny, and Solinus after him, thought that the hyena was +male one year and female the next—an opinion challenged by +Aristotle. It was supposed to carry a stone in its eye which, +placed under a man’s tongue, would enable him to prophesy. +Purchas says the beast “hath no necke joynt, and therefore +stirres not his necke but with bending about his whole body.” +Improving upon Ctesias, he says the animal draws near to +sheepcotes at night in order to learn the names of herdsmen, +whom afterward it decoys to destruction. Its eyes are “diversified +with a thousand colours” and the touch of its shadow +“makes a dogge not able to barke.” Buffon mentions, only to +scout, the notion that the hyena fascinates shepherds so that they +cannot move, and renders shepherdesses distracted in love. As<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span> +a supposed hybrid, Raleigh excludes it from the Ark. A kind of +worship is still paid it in East Africa, where the oath of the +hyena is administered; it is a crime to kill one and a misdemeanor +to mimic its voice. Stories are told of gold rings found +in the ears of dead hyenas similar to those worn by sorcerers +and workers in iron.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Gnu</i></p> + +<p>Near the headwaters of the Nile, according to Pliny, roams +the catoblepas, an animal of moderate size and of movements +made cumbersome by a head immoderately heavy, which is +always bent down toward the earth. This is a fortunate thing, +for otherwise “it would prove the destruction of the human +race,” since “all who behold its eyes fall dead upon the spot.” +In this demon-beast of dejected aspect Cuvier recognizes the +antelope-gnu, a horned creature apparently compounded of a +bison’s head, a horse’s body, and an antelope’s legs; a fantastic +and mournful silhouette of the African prairies.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Crocodile</i></p> + +<p>The standing of the crocodile in ancient Egypt, and among the +savages of the East Indies to this day, has been that of a sacred, +or at least a tabooed, animal. It had its own temple at Memphis, +where it was worshiped as a divinity, and tame crocodiles took +part in the religious processions. The Dyaks of Borneo and the +Minangkabauers of Sumatra never kill a crocodile unless it has +killed a man. Its privileged position among animals is due to +a variety of reasons, of which only three need be noted: it is a +dangerous reptile, it flourishes mainly where other food is +plenty, and its meat is not agreeable to most palates, having, as +Sir Samuel Baker puts it, “the combined flavor of bad fish, rotten +flesh, and musk.” Such a creature it is both savage superstition +and policy to let alone, and even to flatter.</p> + +<p>The older explanations of crocodile worship are more fantastic. +According to Plutarch, this reptile is a symbol of deity because +it is the only aquatic animal which has its eyes covered +with a thin membrane, so that, like divinity, it sees without being +seen. He adds that the Egyptians worship God symbolically in +the crocodile, that being the only animal without a tongue, like<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span> +the Divine Logos, which is in no need of speech. One species +has something more than a hundred teeth, wherefore Achilles +Tatius declares, “the number of its teeth equals the number of +days in a year.”</p> + +<p>In his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Ludolf saw a crocodile +which the Knights Templars, by extracting certain of its teeth, +had converted into a serviceable beast of burden. “In winter,” +says Maundeville, “the Cockodrills lie as in a dream.” Purchas +provides a detail on a matter of peculiar interest to the mediævals: +one lobe of the crocodile’s liver is poison, the other counter-poison.</p> + +<p>“Crocodile tears” are defined as simulated weeping, and back +of this useful metaphor is the venerable tradition set down in +Hakluyt’s collection: “His nature is ever when hee would have +his prey, to cry and sobbe like a Christian body, to provoke them +to come to him, and then hee snatcheth at them, and thereupon +came this proverbe that is applied unto women when they weepe, +<i>Lachrmyæ Crocodili</i>, the meaning whereof is, that as the Crocodile +when hee crieth, goeth then about most to deceive, so doeth +a woman most commonly when shee weepeth.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Snakes</i></p> + +<p>Most of the numerous snake traditions have a religious significance. +The older writers, however, have left observations +which belong to natural history. Pliny recites it as “a well-known +fact” that a serpent 120 feet in length was taken at the +river Bagrada in the Punic Wars by the Roman army under +Regulus. The monster was besieged as if it were a fortress, +balistæ and other engines being used. Of India, known from +earliest time for its immense serpents, the most striking reptile +story Ctesias has to tell is of a snake only a fathom long, and +without fangs. It is purple with a white head and does execution +by vomiting. Flesh putrefies wherever the vomit falls. +Suspended by the tail, it yields two kinds of poison, amber-hued +when the snake is living, black when obtained from a carcass. +A sesame seed’s bulk of the former brings instant death to him +who swallows it, his brains oozing from his nostrils, while the +latter brings death from consumption after about a year.</p> + +<p>Out of many traditions that snakes have power to fascinate<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span> +or injure without striking, two opinions from respectable sources +may be given. Ulloa, the Spanish explorer, thinks the breath +of the cobra produces “a kind of inebriation,” in persons, as +does “the urine of the fox” and “the breath of the whale.” +Lobo, the Portuguese friar, reports that while lying on the +ground in Abyssinia, he was seized with a pain which forced +him to rise, when he discovered a serpent something more than +four yards from him. He revived himself with “that sovereign +remedy” a bezoar stone. These serpents, he explains, have wide +mouths and swallow air in great quantities, which they presently +eject with such force that it kills at four yards.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Grasshoppers</i></p> + +<p>Classic writers knew the grasshopper less as a pest than as +a food, and it has a pleasant place in myth. Tithonus, beloved +of Aurora and dowered by the gods with immortality but not +with eternal youth, was changed by her into a grasshopper after +he shrank up with old age. There is a grasshopper fable to +which Strabo gives a naturalistic and Solinus a supernatural +tinge. In southern Italy, Rhegium and Locris are divided by a +river flowing through a deep ravine. The insects on the Locrian +side sing, while those on the other side are silent.</p> + +<p>Strabo suggests that this is because it is sunny on the Locrian +side, and densely wooded across the river. In the one case the +membranes used in stridulation are dry and horny and therefore +resonant when rasped together; in the other, they are so +softened by shade and dew that they produce no sound. Solinus +has a simpler explanation. Hercules passed by Rhegium and +its grasshopper orchestra irritated him. So he bade the insects +be silent, and, resentful or forgetful, failed to lift the embargo.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Salamander</i></p> + +<p>The best account of the salamander appears in the <i>Memoirs</i> +of Benvenuto Cellini. “One day,” he said, “when I was about +fifteen years of age, my father was in a cellar where they had +been scalding some clothes for washing. He was alone, and +was playing upon the viol and singing in front of a good fire +of oakwood, for the weather was very cold. On looking at the +fire accidentally, he saw a small animal resembling a lizard, +gambolling joyously in the midst of the fiercest flames. My<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span> +father instantly perceiving what it was, he called my sister and +me, pointed out the animal to us, and gave me a severe box on +the ear, which caused me to shed a perfect deluge of tears. He +gently wiped my eyes and said to me, ‘My dear boy, I did not +strike you as a punishment, but only that you should remember +that that lizard which you behold in the fire is a salamander, an +animal which has never been seen by any known person.’ He +afterwards kissed me and gave me a few quattrini.”</p> + +<p>That the salamander is able to live in flames, Aristotle +thought, and Ælian, and Nicander, and Pliny. The last named +tells why: This lizard is so cold that it extinguishes fire like +ice. There is great danger in its venom. Unless precautions +are taken it might destroy whole nations, for if it crawls up a +tree it infects all the fruit and those who eat thereof are killed. +It will also poison water or wine in which it is drowned. Sir +Thomas Browne concedes that it may resist a flame or put out +a coal, but “thus much will many humid bodies perform.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Spider Dance</i></p> + +<p>The tarantula is a large, brown mining spider which is found +on both shores of the Mediterranean, and is said to be numerous +near Taranto in southern Italy, whence its name. Its bite is +painful, although not dangerous, but in the fifteenth century +the superstition arose that it caused what is called tarantism, +a nervous affection with some of the symptoms of hydrophobia, +and now classed with St. Vitus dance. Those who were bitten, or +believed themselves to be, assumed a livid color, lost the senses +of sight and hearing, and sank into a deep depression; nausea +and sexual excitement were also remarked. Only music could +arouse the sufferer; under the influence of lively strains he +would dance himself into a perspiration and the poison of the +spider bite would escape through the skin. If the dance was +continued to exhaustion the patient was cured, at any rate for a +time.</p> + +<p>The disease soon assumed the form of a contagion communicated +from one person to another. Dancers were violently +affected by bright colors. Red was the favorite, and then green +and yellow, and one man’s hue might be another’s madness. +Sufferers sought water, some plunging into the sea, others immersing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span> +their heads in a tub or carrying globes of water while +dancing. Old and young, skeptical visitors as well as natives, +and women more than men, were the victims. Attacks lasted +from two to six days, and recovery was effectual until warm +weather came the following year, when the symptoms had again +to be exorcised to music. One woman was a tarantant for +thirty summers.</p> + +<p>The earliest mention of the mania is in the writings of Nicolas +Perotti, a contemporary of Columbus. It broke out at the same +time that the St. Vitus dance appeared in Germany. A like +superstition and a like cure are known in a Persian province. +The northern nations were first to recover and since the seventeenth +century the epidemic has slowly waned. The lively +Neapolitan folk dance, called the tarantella, is a memorial of +the madness that set the Middle Ages dancing with a spider +calling the tune.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Swallow</i></p> + +<p>Swallows show themselves suddenly in the northern climes +in April, and as suddenly vanish at the threshold of autumn. +They are often seen skimming the surface of water. Doctor +Kalm, the Swedish traveler, reports that in April, 1750, he saw +great numbers perched upon posts, “and they were as wet as if +they had just come out of the sea.” That the swallow comes +out of the sea in the spring and returns to it in the fall is a +belief of unknown antiquity. Thus, thought Luther, it repeated +each year the process of creation recorded in Genesis, when +the water obeyed the command to bring forth “fowl that may +fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.”</p> + +<p>There is a considerable literature on the reputed hibernation +of the swallow. It has been credited with electing at will +the winter economy of the wild goose, the bear, or the batrachian. +In Mediterranean countries it is conceded that swallows migrate. +In England and Germany, according to one eighteenth-century +observer, they “retire into clefts and holes in rocks, and remain +there in torpid state.” In the colder northern countries popular +opinion has been that they submerge in the sea. Regnard, the +French comic poet, who made a journey to Lapland in 1681, +accepted this on the word of trustworthy Danes and Swedes.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span></p> + +<p>In the eighteenth century the secretary to the city of Dantzig +obtained sworn testimony in support of this opinion from collectors +of the revenues of the king of Prussia. The mother of +the Countess Lehndorf reported that she saw “a bundle of +swallows” brought from under water to a warm room, where +they revived and fluttered about. Count Schlieben said that +while fishing on his estate he saw several swallows netted, one +of which he carried into a warm room; it lay there for an hour +and then began to stir and fly around. Collector-General +Witkowski said that in 1741 he got two swallows from the great +pond at Didlacken, and that these birds revived in a warm room, +“fluttered about, and died three hours later.” Six other witnesses +made their several oaths to similar incidents.</p> + +<p>A final touch of poetry is given by the statement of Doctor +Wallerius, the celebrated Swedish chemist, who deposed “that +he had seen more than once swallows assembling on a reed till +they were all immersed and went to the bottom; this being preceded +by a dirge of a quarter of an hour’s length.” Holy, +luck-bringing, and inviolate, men everywhere have thought the +swallow, and the solemn descents into the sea with which legend +credited it deepened this character.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Wild Geese</i></p> + +<p>About wild geese a still more fantastic belief obtained up +to four centuries ago, when the Dutch discovered Spitzbergen. +It was thought that goslings grew upon trees in the form of nuts. +The nuts fell into the sea and the chicks came forth. Therefore +a decree at the Sorbonne in Paris adjudged that wild geese were +not birds and could be eaten in Lent. In Spitzbergen, Barentz +came upon the breeding grounds of these migratory fowl, and, +breaking open the eggs, discovered the unhatched young in them. +So the myth passed. “It is not our fault,” he remarked, “that +we have not known this before, when these birds insist upon +breeding so far northward.” Two variants of the story are +found among Norwegian writers. Jonas Ramus says that “a +particular sort of Geese found in Nordland leave their seed on +old trees and stumps and blocks lying in the sea”; a shell forms +around the seed, and from the shell, as from an egg, young<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span> +geese are hatched by the sun. Pontoppidan describes what +seems to be the goose barnacle which contains “the little creature +reported to be a young wild goose.” It looks like “little +crooked feathers squeezed together” and is merely a “living +sea insect.” While the legend was credited it was used to confirm +the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Animal Politics</i></p> + +<p>Fable dowered various creatures with the political institutions +and social sense of the ant and bee. Pearl oysters were said +to live in settlements under the rule of the oldest. Cranes +placed sentinels on guard at night, each with a stone in its claw; +if the bird nodded the stone fell to the ground, betraying its +neglect of duty. Cranes, rooks and storks, even modern observers +assert, hold criminal courts. Twice a year a pair of +ravens was assigned to each farm in Iceland by a parliament +of their fellows. The storks of Egypt were supposed every +winter to make the Mecca pilgrimage and were regarded as +hajjis. Because the panther’s diet was aromatic roots and herbs, +its breath was balmy and medicinal, and when it walked abroad +all the other beasts attended it. Wild beasts and apes tended a +mountain shrine near Srinagar in India, bringing daily offerings +of flowers. In Ceylon “very pious and credible persons” told +Ibn Batuta that the bearded black monkeys had their own sultan, +who wore a green turban woven of leaves, as if he wished to +seem an Islamite, and maintained a council of state and a harem.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Other Animal Marvels</i></p> + +<p>Marvel tales about animals might be recited almost indefinitely, +and a respectable authority ancient or modern, named for +each. A few representative ones may be noted. It is a well-known +fact, says Solinus, that magpies have died because they +could not master the pronunciation of a difficult word. In South +America, according to Purchas, men make clean their teeth with +the beards of seals, “because they bee wholesome for the toothache.” +The she-camel, so says Launcelot Addison, father of the +essayist, “brings forth her young in a negligent slumber.” The +toucan, says Humboldt, makes an extraordinary gesture when +preparing to drink, which the monks assert is the sign of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span> +cross upon the water, and so the creoles call it <i>diostede</i> (God +gives it to thee). Bordering the country of the grasshopper-eaters +in Africa, says Diodorus, is a fair land which has been +untenanted since rain bred a multitude of venomous spiders that +stung many persons to death and drove away the remainder. +Plutarch thought that the ibis became more sacred by standing +with straddled legs so as to form a triangle. Buffon confutes +the notion, based on the noisome odor of the shrewmouse, that +its bite is dangerous to cattle. Isaac Walton cites a polygamous +fish which “goes courting she-goats on the grassy shore.” Even +Linnæus thought that birds of paradise had neither wings nor +feet.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Pliny’s Mirabilia</i></p> + +<p>Pliny is authority for the fables which follow: The ant rests +from her labors at the changes of the moon. The sea remains +calm while the halcyon is hatching her young upon it. When +the sun is in Cancer the bodies of dead crabs on the seashore +are transformed into serpents. When the porcupine stretches its +skin it discharges its quills like missiles. Lions resent it if a +man looks at them asquint. The breath of the elephant will +draw serpents from their retreats. Only by using the left hand +can one pull snakes from their holes. They will flee from a +naked man, but pursue one clothed. The best way to catch +eels is to put the bait in the end of a hollow fishing rod and +suffocate them by blowing through it.</p> + +<p>Bears crawl into their dens on their backs in order to leave no +betraying trail. Ostriches throw stones at their pursuers. Vultures +will entice a bull over a precipice by holding their wings +before its eyes. The boding raven is most so when it swallows +its voice as if choked. If a horse follows in the track of a +wolf it will burst asunder beneath its rider. If a shrewmouse +crosses the rut of a wheel it will die at once. The pastern bones +of swine promote discord. Madness in he-goats may be calmed +by stroking their beards. She-goats in pasture never look at one +another at sunset. Goats breathe through their ears, are never +quite free from fever, and are therefore more lascivious than +sheep. Roebucks grow fat on poisons.</p> + +<p>As to birds and insects, it is doubtful if they dream; yet<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span> +pigeons “have a certain appreciation of glory.” At a certain +season cuckoos become hawks. The crow is at enmity with the +weasel, the duck with the sea-mew, but there is friendship between +the peacock and the pigeon, the turtle-dove and the parrot, +the heron and the crow. Quails sometimes settle so thickly on +ships at night as to sink them. Locusts make their whirring +noise by grinding their teeth. Hornets, wasps, and bees will not +attack a person stung by a scorpion. In high winds bees carry +small stones for ballast. It is not certain whether their honey is +“the sweat of the heavens, or whether a saliva emanating from +the stars, or a juice exuding from the air while purifying itself.”</p> + +<p>Stranger than these classic beliefs is the early Christian tradition +of the small hole found in the forefeet of pigs when the +hair is removed. Therein of old time passed the legion of +devils in the country of the Gadarenes. The rings about the +hole which seem branded in the skin are the marks of demons’ +claws as they entered their unclean habitation. Javanese Moslems +have it that the peacock was gatekeeper of Paradise and admitted +the devil by swallowing him. A third domestic creature, +the cock, could scatter ghosts and demons by his dawn cry.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Browne Catalogues Vulgar Errors</i></p> + +<p>The treatise upon <i>Vulgar Errors</i> which Sir Thomas Browne +made in the seventeenth century attacks many notions that had +come down to his time from a past without date. Among them +are the following: Swans sing their own death songs. The +badger has the legs of one side shorter than the other. Spermaceti +is the spawn of the whale. Lampries have nine eyes. +There is antipathy between the toad and the spider. There is +a lucky-stone in the toad’s head. The pelican pierces her breast +and feeds her young with her own blood. The clicking sound +made in a wainscoting by the beetle called the death-watch +presages bereavement. Peacocks are ashamed of their legs. +Storks will live only in republics or free states. Lions are +afraid of cocks.</p> + +<p>Each of these beliefs the great physician confutes in turn, +remarking, for example, that storks nest in kingly France and +in the dominions of the Great Turk, and that a lion, escaped +from a menagerie, had robbed a hen roost in Bavaria.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span></p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Beasts of the Hermits</i></p> + +<p>A chapter of charming legends has for its theme not the remarkable +traits of different species of animals, but the conduct +of single creatures that came under the influence of holy men +who went out into the deserts in the early days of the Christian +era. In the absence of human society the fowls of the air and +the beasts of the field formed for the hermit the society of the +waste. The crocodile, protected and worshiped by pagan Egypt, +the gross-looking hippopotamus, the venomous serpents, and +above all the hyena, with its fearful laughter, rimmed the +anchorite’s life with a horizon of supernatural terror; these +were embodied dæmons with designs upon his very soul. But +sometimes he could cast out the evil spirit that tenanted them, +and there were other and gentler beasts that became his servants +and companions. In them the unfriendly deserts were made to +repeat the polity of Eden, where all created things obeyed man.</p> + +<p>Wild asses, lions, stags, wolves, and fowls were the hermit’s +domestic animals. Stags, harnessed to plow, cultivated the +field of St. Leonor, and took the place of St. Colodoc’s cattle +when these were driven away because he had sheltered a hunted +deer. St. Helenus rode on the back of a crocodile. Dragons +guarded the cell of Abbot Ammon. The lion from whose foot +St. Gerasimus extracted a thorn protected his ass. St. Costinian +saddled and rode a bear. St. Sulpicius tells of a she-wolf as +tame as a dog and of a lioness under a palm tree that moved +modestly aside at a hermit’s command until he had eaten his +fill of dates. Swallows sang upon the knees of St. Guthlac.</p> + +<p>Not all of this, it may be, is the mere poetry of pious imaginations. +After the breakdown of Roman civilization in the west, +many of the oxen, horses, and dogs returned to the wild state, +and what the hermits did in some cases was merely to recall +them to their ancient allegiance. Here and there among so +many thousands of solitaries, so Kingsley urges, were men such +as become horse-tamers and bee-takers in settled communities, +whose natures won them friends in the world of brutes. The +very quietude of the hermits, their habit of silent meditation in +field and forest, would disarm the fears of wild things and draw +them toward companionship.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span></p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Invasion of the Cathedrals</i></p> + +<p>The church had yet another chapter to write in the story of +the beasts, and this time they became hieroglyphs on the vast +scroll of the cathedrals. The early significance of animals in +the life of man was completely revived in the mediæval fanes, +but as allegory rather than reality. Brute and fowl were created, +it was thought, only to illustrate the truth of God’s word +and to convey some spiritual message. Did not Job say, “Ask +the beast and it will teach thee, and the birds of heaven and they +will tell thee”? What they taught and told was set forth at +large in the cathedral, which became in very fact a rebus carved +in stone. With effects that were indescribably quaint, and beautiful +at times, Christian symbolism wrought itself in ecclesiastical +architecture in an age when few could read other writing.</p> + +<p>From Egypt, where cenobites were already in communion +with desert creatures, the impulse came; and from India, where +Buddhist ascetics were taught to pattern their humility from the +ass that sleeps by the roadside, their aloofness from the rhinoceros +that wanders alone. Its immediate source was the +<i>Physiologus</i>, or Naturalist, the compilation by an Alexandrian +Greek of what the ancient world reported of animals and plants, +with moral reflections added. The compendium was translated +into all of the languages of Europe and several African and +Asiatic tongues, and, being in the vernacular, may have been +for a time more widely read than the Bible itself. For the +unlearned a source of pleasant stories and forerunner of the +bestiaries, for the learned it was a theological treatise. Its +subject-matter entered patristic writings and popular sermons +and was at length transferred to stone.</p> + +<p>The vogue of animal symbolism in Christian churches covered +half a millennium, was at its height in the eleventh and +twelfth centuries, was still alive at the Reformation, and left +its marks in sacred vessels and ecclesiastical vestments as well +as in sculpture. Façades, portals, buttresses, and gargoyles of +church exteriors, and cloisters, chancels and chapels of interiors, +were decorated with animal forms. As an emblem +of priestly chastity, the elephant was embroidered on sacerdotal +vestments. Lamps, censers, and sacramental vessels<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span> +repeated the outline or carried the effigy of the griffin, the pelican, +the dolphin. Sculptured lions ramped at cathedral doors, +lizards peeped from crevices, and all about the sanctuary were +the figures of foxes and ferrets, harts and hedgehogs, panthers +and partridges, the whale, the crocodile, the tortoise, and a hundred +other flying, walking, creeping, or swimming things.</p> + +<p>Though St. Bernard denounced this as “the foul and tattered +vesture of pagan allegory,” every animal was a text, or was +designed to be. The lion typified majesty, the ox patience, the +ram spiritual leadership, the turtle-dove constancy, the skin-sloughing +snake the repentant believer, the salamander the +righteous who extinguish the flames of desire. The sun-staring, +youth-renewing eagle was an admonition to those grown old +in sin to face the day star of revelation. Ravens symbolized +Jews who battened on the carrion of the Law. Sometimes virtues +and vices were pictured as women riding animals or bearing +animal devices—Humility on a panther, Chastity on a unicorn, +Devotion on an ibex, Patience with a swan helmet, Love +with a pelican shield, Lust with a siren-buckler.</p> + +<p>Animal symbolism had also its secular phases. Amorous +troubadours likened themselves to flame-walled salamanders; +or, disappointed in love, likened woman to the double-natured +dragon and the hooting owl. By degrees the secular impulse +invaded the churches. Animal sculptures were admitted as +such and not as cipher characters of divine script; and satire, +inspired or tolerated by the regular body of clergy, raided the +sheepfold of allegory. This was directed against the preaching +friars and the failings of the monastic orders, all the actors +in the beast-epos of Reynard the fox entering the sanctuary +as its auxiliaries. The animals overran windows, balustrades, +cornices, and capitals; foxes were significantly depicted in +palmer weeds; a stall in the cathedral at Amiens showed Reynard +preaching to a flock of fowls and with pious gesture reaching +for the nearest hen. Death, “the sarcastic and irreverent +skeleton,” capered among the creatures in the dance macabre. +At the outset an attack on religious abuses, the secular phase +became in effect a lampoon of the very rites of the church.</p> + +<p>Among other figures that caricatured its principal ceremonies +under its own roof, says Evans in his authoritative study of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span> +the period, were “apes in choristers’ robes, swine in monks’ +hoods, asses in cowls chanting and playing the organ, sirens in +the costume of nuns with their faces carefully veiled and the +rest of their persons exposed, stags in chasubles ministering at +the altar and wolves in the confessional giving absolution to +lambs.” The ass, which the east had long celebrated for its +devoted service and which has a high niche in biblical story, +attained a place in the churches of the west which neither fact +fully accounts for. There was thought to be some mystic relation +between its anatomy and the architecture of a cathedral. +In a catechism of the last century used in a French town it was +recited among other details that the head of the ass signified +the bell of the town cathedral, its paunch the poor-box and its +tail the aspergill for sprinkling holy water. In the one-time +popular Feast of the Ass, a living ass was led up the nave into +the chancel, the chants were sung in a braying tone, and the +officiating priest dismissed the congregation with a loud hee-haw.</p> + +<p>The ceremony has passed. Most of the beast figures have +been removed from the cathedrals. Animal symbolism still +lives, but more in letters than in stone.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c5">Chapter V. The Fabulous Beasts</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">In</span> the world that was, the fabulous animals that roved the +land were creatures of unusual interest, though of limited number. +More species were to be found in the deep. Thither, +Pliny explains, fall the seeds from the innumerable figures of +beasts impressed as constellations upon the heavens, and these +seeds, being mixed together in the watery element, produce a +variety of monstrous forms.</p> + +<p>With animal life abounding in the thickets and fields of the +earth, and for every bird and beast a fable, there was less incentive +to invent new species of them than there was to make +stories of ghosts, dæmons and faeries, or of men with beast +attributes or lineage or some quality of caricature in their +anatomy. With the coming of heraldry the category of strange +creatures is greatly enlarged, but the shapes added by blazonry +do not purport to be living things and have no place in geography +or in literature, save in massive volumes where the quaint +designs and quainter jargon of a curious erudition are preserved.</p> + +<p>The ancient had naïve ideas about cross-breeding. Every +unusual animal seemed a hybrid of two known species. These +were produced in hot climates. Hence, says Pliny, arose the +saying, common even in Greece, that “Africa is always producing +something new.” The males and females of various species +in that singular land, he thought, coupled promiscuously with +each other, but not always with impunity. “The lion recognizes, +by the peculiar odor of the pard, when the lioness has been +unfaithful to him, and avenges himself with the greatest fury.”</p> + +<p>There was a belief, which lasted nearer to the present time, +that the savage dogs of India, two of which would make no +scruple of attacking the lion, had tigresses for their dams. +Diodorus noted that eastern Arabia produced beasts of double +nature and mixed shape, and he deemed it reasonable that “by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span> +the vivifying heat of the sun in southern parts of the world +many sorts of wonderful creatures are there bred.” Among +these he cites the crocodiles and river horses of Egypt. He +strains a point in support of his theory in the account of what +he calls the Struthocameli of Arabia, “who have the shape both +of a camel and an ostrich.” He describes their bodies “big +as a camel, newly foaled,” their small heads with large black +eyes, their long necks, the “hairy feathers” on their wings, their +strong thighs, and “cloven hoofs.” This creature, says the +Sicilian geographer, “seems both terrestrial and volatile, a land +beast and a bird”—after all, only an inexact yet graphic portrait +of the ostrich. That this fowl is a cross between a camel +and a bird is an Arab notion; according to Aristotle it is of an +equivocal nature, part bird and part quadruped. So its Persian +name signifies, and sacred writers liken its voice to the bellowing +of a bull.</p> + +<p>Even the breezes take part in the creation of hybrids, so men +have thought. That there is actual generative power in the wind +is a belief older than the discovery of its function in carrying +the fertilizing pollen of plants. Pliny records the popular belief +that barren eggs are breeze-begotten; hence their name of +Zephyria. The modern “wind-egg” for an egg without a shell +laid by a fat hen, but supposed by Doctor Johnson not to contain +the principle of life, comes from a similar notion. Male +sheep are conceived when the northeast wind blows, and females +when the south wind blows, according to the Romans. One of +the heroic ballads of the Tartars personifies the wind as a foal +which courses about the earth. The fable about Portuguese +mares, widely credited by the ancients and roundly asserted +by Pliny, is an echo of sailor reports on the fertility of Lusitania: +“In the vicinity of Olisipo and the river Tagus, the mares, +by turning their faces toward the west wind as it blows, become +impregnated by its breezes, and the foals thus conceived are +remarkable for their fleetness; but they never live beyond three +years.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Unicorn</i></p> + +<p>Best known animal of legend is the unicorn. There are two +veritable unicorns, or animals with one horn—the rhinoceros<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span> +and the narwhal. The accepted description of this animal gives +it the narwhal’s straight and spirally twisted horn but none of +the parts of the rhinoceros. It is pictured with the legs of a +buck, the tail of a lion, and the head and body of a horse. Its +markings suggest the zebra’s; its head is red, its body white, +its eyes blue, while its horn is red at the tip, white at the base +and black in between. The high authority of Aristotle has +determined these points.</p> + +<p>The ancients mention five different animals as having one horn +set in the middle of the forehead. The most famous of these +were the Egyptian oryx and the Indian ass. Pliny says the oryx +gazes at the Dog Star when it rises, and sneezes in a sort of +worship. It has the stature of a bull, the form of a deer, and +hair that sets forward instead of backward. The Indian ass is +described by Ctesias as having the traditional shape and hues +of the unicorn, solid hoofs, and a horn a cubit in length. Filings +of this horn, if taken in a potion, are an antidote to poison. +Drinking cups made from it give immunity also from epilepsy. +The Indian ass is so fleet it can be seized only when it leads its +foal to pasture. In defense of its young it uses its horn, teeth, +and feet, killing horses and men. It is sought for the horn and +huckle bones, the latter, Ctesias declares, “the most beautiful +I have ever seen”; they are as heavy as lead, he says, and of the +color of cinnabar.</p> + +<p>The third animal was the monoceros, on which the Orsæan +Indians preyed. It had the head of the stag, the feet of the +elephant, and the tail of the boar, while the rest of its body was +horse-like. The single black horn projecting from the middle +of its forehead was two cubits long. It lowed like a bull, was +of ferocious nature, wandered alone, and could not be taken +alive. The two other unicorns of ancient story were the single-horned +horse and the single-horned ox.</p> + +<p>There was a second growth of the fable in the Middle Ages +and the unicorn took on new dignities. It was the only animal +that would attack the elephant, disembowelling the pachyderm +with one blow of its sharp-nailed foot; and it charged the lion +at sight. The king of beasts was constrained to kingly craft, +dodging behind a tree. His assailant, says Topsell, “in the +swiftness of his course runneth against the tree, wherein his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span> +sharp horn sticketh fast”; and the lion dispatches him at leisure. +In his <i>Display of Heraldry</i> (1724) Guillim says the unicorn is +never taken alive because “the greatness of his mind is such +rather to die.” Mediæval intelligence at last hit upon a characteristic +device to secure this creature without slaying him, and +the bestiaries of the time record it. This was to place a young +virgin near his haunts. As soon as he saw her he would run +to her and lie down at her feet, placing his head in her bosom, +when the hunters could halter him.</p> + +<p>It was the alexipharmic virtues of the unicorn’s horn that most +engaged the ages of faith, when the poisoning of princes was +almost an article of statecraft. As late as 1789 it was used to +test food at the court of France, and horns, usually of the narwhal, +were in the royal museums. The ancients had made little +of this. The reference of Ctesias to the horn of the Indian ass +as an antidote for poison and a cure of the falling sickness +stands alone. What was later made of this reputed power is +shown in a passage from John of Herse, who pilgrimed to +Jerusalem in 1389: “Near the field Helyon in the Holy Land +is the river Mara, whose bitter waters Moses struck with his staff +and made sweet, so that the children of Israel could drink +thereof. Even now evil and unclean spirits poison it after the +going down of the sun, but in the morning after the powers of +darkness have disappeared, the unicorn comes from the sea and +dips its horn into the stream, and thereby expels and neutralizes +the poison, so that the other animals can drink of it during the +day.”</p> + +<p>According to Guillim, it became “a general conceit that the +wild beasts of the wilderness used not to drink of the pools, for +fear of venomous serpents there breeding, until the unicorn +hath stirred them with his horn.” Thus its office was that of +water-conner for the other beasts of the forest.</p> + +<p>Cosmas Indicopleustes said he had seen the brazen statues +of four unicorns set upon towers in the royal palace of +Ethiopia. Frobisher found a dead “sea unicorne” on the +Canadian coast with a broken horn two yards long. Into the +hollow of the horn the sailors put spiders, where they presently +died. In his second voyage (1564) Sir John Hawkins found the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span> +Florida Indians wearing pieces of the unicorn’s horn about their +necks.</p> + +<p>The unicorn was celebrated in Christian symbolism before +it found a permanent niche in heraldry. When Balaam blesses +Israel he says, “God led him out of Egypt even as the glory of +the unicorn.” According to the <i>Bestiare Divine de Guillaume +Clerc de Normandie</i>, the animal represents Christ, and its horn +signifies the Gospel of Truth. It became a favorite charge in +Scottish heraldry and James I of England made it the sinister +support in the arms of Great Britain, replacing the red dragon +of Wales.</p> + +<p>Purchas the Pilgrim was always expecting news of the unicorn, +hearing of it and doubting report. Browne avows his +belief in the animal in a sardonic dissertation. Far from doubting +its existence, he says, “we affirm there are many kinds +thereof,” and he mentions the five classic animals, several +fishes, and “four kinds of nasicornous beetles.” What he wants +to know is which one possesses the alexipharmic horn. He +complains that the animal is not uniformly described: “Pliny +affirmeth it is a fierce, terrible creature; Vartomannus, a tame +and mansuete animal; those which Garcias ab Horto described +about the Cape of Good Hope were beheld with heads like +horses; those which Vartomannus beheld he described with the +head of a deer: Pliny, Ælian, Solinus, and Paulus Venetus affirmeth +the feet of the unicorn are undivided and like the elephant’s; +but those two which Vartomannus beheld at Mecca +were footed like a goat. As Ælian describeth, it is in the bigness +of an horse; as Vartomannus, of a colt; that which Thevet +speaketh of was not so big as an heifer; but Paulus Venetus +affirmeth that they are but little less than elephants.”</p> + +<p>Browne proceeds remorselessly: The horns of the unicorn, +as described by writers or preserved in collections, are too +various. Some are red, some are black, and some have spiral +markings, while “those two in the treasure of St. Mark are +plain and best accord with those of the Indian ass.” Albertus +Magnus describes one ten feet long, a narwhal’s, Browne suggests. +Others are but fossil teeth and bones and petrified tree +branches.</p> + +<p>Yet the tradition long survived Browne. His contemporary,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span> +the Portuguese Jesuit Lobo, said that in Abyssinia he had seen +the unicorn, in shape like a beautiful bay horse with a black +tail. He could give no minute account, for it ran with prodigious +swiftness from wood to wood, and never fed save when +surrounded by animals that protected it. “The unicorn really +exists in Tibet,” Huc affirmed after traveling there in 1846. +At Kordofan, in 1848, a man, whose custom was to provide +Baron Von Mueller with animal specimens, offered to sell him +an <i>a’nasa</i>, which he described as of donkey size with a tail like +a boar’s, and a single pendulous horn which it erected when it +saw an enemy. In 1876 Prejevalski gave an account of the +<i>orongo</i>, a stag-like creature with two vertical horns, which he +said was common in Tibet; according to natives there were a +few single horned individuals among the herds.</p> + +<p>Every feature in the unicorn legend of the west has its counterpart +in the Chinese books. Six species of unicorns are mentioned; +one figures in the crest of the Mikado of Japan; another +is sculptured in the avenue of animals that leads to the Ming +tombs north of Peking. Another, and the best known, the +<i>ki-lin</i>, appeared only in the reign of upright monarchs. It +was called a spiritual beast, chief of the 360 kinds of hairy +creatures. Its pace was regular, it ambled only on selected +grounds, and its voice was like a monastery bell. So softly it +trod that it left no footprints and crushed no living thing.</p> + +<p>All a moon myth, says one ingenious writer. But Gould declares, +“I find it impossible to believe that a creature whose +existence has been affirmed by so many authors, at so many +different dates, and from so many countries, can be the symbol +of a myth.” He thinks it either a hybrid occasionally produced +by the crossing of the equine and bovine families, or else the +generic name for extinct missing links between horses, cattle, +and deer.</p> + +<p>Whence the world’s long belief in the unicorn? Was there +such an animal, now extinct? Cuvier returns an emphatic negative: +“The nations of modern days have only been able to drive +back the noxious animals in the deserts, but have never yet +suceeded in exterminating a single species.” He goes further: +there could never have been a cloven-footed ruminant with a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span> +single horn, because its frontal bone must have been divided, +and no horn could have been placed on the suture.</p> + +<p>Ctesias may have woven some rhinoceros details into his +picture of the so-called Indian ass. The Egyptian unicorn was +called an oryx—a word perhaps related to the Sanscrit and +Teutonic aurochs. There is a large African antelope the modern +name of which is oryx. It is probable that the correct name +has been retained, and that the oryx, or gemsbok, of to-day, is +the unicorn of Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, Lampridius, et al. But +the real oryx has two horns, while the fabled animal had but +one because the Egyptians did not understand perspective in +drawing.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Griffin</i></p> + +<p>Greek and Persepolitan griffins are curiously alike, and both +may have derived from the winged lion of the Assyrians, emblem +of the god Nergal. Griffin lore, however, is rich in details +which have no religious significance. Herodotus speaks of the +animal as guarding the gold of the one-eyed Arimaspians in +Asia north of the Altai Mountains. Ctesias places it in the mountain +barrier of India.</p> + +<p>According to Ælian the griffin was a winged and feathered +lion with an eagle’s head and a color scheme that suggests the +German imperial flag—the breast plumage red, the wings white, +and the dorsal plumage black; “a mixed and dubious animal,” +Browne calls it. Ctesias says it had also blue neck feathers +and red eyes. He describes the species as a race of four-footed +birds the size of wolves, but Maundeville says they +were as large and strong as eight lions and could carry to +their nests “a great Horse, or two Oxen yoked together as they +go to the Plough.” Of their talons the Indians made drinking +cups. The griffins built their nests like the eagle, but laid +therein agates instead of eggs. The Bactrians said that these +birds dug gold out of the mountains and made their nests therewith, +and the Indians carried off so much of it as falls to the +ground. The Indians denied that the griffins were watchmen for +the gold of their district or had any use for it; they said that +when the birds see them coming to gather gold, they fear the intruders +are after their young and assail them. Also they attack<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span> +all other beasts and prevail over them, save only the lion +and the elephant.</p> + +<p>Fearful of their vengeance, the natives go not out to gather +gold in the daytime, say the chroniclers, but under cover of +night make their raids into a frightful desert where griffin and +gold are found together. Companies of one thousand or even +two thousand men set out, equipped with mattocks and sacks. +The expeditions take from three to four years, for this region +lies afar. If successful, the members return wealthy; but should +they be detected in the act of theft, says Ælian, certain death +would be their fate.</p> + +<p>There are four explanations of this four-footed bird of classic +legend and Welsh heraldry—that the winged Assyrian lion was +taken for a portrait instead of a symbol; that the Samoyeds mistook +mammoth bones in the gold-bearing district of the Ural +Mountains for remains of monster fowls; that the griffins were +merely Tibetan mastiffs of singular ferocity and reputed tigrine +decent, and that they are an early form of the dragon. The so-called +griffin’s claws in the museums of Dresden and Vienna +and in the churches elsewhere are horns of the Caffrarian buffalo. +Drinking cups made of them were used in treating +epilepsy.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Hippogrif</i></p> + +<p>It would be vain to seek among animals the original of the +hippogrif, a creature related to the griffin, though of more involved +lineage, and like it treated sometimes as a bird, sometimes +as a beast. The hippogrif is a product of mediæval +romance, and wings its way as the courser of more than mortal +knights over countries of fable, albeit they bear such names as +Brittany, Abyssinia, Circassia, and Cathay. As the griffin was +called a hybrid between the lion and the eagle, so the hippogrif +was supposed to be a hybrid between the griffin and the +horse. It had the head, wings, and fore claws of the griffin and +the body, hind hoofs and tail of the horse. Its habitat was the +Riphæan Mountains, source of the north wind. The hippogrif +enters the Orlando cycle as the mount of an enchanter with a +castle on the Pyrenees, but later serves the far adventures of the +paladins of Charlemagne.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span></p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Monster Rat</i></p> + +<p>The Samoyeds and Chinese who found in the river banks of +the north the frozen bodies of mammoths, with skin and flesh intact +as if they had died but yesterday, reached the strange yet +natural conclusion that this was a kind of monstrous burrowing +rat. It figures in Chinese books as <i>fen-shu</i>, the “digging rat,” or +<i>yen-men</i>, the “burrowing ox.” Why was it always dead when +men came upon it? Because air and sunshine were both fatal +to it; evidently in its wanderings underground it had broken the +crust above it and died in the daylight. Sometimes the Yakuts +saw the earth tremble and knew this great rat walked beneath. +“There is got from it,” says the <i>Chinese Encyclopedia</i>, “an ivory +as white as that of the elephant, but easier to work, and not +liable to split. Its flesh is very cold and excellent for refreshing +the blood.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Martikhora</i></p> + +<p>In the jungles of Ind roved the martikhora—a creature with +unpleasant affinities to men, the great cats, and the serpents. +Its face was like a man’s with pale blue eyes and human ears +but with three rows of teeth. Its body was as big as the lion’s +and in color red like cinnabar. It had a tail like the scorpion’s +and more than a cubit long. The martikhora, indeed, was a +sort of anticipation of the machine gun, for it had one sting +at the end of its tail, two at the roots of this member, and a +fourth on the crown of its head; and these it projected to the +distance of a hundred feet. The missiles, which were about a +foot long and no thicker than fine thread, were fatal to every +animal save the elephants. The natives, says Ctesias, hunted it +from the backs of elephants. The name of the animal means +man-eater, so-called because the beast carried off men and +women. Its size, also, and general description, and the manner +of hunting it all suggest the tiger as fearful Indians might +report it. To this day the Cambodians think the whiskers of +the tiger are a strong poison. The Malays call it a demon in +beast form and speak of its Village where the houses are raftered +with men’s bones and thatched with human hair.</p> + +<p>In heraldry the martikhora is called the montegre, manticora,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span> +or man-tyger, and is pictured with the body of a lion, the head +of an old man, the horns of an ox, and sometimes with dragon +feet.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Scythian Lamb</i></p> + +<p>To match the barnacle goose which came from a nut, the ages +of faith had the Scythian lamb which grew in a gourd. Maundeville +has the best account, for did he not make a meal of one? +The creature is found in “a kingdom that men call Caldilhe,” +one of “the Countries and Isles that be beyond the Land of +Cathay.” In this country “there groweth a manner of Fruit, as +though it were Gourds. And when they be ripe, men cut them +in two, and Men find within a little Beast in Flesh and Bone +and Blood, as though it were a little Lamb without Wool. And +men eat both the Fruit and the Beast. And that is a great +Marvel.”</p> + +<p>Friar Odoric makes a similar report. In other stories the +Scythian lamb is a true animal attached to the earth by its +umbilical cord. The Scythian lamb of botany is a woolly +fern (<i>Cibotium barometz</i>) with a prostrate stem turned upside +down. It is also called vegetable lamb and Tartarian lamb. +In his <i>Travels into Muscovy and Persia</i> (1636) the ambassador +from the Duke of Holstein describes it as a gourd like unto a +lamb in all its members and with the lamb’s sacrificial relation +to the wolf. It grows wild in the district of Samara, in Russia, +and its growing is a kind of destructive browsing. “It changes +places in growing, as far as the stalk will reach, and wherever it +turns the grass withers, which the Muscovites call feeding.” +When all available grass fails, it dies. The rind of the gourd +is covered with a sort of hair, which makes a good substitute +for fur. The natives showed the traveler certain skins, covered +with a soft frizzled wool “not unlike that of a lamb newly +weaned”—vegetable lamb, they affirmed. Scaliger declares that +alone among animals the wolf feeds on this gourd and that +wolf traps are baited with it.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f9"> +<img src="images/fig9.jpg" alt="fruit"> +<p class="caption"><i>In Caldilhe There Groweth a Manner of Fruit, and Men Find Within a<br> +Little Beast as Though It Were a Lamb Without Wool</i></p> +</div> + +<p>Erasmus Darwin has these lines upon the Scythian lamb in +his <i>Botanic Garden</i>:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span></p> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Rooted in earth each cloven hoof descends,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And round and round her flexible neck she bends;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Crops the gray coral moss and hoary thyme;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And seems to bleat, a Vegetable Lamb.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + + +<p>So until 1915 stood the fable—seemingly just a tale of the +credulous Middle Age, rationalized by later science and gently +derided in still later rhyme. Then the scholarship of Berthold +Laufer, basing itself mainly upon Chinese texts, gave it long +backgrounds. The Scythian lamb has been in turn a mollusk, a +marine sheep, a bird, the cotton-plant, a strange half-human +creature and—this part is surmise—an allegory of the early +Christian Church, the Lamb of Revelation that “stood on the +mount Sion.”</p> + +<p>Unto this day fabrics are made of the undyed fleece of the +true Scythian lamb. Byssus silk is the name it bears in commerce, +and Taranto is the seat of its manufacture. The silk +is derived from the fibrous foot by which mollusks of the +species called the pinna, found in the waters about southern +Italy, attach themselves to rocks. The original Scythian lamb +was this mollusk and its umbilical cord was the byssus, or foot, +which anchored it. The genesis of the legend seems to be a +statement of Aristotle that these creatures have within them +a parasite, a small crab, nicknamed the “pinna-guard” which +in gathering its own food collects fishes also for its blind, stationary, +and helpless host. Without the pinna-guard, says +Aristotle, the mollusk soon dies; and he cites the latter to illustrate +his observation that in the sea “there are certain objects +concerning which one would be at loss to determine whether +they be animal or vegetable.” After Aristotle’s time, and in +the first centuries of the Christian era, byssus fabrics, which +may have been a by-product of pearl fisheries in the Persian +Gulf, appeared in the Mediterranean countries.</p> + +<p>Here, then, is an animal living within what passed for a +vegetable that was “rooted in earth,” and that produced a substance +later known as marine wool. But how did the Adriatic +mollusk and its tenant crab become a lamb-tenanted gourd, or +a veritable sheep attached to the soil by a fleshy stem, in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span> +plains of Asiatic Scythia? And how did this tiny partnership +of the sea floor become in turn a phœnix-like creature of the +air and the grisly Yedua, man-monster of Talmudic legend? +The process illustrates the part that travel tale, the carrying +of confused reports from place to place, has in creating myth. +Though the fable grew up in the Roman Orient and reached +China only through such reports, the superior historical sense +of the Chinese has made their annals the key to its meaning.</p> + +<p>The first Chinese record in point, not later than <span class="allsmcap">A. D.</span> 220, +speaks of a fine cloth in the Roman Orient “said by some to +originate from the down of a water sheep.” This may be inference +from the almost contemporary phrase of Alciphron, +the Greek sophist, who calls byssus textiles “woolen stuffs out +of the sea.” In the sixth century Procopius recites that each of +the five hereditary satraps of Armenia had from the Roman +emperor a golden-hued cloak made from “wool gathered out of +the sea.” In an account by the Arab Istakhri, written about +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> 950, it is said that an animal runs out of the sea and rubs +itself against the rocks, “whereupon it deposes a kind of wool +of silken texture and golden color.” Robes of this, worn by +the Ommiad princes at Cordova, were valued at a thousand +gold pieces each.</p> + +<p>By etymological error and a device of ancient trade, the +mollusk, which had already become a water sheep, got itself +wings. Pinna, its name, is also the classic Latin word for +“feather,” an ambiguity which may have confused the Arabs; +and the filaments of the shellfish are rather like the plumage of +fowls. Byssus weaves were held at so high a price that they +were counterfeited in feather fabrics, and to promote their sale +the discovery of a wonderful bird was at length announced. +The Arab, Kazwini, calls it <i>abu baraquish</i> and pictures it as +like the stork; but “every hour its plumage glitters in another +color, red, yellow, green and blue.” The fabric from its plumage +is named “phœnix-feather gold” in a Chinese work of the +Mongol period. Skilled artisans, it is related, weave a soft +golden brocade from the neck feathers of the phœnix, which +in the spring drop to the foot of the mountains. These were +probably the feathered headskins of peacocks, which in China +are still made into jackets.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span></p> + +<p>When the <i>Annals</i> of the T’ang Dynasty (618-906) were compiled, +the water sheep had become a land animal of Syria, or +Fu-lin as that country was called. Here is the Chinese account: +“There are lambs engendered in the soil. The inhabitants wait +till they are going to sprout, then build enclosures around as +a preventive measure for wild beasts that might rush in from +outside and devour them. The umbilical cord of the lambs is +attached to the soil, and when forcibly cut off they will die. +The people, donning cuirasses and mounted on horseback, beat +drums to frighten them. The lambs shriek from fear and thus +their umbilical cord is ruptured. Thereupon they set out in +search of water and pasture.”</p> + +<p>It was part of the tradition of the marine sheep that it yielded +its fleece of its own accord, and this was carried over into the +later Chinese story that the Scythian or Syrian lamb must +itself rupture the umbilical cord, which others could not sever +without killing it. The appearance of men in armor to frighten +it to this end is elucidated by a passage from the thirteenth-century +Arab traveler, Abul Abbas. After the pinna comes +ashore and lets its wool escape, he records, it is pounced upon +by large crabs. In the Chinese story, these crabs have become +men on horseback and their shells are the cuirasses worn by the +horsemen.</p> + +<p>A debased version of the same story appears in the Mongol +period when a thirteenth-century Chinese traveler describes the +“sheep planted on hillocks” in the countries of the western sea. +The umbilical cord of a sheep is planted and watered. At the +time of the first thunder peals it begins to grow. When matured, +the creature is frightened by the sound of wooden instruments +and, breaking off the cord that attaches it to the ground, roams +about in search of herbage. This was the tale Odoric and +Maundeville heard; that the lamb was inclosed in a gourd may +have been their own invention, or the report of some early attempt +to relate it to the cotton pod, which about a generation +ago was conjectured to be the basis of the fable.</p> + +<p>“Creatures called Lords of the Field are regarded as beasts,” +says the Talmud. The same creature is also called the Man +of the Mountain. “It draws its food out of the soil by means +of the umbilical cord; if its navel be cut, it cannot live,” says<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span> +Simeon a thirteenth-century rabbi. In the detailed portrait by +Rabbi Meir the timid vegetable lamb undergoes a wolfish transformation: +“There is an animal styled Yedua, with the bones +of which witchcraft is practiced. It issues from the earth like +the stem of a plant, just as a gourd. In all respects the Yedua +has human form in face, body, hands, and feet. No creature +can approach within the tether of the stem, for it seizes and +kills all. As far as the stem stretches, it devours the herbage all +around. Whoever is intent on capturing this animal must not +approach it, but tear at the cord until it is ruptured, whereupon +the animal soon dies.”</p> + +<p>Laufer thinks that the Jewish legend is early Christian allegory +misunderstood; that the Man of the Mountain is “the +lamb that stood on the mount Sion,” a symbol of the Church +itself the followers of which are attached to the earth by sensual +pleasures; and that the mounted horsemen of the Chinese version, +who cause the lambs to break their connection with the +earth, may be the two hundred thousand horsemen of Revelation +that symbolize the Last Judgment.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Gold-guarding Ants</i></p> + +<p>Bits of turquoise, chips of obsidian arrow heads, and fragments +of prehistoric jewelry are found in the little heaps of +earth which ants bring up from underground on the sites of +vanished cities in New Mexico. On the Pajarito plateau ant-gold +is not unknown. Ant-gold is the theme of one of the +most circumstantial and puzzling stories told by ancient travelers. +Herodotus lays its scene somewhere near Cabul. The +Indians of that district send forth men in search of gold into a +sandy desert “where live great ants in size somewhat less than +dogs, but bigger than foxes.” A number of these were caught +by hunters and sent to the Persian king. The ants live underground +and, “like the Greek ants, which they very much resemble +in shape, throw up sand-heaps as they burrow.”</p> + +<p>There is gold in the sand, but the ants are formidable enemies +and fleet in pursuit. So the Indians harness a female camel +between two males, and the female is one that has lately dropped +a foal. The inroad is timed so that the caravans arrive when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span> +the sun is hottest and the ants are hiding from the heat. +Herodotus continues:</p> + +<p>“The Indians fill their bags with the sand and ride away at +full speed; the ants, however, scenting them, as the Persians say, +rush forth in pursuit. Now these animals are so swift, they +declare, that there is nothing in the world like them; if it were +not, therefore, that the Indians get a start while the ants are +mustering, not a single gold-gatherer could escape. During +the flight the male camels grow tired and begin to drag; +but the females recollect the young which they have left behind, +and never flag. Thus, say the Persians, the Indians get most of +their gold.”</p> + +<p>In substance the story is repeated in the letter which Prester +John sent to the Pope in the twelfth century. The “emmet +valley” also appears in the <i>Arabian Nights</i>. Megasthenes said +that the plain tenanted by the monster ants is three thousand +stadiæ in circumference and lies eastward in the mountains in +the kingdom of the Dardæ. In winter the ants dig holes and +pile the auriferous earth in heaps at the pit mouths. Pliny +declares the ants are of the color of cats and the size of Egyptian +wolves; that they work in winter and are despoiled in summer. +“The horns of the Indian ant,” he remarks, “fixed up in the +temple of Hercules at Erythræ were objects of great wonderment.” +Nearchus, admiral of Alexander, reports having seen +skins of these ants as large as leopard skins. Ctesias speaks in +his <i>Persica</i> of a horse-pismire which was fed by the magi and +became of such monstrous size that it took two pounds of meat +a day to victual it. As late as the sixteenth century there is a +story by Busbequius that the Shah of Persia sent one of the +Indian ants as a present to Sultan Soliman at Constantinople. +Maundeville transfers the whole scene to Taprobane (Ceylon) +and varies the incidents: Men do not enter ant-land but send +thither mares to which empty vessels are suspended. “It is +Pismire nature that they let nothing be empty among them, but +anon they fill it, and so they fill those Vessels with Gold.” When +the foals neigh in the distance their dams return to them with +a golden burden.</p> + +<p>What were these ants, and whence the fable?</p> + +<p>It will be noted that the griffins were cast in a similar rôle<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span> +in another Indian gold quest. It may be accepted that good-sized +animals, or the skins of animals, were seen in menageries, +museums, and temples, and identified with the ant custodians +of the Scythian metal. It has been suggested that these were +some other burrowing animal—the anteater, or the marmot; +but neither is fleet of foot. M. de Weltheim thought the Herodotoan +ant might be the corsac, a small Asiatic fox.</p> + +<p>Philology has a word to offer. The gold collected on the +plains of Little Tibet is popularly known as <i>pippilika</i>, or “ant +gold,” from the belief that ants bring it up, or bare the veins +which carry it. McCrindle asserts that the gold-diggers were +neither ants nor other animals, but “Tibetan miners, who, like +their descendants of the present day, preferred working their +mines in winter when the frozen ground stands well and is not +likely to trouble them by falling in.” Thus the raid and retreat +would be accomplished with the same expedition with which +any tribe would make a sudden foray on another tribe equipped +with equal ordnance and cavalry. Metaphor still speaks of the +miner as a mole or a human ant.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Questing Beast</i></p> + +<p>In <i>Le Morte d’Arthur</i>, Malory describes a singular animal +with an economy of phrase that whets curiosity. Arthur had +had a heavy dream of griffins and serpents that devoured his +land, and to put it out of his mind he went a-hunting. And he +followed a white hart until his horse fell dead under him and +his quarry was embushed. “He set him down by a fountain, +and there he fell in great thoughts. And as he sat him so, him +thought he heard a noise of hounds, to the sum of thirty. And +with that the king saw coming toward him the strangest beast +that ever he saw or heard of; so the beast went to the well and +drank, and the noise was in the beast’s belly like unto the +questyng of thirty couple hounds; but all the while the beast +drank there was no noise in the beast’s belly; and therewith the +beast departed with a great noise, whereof the king had great +marvel.”</p> + +<p>Followed a knight hight Pellinore, and sought to borrow the +king’s horse to pursue this animal, and the king would have +taken over his quest for a twelvemonth, but he would not. After<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span> +Pellinore’s death it is Palomides that rides across the pages +of romance, well in the rear of the questing beast.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Beasts of Revelation</i></p> + +<p>The beasts of Revelation were but symbols; yet they moved +like realities through the imagery of the Church, and, undergoing +a sea change, appeared alive in the distant Atlantic Islands +of Irish epic. St. John beheld the shapes of locusts like unto +horses prepared for battle; “and their faces were as the faces +of men, and they had hair as the hair of women, and they had +tails like unto scorpions.” He saw also a beast coming up out +of the earth; “and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake +as a dragon.” Above all, John saw the beast that came up out +of the sea, a leopard with the feet of a bear and the mouth of +a lion, and with the dragon’s authority; and the beast had seven +heads and ten horns, “and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.” +The Whore of Babylon rode this beast—composite +of seven mountains and ten kings, the text explains—to world +power and to downfall; and rode on into literature, and an +unending controversy.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>American Contributions</i></p> + +<p>Animal elders are America’s main contribution to the collection +of fabulous beasts. The Indian believed that every +species had a giant ancestor like itself in form, but with supernatural +powers to protect it. Hunters who killed more animals +than they needed for food felt the vengeance of the elder beasts. +The latter gave a tribe its medicine, and themselves became +totems. They are sometimes represented as in human form +and living in stately lodges. The Pacific coast of South America +has also stories of a house-haunting ram, a repulsive tree-dweller, +a water-monster resembling a distended cowskin, and a +creature with the head of a heifer and the body of a sheep.</p> + +<p>According to members of the Forest Service, American lumberjacks +have their own mythology. Product of camp-fire chaff +and a whimsical humor, the creatures that people it are noted +here only because, both in name and in nature, they illustrate +the traditional instinct for composites that elsewhere has +wrought to more serious ends. They include the tote-road<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span> +shagamaw, with the head of a lion, the forepaws of a bear and +the hind legs of a moose; the splinter cat, which crushes hollow +trees in search of raccoons; the hugag, with buffalo body and +jointless legs, which sleeps leaning against a tree; the sausage-like +wapaloosie, which lives on fungi; the billdad, which kills +fish with its tail; the gumberoo, which explodes when it gets too +near a fire; the snoligoster, a spiked and legless crocodile, and +the lachrymose squonk. A common human figure in these tales +is the grotesque giant, Paul Bunyan.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Prodigies of Heraldry</i></p> + +<p>In the later totemism, which is called heraldry, the following +fabulous creatures with human, animal, or bird attributes, or +an admixture of all of these, were represented on crests and +coats of arms: allerion, chimera, cockatrice, dragon, griffin, +harpy, hydra, lyon-dragon, lyon-poisson, mermaid, montygre, +martlet, opinicus, pegasus, sphinx, sagittary, satyr, tarask, +tityrus, unicorn, wyvern, winged lyon, winged bull.</p> + +<p>Several of these are noted elsewhere in this study, and a word +will serve for the rest. The allerion is an eagle without beak +or claws. The chimera, says Bossewell, is “a beast or monstre +having thre heades, one like a Lyon, an other like a Goate, the +third like a Dragon.” The hydra is a seven- or nine-headed +water serpent. The lyon-dragon is a composite of a lion and a +dragon, and the lyon-poisson of a lion and a fish. The martlet +is a swallow without feet. The opinicus is a composite of +camel, dragon, and lion. The pegasus is a winged horse. The +sphinx is a figure with a woman’s head and breasts, a lion’s +body, and usually eagle’s wings. The sagittary is the centaur of +antiquity with the head, arms, and body of a man from the +waist up, united to the body and legs of a horse. The heraldic +satyr has a human face, a leonine body, and the horns and tail +of an antelope. The tarask is a dragon-basilisk on the shield of +Tarascon. “The tityrus is ingendred between a sheep and a +buck-goat,” says Guillim. The wyvern is a serpentine dragon +with a long tail and only two legs. The winged lyon is an +achievement of Venice, the winged bull a memory of Assyria.</p> + +<p>Other heraldic creatures, not so well authenticated, are mentioned +by Randle Holme in his <i>Academy of Armory</i>. These<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span> +include the ass-bittern, the cat-fish, the devil-fish, the dragon-tyger, +the dragon-wolf, the falcon-fish with a hound’s ear, the +friar-fish, the lamya, compounded of a woman, a dragon, a lion, +a goat, a dog, and a horse; the lyon-wyvern, the minocane or +homocane, half child and half spaniel dog; the ram-eagle, the +winged satyr-fish, and the wonderful pig of the ocean.</p> + +<p>The menagerie of blazonry has been enlarged by representing +nearly all of the animals at times with fish-tails, when they are +said to be marined. The zodiacal sign of the capricorn, shown +as half goat and half fish, is a familiar example. Sometimes +the sea-horse is drawn as an enlarged hippocampus, sometimes +with the forequarters of a horse and a fish tail. Griffins and +unicorns are marined in German heraldry.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c6">Chapter VI. Fable upon Wings</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">For</span> the most part the winged creatures of fable are exiles +from mythologies broken down or forgotten. They are imperfect +and confused embodiments of the phenomena of the +heavens. In them one sees, what the men who repeated stories +about them did not see, the diurnal journeys of the sun into the +west, the shadowing storm-cloud, the lightning flash, the fury +of evil winds, the hail, and the snow. But the poetry of the +air, of which these creatures are the flying shreds, is weighted +with terrestrial prose. Extinct birds of colossal size, prehistoric +winged reptiles, and the bones of fossil mammals are reflected +in the shapes of cloudland. Few of the creatures that hover +there can be called fowls at all; their wings carry bodies that +belong upon the earth. Thus Pliny, in one of the most flagrant +of his carelessly credulous passages, makes the casual statement +that Ethiopia produces “horses with wings, and armed with +horns, which are called pegasi.” Because of its human affinities +the dragon must be considered by itself.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Phœnix</i></p> + +<p>Of the phœnix, a true fowl of legend and its most renowned, +Maundeville has a vivacious picture. This bird, he says, “is +not much more big than an Eagle, but he hath a Crest of Feathers +upon his Head more great than the Peacock hath; and his Neck +is yellow after the Colour of an Oriel that is a fine shining Stone; +and his Beak is coloured blue as Azure; and his wings be of +purple Colour, and the Tail is yellow and red, cast in streaks +across his Tail. And he is a full fair Bird to look upon, against +the Sun, for he shineth full gloriously and nobly.”</p> + +<p>Other men were not so sure about the phœnix. Herodotus +said he had never seen it and Pliny declared he was “not quite +certain that its existence is not all a fable.” Herodotus, however, +had seen its picture, and the Maundeville account is copied +from him.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span></p> + +<p>The bird was Arabian, its legend Egyptian. It was said that +there was only one phœnix in the world, and that it appeared at +very long intervals. The Roman Senator, Manlius, wrote that +no person had seen it eat since its food was air, that in Arabia +it was sacred to the sun, and that its lifetime was five hundred +and forty years. When stricken with age it built a nest of cassia +and sprigs of frankincense and lay down to die; from its bones +and marrow issued a worm which in time changed into a small +bird. The first duty of the new bird was to perform the obsequies +of its predecessor, and carry the nest containing its myrrh-swathed +remains to the City of the Sun in Egypt, placing it +upon the altar of that divinity.</p> + +<p>According to the more familiar account, when the phœnix is +full of years it flies to Heliopolis, sings its own dirge there, +flaps its wings to fan the funeral pyre, and presently is utterly +consumed; the next day emerges the new bird, fully feathered; +and on the third day, its wings well grown, it salutes the priest +and returns to the East. Still another account has it that in its +old age the bird casts itself on the ground, receiving a mortal +wound, and the new bird issues from the ichor.</p> + +<p>In the censorship of the Emperor Claudius what purported +to be a phœnix was brought to Rome and exhibited in the +Comitium, but it was adjudged an imposture. Plutarch ventures +the daring statement that “the brain of the phœnix is a pleasant +bit, but that it causeth the headache.” He may have meant the +golden pheasant, or even wine from cocoanuts, but it is said that +Heliogabalus made a fruitless attempt to secure this unique +tidbit for his table.</p> + +<p>Popular art reflects the phœnix legend, metaphor still more. +It is the favorite symbol of self-regeneration. The burned city, +the ruined country or cause, “rises like the phœnix from its +own ashes.” Jesus, whose death coincided with one of the +reported flights of the fowl to Egypt, was called the Phœnix by +monastic writers, and St. Clement of Alexandria cites the fowl as +proof that the dead will rise again. Its effigy was taken over +from the pagan urn by the Christian sarcophagus. Browne, +however, thought that the notion of a solitary phœnix was repugnant +to Scripture, “because it infringeth the benediction of +God concerning multiplication.” At one time its image hung<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span> +before chemists’ shops because of its association with alchemy. +Sometimes the Arabs confused it with the salamander and pictured +the latter as a bird.</p> + +<p>The relation of the phœnix to astronomical reckoning gives +a clue to the legend. It reappeared, according to some authors, +at intervals of 250, 500, 654, 1,000, 1,461 or even of 7,006 +years, but the accepted Phœnix Period or Cycle was 540 years, +and Egypt reports having seen the fowl five times, the first in +the reign of Sesostris, and the last time in <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> 334. This relates +the appearances of the phœnix to the Great Year, which Hardouin +says is 532 years.</p> + +<p>It was an ancient belief that the same aspect of heaven and +order of the stars that had prevailed when the world began +recurred every 532 years, and that at one of these periods, with +all the planets in conjunction or all the stars returned to the +same point in the ecliptic, the world would be destroyed; or +else that it would perish and revive again to go through the +same sequence of celestial phenomena. The phœnix, self-regenerating, +sun-dedicated, westward-winging, arrayed in the gold +and purple of dawn and twilight, seems to be an obscure form +of the sun myth; and this inference is strengthened by the fact +that at Heliopolis a bird called the bennu was a symbol of the +Egyptians for the rising sun. It was a heron which “created +itself” and rose in a “fragrant flame” over a sacred tree. Bennu +in Egyptian and phœnix in Greek are the same word, and +signify the palm tree.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Fung-wang</i></p> + +<p>There was a Chinese phœnix called the fung-wang which at +long intervals and only in the reigns of upright monarchs +emerged from the deserts. Six feet high, with plumage reflecting +the five colors that the Chinese recognized—red, white, +yellow, azure, and black—it was something like an immense +bird of paradise. It was called the chief of the three hundred +and sixty kinds of birds, and classed with the dragon and the +unicorn as a spiritual creature. On its poll appeared the +Chinese character for uprightness, on its back that for humanity, +while its wings enfolded the character for integrity. Its low +notes were bell tones, and its high like those of a drum. When<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span> +you play the flute, in nine cases out of ten the fung-wang comes +to hear, says the <i>Shu King</i>. It frequented only groves and +gardens and would not peck living grass. The <i>Bamboo Books</i> +record its visits as far back as 2647 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> The emperor in +whose reign it first showed itself recast his cabinet so that officers +bore the names of birds, and the Minister of the Calendar +was called the Phœnix. “Another example of an interesting and +beautiful species of bird which has become extinct within +historic times,” rashly concludes Gould.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Flying Serpents of Araby</i></p> + +<p>Another winged creature besides the phœnix sought to go out +of Arabia into Egypt, but its passage was opposed. This was +the flying serpent. Herodotus says he went to “a certain place +in Arabia” to ask about it. He saw the backbones and ribs of +these reptiles in inconceivable number, piled in a gorge, and +learned why they got no further. They are met in this place +by “the birds called ibises, who forbid their entrance and +destroy them all.” Hence the Egyptians hold the ibis in +reverence.</p> + +<p>Josephus uses the incident as basis of a story about Moses +that is not in the Pentateuch. The Ethiopians had successfully +invaded the land of Egypt, and an oracle advised the defenders +to choose for their general Moses the Hebrew. His choice +pleased the scribes of both nations—the Egyptian because they +apprehended that Moses would be slain, and the Jewish because +they expected that he would be the instrument of their deliverance. +The line of march lay through the country of winged +serpents, powerful and mischievous creatures that came out of +the ground unseen or fell upon men from the air. But Moses +“made baskets like unto arks of sedges, and filled them with +ibes, and carried them along with him, which animals are the +greatest enemies to serpents imaginable, for these fly from them +when they come near them, and as they fly they are caught and +devoured.” So Moses passed on unscathed, and into the heart +of an Ethiopian princess through whose aid her father’s forces +were routed.</p> + +<p>After centuries of discussion the sacred ibis of the Egyptians +was finally identified by the traveler Bruce with the bird the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span> +Abyssinians call Father John; but the winged serpents have not +been satisfactorily explained. It has been suggested that what +Herodotus saw in the Arabian gorge was the remains of a locust +invasion—a difficult surmise, although Pliny reports that the +legs and wings of grasshoppers three feet long were dried in +the sun and used by the Indians for saws.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Roc</i></p> + +<p>The case for the roc—a creature unknown to either Greek or +Roman legend—rests mainly upon three beguiling names of +travel tale. These are Aladdin and Sindbad of the <i>Arabian +Nights</i>, and Marco Polo of the <i>Diversities</i>. By the magic of +his lamp Aladdin, the wayward gamin of a Chinese city, had +won a princess and a palace; and he had poisoned the African +magician who sought to use him as a tool and then to take the +lamp from him. Bent on vengeance, the magician’s brother +stabbed a holy woman with the very un-Chinese name of Fatima, +disguised himself in her habiliments and won entrance +into the palace of Aladdin and into the confidence of his princess. +The latter asked the false Fatima what she thought of her +residence, and this was the reply.</p> + +<p>“My opinion is that if a roc’s egg were hung up in the middle +of the dome, this hall would have no parallel in the four quarters +of the world, and your palace would be the wonder of the +universe.”</p> + +<p>“My good mother,” said the princess, “what is a roc, and +where may one get an egg?”</p> + +<p>“Princess,” replied the pretended Fatima, “it is a bird of +prodigious size, which inhabits the summit of Mount Caucasus; +the architect who built your palace can get you one.”</p> + +<p>The princess consulted Aladdin, and, retiring to his apartment, +he rubbed the lamp; when a genie appeared, he bade +him procure the roc’s egg. Whereupon the hall shook as if +about to fall, and the genie exclaimed in a loud and terrible +voice, “Is it not enough that I and the other slaves of the lamp +have done everything for you, but you, by an unheard-of ingratitude, +must command me to bring my master and hang him +up in the midst of this dome? The attempt deserves that you, +the princess, and the palace should be immediately reduced<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span> +to ashes; but you are spared because this request does not come +from yourself.” Then he told of the presence of a conspirator +in the household. Aladdin’s killing of the latter is the final +episode of the tale, the fortunate adventurer and his spouse +soon mounting the throne of China.</p> + +<p>Sindbad encountered the parent bird on his second voyage, +after he had been abandoned on an island; and first he saw +its egg. He mistook the egg for a white dome of prodigious +height and extent and found it fifty paces around and too smooth +to climb to the top. All of a sudden the sky became dark as by +a thick cloud and a huge bird came flying toward him. It +alighted on the egg, and Sindbad, creeping close to the shell, +tied himself by his turban to one of its legs, which was as big +as the trunk of a tree. The next morning he hoped the roc +would carry him away. Nor was his hope disappointed, and +after an immense journey in the air—quite from Madagascar to +India—the bird alighted in the Valley of Diamonds. There +Sindbad disengaged himself, only to fall into other adventures.</p> + +<p>Marco Polo was the first veracious traveler to bring to the +west a report of the roc, and he was careful to state that he +did not see the bird; he only heard of it. The roc, he said, +comes to Madagascar from the south. It resembles the eagle, +but is so much larger that it can carry away an elephant. “Persons +who have seen the bird,” he continues, “assert that when +the wings are spread they measure sixteen paces [forty feet] +from point to point, and that the feathers are eight paces [twenty +feet] long and thick in proportion.” Messer Marco guessed +that these creatures might be griffins, half birds and half lions, +and particularly questioned those who claimed to have seen +them. No, was the reply, they were fowls altogether. Kublai +Khan sent messengers to Madagascar to confirm the story. They +brought back, as Marco heard, “a feather of the roc positively +affirmed to have measured ninety spans, and the quill part to +have been two palms in circumference.” The delighted khan +sent valuable gifts.</p> + +<p>Two centuries afterward the roc reappears in the narrative +of Father Joano dos Santos, a Portuguese Dominican friar +traveling in eastern Ethiopia. He tells of a fellow Portuguese +faring inland in Madagascar to purchase ivory, and leading a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span> +large monkey on a chain. This he fastened to the trunk of a +tree and lay down to rest; a monstrous bird snatched up both the +monkey and the tree and flew away. The Shoshones have a +story of an owl which carries men away to its island larder. +Mewan legend speaks of the cannibal bird Yel-lo-kin with wings +like pine trees which snatched children by the top of the head +and bore them through the hole in the middle of the sky to its +nest on the other side.</p> + +<p>While the roc belongs to nature myth, matter-of-fact has a +word to say. The extinct dodo is recalled, which, however, +could not fly. The feather brought to Kublai, and the monstrous +stump of a roc’s quill which it is said was brought to Spain by +a merchant from the China seas, may have been taken from a +species of palm growing in Madagascar which has quill-like +fronds. Southern Madagascar is frequented by very large +birds—the albatross with a wing-spread of fifteen feet, and the +condor, which may measure more than ten from tip to tip.</p> + +<p>Everybody in the east believed that the roc, or more correctly +the rukh, really existed. When the utmost depths of Arabic +credulity are sounded, one reaches the probable basis of a +legend into the superstructure of which exaggerated details of +natural history have been built. One Arab writer says the +length of the roc’s wings is ten thousand fathoms, or nearly +twelve miles, and these dimensions would make a fair-sized +storm cloud. A Chinese tale describes the bird as a fowl which +in its flight obscures the sun, and of whose quills “water-tuns” +are made. One of the riders of the roc in another tale from the +<i>Thousand and One Nights</i> is admonished to stop his ears from +the wind, “lest thou be dazed by the noise of the revolving +sphere and the roaring of the seas.” It is shrewdly surmised +that the roc is the storm cloud and the egg it covers is the sun—true +master of the slaves of Aladdin’s lamp.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Rhinoceros of the Air</i></p> + +<p>Another monstrous fowl, the rhinoceros of the air, was +reported in mediæval travel and still commands the faith of the +Samoyeds. Purchas abstracts the description given by Andrea +Corsali in his Abyssinian travels. The bird is much bigger than +an eagle and has a bow-fashioned bill or beak four feet long,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span> +with a horn between the eyes streaked with black. “It is a cruel +fowle and attends on battels and campes.” The Siberian myth +gives this winged rhinoceros gigantic dimensions. The tusks +and bones of the great pachyderms, found in the tundras, are +thought by native hunters to be the beaks and talons of monster +birds. The nearest approach of fact to the Abyssinian prodigy +is perhaps the horned screamer, or unicorn bird, whose cries +“resembling the bray of a jackass, but shriller,” unpleasantly +disturbed for the naturalist Bates the solitude of the Brazilian +forest.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Harpies</i></p> + +<p>Those forbidding sister groups, the gorgons, the sirens, and +the harpies, are perhaps different aspects of the storm clouds +and the storm wind—the baleful lightning, the shrieking sea +gales, the violent gusts that snatch (<i>harpazo</i>) away soul and +body. Of the three, the gorgons and sirens will be left within +the domain of nature myths. The harpies may be migrants +from the religions of Egypt, in which Nekhbet, the vulture-goddess, +is sometimes represented as a woman with a vulture’s head, +and the soul is depicted as a human-headed bird fluttering from +the mouths of the dying. Yet they have that savor of the soil, +that touch of the grotesque, that suggestion of coarse reality that +belong rather to travel tale. Though with woman faces, their +attributes are animal.</p> + +<p>Hesiod describes them as maidens, winged and golden-haired, +who harassed the blind King Phineus at his banquets. The myth +is retold in grosser form in the story of the Argonauts, whence +these sisters, driven away by the comrades of Jason, make their +flight to the Æneid and find roost in an isle where the Trojans +cast anchor. The picture Virgil drew of them superseded the +more flattering accounts of poets before him, and the immense +vogue of this poet in later ages led the romancers of the Charlemagne +cycle to adopt his report without abatement.</p> + +<p>The harpies of Virgil are, as the poet Morris pictures them, +“dreadful snatchers,” like women down to the breast, with +scanty, coarse black hair, dim eyes ringed with red, bestial +mouths, gnarled necks, and birds’ claws. Their faces are pale +with hunger. When the Trojans slay the island cattle and prepare<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span> +meat for a feast, the birds swoop down with a horrible +clamor, seize part of the meat, and defile the rest. Nimbly they +dodge the Trojan swords, and their feathers are like steel mail. +From a cliff they reproach the visitors for slaying their cattle +and warring upon them, and as Æneas departs they shriek direful +predictions after him.</p> + +<p>In the legends of Charlemagne the bird-sisters reappear when +Astolpho, cousin of Orlando, reaches Abyssinia riding the hippogrif. +Here is another blind king, like Phineus, “prey to a +flock of obscene birds called harpies, which attacked him whenever +he sat at meat, and with their claws snatched, tore, and scattered +everything, overturning the vessels, devouring the food, +and infecting what they left with their filthy touch.” They are +put to flight with one blast of Astolpho’s horn and driven by him +and his hippogrif into a cavern, the entrance of which he blocked +up so that they are seen no more.</p> + +<p>That is, so far as the romancer of that time knew. They +reappeared in the New World on the Isthmus of Darien, where +Balboa was pursuing, amid the fens of a haunted land, the adventure +of the mines of Dobayba and the elusive golden temple. +The Indians told him there had been a horrible tempest, and +when they ventured forth again they found that two monstrous +creatures had come in with the storm. They were apparently a +mother and her daughter. They had woman faces and eagle +claws and wings; the branches of the trees where they perched +broke with their weight. Swooping down, they would seize a +man and carry him away to the hilltops to devour him. At last +the natives killed the older bird by a stratagem, and, suspending +her body from their spears, bore it from town to town to appease +the alarm of their people. The younger harpy disappeared.</p> + +<p>Natural history has given the name of harpy to a buzzard, an +eagle, a fly, and two species of bats. Neither of the last named, +however, is the vampire bat of which Bates has left a portentous +portrait. Its spread of wing is nearly two and a half feet. +“Nothing in animal physiognomy can be more hideous than the +countenance of this creature when viewed from the front; the +large, leathery ears standing out from the sides and top of the +head, the erect, spear-shaped appendage on the top of the nose, +the grin and the glistening black eye, all combining to make up<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span> +a figure that reminds one of some mocking imp of fable.” It +seems to be fact that villages in Central America have been +abandoned because of the nocturnal attacks of this animal. +Dampier professes to have seen on an island near Sebo bats +“with bodies as big as ducks and with a wing spread of eight +feet.” The custom of nailing up dead bats as witch-or-devil +forms is common. “An animal,” says Buffon, “which, like the +bat, is half quadruped and half bird, and which, in fact, is +neither the one nor the other, is a kind of monster.” He suggests +that “the wings, the teeth, the claws, the voracity; the nastiness, +and all the destructive qualities and noxious faculties of +the harpies bear no small resemblance to those of the Ternat +bat.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Stymphalian Birds</i></p> + +<p>The Stymphalian birds, according to Greek legend, frequented +a lake in the northeast of Arcadia, which lay on the +main route from Argolis and Corinth westward. To disperse +or destroy them was the sixth labor of Hercules. These birds +were anthropophagous, used their feathers as arrows, and were +equipped with brazen claws, wings, and feet. Diodorus has a +milder account in which they figure merely as voracious poachers +of the fruits of the neighborhood. With a brazen pan the +hero made such an uproar that they flew away, appearing again, +in the story of the Argonauts, as tenants of the island of Aretias.</p> + +<p>Pausanias visited the township of Stymphalus in his tour of +Greece. He describes a temple to Artemis Stymphalia standing +there, and the figures of the birds Stymphalides under its roof; +behind the temple were marble statues of young women with the +legs of fowls. The birds, he says, are as large as cranes, but +resemble the ibis save that they have stronger beaks and less +curved; so, indeed, they are represented on coins of Stymphalus. +Herodotus rationalizes the legend by intimating that their feathery +arrows were, in truth, hail or snow.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Cockatrice</i></p> + +<p>“The weaned child,” said Isaiah, prophesying the good time +coming, “shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den.” The cockatrice +was a monster with the head and plumage of a cock and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span> +a barbed serpent’s tail, and so it is represented in heraldry. The +word is an old French corruption of the Latin for crocodile, but +popular etymology attributed the name to the fact that the prodigy +was hatched from an aged cock’s egg by a serpent. Because +of the crest crowning its head it is also called a basilisk, from +the Greek <i>basilikos</i>, or “little king.”</p> + +<p>Its habitat was Africa. It was horrid to look upon and its +glance and breath were alike fatal, while its voice struck terror +to other serpents. Its own image, reflected in a mirror, would +kill it. The basilisk of Cyrene, Pliny said, was not more than +twelve fingers in length, but it destroyed all shrubs save the rue, +and consumed grasses and shattered stones merely by breathing +upon them. “He infecteth the water that he cometh neare,” +according to Leigh. It was believed that if a horseman killed +a basilisk with a spear-thrust, its poison would ascend the +weapon and destroy not only the rider, but his mount. Even +its dead body hung in a temple kept swallows from building and +spiders from spinning there. However, if a man saw the basilisk +first, he went scatheless and the creature itself might die, +while women could seize it without suffering harm. The effluvium +of the weasel and the crow of the cock were alike fatal to +it. Travelers passing near its haunts sometimes took a cock +along.</p> + +<p>While its deadly nature has persisted, the shape of the cockatrice +has changed. To the ancients it was merely a baleful +lizard. Its confusion in the Middle Ages with the cock gave it +feathers and a beak. As soon as hatched by a toad or snake +from a cock’s egg laid in a stable it hid itself in crevice, cistern, +or rafter, for to be seen was to die. Later the heralds and painters +represented it with the head of a hawk, sometimes even with +the head of a man. Its ashes would turn base metals into gold. +People thought that cock’s eggs were used in the devil’s chrism +whereby his anointed hags could assume beast form or ride the +clouds. In Browne’s time there was traffic in counterfeited cockatrices +made by joining the dead bodies of pheasants and serpents, +or out of the skins of thornbacks. The basilisk of natural +history, which may have been the original of the fable, is a +harmless creature, although of frightful aspect.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c7">Chapter VII. The Dragon</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">The</span> dragon of pagan and early Christian legend was a +winged crocodile with a serpent’s tail. As the word is used by +travelers, often a crocodile or a snake rather than a fabulous +composite animal is intended. There are three animals listed +in natural history which somewhat resemble this creature. The +dragon-fly is a frightful-looking but entirely harmless insect; +how the supersession of myth by science has shifted values is +illustrated by the fact that the ninth edition of the <i>Encyclopædia +Britannica</i> gives nearly four pages to the insect and only a +dozen lines to the fabulous monster, the destruction of which in +another age was the crowning exploit of gods and men. There +is also a small flying lizard, native to the East Indies, which is +called a dragon and which in miniature is a fair copy of fable. +The primeval world knew a veritable dragon in the pterodactyl, +a flying lizard with a wing span of seventeen feet.</p> + +<p>In the Far East the dragon was a four-legged serpent with +rugged head and spiked ears, and, though without wings, it flew. +There was more of the crocodile in the dragon of the Near East. +It had four short paws, a forked tongue, and bat wings, and fire +came from its mouth. The dragon of heraldry had a squat, +scaly body, a head with horny projections, long clawed legs, a +barbed tongue, and bat wings.</p> + +<p>There were four noteworthy things about the dragon. It was +watchful, it spat fire and smoke, it ejected poison, and it had +control of water. The dragon watched the golden apples in the +garden of Hesperides where Hercules found and slew it. It +guarded the Valkyrie Brynhild in a castle on the Glistening +Heath. Although ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages used the +word to symbolize sin and particularly pagan worship, yet until +very recent times the world accepted the dragon. The elder +naturalists, such as Gesner and Aldrovandi, picture it in their +works. A mediæval writer says that at the midsummer celebration<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span> +lads burned bones and filth to generate a noxious smoke, +and so to drive away dragons, which, excited by the summer +heat, copulated in midair, poisoning the wells and springs by +dropping their seed in them.</p> + +<p>For what it is worth there is documentary evidence of dragons +in the Alps, all of it attested by oath. The depositions were +gathered early in the eighteenth century by Prof. Johann Jacob +Scheuchzer and are thus summarized in Francis Gribble’s <i>Early +Mountaineers</i>: “There are dragons with and without wings, +with and without legs, with and without crests; dragons with cat +faces, with human faces, and with nondescript faces; dragons +that breathe fire and dragons that do not breathe fire.”</p> + +<p>Scheuchzer was impelled to this inquiry when he found there +were graven images of dragons on Swiss public buildings and a +“dragon-stone” in a Lucerne museum. The latter item he says +is a jewel cut out of a dragon’s head in its sleep. If the monster +awakes before the operation is complete, it will die and the +stone will vanish. To forestall awakening, drowsy herbs are +scattered about, and sometimes incantations are muttered. The +dragon-stone is a remedy against plague, poison, dysentery, and +nosebleed. Scheuchzer concludes that the Lucerne dragon-stone +is no imposture because it does effect cures, because the Alps +afford many caves for dragon haunts and because of the testimony +of eye-witnesses as above.</p> + +<p>In June, 1673, Joliet and Marquette saw two dragon forms +carved and painted along a bluff that overlooks the Mississippi +at Alton, Illinois. Says Père Marquette: “As we +coasted along rocks, frightful for their height and length, we +saw two monsters painted on one of these rocks, which startled +us at first, and on which the boldest Indian dare not gaze long. +They are as large as a calf, with horns on the head like a deer, +a fearful look, red eyes, bearded like a tiger, the face somewhat +like a man’s, the body covered with scales, and the tail so +long that it twice makes a turn of the body, passing over the +head and down between the legs, and ending at last in a fish’s +tail. Green, red, and a kind of black are the colors employed.”</p> + +<p>These outlines, which have been called the highest attainment +of early Indian pictorial art, and which Marquette said the best +painters of France could scarcely equal, became known as the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span> +Piasa petroglyph. Quarrymen destroyed them shortly before +the Civil War, but drawings were made of them by artists who +followed descriptions. One surmise is that they represented the +Algonquin thunder bird.</p> + +<p>A copious and curious literature treats of the dragon as a +veritable creature of natural history. According to Ælian, +although the Ethiopians call it the slayer of elephants, it conceals +itself when it hears the noise of the eagle’s wings. When +it lies in wait for man or beast, it consumes deadly roots and +herbs. At Lanuvium naked virgins paid it the annual tribute +of a barley cake to insure a fruitful year. Passing the cave of +a sacred Indian dragon, the army of Alexander was affrighted +by hissing and blowing and the apparition of a head with eyes +“of the size of a Macedonian shield.” Artemidorus adds the +detail that the Indian and African dragons have grass growing +on their backs. “You burst asunder vast bulls” is Lucan’s apostrophe. +Ignatius reports that the library of Constantinople had +the intestine of a dragon 120 feet long on which the Iliad and +Odyssey were inscribed.</p> + +<p>Chinese reports are very detailed. In the great Materia +Medica of the early seventeenth century it is said that the dragon +has nine resemblances—its head like a camel’s, its horns like a +deer’s, its eyes like a hare’s, its ears like a bull’s, its neck like +a snake’s, its belly like an iguanodon’s, its scales like a carp’s, +its claws like an eagle’s and its paws like a tiger’s. It is whiskered +and its voice resembles the beating of a gong. The +dragon, however, cannot hear itself, for it is deaf. It is fond +of gems and jade and excessively fond of swallow’s flesh; but +it dreads iron, beeswax, the mong plant, the centipede, the leaves +of the Pride of India, and silk dyed in the five colors. It passes +the winter in muddy water contemned by the fish and turtle, and +in summer the moles, crickets, and ants annoy it. At five hundred +years it grows horns. “If you do not ride on a dragon,” +says one writer, “you cannot reach the weak waters of Kwan-lun +hill.” Another suggests that if you eat dragon’s flesh soaked +in acid “you can write essays.”</p> + +<p>It was a belief among Chinese that dragons did not die, but +merely sloughed off their bones as a snake its skin. These were +used to cure a variety of diseases and are still sold in apothecaries’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span> +shops. The records speak of a bone-covered dragon +plain east of the hills of Fang-chang, and of isles where the +dragons shed their bodies; “teeth, horns, spines, feet, it seems +as though they are everywhere.” The identification is perhaps +with those deposits of dinosaur and other paleontological +remains which modern exploration has uncovered.</p> + +<p>The naturalistic side of Chinese dragon lore is not far +removed from the position taken by Charles Gould, the stoutest +defender of the literal basis of wonder stories (<i>Mythical Monsters</i>, +1886). He finds nothing impossible in the dragon of tradition +and thinks it more likely that it once lived than that fancy +engendered it: “It was a long, terrestrial lizard, hibernating and +carnivorous, which dragged its ponderous coils and perhaps +flew; which devastated herds and on occasions swallowed their +shepherd; which, establishing its lair in some cavern overlooking +the fertile plain, spread terror and destruction around, and, +protected from assault by dread or superstitious feeling, may +even have been subsidized by the terror-stricken peasantry, who, +failing the power to destroy it, may have preferred tethered +offerings of cattle adjacent to its cavern, to having it come down +to seek supplies.”</p> + +<p>But the dragon reached a place in the political and spiritual +life of China such as a mere saurian hardly could attain. The +empire was called “the dragon empire”; the imperial throne, +“the dragon throne”; the emperor’s countenance, “the dragon’s +face”; his beard, “the dragon’s beard.” In pictured effigy, the +dragon rears itself upon house fronts and draws its scaly folds +over garments and utensils as well as across the imperial +flag; and there are annual processions of dragon images, regattas +of dragon boats, and sacrificial ceremonies in dragon temples. +To a third of mankind, for five thousand years or more, the +dragon has been the bestower of rain and the great giver of +good, and the emperor its earthly representative.</p> + +<p>As in other matters, China has merely preserved and exaggerated +beliefs which were world-wide. Nearly all of the +thrones of earth were once dragon thrones. On the shield of +Agamemnon, king of kings, was “the unspeakable horror of a +dragon glancing backward.” Persians, Parthians and Scythians +had dragon flags and Rome borrowed them for its cohorts. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span> +dragon flew on the battle standards of German, Celt, and Saxon, +and breasted the foam of the seas as the figurehead of Norse +longboats. In the older Europe, as in the China of to-day, it +was carved on house gables, bells, musical instruments, goblets, +weapons, chairs, and tables.</p> + +<p>Under these world-wide customs, was there only a giant reptile +not long extinct, an inference from fossil remains, some +frightful-seeming but diminutive lizard contemporary with man +and magnified a thousand times by the aberrations of fancy? +All of these things there may have been, for the myth is so complex +that its development has been called the history of civilization. +But inevitably speculation had to rise higher than a +saurian to account for phenomena of such consequence; it was +conceived that the dragon was the storm-cloud and he who slew +it the sun. So, it may be, ingenious minds surmised thousands +of years before modern conjecture first spoke of solar myths +and found in forgotten texts not the heart of the thing, but allegories +in which ancient solar mythologists had wrapped it. Or, +it was guessed, the dragon typified the spirit of evil, a power to +be placated by sacrifice and politic devil-worship, but destroyed +as opportunity offered. So the world long thought, and so far +as it thinks at all of the dragon, that is what it thinks now.</p> + +<p>To assume that the myth is an allegory of satanic forces is to +explain much, but does it explain all? Powerful as is the motive +of fear, it is negative. Was it potent enough to coil a +dragon at the roots of all the world’s religions; and when these +arose, were men able to speculate on so abstract a thing as evil +and symbolize it as a composite beast? The Bible narrative +begins with the dragon of Genesis in the Garden of Eden and +ends with the dragon of Revelation, “that old serpent which is +the Devil and Satan,” in the bottomless pit. The slaying of the +dragon is the central point of Norse and Saxon epic, the great +deed of the heroes. The water monster of Navaho legend is a +dragon; the elephant-headed thunder god of the Mayan inscriptions +is a dragon deity; the legendary founders of both Athens +and Mexico were dragon-tailed. Snake worship is dragon worship +and, like the Midgard serpent, it encircles the earth. Everywhere +the myth is a thing of thrones and temples.</p> + +<p>Perhaps its secret is to be found, as later in this study it will<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span> +be seen that the secret of the Amazon myth is to be found, in +the time when thrones and temples were one. Clues that lead +to it are: (1) the world has still a dragon throne, or rather a +recent memory of one; (2) always in the lore of dragon or +serpent, whether as victim, votary, or mate, appears the figure +of a daughter of Eve; (3) the snake is the badge of Æsculapius +and the symbol of healing; (4) the dragon, whether haunting +cloud or pool, is associated with water.</p> + +<p>Woman is the physical source of human life. Water is healing, +fertilizing, and regenerating. Use the Scriptural figure, +“the water of life,” and it relates itself to woman and to the +serpent symbol of the art that lengthens life. When the throne +and temple were one, the creation and continuation of life was +the function of the priest-king, though only in China has his +tradition come down to the modern time. The Chinese emperor +was himself the dragon. In the spring festivals of his people +he supplicated heaven for rains that would revive the land, and +in the autumn festivals he rendered thanks for nature’s bounty +or took upon himself the blame for dearth.</p> + +<p>The dragon myth is not a myth of fear, nor was the dragon +in the beginning a personification of evil. It was an expression +of the deepest desire of man, the desire to defeat chance +and change, to repeal “the sad laws of time” and to live forever. +Of all myths, that of the dragon is the fundamental, for +the forces with which it deals are the forces which have impelled +man, in a long grapple with destiny, to construct societies, build +religions, and create an art and a literature. In China both the +significance and the origin of the legend lie almost on the surface. +In most other places and at most other times its meaning +has been distorted, inverted, weighted down with fancies and +guesses. As it stands, it is like the fabric of a vision in which +tatters of experience are woven on the looms of sleep by the +master weavers of hope and fear; and in this faded grotesque +one may decipher the eternal dream of mankind.</p> + +<p>The theory which will be interpreted here is that of Grafton +Elliot Smith (<i>The Evolution of the Dragon</i>: 1919). It is too +sweeping in its implications and too revolutionary yet to have +received the general sanction of writers upon mythology; but +among all dragon theories it must take precedence because<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span> +alone it has the elemental breadth demanded by the phenomena +to be accounted for. A difficult thing about it is that the author +rejects the doctrine accepted of the time, that the same beliefs +and practices can arise independently in two or more places. +Unless there is in any case definite evidence to the contrary, he +assumes that “no ethnologically significant innovation in customs +or beliefs has ever been made twice.” It is his contention +that the dragon myth was born in Egypt, developed in Babylonia, +and in a time remote carried to China, India, and the +Americas, and to all other parts of the earth. Granting this, +it becomes not merely the one world-epic, but the proof that, +before history began even as now, all races of men were in +effectual contact.</p> + +<p>The primitive custom at the basis of the myth is well established. +The post of priest-king was enviable but dangerous. +With each recurring spring he was expected to bring fertility +to his land; but sometimes he was killed and a successor +appointed each year, in imitation of the death of vegetation that +preceded the resurrection of spring; and always when age overtook +him he was slain, for what vital magic over nature was +there left in his aging frame? To avoid this fate a mock king +was erected to suffer in his stead; or a virgin was sacrificed; +or in elaborate mummery a ritual murder was merely simulated.</p> + +<p>Here in their simplest form appear all the elements of the +dragon myth—a king who was thought to control the sources +of water and the fertility of which it was the symbol; a slaying +to be accomplished, and a woman who was at once a fertility +symbol and a vicarious sacrifice. The king himself was the +dragon, in its original form just a serpent symbol of his reputed +control over water.</p> + +<p>Thus stated the story is understandable, but it becomes confused +and infinitely complex when it is dramatized in the mythology +of ancient Egypt. A king who through his beneficent +irrigation works is identified with the river Nile is translated +by legend into the skies and becomes the water god Osiris, a +member of the earliest Trinity. The second member of the +Trinity, but the first in point of time, is Hathor, the Great +Mother,—at one time identified with the cowry shell, the earliest +form of fertility emblem, and then identified with the moon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span> +and translated into the sky when primitive minds saw the lunar +rhythm repeated in the sex life of woman. The third member +of the Trinity is Horus, the Warrior Sun God, a son of Osiris. +How an aging king, not yet a god, resolved that he would not +be slain to make way for a younger man and called upon the +Great Mother, already a goddess, to provide him with an elixir +of life, which was blood, and how, in compliance with his +entreaty, she nearly wiped out mankind before a substitute was +provided—in reality the red waters of the Nile inundation—is +allegorically recited in the ancient Egyptian narrative called +the Destruction of Mankind.</p> + +<p>In this and its companion legends, the Story of the Winged +Disk and the Conflict between Horus and Set, are all the elements +of the dragon saga. It would be futile to recite them in +detail, for the thing has become so confused that in the words +of Doctor Smith it amounts to this: “The early Trinity as the +hero, armed with the Trinity as a weapon, slays the dragon, +which is the same Trinity.” But the confusion has produced a +concrete and comprehensible result, a composite wonder-beast +in which are blended parts of real animals that symbolize both +regeneration and destruction and that are the attributes of the +several members of the early Trinity, and of Set, enemy of +Horus and lord of chaos.</p> + +<p>An archaic conception this may seem now, but what is there +of the human or the cosmic that does not lie in it? The desire +for unfading youth and continuing life on one side of the grave +or the other is in it, and that is the heart history of humanity. +The conflict between order and chaos is in it, and that is the +story of nature. The theme of vicarious sacrifice is in it, and +that is the deep mystery of religion. There is that in the tale +which impelled the story-tellers of five millenniums to repeat it, +to enrich its incidents and to weave the tissues of new meanings +through it until it was at once a treatise on astronomy, a theory +of meteorology and a philosophy of destiny; a record of the +strife between winter and summer, night and day, justice and +injustice, and good and evil fates, which is the world as men +have found it.</p> + +<p>Unquestionably the dragon of classic story and mediæval +blazonry is the devil of Scripture; the biblical identification is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span> +complete, and the bird-like features, leathern wings, and forked +tail of this elemental creature of fable all are reproduced in +familiar portraits of the enemy of mankind. This and the +inner meaning of the dragon myth may be accepted, while its +origin in Egypt and dissemination from one place throughout +the world is probable. Doctor Smith, whose contentions are all-embracing, +makes other inferences which here will be outlined +without comment:</p> + +<p>The serpent in the Garden of Eden, the tree of life and Eve +herself are all one. The deluge of Sumerian, Babylonian, and +Hebrew legend is a disastrous Nile inundation dramatized. The +ark is the moon-boat of Hathor. The pig owes its evil name to +its identification with Set, who represents the evil side of the +dragon’s nature. The cowry shell, suspended from the girdle +as a fertility emblem and not from any motives of modesty, +became the origin of all clothing. Inland tribes which had no +access to the shore copied the cowry in a plastic yellow metal, +and this was the origin of the world-old quest for gold and the +occasion of its use as money. The object of mummification was +the continuance of life beyond the grave, the purpose in burning +gums and spices was to restore to the mummy the odor and +warmth of life; and these customs, related to each other and to +the theme of the dragon saga, are also related to the development +of architecture, sea trade, and medicine. Jade reached +its mystic estate in China and other lands, because the men who +sought gold for cowry amulets in Turkestan sought jade at the +same time for seals, and in popular thought the two substances +became confused. Through a similar confusion, diamonds +attained in India the value they have since had everywhere. +Pearls ranked beside both because they were thought to be particles +of moon substances, emanations of the moon goddess herself. +The precious metals and precious stones became so not +because of their rarity or beauty, but because of their magical +power as symbols of the divine actors in the dragon story. The +griffin of legend is merely a tentative dragon. The mandrake +of legend is merely a stranded pearl shell, and the dog used to +extract it from the earth is a terrestrial version of the Mediterranean +dogfish to which had been transferred the demoniac powers +of the sharks that guarded the pearl treasures of the east.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span> +With the dragon began the unending search for the elixir of life.</p> + +<p>These conclusions, some of which offer novel explanations +for enigmatical things noted in this study, are at least a testimony +that the dragon myth has traveled far, and in its travels +has become related to many things. It is the most vital of all +growths that have found root in the fecund soil of the imagination. +It is a richly pictorial history of the groping sublimities +of human thought. The dragon is one of two portraits which +man has painted of himself.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c8">Chapter VIII. Denizens of the Deep</h2> +</div> + +<p> +<span class="smcap large">Belief</span> that the sea was in every respect like the land, and that +its very waves were only a thicker atmosphere, was the main +source of marine fable. In Celtic story, for example, Manannan +sings to Bran that what he is sailing across is not the sea +but a flowery plain, and the speckled salmon are lambs and +calves. Mældune, voyaging over the ocean, descries beneath +him a country with castles, people, and cattle. In the <i>Pih T’an</i> +it is said that in the midst of the waters off Shantung there is +sometimes the misty semblance of a palace, with towered walls +about it, and the appearance of men and carriages and horses +busily engaged; and this is called the Market of the Sea.</p> + +<p>It was long held that every land animal had its counterpart +in the ocean. So there had to be mermen to match the men of +the land. Such names as sea-mice, sea-spiders, sea-kites, sea-hares, +sea-dragons, sea-lions, sea-oxen, and sea-horses, “the +grisly wasserman” and “the horrible sea-satyr,” are the records +of old belief. Pliny tells of a number of strange marine creatures, +including elephants and rams, stranded on a Mediterranean +beach, and of others with the heads of horses, asses, and +bulls, which despoiled grain fields beside the Indian Ocean. +The Chinese believed that all domestic animals in the Roman +Orient came out of the sea. Proclaiming that the atmosphere +was only diluted water, De Maillet, a French naturalist of the +eighteenth century, contended that in the ocean was the original +type of everything; that dogs descended from seals and men +from tritons, while parroquets had their brilliant colors from +gold, green, and violet fishes in the sea. There were fierce +tribes of men in the north who seemed to him only lately +emerged.</p> + +<p>In classic legend, danger and marvel met mariners upon the +strands along which they sailed in coasting voyages, and there +was no need to go inland for adventure. The sirens sang their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span> +shrieking songs by the water’s edge, the Polyphemus-folk flung +masses of rock into the breakers, and from their island palaces +enchantresses kept watch for passing ships. The voyages of +fable were thus a sort of parade between shores thronged with +perilous romance. A writing on the Catalan map of 1375 is +in this spirit. In the Spice Islands, it recites, are “three kinds +of sirens—one is half woman, half fish; another is half woman, +half bird; and the third is half woman, half horse.”</p> + +<p>Elder fancy peopled the deep itself with tritons riding sea-horses +and stilling the waves with blasts from their shell trumpets, +and with divine nymphs of great beauty and often of +engaging nature, as well as with singular animals. The legate +of Gaul wrote Augustus that a number of nereids had been +found dead on its shore, and men from Olisipo (Lisbon) +brought word to Tiberius that a triton had been heard blowing +a conch shell in a cavern retreat. Sea marvels multiply, but +somehow take on a coarser texture, in the mediæval time.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Sailors’ Favorite</i></p> + +<p>Among the marine populations the dolphin has always been +a favorite with sailors, as Greek and Roman bas-reliefs and the +coins, medals, and coats of arms of Mediterranean countries +bear witness. It was supposed to be the swiftest of animals; it +was fond of men and of music, particularly that of the water +organ; it had a turned-up nose, and according to Pliny recognized +in a surprising manner the name of Simo (flat-nose) and +“preferred to be called by that name rather than any other.” +Ajasson thought it was attracted merely by the hissing sound of +the word. Pliny has a tale of its friendship with mankind which +should have a better ending:</p> + +<p>“A dolphin at Hippo Diarrhytus on the coast of Africa used +to receive his food from the hands of various persons, present +himself for their caresses, sport about among the swimmers, and +carry them on his back. Proconsul Flavianus rubbed him with +unguents whose odor rendered him as if dead, and he kept aloof +for months afterward, as though affronted. But he returned to +familiar intercourse later. At last the vexations that were +caused them by having to entertain so many influential men who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span> +came to see this sight, compelled the people of Hippo to put the +animal to death.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Monster Whales</i></p> + +<p>The ancients held the great cetaceans in terror. The Talmud +declares that it would take a ship three days to sail from the +head to the tail of Leviathan. Pliny speaks of whales in the +Indian Ocean nine hundred feet long, and of others which +would cover two acres of ground. The traditional fear of them +is in the account by Nearchus of his battle—his own word—with +a school of whales when he was taking Alexander’s fleet +back from the mouth of the Indus to the Persian Gulf. The +sailors saw columns of foam shooting up from the sea and at +first mistook them for waterspouts. When they learned that +these came from whales, “they were so terrified that the oars +fell from their hands.” But Nearchus rallied them, drew up +his ships in order of battle, and at a given signal dashed toward +the monsters. Oars splashed loudly, rowers shouted, trumpets +sang defiance. The astonished whales plunged out of sight, and +his men hailed Nearchus as savior of the fleet.</p> + +<p>Sailors in the Indian Ocean of a later time told of the head +of a fish “that might be compared to a hill; its eyes were like +two doors, so that people could go in at one eye and out at the +other.” In these waters Sindbad’s companions mistook a whale +for a green meadow. The whales of Norse lore carry witches, +while the monster that bore Glooskap, the Algonquin culture +hero, could hear the song of clams as they lay under the sand.</p> + +<p>St. Brendan and his seventeen monkish brethren repeated the +Sindbad adventure when they sailed into the western seas in +search of the Isle of the Blessed. Bearing a lamb without blemish, +they landed on a low island to celebrate the Easter festival. +But when a fire was lighted and the pot set over it, the island +began to move, and they fled to their osier ship. What they had +taken for an islet was “the beast Jasconius, greatest of things +that swim, which laboureth night and day to put his tail in his +mouth, but for greatness he may not.” In stories of this kind +in the <i>Physiologus</i> the whale was supposed to represent the +devil, the sea the world, and the ship the human race.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span></p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Kraken</i></p> + +<p>“Oh, silly mariners,” exclaimed Arngrim, “that in digging +cannot discern whale’s flesh from earth!” Bishop Pontoppidan +pondered these accounts and in his <i>Natural History of Norway</i>, +published in 1752, he concluded that the whale, large as it +was—and science knows no extinct monster of equal bulk—was +not large enough to explain them. These are not floating +islands, but a vast sea-monster called kraken, kraxen, or krabben. +“What the credulous Olaus Magnus writes,” says he, “of +the whale being so large that his back is looked upon as an +island, and that people might land, light fires, and do various +kinds of work upon it, is a notoriously fabulous and ridiculous +romance.” No, this is the kraken, the back of which “seems to +be about an English mile and a half in circumference.”</p> + +<p>People, thinks the bishop, had some imperfect idea of the +kraken for ages back. Pliny heard an obscure account of it in +the Gaditanian sea; he likens it both to a wheel with spokes and +to a tree with such large branches that it could not get through +a ship channel. The Kors Trold or Soe-Drawl which sailors +deemed an evil spirit, and which they said could stop a ship +under full sail, must be the kraken, concludes the Norwegian.</p> + +<p>Pontoppidan draws a spirited picture of this prodigious creature +showing itself among a fleet of fishermen. They are several +miles out at sea on a hot summer day. Their lines should show +from eighty to one hundred fathoms of water under them, but +show only twenty or thirty. Fish are plentiful, above all cod +and ling. As fast as the sailors cast in they draw out their finny +prey. They are angling right over the monster, and his back +is the bottom the lines have sounded. Then they see the water +shallowing still further; the kraken is raising himself. So they +hasten out of danger and lie on their oars.</p> + +<p>“In a few minutes,” says the historian, “they see this enormous +monster come up to the surface of the water; he there +shows himself sufficiently, though his whole body does not +appear, which in all likelihood no human eye ever beheld. His +back looks at first like a number of small islands, surrounded +with something that floats and fluctuates like seaweeds; and several +bright points or horns appear, which grow thicker and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span> +thicker the higher they rise above the water. Sometimes they +stand up as high and as large as the masts of middle-sized vessels. +These are the creature’s arms, and it is said if they were +to lay hold of the largest man-of-war, they would pull it down +to the bottom. After this monster has been on the surface a +short time, it begins slowly to sink again, causing a whirlpool +that draws down everything with it.”</p> + +<p>Pontoppidan believes the kraken is a polypus, one of the starfish +kind. It has a strong and peculiar scent by means of which +it attracts other fish. Those islands, among the Faroes, that suddenly +appear and as suddenly disappear and that people deem +inhabited by evil spirits are krakens.</p> + +<p>All of which is set down in the famous eighth chapter of the +<i>Natural History</i> which, as its author says, “treats of the Norwegian +Sea-Monsters, or those animals of enormous size and +uncommon form which are sometimes seen in the ocean.” In +this chapter the Norse cleric seeks seemingly to outmatch in the +colder seas of Scandinavia the marvels of the Mediterranean. +He makes himself chief sponsor for the sea-serpent. He +describes the trold-fish, or unlucky-fish, that sailors hasten to +throw overboard. He has much to say of mermaids. He tells +of the Maelstrom in the Lofoden district of Nordland—an abyss +which penetrates the globe and issues in the Gulf of Bothnia; +“within a Norway mile of it, boats, ships, and yachts have been +carried away.” Whales are sometimes swept into it, “and then +it is impossible to describe their howlings and bellowings.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Sea Serpent</i></p> + +<p>The sea serpent of Pontoppidan has a venerable past and a +present of conjecture and recurrent report. Insensibly a legend +has been built up in the modern time as strange as any in the +whole range of fable. Men say, not “a sea serpent,” but “the +sea serpent.” It is assumed that there is but one, and that for +ages it has haunted the deep, appearing sometimes in the +Atlantic, sometimes in the Indian Ocean, sometimes in the South +Pacific—a plesiosaurus, perhaps, wandering the seas, the lonely +survivor of a vanished age.</p> + +<p>Olaus Magnus described the great marine snake—the Soe-Ormen<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span> +of old lays—as two hundred feet long and twenty feet +around, and as rising up like a mast before ships and snapping +men off their decks. Hans Egede, the Greenland missionary, +saw it in July, 1734. When it reared itself, its head was higher +than the ship’s maintop. When it flattened itself upon the +water, its tail was a ship’s length behind its head. “The following +evening,” says Mr. Egede, “we had very bad weather.”</p> + +<p>From all accounts, Pontoppidan concludes that this monster +is of about the length of a cable, or six hundred English feet. +The body is as big around as two hogsheads. “The head has +a high and broad forehead, but in some a pointed snout, though +in others that is flat, like that of a cow or horse; with large blue +eyes like a couple of bright pewter plates, large nostrils, and +several stiff hairs standing out on each side like whiskers.” Its +skin is smooth, except for a mane, like seaweed.</p> + +<p>These great snakes, the Norse writer declares, haunt the floor +of the North Sea, rising in July and August, their spawning +time. The wind is destructive to them, and they appear only +in calms. They cannot face the sun, and the fisherman may +escape them by rowing toward it. Nor can they endure the +smell of castor or asafœtida, and anglers who go out on Stor +Eggen in the summer provide themselves with one or the other. +Sometimes, however, the monster rises under small boats and +upsets them, or throws its heavy folds across vessels even of +some hundred tons burthen, and sinks them.</p> + +<p>The appearances of the sea serpent are well enough documented. +It was reported off the Norway coast in 1819, 1822 +and 1837, off the New England coast in 1815, 1817, 1819, +1833, and 1869, and off the American coast farther south in +1895. It was seen in the South Atlantic in 1841 by the frigate +<i>Dœdalus</i>, and in 1875 by the bark <i>Pauline</i>, when seemingly it +was dragging under a large whale. A few years ago it was seen +by the bark <i>Harvard</i> near Borneo. In the nineteenth century it +was sighted so often near Boston that it became known as the +American sea serpent. The accounts were circumstantial and +so well vouched for that there could be no reasonable doubt +that a strange marine monster was abroad. A committee of the +Boston Linnaean Society, for example, drew up a report signed +by eye-witnesses in 1819. The serpent, they said, was from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span> +eighty to ninety feet long, with buoy-like protuberances on its +back and was swimming at twenty miles or more an hour, and +driving frightened mackerel before it.</p> + +<p>These reports have been variously explained—that a low-ranging +flight of sea fowl could produce the semblance of a +snake upon the water; that a mass of seaweed had created this +effect; that a pair of gigantic basking sharks, swimming in a +line, had seemed to be one creature; that twenty-foot ribbon fish +were the basis of the legend, and that a monster squid had been +mistaken for a snake. The preponderance of scientific opinion +inclines to the last named view. Cephalopods more than sixty +feet long have been seen off Newfoundland and the coasts of +northern Europe, and it may be that what the <i>Pauline</i> saw was +not a serpent crushing a whale, but a whale killing a giant cuttle +fish. But it is not at all certain that a monster of some +species unknown, or too hastily assumed to be extinct, a stray +from the Mesozoic or Eocene seas, does not haunt the ocean.</p> + +<p>Cousins of this prodigy, of vaguer outline, rove the deeps of +myth and romance. The sea serpent of Arab story is the waterspout. +The spotted snake of Navajo story caused the flood. +The bunyip of Van Diemen’s Land carried off women to his +water abode. The yacu-mama, or mother of waters, of Brazilian +story—fifty paces long and twelve yards in girth—drew +anything within a hundred yards into its jaws, but could be placated +by bugle music. The orc of the Charlemagne cycle, a +horrible mass of tossing and twisting body with nothing of the +animal but head, eyes, and tusked mouth, haunted an island off +the Irish coast and menaced the manacled and beauteous Angelica. +Rogero with his hippogrif and magic buckler released her, +and Orlando slew the monster afterward. The killing by a Moslem +of a like creature that had been devouring beautiful virgins +led to the conversion of the Maldive islanders, according +to Ibn Batuta; at times it reappears in the offing in the seeming +of a ship with lighted candles. The orc of science is no +serpent, but a large dolphin, and when it pursues the whale, +says an old writer, the latter makes “a hideous bellowing, like +a bull when bitten by a dog.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span></p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Tortoises</i></p> + +<p>A quaint humor animates much of tortoise tradition. By +stringing cords across a tortoise shell the infant Hermes invented +the lyre. According to the Sicilians a tortoise executed the +decree of fate that Æschylus should die of a blow from heaven; +an eagle mistook the tragic poet’s bald head for a stone and +dropped a tortoise upon it to break the shell. Pliny says that +tortoises betray themselves to fishermen by overeating at night +on land and snoring loudly after they return to the water. +“Some persons are of opinion,” he reports, “that the female +refuses to have any intercourse with the male until he has placed +a wisp of straw on her back, and that she hatches her eggs +merely by looking at them.” From the tortoise the Romans +obtained no less than sixty-six remedies for bodily ills.</p> + +<p>Sea turtles may attain a weight of a thousand pounds, and +legend has enlarged this figure. In their shells, says Diodorus, +the Chelonophagi (turtle-eaters) of the East African islands, +sailed to the mainland for fresh water. They used them also +as roofs, nature’s bounty providing them “by one gift food, +vessels, shipping, and habitations.” Ælian speaks of tortoise +shell houses fifteen cubits long: “nor does the rain beating +against them sound otherwise than if it were falling on tiles.” +Odoric overtops this. In Cochin-China he saw a tortoise “bigger +in compass than the dome of St. Anthony’s Church in +Padua.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Eels</i></p> + +<p>The Romans thought that the murænas, or sea eels, had a +language of their own, and that their voices were “low and +sweet, with an intimation so fascinating that few could resist +its influence.” The Emperor Augustus, it was believed, could +understand the language. How eels were generated was long a +puzzle, their origin being imputed to May dew, horse hairs, +rocks, mud, the carcasses of animals, and even to Jove and the +goddess Anguilla; hence their scientific name of <i>Anguillina</i>. +A cod of the German coast and a Sardinian water beetle have +each been called the “eel-mother.” It has lately been ascertained +that the eggs are spawned in Bermuda waters, and the +young reach Europe after a two years’ journey.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span></p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Three Traditions</i></p> + +<p>A German folk-tale has it that when Christ was crucified all +the fishes were terror-stricken and dived under water, save the +pike, which thrust forth its head and witnessed the scene. Hence +the pike’s head shows some of the parts of the crucifixion—the +cross, three nails, and a sword. Another fish, the remora, +decided the fate of the world by attaching itself to Antony’s +galley and keeping it out of the battle line at Actium; or so +says Pliny. There are monstrous crabs on the beaches of +Japan, some of them seven feet across, which bear what seems +to be a human mask on their backs. The natives say they appeared +after a pirate fleet had been destroyed and its leaders +beheaded on the shore.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Water Horses</i></p> + +<p>The water gods of northern Europe usually had the horse +form, and their memory survives in Shetlandic tales of the +njogel and tangi. The former appeared as a sleek pony or +decrepit gray horse; its hair grew forward instead of backward; +its fetlocks pointed upward instead of downward; its +hoofs were reversed. At dusk it would stand beside a trail, +and seemed to invite the benighted traveler to mount it. Then +it galloped over a waterfall, or dashed into a lake, leaving him +to drown while it vanished on the other bank in a blue light. +The tangi was like it, but had its ranging ground on the seashore. +People became insensible for days when it ran around +them.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Sharks</i></p> + +<p>Human attributes among the sea’s inhabitants are divided +between sharks and the merfolk. The latter are the graceful +creatures of an imagination at play with itself. The former +are always things of terror, not only because they attack man, +but because they seem to have some special and sinister relation +to him. They have been thought to be enchanted men. +Savages tell of their taking human form and human mates. +The West African sacrificed children to a shark god. In the shark +temples of the Sandwich Islands priests rubbed their own<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span> +bodies with salt water so as to seem to have scaly skins. Offerings +of coins were made to the basking shark in northern +Europe. In New Calabar it was a capital offense to kill a shark. +Sailors still think that this fish will follow vessels on which +some one is to die, and in the days of the slave ships it was +said to have a special fondness for the flesh of blacks. In +former times its teeth, set in gold, were used as amulets and +its powdered brains had a place in medicine; shark’s oil is still +in the pharmacopœias, shark fins are a Chinese dainty, and +shark skins an article of commerce. The source of these beliefs +and practices may be in the world-wide dragon myth, wherein +pearls were thought to be emanations of the moon goddess and +were sought as givers of life. The sharks that harassed the +pearl fisheries came to be looked upon as demons guarding the +treasure houses of the sea floor, and embodiments of evil like +the dragon itself.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Merfolk</i></p> + +<p>Under mermaid legend is the old notion that because there +are men and women on the land there must be men and women +in the sea. The texture of the legend has become about as complex +as human nature itself, and, like it, shows the divine, the +semi-divine and the coarsely animal subsisting together. In +turn the mermaid has been goddess, enchantress, and fresh meat +at sea.</p> + +<p>The oldest known form of the myth may be glimpsed on tavern +signs, where the mermaid is depicted with a circular mirror +in her hand and a fish tail. She is Chaldean and Phœnician. +Derceto, the moon goddess, was represented as half woman and +half fish because it was conceived that she divided her time +between the earth and the waters under the earth, plunging into +the sea with every moonset. Baring Gould thinks that the mirror +she holds may be the moon disk.</p> + +<p>Other shapes of poetry were merged in the legend before it +entered the prose period of maritime discovery. Among them +were the tritons and the nereids, “half-naked, natural, loving, +and antique”—lesser divinities of classic fable. At some time +the sirens, who had been pictured as half human and half bird, +were immersed, and thereafter were pictured as half human<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span> +and half fish. Browne protests this representation, but the mermaid +myth does carry siren features, song included. The song +of the Rhine maidens is mermaid song, their prophecy mermaid +prophecy. Of the same family are the nixies who love music +and foretell the future.</p> + +<p>The legend has become further entangled—with tales of banshees +whose wailing portends death, of gull-befriended seal people +who could take human form, of swan maidens who wed mortals, +of forward sea fairies who leave their red caps on the +shore of Ireland for young men to pick up, even of the female +demon or nightmare. There are both foam and cloud-flock in +mermaid story, and they meet in the gentle Phæacian, Nausicaa, +whom Ulysses discovers bathing on the shore.</p> + +<p>In Fouqué’s <i>Undine</i> the legend achieves its purest poetry. It +is the story of a nymph who lives with her foster parents on +the edge of an enchanted forest where a knight of the old German +Empire finds and woos her. Riding thither through the +wood, a bear mocks him with human voice from the branches +of an oak, a troll shows him the goblins at play with their gold +beneath the earth, and what seems at one moment a tall white +man and at the next a foaming brook guides him to the cottage. +These were Undine’s familiars, and when the knight meets the +water maiden the brook rises and for days roars about the cottage, +secluding him there until he has won the nymph’s heart, +and she his hand and with it an immortal soul. Through the +remainder of the story until its inevitable disaster in the unwitting +breaking of a vow—the end of all unions between nymphs +and mortals—water foams and flashes and strange shapes dissolve +in spray.</p> + +<p>This is the type of a hundred mediæval tales, of which the +best known is that of Melusina, a fountain nymph wedded to +the head of the house of Lusignan, but lost to him because he +did not keep his pledge to respect her Saturday privacy. He +discovered her in the bath, a serpent from the waist downward. +According to report her blood flowed in the veins of the Luxembourg +and Rohan families and in Henry VII, sovereign of the +Holy Roman Empire. Her spirit was seen whenever the death +of a Lusignan impended. The tale has an extensive bibliography.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span></p> + +<p>Other accounts of water maidens are of a wilder cast. The +judy of Slavic folk tales lived in the lakes and rivers of the +Rhodope Mountains and danced in meadows, and him whom +they coaxed to dance with them they destroyed. When they +saw a man in the water they entangled him in their long hair +and drowned him. The pariks of Armenian story are erotic +female demons of the river banks. In a Celtic tale Rath saw +mermaids as “grown-up girls, the fairest of shape and make +above the waters; but huger than one of the hills was the hairy-clawed, +bestial lower part which they had beneath.” They sang +the hero to sleep and tore him to pieces. The ships of another +Celtic adventurer, Ruad, were stopped, and when he went over +the side he saw “three of the loveliest of the world’s women” +holding to the keels; the rest of the story is dalliance. Pacific +coast Indians have legends of beautiful, long-haired women +who lived in a round house under the ocean and made trouble +for people above. An Arab traveler tells of joyous water maidens +caught and caressed by sailors in the bright straits of +Greece, and then returned to the sea.</p> + +<p>The prose of the legend was reached when men began to +capture what they conceived to be mermaids and mermen, and +failed in most cases to find kindred beings. There is a considerable +list of these creatures captured or sighted on the beaches +of the Old and the New World. Only one of these talked, and +Pontoppidan mentions the story but to discredit it. Two senators +of Norway caught a merman, but let him go on his threatening +them in Danish to sink the ship with all its crew. Of the +so-called bishop-fish or sea bishop, said to have been netted for +the King of Poland in the Baltic in 1453, a similar tale is told. +It wore a dalmatic and mitre and carried a crosier. With gestures +of entreaty it besought the intercession of its brother +prelates of the court. When it was released into the sea the +grateful creature made the sign of the cross and gave the episcopal +benediction with its fin before it submerged. In one other +instance there were points of human contact. Milkmaids of +Edam in West Friesland in 1430 found a mermaid which had +been swept over the dykes by a storm. They brought it home, +as the story goes, and dressed it in female attire; it learned how +to spin, to eat with them, to adore the crucifix, but it never spoke.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span></p> + +<p>Through many other accounts runs the belief that merfolk +were weather-breeders. The <i>Speculum Regale</i>, an Icelandic +work of the twelfth century, describes a mermaid with a “very +horrible face” that haunts the deep near Greenland and before +heavy storms is seen with fish in its hands. If it casts the fish +toward the ship, it is an omen of death in the coming storm; +if it casts the fish away from the ship it is a good omen. Hakluyt’s +<i>Voyages</i> tell of a monster, from the middle upward proportioned +like a man and with a tawny skin, which was discovered +near Bermuda in the sixteenth century. The clerks +of the expedition put the account in writing, to be certified to +the English king. “Presently after this,” it is recited, “for +the space of sixteen days we had wonderful foule weather.” +Knud Leems in his account of Danish Lapland asserted that +horrible tempests followed the appearance of a merman and +merwoman in those seas. The male, or hav-manden, was like +a robust man with brown skin and long hair and beard; the +female, or hav-fruen, had the human shape and hair and a +ghastly visage.</p> + +<p>It appears that a merman, captured in the Baltic in 1531, +lived for three days at the court of Sigismund, King of Poland, +and there is a story that to determine ownership of another +the King of Portugal and the Grand Master of the Order of +St. James had a suit at law.</p> + +<p>Merolla tells of a ship’s crew in a South African port who +saw at a distance “a sort of sea monsters like unto men” gathering +herbs, with which they plunged into the sea. The sailors +gathered herbs for them, and the grateful creatures “forthwith +drew from the bottom of the sea a quantity of coral” and laid it +in the place where the sailors had piled the herbs. Human +perfidy ends a pretty story. The sailors spread a net to catch the +mermen, who lifted it and fled.</p> + +<p>The purely animal quality predominates in other of the circumstantial +accounts repeated of the mer people. A merman +was captured off the coast of Suffolk in 1187, but escaped. +Hendryk Hudson reports that his crew saw a mermaid near +Nova Zembla, and “from the navel upward her back and breasts +were like a woman’s,” while the tail was like the tail of a porpoise. +In 1560 fishermen netted seven mermen and mermaids<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span> +in the seas west of Ceylon; several Jesuit priests were witness +thereto. Captain Weddell, the Antarctic explorer, records the +sworn testimony of one of his crew that he had seen a creature +with human form and the tail of a seal, and with red face and +green hair. In the sea of Angola, says Pontoppidan, mermaids +are heard to shriek and cry like women; negroes net and eat +them, and their flesh is considered much like pork. Sigismundus +ab Herbenstein had it from Muscovite sources that in +the river Tachnin there was “a certain fish with head, eyes, +nose, mouth, hands, feete and other members utterly of humane +shape, and yet without any voyce, and pleasant to be eaten.” In +Pinkerton’s <i>Voyages</i> there is an account of the woman fish found +“among the islands Boccias,” the flesh of which is “of excellent +savour when eaten boiled like other meat, and which also +serves to make highly savoury sausages.”</p> + +<p>The dugong, manatee, or sea cow has been called the Old +Man of the Sea as well as the mermaid. It has figured in +legends with a biblical background; the people about the Red +Sea took these creatures for survivors or descendants of the +army of Pharaoh that was drowned in pursuing the Israelitish +host. The three mermaids that Columbus saw on his first voyage +to the New World are supposed to have been of this species. +When white men first came to America the manatees thronged +the waters of Florida, but have since become nearly extinct +there, although there is a protected herd in the Miami River.</p> + +<p>Reports of actual captures present the rationalization and +degradation of the mermaid legend. The divine daughters of +the deep with their lovely bodies and flowing hair become strange +animals of the seal or cetacean species with ugly faces and +bodies that may be converted into pork—sea apes, as the credulous +and yet cautious Pontoppidan calls them. They grow so +common that the <i>Aberdeen Almanac</i> of 1688 predicts the periods +when mermaids may be expected near the mouth of the Dee.</p> + +<p>Sir Humphrey Davy argued that if God had created the +mermaid, her deficient means of locomotion and of self-defense +would have left her a prey to the fish. Yet the seas would have +been poorer of romance if the logic and poetry of men had not +led them to correct, in ages more naïve, what seemed to them +an oversight of their Maker.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c9">Chapter IX. The Peoples of Prodigy</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">In</span> his <i>True History</i> Lucian relates what he is at pains to +point out is a fictitious voyage to the moon and to various isles +of the outer seas. Grotesque half-human beings people his +narrative. There are grape vines, the upper parts of which +have the shape of women, and these entwine themselves about +his men. There are Hippogypi, or men carried upon vultures; +Onoscileas, or ass-legged women, with long robes and a free +manner of harlotry; Bucephali, or men with bulls’ heads and +horns and lowing voices; Schorodomachi, or garlic-fighters; +Psyllotoxotæ, or flea-archers; Acroconopes, or gnat-riders; +cloud-centaurs, nut-eaters, pirates riding dolphins that neigh like +horses, and a variety of other fantastic creatures. The Samosatan +wrote, he says, “about such things as neither are nor +ever can be.”</p> + +<p>Yet races of men very much like these were long supposed to +live upon earth. Their descriptions are in the ancient histories, +their habitats are defined in the classic geographies, their effigies +are upon mediæval maps. As late as the century after +Columbus, travelers were still coming upon them, and repeating +the interrogatory of <i>The Tempest</i>, “What have we here, a +man or a fish?” Perhaps twoscore of these imaginary tribes +are better documented, and not so long ago were better known, +than most of the tribes of real men and women upon the earth; +the documents are on dusty shelves of the larger libraries.</p> + +<p>Some of the singular folk entered literature by the double +gates of mistaken etymology and literal acceptance of figurative +language. In the lineaments of others one discerns races that +are still upon earth, but divested of the masks of fable. In +the rest one sees the creative fancy of man following its natural +bent—cartooning humanity by exaggerating a limb or feature +or by eliminating it; borrowing something from the brute; +making men taller or shorter, or longer-lived or shorter-lived,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span> +than reality; fashioning the moon calves, the Calibans; setting +up a realm in which paradox is law. Thus mankind gave itself +new and interesting neighbors.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Singular Speech</i></p> + +<p>Men judge one another by the testimony of the ear as well +as of the eye; and the speech of all these peoples, no less than +their anatomy, proclaimed the law of paradox. Sometimes +the surprise was in hearing Indian or Greek or Arab words from +lips that seemed bestial rather than human. Often no words +came at all, but only unintelligible animal sounds. This, indeed, +was to be expected from races whose bodies varied from +the normal; but the list of prodigious folk is lengthened by the +addition of other men who, while looking like ordinary mortals, +were not quite human in their speech.</p> + +<p>There were nations which used dumb-barter because they +had no language. There were tribes in Ethiopia which, as Pliny +says, “have to employ gesture by nodding the head and moving +the limbs instead of speech.” On the Atlantic seaboard were +troglodytes that “have no articulate voice, but only utter a kind +of squeaking noise.” “Like the screeching of bats,” says +Herodotus of the same people. Another tribe of troglodytes, +according to John Lok, “have no speech, but rather a grinning +and chattering.” The Arabians dwell in caves and have shrill, +boyish voices, declares Jordanus. In the eastern mountains of +Ind, says Tauron, are the Choromandæ, a forest folk with hairy +bodies, canine teeth, and sea-green eyes who “screech in a +frightful manner.” Kazwini speaks of hairy little men in +Ramni with a speech like the chirping of birds. Carpini names +among the peoples of Ind the dog-faced men who speak two +words in human wise and bark for the third. There were people +with a small hole in place of the mouth, whose conversation was +a whistling. Among the isles of Maundeville is one “clept +Traconda, where the Folk be as Beasts and unreasonable, and +dwell in Caves; and they eat Flesh of Serpents, and they eat +but little; and they speak Nought, but they hiss as Serpents do.” +In a desert beyond paradise this authority says there are wild +men “that be hideous to look on, for they be horned and they +speak Nought, but they grunt as Pigs.” However, there was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span> +speech in that country, for “Popinjays speak of their own +Nature and say ‘Salve’ to Men that go through the Deserts.”</p> + +<p>Neither classical nor mediæval relators mention the device +which has given a South African tribe its name, and rumors of +which may have provided a basis for fable. Merolla, who +went to the Congo in 1682, heard that the Hottentots “have not +the gift of human voice, but understand each other by a sort +of hissing tone and motion of the lips.” This is the Hottentot +“click” which the Portuguese called a kind of stammering and +the Dutch likened to the turkey’s gobble. It is made by applying +the tongue to the roof of the mouth, the teeth, or the gums, +and suddenly drawing it back. There are four of these clicks—the +dental, like the smack of a kiss; the palatal, like the tap of +a woodpecker; the cerebral, like the pop of a cork; and the +lateral, like the quack of a duck.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Dog-headed People</i></p> + +<p>The Amazon and pygmy, and certain tribes of the satyrs, had +speech entirely human. Because in them credulity has won +unlooked-for triumphs over skepticism, these three peoples, best +known of the races of legend, are reserved for separate treatment +later. The men of another race vie with the Amazons as +figures in plastic art, although only in its more grotesque manifestations. +The Cynocephali, or dog-headed people, writes +Ctesias, are a swarthy and extremely just people living in the +mountains of northern India at the sources of the Hyparkhos. +The tribe numbers about one hundred and twenty thousand persons +and pays tribute to the King of the Indians.</p> + +<p>These people have the heads of dogs, but with larger teeth, +and the bodies of men; and they have dog claws. They cannot +use human speech, although they understand it. They converse +with one another by barking, and with other people by +barking and the sign language. They practice no arts but live +by the chase, using the bow and spear; and they can outrun wild +animals. Their staple food is raw flesh, which, however, they +roast in the sun. They rear numbers of sheep, goats, and asses +and drink the milk and whey of the ewes. They are fond of the +fruit of the siptakhora, the tree that produces amber. The +surplus fruit they dry and pack in hampers as the Greeks pack<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span> +raisins. Every year they freight rafts with the hampers and +with two hundred and sixty talents weight of amber, and a like +weight of a pigment which they make from a purple flower. +This they convey as tribute to the Indian king. They ship +other raft-loads of the same commodities to their neighbors, receiving +bread and flour in return and a cloth made from a stuff +grown on trees (cotton). They also sell arms to other peoples.</p> + +<p>The dog-headed people are troglodytes, sleeping on a litter +of straw or leaves spread in caves. The women bathe once a +month, the men not at all, merely washing their hands; but +thrice a month they anoint themselves with butter. They are +clad in skins and the richest have cotton raiment. Some of +them live to be two hundred years old.</p> + +<p>The inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, says Marco Polo, +are a savage race “having heads, eyes and teeth resembling those +of the canine species”; and they kill and eat strangers. Odoric +is equally uncomplimentary, but Ibn Batuta, always sensitive +to female charm, says their naked wives are of exquisite beauty. +Carpini speaks of India’s dog-faced men. Even Greenland has +a similar legend as to an older race of barbarians who had +magic, but not the bow and arrow. These were men with dog +paws. They disappeared in battle with the Eskimos, or from +natural causes, since “the world was too small to hold both +races.” Myths of dog descent are found among the Aleuts, Dog-ribs, +and Ojibwas in North America, as well as in Madagascar, +Java, the Nicobars, New Guinea, Indo-China, and even Europe. +In North America the wild dog (coyote) frequently figures as +the creator of mankind.</p> + +<p>Sunamukha is the Indian name of the Cynocephali, and a +manuscript of the Prabhâsakhanda recites that this people lives +on the Indus. What Ctesias has set down seems to be an account +of an actual race, a tribe of black aborigines.</p> + +<p>When Hayton, the intrepid traveler-king of Armenia, paid a +visit in the thirteenth century to Batu, the Mongol prince, he +brought back a related and still stranger story. Beyond Cathay, +a journey of two years and two months from Nakin, was a country +where the women had the human shape and speech, but the +men were like hairy dogs and had no speech. These dog-men +repelled all strangers from their land, and supported themselves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span> +and their wives by the chase, the men eating flesh raw, the women +cooking it. When children were born, the males had the shape +of dogs, the females that of women. The <i>Chinese Encyclopedia</i> +also has a tale of the Kingdom of Dogs, and it was a Chinese +traveler who broke up this curious commonwealth. The women +wished to escape from it and gave him little sticks, asking him, +when he went back to his native land, to drop one of these every +ten li. They got away by the trail he marked.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The One-Eyed Arimaspians</i></p> + +<p>Lying between the gold-guarding griffins and the cannibal +Issedones was the country of the one-eyed Arimaspians. They +first appear in a poem of Aristeas of Proconesus, a semi-mythical +person who made a northward journey, as his verses declare, +in a mood of “bacchic fury.” Herodotus bases his account +on these, but cannot persuade himself that there is a race +of men born with one eye who in all else resemble the rest of +mankind. Arimaspi, he says, is a word of Scythic origin, a +compound of <i>arima</i> (one) and <i>spou</i> (eye).</p> + +<p>There Herodotus drops the legend, and after it has thriven +in the tales of the fabulists for some thousands of years, modern +criticism takes it up again from the same angle. It is suggested +that, after all, Arimaspi never meant one-eyed, and that the +race, the tradition of whose deformed aspect arose from a mistaken +translation of its name, is still in existence in the Russian +tribe known as the Tsheremis, which occupies the left bank of the +Middle Volga. This is near enough to the Ural gold districts +to meet the general topography of the legend.</p> + +<p>Strabo also describes a one-eyed nation, the Monomatti, with +the ears of dogs, bristling hair, and shaggy breasts.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Folk That Live on Odors</i></p> + +<p>The folk that live on odors dwell, says Megasthenes, near +the sources of the Ganges. They have no mouths, hence their +name of Astomi. Their bodies are rough and hairy and they +clothe themselves with a down plucked from trees—silk or +cotton. They use neither meat nor drink and subsist only by +breathing and by inhaling scents. When they start on a long +journey they lay in a supply of odoriferous roots, flowers, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span> +apples. But, says Pliny, “an odor which is a little more powerful +than usual easily destroys them.” Pope’s “die of a rose in +aromatic pain” may define such a fate.</p> + +<p>According to other ancient writers the Astomi also supported +life by sniffing at raw meat, and their susceptibility to rank +smells made it hard to keep them alive in camp. In Ethiopia +Pliny places a people that “have the mouth grown together, and +being destitute of nostrils, breathe through one passage only, +imbibing their drink through it by means of a hollow stalk of +the oat, which there grows spontaneously and supplies them with +its grain for food.” Maundeville removes the Astomi to an +island and gives them the stature of pygmies and a hissing +speech.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Noseless Nations</i></p> + +<p>There were several noseless nations. The flexible-footed +Scyritae, says Megasthenes, had only two breathing orifices +above the mouth; and he sketches pygmies similarly made. +Maundeville improves on the sketch: “And in another Ile be Folk +that have the Face all flat, all plain, without Nose and without +Mouth.” In contrast still another island had “Folk of foul +Fashion and Shape that have the lip above the Mouth so great +that when they sleep in the Sun they cover all the Face with that +lip.” Megasthenes had named and described these seventeen +centuries before. They were the Amycteres, with upper lips +projecting far beyond the lower—an omnivorous people, fond +of raw meat, and short lived. Tudela tells of desert-ranging, +infidel Turks who worship the wind, eschew bread and cooked +meats, and, lacking noses, breathe through two small holes. +The Noseless People of the Eskimo shore are evil spirits that +drag fishermen to gloomy abodes under the sea.</p> + +<p>To men with the bold Roman profile, the Levantine contour, +or the scimitar-shaped visage of the Sephardic Jew, Tartary’s +small-nosed, flat-faced peoples would indeed present a countenance +very like a plane surface. The scanty hair of the same +peoples may be responsible for the ancient notion of bald northern +nations. The Eskimo legend suggests a skeleton tenanted +by a demon.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span></p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Large-eared Races</i></p> + +<p>An Indian race called the Enotocoitæ had ears hanging down +to their feet—“great Ears and long that hang down to their +Knees” is for once the more restrained phrase of Maundeville. +The philosophers who had told Megasthenes of so many interesting +folk told him also of these. They could sleep upon their +ears as upon a rug, or under them as under a canopy, or inside +them as in a sleeping bag. These appendages were like +winnowing fans, Tzetzes puts it. Their owners were so strong +they could pluck up trees. So could the elephant, which also +has flapping ears and a prolonged upper lip—the pattern, it +would seem, for at least two fables.</p> + +<p>Ctesias describes a people who could blanket the upper parts +of their bodies with their ears. These were the Pandore, a +mountain race who lived to be two hundred years old, yet were +destined evidently to become extinct, for they numbered only +thirty thousand persons and the women bore children but once. +The infants were hoary-headed at birth, but at thirty the hair +began to turn black, and at sixty no white hairs were left. Five +thousand bowmen and spearmen of the tribe followed the Indian +king. There was even a Scandinavian tribe with all-enveloping +ears, if Pliny had it right.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Headless Peoples</i></p> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Do grow beneath their shoulders.</div> + <div class="verse indent16">—<span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span>: <i>Othello</i>.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + + +<p>To the west of the Troglodytes in distant mountains of Ind, +says Ctesias, live tribesmen who are without necks and have +eyes in their shoulders. In the north of Africa, says Pliny, are +the Blemmyes who “are said to have no heads, their mouths +and eyes being seated in their breasts.” These were also +called the Acephalites. Maundeville shifts their habitat. They +occupy one of fifty-four great isles under the jurisdiction of the +king of Dondun. This island is somewhere toward the south of +Asia. In it dwell “Folk of foul Stature and of cursed Nature +that have no Heads. And their Eyes be in their Shoulders, and +their Mouths be round shapen, like an Horse-shoe amidst their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span> +Breasts.” The <i>Arabian Nights</i> locates these same people in the +City of Brass. Abu Mohammed, hight Lazybones, in quest of +his wife, who has been carried thither by a Marid, “heard a noise +of cries and found himself in the midst of a multitude of folk +whose eyes were in their breasts.” They gave him the news he +sought and volunteered, “Now we be brethren of the white +serpent.” The Eskimos speak of a headless people living in +the moon and in remote regions of the earth.</p> + +<p>Here is a story of a curious race domiciled by various writers +in various parts of the Old World, and yet lacking details to +give it verisimilitude. These are supplied by Sir Walter Raleigh +in his report on the wonders of Guiana. The headless people +are Indians of the tribe of Ewaipanoma living in a district near +the Orinoco. He has seen none of them, but “every childe in the +provinces” affirms the story. Their eyes are in their shoulders, +their mouths in the middle of their breasts, “and a long traine of +haire groweth backward between their shoulders.” A chief’s +son whom they had made a prisoner told Raleigh they were +“the most mighty men of all the land, and use bowes, arrowes, +and clubbes thrice as big as any of Guiana.” This confirms, +concludes Raleigh, what was written of them by “Mandevile, +whose reports were holden for fables many yeeres.”</p> + +<p>In the interior of Guiana Sir Walter had a trading transaction +with a nation of kindred appearance. He bartered jew’s-harps +for fowls at a town of five hundred houses, where he found +Indians plentifully provisioned with venison, fowls, and wine. +He asked their chief “whence hee had those Hennes.” The +answer was that they were brought from a mountain less than +a mile away, “where were many Indians, yea so many as grasse +on the ground, and that these men had the points of their +shoulders higher than the Crownes of their heads, and had so +many Hennes as was wonderful; and if wee would have any +wee should send them Jewes harpes, for they would give for +every one two Hennes. Wee tooke an Indian, and gave him +five hundred Harpes; the Hennes were so many that hee brought +us, as were not to be numbered.” Raleigh wanted to visit these +mountain Acephali, but was warned that they were in their +drunken feasts and would kill him.</p> + +<p>One may explain the headless peoples about as one will. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span> +Tartar tribes north of India certainly have short necks. Thus +Pliny on the African Acephalites: “On the invasion of the Persians +the Blemmyes were in the habit of falling on one knee +and bowing the head to the breast, by which means, without injury +to themselves, they afforded a passage to the horses of the +enemy.” Buffon accepts and interprets the Raleigh tale. “This +monstrous deformity cannot be natural,” he says. “It is probable +that savages, who are so pleased in disfiguring nature by +flattening, rounding, and lengthening the head, might likewise +contrive to sink it into the shoulders. These fantasies might +arise from an idea that, by rendering themselves deformed, they +became more dreadful to their enemies.” This passage would +have interested Sir Walter.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Half-men</i></p> + +<p>There were people in the Philippines whose bodies suffered +temporary subtraction at the other extremity. These were the +asuangs—men who had acquired powers of sorcery by eating +human livers. When they willed it their persons divided at +the waist line, the lower part remaining behind and the upper +growing wings and long nails and a horrible black tongue, and +flying away on vampire errands. An orifice in the armpit contained +an oil which rendered this human bat invisible. If salt +was cast on his abandoned half he could not assemble himself +on his return. Wak-wak was one of his names. The reality +behind this grim fiction was the learned counselor, called the +asuang, whom each datto had at his court before the Spaniards +came. His evil repute is a Spanish slander.</p> + +<p>If there were men whose stature had been reduced as by a +transverse sweep of the knife, there were others whose appearance +was as if they had been sliced. These were the half-men +of Moslem legend called the Shikh and the Nesnas, each +with a single arm, leg, and eye, as though one man had been +split in twain. The Zulus had the same story, perhaps from +Moslem sources. They tell of half-men discovering a Zulu girl +in a cave and thinking her two persons. When they discovered +their error they exclaimed: “The thing is pretty! But, oh, +the two legs!” The fable may have sprung from figurative<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span> +speech, in which men of backward culture are described as +only half-men.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Diminutive Husbands</i></p> + +<p>American Eskimo legends tell of a tribe called Ardnainiq +living far to the northwest, whereof the men, small as children +and covered with hair, were carried around in the hoods of their +wives, who were of normal size. The detail oddly parallels +Darwin’s statement that he had found a female crustacean of +the common cirripedial character, “and in two valves of her +shell she had two little pockets, in each of which she kept a +little husband.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Eel-like Men</i></p> + +<p>A race of eel-like men, says Julius Scaliger, dwell in Malabar. +They have the serpent’s form, are eight feet long, and, +while of horrible aspect, are harmless unless provoked. They +will “stand bolt upright for hours together, gazing on the boyes +at their sportes, never offring to hurte any of them.” In the +upright posture they lose the likeness of serpents and “spread +themselves into such a corpulent breadthe, that had they feet +they would seeme to be men.” This is a tale brought to Europe +by the Portuguese; and at a time when it was debated whether +the serpent assumed a human form in tempting Eve, it was +thought this might be the creature whose body Satan borrowed.</p> + +<p>The tale is based in part on the cobra’s power to dilate its +neck into a broad hood. Back of it are Buddhist traditions of +the Nagas, a race of serpents that lived in dragon palaces under +the earth. There were naga-kings, and naga-maidens who assumed +human form, had their mortal lovers, and became the +founders of dynasties. The original inhabitants of the Andamans +were reputed to have been of this race, and according +to a popular belief their descendants were oviparous. The +interpretation of this legend is complicated by the surmise that +the Nagas were actually an ancient, non-Aryan people whose +emblem was the cobra.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Strangely Footed Folk</i></p> + +<p>Certain races the ancients classified and named according to +their means of getting over the ground. With his instinct for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span> +balanced statement Pliny unearths a passage from Eudoxus +which says that “in the southern parts of India” the men have +feet a cubit in length, “while those of the women are so remarkably +small that they are called Struthopodes.” The word +may mean either “sparrow-footed” or “ostrich-footed.” In the +context it probably means the former; the dames with diminutive +feet hopped around as sparrows do. It may be they were +Chinese women.</p> + +<p>Near the Indian troglodytes, according to Ctesias, dwelt the +Monocoli, who had only one leg, but were able to leap with +surprising agility. These people were also called the Sciapodes, +which means “making a shadow with the foot.” It was their +custom in the time of extreme heat to lie on their backs and +shield themselves from the sun, each under the shade of his +own foot. A later century knew the shadow-footed folk as the +men with parasol feet. Maundeville places them in Ethiopia. +In Armenia, or bordering upon it, the Mongols found another +one-legged nation, but with different structure. Its citizens had +only one arm also, which was attached to the middle of the +breast, but they had two gaits. Hopping, they covered ground +with remarkable speed, and when tired of hopping the men and +women whirled themselves around like cartwheels.</p> + +<p>When the Norsemen were exploring America, they encountered +a Uniped, or one-legged man, who launched a lethal arrow +at Thorwald Ericson, as he sat at the boat helm. The dying +leader drew it out and exclaimed, “There is fat around my +paunch; we have hit upon a faithful country, and yet we are +not like to get much profit by it.”</p> + +<p>The stiff-legged men, Carpini heard, lived south of the country +of the Kara-Khitai, upon a great desert. They had no speech +and no joints in their limbs, and when they fell down somebody +had to help them up. They wore felt of camel’s hair and +made wind shelters thereof. When wounded in battle they +stanched the blood with grass and fled swiftly away.</p> + +<p>A related tale is told by Rubruquis, who had it from “a certain +priest of Cathaya who sat with me clothed in a red-coloured +cloth.” When the friar asked him whence he had such a color, +“he told me that in the east part of Cathaya there were high +craggy rocks, wherein certain creatures dwell, having in all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span> +parts the shape of men, but that they bow not the knees, but +leap instead of walking; which are not above one cubit long, +and their whole body is covered with hair, who have their abode +in caves, which no man can come unto; and they who hunt them, +go to them, and carry strong drink with them, and make pits +in the rocks like wells, which they fill with that strong drink. +The hunters hide themselves, and then these creatures come out +of their holes and taste the drink, and cry ‘chin-chin’ and drink +till they are made drunk, so that they sleep there. Then the +hunters come and bind them hand and foot, while they are +sleeping, and afterwards open the veins in their neck and draw +forth three or four drops of blood from every one, and let them +go free; and that blood, as he told me, is the most precious +purple.”</p> + +<p>Megasthenes describes a race of Indians living upon a mountain +called Nulo, who had their feet turned backward with the +heel in front and with eight toes on each foot. Pliny places +this race “beyond the other Scythian Anthropophagi in a country +called Abarimon situate in a certain great valley of Mount +Imaus” (Himalayas). They had great rapidity of movement +and wandered about indiscriminately with the wild beasts. The +fable may have originated in the Caucasus, where there is still +a tradition that dæmons take the shapes of armed men, and have +their feet reverted. Farther north dwelt an ox-footed race.</p> + +<p>Classic note is made of two writhing nations. The Scyritæ +of India who “have merely holes in their faces instead of +nostrils” have “flexible feet like the body of the serpent,” says +Megasthenes. There was also the thong-footed people or Himantopodes, +residents of northern Africa, who moved with a +serpentine, crawling gait. This may be a traveler’s impression +of some sinuous dance of the desert.</p> + +<p>Under the hand of Maundeville the centaurs pass out of mythology +into history. The “Folk that have Horses’ Feet” are in +his collection of marvelous islanders: “And they be strong and +mighty and swift Runners, for they take wild Beasts with Running +and eat them.” These are the Hippopodes of Pliny, tenants +of a Baltic island. A related folk are the islanders permanently +mounted on ostriches, with which they seem to form one body. +Kazwini, who records this Arab legend, says they devour the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span> +bodies of drowned persons cast up by the sea. On another isle +Sir John seems for the once to have invented a people rather +than revived a legend. Here be “Folk that go always upon +their Knees full marvellously. And at every Pace that they +go, it seemeth that they would fall.”</p> + +<p>In Ethiopia, “on that side of the Nile which extends along +the borders of the Southern Ocean,” Pliny domiciles the Artabatitæ, +who have four feet and wander about after the manner +of wild beasts. Maundeville is more detailed: “And they be +all skinned and feathered, and they would leap lightly from +Tree to Tree.” Farther south were the Aigamuxa, theme of a +Hottentot story cycle, whose eyes were in the back of their feet. +Regarding human beings as zebras, they hunted them down and +tore them to pieces.</p> + +<p>Chinese marvel tales describe a race of people living somewhere +in the west. They have a hole right through their bodies +at the breast. When their mandarins would take the air, they +thrust a stick through the aperture, and two domestics carry them +so. “If the bearers are strong enough,” says Huc, “they often +string on several gentlemen at once.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>In the Russian East</i></p> + +<p>There was an east other than the sun-bathed lands whose +fabulous peoples are in literature. It lay just beyond northern +Europe, on the farther flanks of the Urals and beside the +Obi. To the Russians of the Middle Ages it was a land of +strange races and weird happenings. About these a body of +legends grew up which in a measure parallel the classic stories, +but give them backgrounds of ice and snow and add new +actors and enriching details. A Russian manuscript of the fifteenth +century, found at Novgorod a few years ago and entitled +“The Unknown Peoples of the East,” pictures these forgotten +folk. Nine different races, all called Samoyeds, are described, +and six are races of marvel.</p> + +<p>There were Samoyeds who shed their skins like snakes. For +a month each year they stayed in the water, avoiding dry land, +lest their bodies crack open. The Russian anthropologist, Professor +Anutschin, whose interpretation of the narrative is followed +here, says that these are natives who fish and hunt in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span> +the watery domain of the tundras, where the summer attacks of +mosquitoes and horse flies give their skins a rough and bloody +aspect, as if cracking before sloughing off. There were also +Samoyeds like other people from the navel up, but all shaggy-haired +from the navel down—in reality wearing trousers of +reindeer skins with the hair outside. There were other and +speechless Samoyeds with their mouths on the top of their +heads. When they would eat, says the Novgorod manuscript, +“they crumble the meat or fish, stick it under their fur caps and +then move their shoulders up and down.” This is the account +of a people whose speech the Russians did not understand, who +wore the head skin of the reindeer, ears and all, for a cap, and +whose sack-like garments had collars so high as to conceal their +mouths.</p> + +<p>There were also headless Samoyeds with eyes in their breasts +and the mouth between the shoulders, and their diet was raw +reindeer heads and bones; in warfare and the chase their weapon +was an iron tube through which they drove an iron arrow by +hitting it with a hammer. This, it is thought, was an early race +of ironworkers who wore peaked head-caps which concealed the +shoulder line and made the face of the wearer seem to be in +the breast. Another explanation is that several Siberian tribes +had faces painted on the leathern fronts of their garments. The +descriptive phrase, “with the face upon the breast,” might easily +become “headless” when translated into Russian.</p> + +<p>Then there was a strange Samoyed race—an independent +creation of Russian fantasy—the members of which died every +winter and revived two months afterward, if let alone. When +the fatal hour had come, they sat down and a stream of water +gushed from their nostrils and froze to the ground. If a stranger +came from another land and broke this icicle or removed it, +the Samoyed never woke up. If he merely jarred it, the refrigerated +native would open his eyes and ask, “Why, little +friend, have you disfigured me?” Others were brought to life +by the warmth of the spring sun. According to a German writer +the day of death was November twenty-seven and revival came +on the twenty-third day of the following April. It is supposed +that the wooden idols scattered over the Obi country, three +hundred of them on a single river island, were the basis of this +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span>curious story. Covered with ice and drifted snow, they looked +human enough, and there were native reports that these were +ancestral Samoyeds.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f10"> +<img src="images/fig10.jpg" alt="cosmic"> +<p class="caption"><i>The First People Engaged in Such Cosmic Adventures as Warfare<br> +Against Stone Giants</i></p> +</div> + +<p>One race of Samoyeds, says the Novgorod manuscript, +travels day and night with torches by underground ways and +comes out upon a sea over which a strange light falls and beside +which is a great fortress and a deserted city. When the +stranger approaches he hears a tumult in the streets, but, entering, +he sees no one and the clamor dies away. In each house, +however, there are things for him to eat and drink, and other +commodities. He takes what he needs, lays down money in its +stead, and goes his way. Should he fail to make payment, +the wares he takes with him vanish and return to the silent +town. And when the stranger leaves, “then he hears again a +tumult as in other inhabited cities.”</p> + +<p>This story has the Celtic magic and might be a chapter from +Malory. It is thought that the mysterious sea is Lake Koliwan +in the western Altais. Granite rocks in the semblance of towers, +terraces, and dismantled fortifications rise from its shores, and +in the hills are the pits and galleries of a copper camp long +abandoned by the Tchudi. These are the underground Samoyed +ways of legend. Perhaps dumb barter was once carried on here. +The radiance across the lake, if not the northern lights, may +have glanced from some Russian tale, like that in which Bishop +Theodor saw the earthly paradise on a mountain side with an +azure light upon it.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>New World Prodigies</i></p> + +<p>The New World, it has been seen, had its own prodigious +peoples. In Spanish America their legends are overlaid with +imported material, but elsewhere there is little alien alloy. +North America has traditions of stone giants, pygmies, one-eyed +cannibals, hermaphrodites, flint-armored warriors, double-headed +men, dog-headed tribes. There are also storm-raising +mermen, phantom boatmen, underwater folk, otter-men, seal-men, +pug-nosed people, skeletons that resume human shape +at night, talking skulls. Many stories tell of the marriage of +mortals with unearthly beings, of the living with the dead, and +of the union of women with animals. The best known Indian<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span> +myth has two versions, in one of which the people of the First +Age had human forms but an animal nature, and took the animal +guise before the real men appeared; in the other, which is of +the southwest, the first people had bestial forms but a human +nature, and presently laid aside their animal masks. In the +latter version there was an Amazonian phase in the ascent of +the primitive people. Their women seceded from society and +lived with a water monster. Hunger drove them back, but they +brought into the world a number of prodigious beings whom +their lords had to destroy.</p> + +<p>In the First People who had the human form but became animals +the Eastern Algonquins and the Pacific tribes have a myth +which ranks beside the Greek myth of the Titans that were before +Zeus, and the myths of the Golden Age. Its quality is at once +haunting and challenging, the more so because these dawn-folk +are nowhere described. “In old times,” a Micmac Indian told +Leland, “men were as animals and animals as men; how this +was no one knows. But it is told that all were at first men, and +as they gave themselves up to this and that desire, and to naught +else, they became beasts. But before this came to pass, they +could change to one or the other form; yet even as men there +was always something which showed what they were.”</p> + +<p>The story cycle of the Mewan Indians of California pictured +the First People as living in great ceremonial houses and engaging +in such cosmic adventures as sun-capture, fire-theft, and +warfare against stone giants. How nearly human and how +much animal they were the Western Indians left in doubt. When +they became animals and went forth from the ceremonial house, +they carried to their future haunts not only their old names, but +their distinctive traits, such as Grizzly Bear’s appetite for acorns, +Frog’s aptitude at water jumps and the clamorous voice of Sandhill +Crane. After the transformation was effected—and only +casual reasons for it are suggested—man was created. Coyote +made him out of feathers, or sticks, or clay, and Lizard gave +him five fingers because he had five himself and knew their +value. In Popol Vuh, the Guatemalan saga, the First People +were manikins that the gods carved out of wood and endowed +with life; but so frivolous and irreverent were these that a flood<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span> +was invoked to destroy them; “the little monkeys that live in the +woods” are descended from survivors.</p> + +<p>All over North America were stories of stone giants, and +crudely archaic as are these stalking figures of legend, the myth +has the elemental vigor of Norse epic. According to the +Iroquois, a cannibal race—“stonish giants,” Schoolcraft calls +them—who made their bodies hard by rolling in sand, overran +America seventeen centuries ago, and nearly exterminated +the natives. The Holder of the Heavens took giant form in +order to destroy them. These are the icy-hearted Chenoos of +Algonquin story who lived in northern Canada; in summer they +rubbed themselves with fir balsam and rolled on the ground +so that moss, leaves, and twigs adhered to them. The California +Indians have tales of a cannibal rock-giant who went abroad +with a rock basket on his back into which he tossed people. +There was another stony Titan, tall as a pine tree but vulnerable +under the heel. Only after the First People had killed him by +planting sharp sticks in his path did they elect to become animals. +The theory that these clanking folk typify mountains is +not convincing.</p> + +<p>Maundeville has a tale of a bodiless head, but North America +is the true home of this weird legend. Glooskap, culture hero +of the Eastern Algonquins, played at ball with a snapping skull. +There were Indians who went all to pieces leaving only the head, +which ate the other members. Everywhere stories were told +of heads that pursued people and devoured them. The skull +of a mother chased her children over hill and plain. In nightmare +flight the heroes of Indian epic cast obstacles or attractive +things behind them to delay or divert the rolling skull. Reading +a new meaning into the legend, the Arapahoes used it to explain +the railroad.</p> + +<p>A Sioux story describes a duel between the Monster and the +Bladder, twin sons of the Turtle. They kept striking off each +other’s heads, and these flew into the sky and, falling back, adhered +again to their necks. But at length Bladder pushed +Monster’s body aside, and the head rebounded, and to this +day it rebounds, for it is the sun, and Bladder is the sky; but +only to old men or wise is this part of the story told. It may +be that these tales derive from the conception of the sun and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span> +moon as traveling heads, or from the use of a skull as tribal +medicine, or from the war custom of decapitation later supplanted +by scalping, or even from the appearance of the tumbleweed +of the western prairies, which wanders like a ball before +the autumn wind.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c10">Chapter X. The Satyrs</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">The</span> tail is a symbol of the animal nature. Stories of tailed +humans are found all over the world. They signify a belief that +certain races of men are descended from the apes, or that the +apes are descended from certain races of men. Both beliefs +have been stressed in the modern debate on evolution; yet +neither is new. They are almost the oldest of the philosophical +myths. They trace back to primitive animism—to the notion +that animals are endowed with human intelligence, can understand +the speech of men, and may well be propitiated with worship. +Early man accepted them as cousins. He could change +natures with them, and sometimes it seemed to him he did. Père +Lafitau said of his American flock, “These men are living in +Ovid’s Metamorphoses.”</p> + +<p>Sometimes men were content enough with this kinship, erecting +it into totemism, wearing the tail of the buffalo or horse as an +emblem of power. Sometimes they were ashamed of it. They +plucked off all hair from their bodies, because animals were +hairy, and resented it when their women bore them twins, because +the young of animals came in litters instead of singly. +Constantly they confused brute and human nature, using identical +terms of neighbor folk, whether these were apes or men. +The confusion was carried over into literature. One African +tribe was said to have an ape king. There are passages in which +travelers seem to themselves to be speaking of men while to their +readers it is evident they are speaking of monkeys. There are +other passages in which they set out to describe monkeys, +yet draw pictures of men like themselves, but of more primitive +cast. The creatures called satyrs embody this confusion and the +sense of kinship behind it.</p> + +<p>According to Isidore, the satyrs have done something to make +their own nature clear. One of them, he says, appearing to St. +Anthony in the desert, explained, “I am mortal, one of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span> +inhabitants of the waste, whom the heathen, misled by error, +worship as the Fauns and Satyrs.” He pictures them as manikins +with upturned noses, horns on their foreheads, and goat +feet.</p> + +<p>The heathen world, however, never was quite sure what it +meant by the satyrs. If it be true that the fable began with ritual +mummers who donned the nature of fertility dæmons when they +put on the heads of asses, horses, or goats, and danced in them—as +men still do—the memory of this was forgotten. The satyrs +were supposed to be spirits, half human, half bestial, that +haunted woodland and mountain side and fellowshipped with +Pan and Dionysus. They had bristly hair, flat noses, and +pointed ears, with two small horns, and a tail like that of a horse +or goat. Earlier Greek art represented them as ugly, withered, +and ape-like. But Attic sculpture in the time of Praxiteles shows +them with the beast nature well-nigh submerged—graceful figures +instinct with poetry. They took over the attributes of the +kindred sileni, and as Roman influence grew they were confounded +with the fauns and were depicted as half men and half +goats. In Scripture they are the “hairy ones” of Hebrew folklore, +a sort of demon of waste places. So is the word intended +in the prophecy of Isaiah as to Babylon: “Wild beasts of the +desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful +creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance +there.”</p> + +<p>Satyrs, as the ancients conceived them, were a wanton, music-loving, +merry-hearted and yet timid folk, their symbol the hare. +They roved about, drinking, dancing to the pipe and cymbal, +pursuing the nymphs, killing the cattle of men and making love +to their women. Men feared them, as embodying the loneliness +of waste places, feared them with the sudden panic fear, which +the apparition of their leader, the leering goat-god, always excited. +Equally, the shy creatures feared men, but not women. +Gradually these timid spirits moved out of mythology into +geography. There were satyr isles, and there were satyr tribes +in distant mountains and deserts, alike in Africa, India, and the +spaces of the sea. Always they were described as avoiding contact +with men, screening themselves in the thickets and seen only +from afar. The satyrs of western Africa, says Pliny, “beyond +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>their figure have nothing in common with the manners of the +human race.” Ælian speaks of Indian satyrs that have human +features, that go sometimes on four feet and sometimes on two +and are too swift to be caught.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f11"> +<img src="images/fig11.jpg" alt="satyr"> +<p class="caption">A SATYR<br> <i>By</i> Jacob Jordaens</p> +</div> + +<p>Thus the classic conception of this creature passes from +spirits of the waste to tailed men, to apes, retracing the path +which Greek art followed from simian beings to spirits of the +waste. These were the wild men and wild women whom Herodotus +locates in western Africa. Hanno, the Carthaginian explorer, +had been before him. His narrative tells of finding an +island full of wild people on the west coast of Africa: “For the +greater proportion were women, whose bodies were covered with +hair, and whom our interpreters called Gorillæ. Though we +pursued the men, we could not catch any of them, since all fled +from us, escaping over the precipices and defending themselves +with stones. However, we took three women, but they attacked +their conductors with their hands and teeth, and could not be +prevailed on to accompany us. We therefore killed and flayed +them and brought their skins with us to Carthage,” where they +were hung up in the temple of Juno.</p> + +<p>This narrative betrays the ancient confusion as to the satyrs’ +real nature. They are described as wild men and women, and +it would even seem that the Carthaginians undertook to reason +with their captives; but their captors killed and skinned them, +as they certainly would not have done to creatures they deemed +to be of their species. The terms gorilla and orang-utan both +mean men-of-the-woods. They are borne by large apes, but +when the Malays speak of the orang-utan they mean a savage +and not a simian.</p> + +<p>The Hindu term for man-of-the-woods is bunmanus, and here +is a Hindu sketch of him. “The bunmanus is an animal of the +monkey kind. His face has a near resemblance to the human; +he has no tail and walks erect. The skin of his body is black, +and slightly covered with hair.” Then the account proceeds to +enumerate the dialects of the peninsula and includes among +them “the jargon of the bunmanus.” These animals of the +monkey kind are really the dark-skinned, non-Aryan aborigines.</p> + +<p>A Portuguese manuscript cited by Tylor tells of an Indian +tribe in Brazil called the Cuatas. “This populous nation,” it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span> +says, “dwells east of the Juruena, in the neighborhood of the +rivers San Joao and San Thome. It is a very remarkable fact +that the Indians composing it walk naturally like the quadrupeds, +with their hands on the ground; they have the belly, breast, +arms, and legs covered with hair, and are of small stature; they +are fierce, and use their teeth as weapons; they sleep on the +ground, or among the branches of trees; they have no industry, +nor agriculture, and live only on fruits, wild roots, and fish.” +The author of this account seemed not to know that the coata +he was describing was an ape and not a man.</p> + +<p>Customs of speech and sometimes motives of self-interest have +shaded the differences between the two species. The belief is +widely held, both in Africa and in South America, that apes +know how to talk, but hold their peace lest they be put to work, +as it seems they were put to work in gathering the fig harvest +in ancient Egypt and perhaps in ceremonial processions as +torch-bearers. On the other hand, sailors, pioneer colonists, +and slave dealers betray a tendency to rate the savages among +whom they are thrown, and whom they may wish to exploit, as +little, if any, above the brutes.</p> + +<p>It has become almost a principle of ethnology, wherever a +story of a neighboring race of tailed men is current, to look +for a tribe of aborigines who have been dispossessed by men of +a higher culture. Thus the conqueror asserts his contempt, and +justifies his treatment, of the conquered. The latter may accept +it in good part and admit a monkey descent. The Marawars of +South India trace their lineage back to Rama’s monkeys, and the +Kathkuri avow an ape ancestry. Even the Jaitwas of Rajputana, +although classed as Rajputs, derive, they say, from the monkey-god, +Hanuman, and allege that their princes have still a vestige +of tails. There are tribes in Tibet and in the mountains of the +Malay peninsula whose traditions tell of ape progenitors.</p> + +<p>By a sort of poetic justice, savages sometimes tell a like story +about civilized men. Why should these wear so much clothing +if there were not something they wanted to conceal? In the +Land of Lamary, says Maundeville, men and women go all +naked, “and they scorn when they see any strange Folk going +clothed,” hinting that these are not formed as are other men. +Captain Cook was not the only explorer to tell of natives demanding<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span> +that the white men strip so that it might be seen if they +were everywhere of the human kind. Buchanan gives this +account in his Indian travels:</p> + +<p>“When I passed through among the gardens near houses, I +have observed the women squatting down behind the mud walls, +in order to satisfy their curiosity by viewing a stranger. When +they thought that I observed them, they ran away in a fright. +This does not arise from the rules of caste in Malabar requiring +the Hindu women to be confined, for that is by no means the +case; but in the interior parts of North Malabar the Nairs, being +at enmity with Europeans, have persuaded the women that we +are a kind of hobgoblins who have long tails, in order to conceal +which we wear breeches. The women and children are +therefore afraid of Europeans.”</p> + +<p>Stories of man’s descent to the ape match stories of the ape’s +ascent into man. One of these is recited in the Metamorphoses +of Ovid, where for their treachery Jove degrades the Cercopes. +A Moslem legend tells of Solomon passing through the Valley +of Apes, between Jerusalem and Mareb, and finding monkeys +dwelling in the houses, wearing the clothes, and using the speech +of men. The river which flowed by their city had been full of +fish, they said, and these showed themselves freely on the +Sabbath day, trusting to the Jewish fishermen to keep the Commandments. +The temptation proved too strong, and for their +offense of Sabbath-breaking Jehovah turned all the citizens into +apes.</p> + +<p>There is a Zulu story of a lazy tribe of negroes who would +not dig the soil. Their chief led them into the wilderness, where +the pick handles which had hung useless at their backs became +tails, and they themselves baboons.</p> + +<p>In both hemispheres there are legends of cross-breeding between +the human and the simian species. The Quoyas Morrov, +or wood-man of Angola, which was sent to Frederick Henry, +Prince of Orange, was supposed by his age to have an ape father +or an ape mother. The First People of Central American myth +were manikins who became monkeys, and Count Castelnau repeats +a story by Father Ribeiro, a Carmelite missionary, of a +tribe of tailed Indians in the Amazonian region, whose descent +was from both apes and men. In British Central Africa, says<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span> +Sir Harry H. Johnston, the negro women profess to go in terror +of the large male baboons, and it is a fact that these animals will +descend upon parties of unarmed women, but only if they are +carrying well-filled market baskets.</p> + +<p>The forests of South America are haunted by two legendary +creatures of related natures, in whom the myths of tailed men +return to their Greek originals. One of these is the salvaje, or +hairy man-of-the-woods, of whom Humboldt first heard among +the cataracts of the Amazon. This creature, the natives, planters, +and missionaries were agreed, carried off women, constructed +huts, and sometimes ate human flesh. For five years, everywhere +the explorer traveled in the Americas, the story followed him, +and he was censured for doubting it. He surmises that the +legend is decked out with features taken from African ape-lore, +but adds that it may be that the man-of-the-woods, if not some +rare ape, is one of the large bears, the footsteps of which resemble +a man’s, and which are believed in every country to +attack women.</p> + +<p>“Father Gili,” says Humboldt, “gravely relates the history +of a lady in the Llanos of Venezuela, who so much praised the +gentle character and attentions of the man-of-the-woods. She +is stated to have lived several years with one in great domestic +harmony, and only requested some hunters to take her back because +she and her children (a little hairy, also) were weary of +living far from the church and sacraments.” A Spanish author +wonders, however, if the fable of the man-of-the-woods has not +sprung from the artifice of Indian women who pretended to have +been carried off in default of a better excuse for long absences +from their husbands.</p> + +<p>The other legendary creature is the Curupira, or Diable Boiteux. +Among the noises of the Brazilian forest that used to +startle Bates was “a sound like the clang of an iron bar against +a hard, hollow tree, or a piercing cry.” This was never repeated, +and the silence that followed tended to deepen the unpleasant +impression. With the natives it was always the Curupira, the +wild man or spirit of the forest, that made these inexplicable +sounds. “Sometimes,” says Bates, “he is described as a kind of +orang-otang, covered with long, shaggy hair, and living in trees. +At others he is said to have cloven feet and a bright red face. He<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span> +has a wife and children, and sometimes comes down to the rocas +to steal the mandioca.”</p> + +<p>All accounts agree that the Curupira is not footed like +normal men. He is lame, with one foot larger than the other, +or his feet turn backward so that his trail deceives. He is bald +and dwarfish, with hairy person, huge ears, and blue-green +teeth, and he rides a deer, a rabbit, or a pig. The spirit of the +wood, the guardian of all wild things, he is beneficent or mischievous, +as occasion or mood offers. He insists that game shall +be killed, not maimed, merely, and for a gift of tobacco he will +return lost cattle. Where the forest is darkest, sometimes he +will appear in friendly but treacherous human guise, luring +hunters from the path and at last vanishing in mocking laughter. +When the hunter sees footprints of unequal size on the woodland +trail ahead, if he is well advised he will hasten back, and avoid +the forest for weeks afterward.</p> + +<p>Farther north one finds again the tracks of this strange old +man, or of beings like him. The Maidu Indians of California +tell of the Chamlakhu, a bearded ancient with clawlike hands +and feet who lived in trees; running on the ground, his gait was +shambling and his arms fanned the air like wings. The Indians +of Costa Rica tell of a king of the tapirs, a man of stately bearing, +who rebukes hunters that kill out of wantonness. Among +the Indians of Guatemala there are stories of a forest sovereign +and protector of game whom the ladinos call the Sombreron, +from the enormous hat which he wears. Short and sturdy of +figure, he rides his domain astride a deer. He has a rustic +stronghold, and a hunter following a wounded deer once came +upon it. The Sombreron was swinging in a hammock in the +courtyard. He led the hunter to an inclosure in which were +many deer. Pointing out the wounded animal, he said, “Kill it, +but another time shoot better and do not torture my subjects.”</p> + +<p>This creature is Arcadian Pan, master of the satyrs, generative +dæmon of the flocks and herds, somehow an emigrant to the +New World. The Filipinos call him the Tig-balang, picture him +with long ears, legs of grasshopper slenderness, and goat hoofs, +and know him for a treacherous jungle guide. The Russians +call him the Lesiy. He guards their forests, misleads wanderers, +removes boundary stones and sign-posts. It is he that makes the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span> +echo. Shouting and whistling in his domain he cannot abide. A +bearded, shaggy, green-eyed old man, he yet entices girls into +his thickets, whence after a long time they may escape, but with +honor forfeited; and he substitutes his stupid changelings for +the children of men. The same or a like figure is Tapio, “the +golden king of the forest” in Finnish magic songs. Wild animals +are his flocks and herds, his queen is the charcoal wife, the +bear is his bastard son, and he lives in Brushwood Town.</p> + +<p>Satyr geography covers a good many countries and centuries +and specifically includes at least one civilized race. It was long +the vulgar belief upon the Continent that Englishmen had tails. +This was first the story that the people of one shire told about +another, and its birthplace was Kent. Kentishmen, according to +their neighbors, were tailed, as a punishment for one or the other +of two acts of sacrilege. Their first offense was committed, says +Bailey, when they were still pagans. They abused “Austin the +monk and his associates, by beating them and opprobriously +tying fish tails to their backsides; in revenge of which such appendants +grew to the hind parts of all that generation.” The second +offense was against Thomas À Becket when it was noised +abroad that he was out of favor with Henry II. The inhabitants +of Strood cut off the tail of his horse, and by the will of God, +says Polydore Vergil, “all their offspring were born with tails +like brute animals”; not until their race was extinct did tailed +men pass from Kent.</p> + +<p>Pliny numbers among the nations of India “men born with +long hairy tails, and of remarkable swiftness of foot. In Indo-China, +southwest of Yunnan, were the Tailed Pu mentioned in +the <i>Sung Geography</i>. Ma Tuan-Lin allows them tails from +three to four inches long and classes them among anthropophagi +who eat their aged relatives. The Yao, a subtribe of the +Miaotze, have tails like monkeys, their neighbors say. They +live in leaf lodges or caves in the Lipo district south of the +Nanling range, and access to their habitations is by bamboo +ladders. Yet they are skillful weavers and musicians.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f12"> +<img src="images/fig12.jpg" alt="waste"> +<p class="caption"><i>Men Feared Them, as Embodying the Loneliness of Waste Places</i></p> +</div> + +<p>There are numerous reports of tailed tribes in the large +islands of the East. Marco Polo speaks of “a kind of wild men” +in Sumatra, in the kingdom of Lambri, with hairless tails a palm +in length. The <i>Merveilles de L’Inde</i> tells of tailed cannibals on +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span>the west coast of Sumatra, and Galvano has an account of Sumatrans +with tails like a sheep’s. The fifteenth century <i>History +of the Ming Dynasty</i> pictures the Borneo village of Wu-lung-li-tan +and its tailed citizens. When they see other men approaching +they flee with their hands over their faces. The resemblance of +the name to orang-utan, or “wild men,” will not escape notice. +Colonel Yule tells of a trader who had examined the tails of a +tribe on the northeast coast of Borneo. These appendages were +long and so stiff that the natives had to use perforated seats; +Arab, Malay, and native travelers report having seen them +squatting on these little stools. John Struys, a Dutch traveler +in Formosa, saw there in 1677 a man with a tail “more than a +foot long, covered with red hair, and very like a cow’s.” The +man said the tail was the effect of climate and all the natives on +the southern side of the island had them.</p> + +<p>There were two archipelagoes known as the Satyr Islands. +Ptolemy mentions one of them, and Gerini identifies it with the +Northern Anambas lying off the Indo-Chinese mainland. Hsi-tung, +supposed to be a transcript of Syatan, was their name of +old; the resemblance of Syatan to the Greek Satyron may have +led Levantine sailors to make this jest at the expense of ill-favored +little people living then in the Anamba group. To reach +the other archipelago one must steer through the Pillars of +Hercules in company with a Carian sailor of the second century. +Him Pausanias asked what he knew about the satyrs. The +Carian replied that in a voyage to Italy he was driven from his +course to a distant sea whither people no longer sail. Here were +many islands which the crew did not care to touch, and these +they called the Satyr Islands. Their inhabitants were red-haired +and had tails not much smaller than a horse’s.</p> + +<p>Many African tribes wore animal tails for ornament, and explorers +were sometimes misled by the custom. The Duir of the +northeast attached two antelope tails to their girdles. The Wa-Kavorondo, +east of the Nyanza, go naked or wear only a waist-cloth, +and the women attach to it a tail of bark. In the same +quarter of Africa the Bongo women, with their large hips and +lubricious gait, have had a share in propagating fable, for they, +too, ornament themselves with tails; and as they stride along they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span> +swing these about in conscious emulation of the flocks and herds. +Schweinfurth likens them to “dancing baboons.”</p> + +<p>Other African satyr stories do not yield their secret so easily. +The Ba-Kwambas of the northwest, report said, had tails which +they inserted in holes in the ground when they sat down. In his +<i>Travels and Adventures</i> (1861) Doctor Wolf asserted that in +Abyssinia were men and women “with tails like dogs and +horses,” some of these so large that they were able to knock +down a horse with them. About the Niam-Niams, a cannibal +people with filed teeth that live in French Equatorial Africa, +legends have multiplied, and these Baring Gould has assembled.</p> + +<p>Horneman was the first to describe them as tailed anthropophagi. +In 1849 M. Descouret reported that this was the common +belief among the Arabs. In 1851 M. de Castelnau told of a +Houssa expedition in which a band of Niam-Niams was slaughtered +to a man. All, including the women, had hairless tails +about fifteen inches long. These people were otherwise a handsome +race, of a deep black, using clubs and javelins in war, and +in peace cultivating rice, maize, and other grains. An Abyssinian +priest, seemingly speaking of the same tribe, told M. d’Abbadie +in 1852 that only the men had tails, and these were covered +with hair and the length of a palm. Doctor Hubsch, physician +to the hospitals of Constantinople, examined in 1852 a +tailed negress of the Niam-Niams who was offered for sale in +the slave market. She was black as ebony, with frizzled hair, +bloodshot eyes, large white teeth, and a smooth, hairless, pointed +tail two inches long. Her clothes fidgeted her, she ate meat raw, +and was an avowed cannibal. The slave dealer said all her +tribe was as herself.</p> + +<p>In Cuba Columbus heard of a province called Mangou, lying +farther west, and it sounded like Mangi, the rich maritime province +of the Grand Khan. Its inhabitants had tails, and wore garments +to conceal them. Columbus recalled the Maundeville +story, related above, of the scorn of certain naked Asiatics for +clothing, and their belief that garments hid bodily defects. So +he pressed onward in the thought that Mangi and the robed +peoples of Tartary lay just below the horizon.</p> + +<p>Despite witness from Asia, Africa, and the eastern and western +Indies, there are no tailed races of men. But there have been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span> +tailed individuals. Hottentot women come nearest meeting the +requirements of legend. Without a tail, they yet have a development +of the posteriors that amounts to a natural shelf, on which, +as on a pillion, their infants may ride. The mandril and certain +other monkeys living in the same latitudes show a like enlargement.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c11">Chapter XI. The Pygmies</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">It</span> was left to the pygmy to revenge all of the creatures of +fable upon incredulous mankind. He was doubted, yet he is. Not +until some fifty years ago would the learned doubters admit that +Homer and Herodotus were right, and themselves wrong. Now +it is in the books that half a hundred groups of pygmies are +living on the earth, to say nothing of others that have become +extinct. Every race has had such groups, and every continent +has known their tread.</p> + +<p>There is palliation for ancient and modern doubts as to these +dwarfish nations. The pygmies of reality are not so small as +the pygmies of tradition. Their name is from the Greek word +for fist, or the distance between the elbow joint and the knuckles +of the average man—a little more than thirteen inches. The +ancient geographers, however, allowed the smallest pygmies at +least double that stature. There were two species of little men—the +one averaging three spans, or two feet three inches high, +the other averaging five spans, or three feet nine inches. These +measurements recur again and again for fifteen centuries in the +writings of the east and west.</p> + +<p>No race has a mean stature as short even as the pygmies of +five spans, but among the dwarf tribes there are many women +who do not greatly exceed it; and there are women, not so small +according to the standards of their brothers as to be accounted +deformed, who do not equal it. Stanley saw among the Akkas +of the West African Rain Forest a grown girl of seventeen who +was half an inch short of three feet.</p> + +<p>Poetic license of the old time took liberties with the estimates +of geographers, but these liberties were understood as such. +The dwarf nation on the Upper Nile that was reputed to war with +the cranes used the ax, it was said, to cut down ears of wheat. +When Hercules passed through their country they set up ladders +to climb to the rim of his goblet for a drink. In his slumber two<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span> +armies swooped down upon his right hand and two on his left; +but, awaking, the hero laughingly gathered them all in his lion +skin.</p> + +<p>The myth of their warfare with the cranes became a theme +of literature and art, but cast doubt over the whole pygmy tradition. +It first appears in Homer. The <i>Iliad</i> likens the shouts +of the onrushing Trojans to the cries of cranes as they fly southward +“with noise and order through the sky,” bringing “wounds +and death to pygmy nations.” Megasthenes elaborates the +theme. It is the three-span pygmies, he says, that war upon the +cranes, as well as on the partridges, which are as large as geese. +The small folk collect and destroy the eggs of the cranes, which +breed in India and nowhere else. Pliny adds that every spring +the little men go in a body to the seashore, astride of rams and +goats, and there destroy the eggs and young of the birds; “otherwise, +it would be impossible for them to withstand the increasing +multitude of the cranes.” The shore booths which they occupy +they build of mud mixed with feathers and egg shells.</p> + +<p>So the story moves from Africa to India, and towards modern +times. Maundeville declares that in the Land of Pygmies, which +he seems to place to the west of, and tributary to, China, the +inhabitants “have oftentimes war with the Birds of that Country +that they take and eat.” There is even a reference to this warfare +in the writing (1563) of a traveler in Greenland. There +Dithmar Blefkens of Hamburg met a blind monk who said that +the pygmies represented the most perfect shape of man, but +were “hairy to the uttermost Joynts of the Fingers,” had no +proper speech, and were “unreasonable Creatures that live in +Perpetual Darkness.”</p> + +<p>India appears to be the home of the tradition that the dwarfish +peoples warred with the cranes. Just a hint of its origin is afforded +by Ctesias. The “swarthy men called Pygmies,” he said, +“hunt hares and foxes not with dogs, but with ravens and kites +and crows and vultures.” Falconry is known to have been practiced +in India as early as B.C. 600 and may be a thousand years +older there. From a people’s using birds of prey in hunting to +themselves fighting against birds of prey is a step of inference +easy to take.</p> + +<p>There is, however, a more direct explanation. According to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span> +a tradition of the Indians, the Garuda, the bird of Vishnu, was +hostile to the people of the Kirata, and the name of this people +means “dwarfish.” While the sacred bird as pictured by the +poets does not look like the crane, or any other known species, +it may be near enough to account for the legend.</p> + +<p>Herodotus was the first to give the pygmy tradition a historical +quality. He heard of the little people while he was collecting +materials for his books in Africa. His informants were natives +of Cyrene who had been to the shrine of Ammon and talked with +Etearchus the Ammonian king. The latter tells the story of the +adventure of the five Nasamonian youths, which he had received +from their Libyan countrymen and which Herodotus, therefore +transcribes at third hand:</p> + +<p>“The Nasamonians said there had grown up among them some +wild young men, the sons of certain chiefs, who, when they +came to man’s estate, indulged in all manner of extravagances, +and among other things drew lots for five of their number to +go and explore the desert parts of Libya, and try if they could +not penetrate further than any had done previously. The young +men, therefore, dispatched on this errand by their comrades +with a plentiful supply of water and provision, traveled at first +through the inhabited region, passing which they came to the +wild beast tract, whence they finally entered upon the desert, +which they proceeded to cross from east to west. After journeying +for many days over a wide extent of sand, they came at +last to a plain where they observed trees growing; approaching +them, and seeing fruit on them, they proceeded to gather it.</p> + +<p>“While they were thus engaged there came upon them some +dwarfish men, under the middle height, who seized them and +carried them off. The Nasamonians could not understand a +word of their language, nor had they any acquaintance with the +language of the Nasamonians. They were led across extensive +marshes, and finally came to a town where all the men were of +the height of their conductors, and black complexioned. A +great river flowed by the town, running from west to east, and +containing crocodiles.</p> + +<p>“Here let me dismiss Etearchus, the Ammonian, and his story, +only adding that he declared that the Nasamonians got safely +back to their country and that the men whose city they had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span> +reached were a nation of sorcerers. With respect to the river +which ran by their town, Etearchus conjectured it to be the Nile, +and reason favors that view.”</p> + +<p>Thus ends one of the most valuable records which have come +down from ancient times. The river referred to is now believed +to be the Niger, or perhaps an affluent of Lake Tchad. Herodotus +has another story of a dwarfish people found in the west +when Sataspes, the Carthaginian, undertook to sail around Libya.</p> + +<p>Although Strabo doubted the existence of pygmy races, yet +his keen mind brought him within reach of the truth. He finds +in the wretched mode of life of the people he called the Ethiopians, +an explanation of the reports of their dwarfish stature. +They were naked and wandered from place to place, and their +sheep, goats, oxen, and dogs were undersized like themselves. +“It was perhaps from the diminutive size of these people,” he +concludes, “that the story of the pygmies originated, whom no +person worthy of credit has asserted that he himself has seen.” +The Greek geographer seems to have had reliable information as +to a fact that on its face is as hard to believe as the legends he +discredits—that there was dwarfish live stock as well as a dwarfish +people. Sir Samuel Baker found that the cows and ewes of +the Bari, a tribe living in the same district with the forest pygmies, +“have dimensions truly liliputian.”</p> + +<p>Aristotle speaks with authority of the pygmies of Africa. +“The storks,” he said, “pass from the plains of Scythia to the +marsh of upper Egypt, toward the sources of the Nile. This is +the district which the pygmies inhabit, whose existence is not a +fable. There is really, as men say, a species of men of little +stature, and their horses are little also. They pass their life in +caverns.” Pliny speaks of the pygmies as dwelling in Thrace +near the Black Sea, in the Carian district of Asia Minor, in +India under the shadow of the Himalayas, and at the sources +of the Nile. There is a valuable fact behind this apparently +confused geography: the Roman was right in assuming there +were several such races.</p> + +<p>The pygmy races of Asia and Indonesia are cited in classic, +Arabic, and Chinese geography, and in mediæval travel. “In +the middle of India,” Ctesias says, “are found the swarthy men +called pygmies, who speak the same language as the other Indians.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span> +They are very diminutive, the tallest but two cubits +high, the majority only one and one-half. They let their hair +grow very long—down to their knees and even lower. They +have the largest beards anywhere to be seen, and when these +have grown sufficiently long and copious, they no longer wear +clothing, but let the hair of the head fall down their backs +far below the knee, while in front are their beards trailing +down to their very feet. When their hair has thus thickly enveloped +their whole body they bind it round them with a zone +and so make it serve for a garment. They are snub-nosed and +otherwise ill-favored. Their sheep are of the size of our lambs, +and their oxen and asses rather smaller than our rams. Three +thousand men attend the king of the Indians on account of their +great skill in archery. They are eminently just and have the +same laws as the other Indians.”</p> + +<p>This may be a description of the Kiratas, whose district is +east of Bengal in the Himalaya foothills.</p> + +<p>There were vague reports in the classic world of other pygmy +peoples far to the southeast in Asia. The Chinese records make +these more definite. The <i>Hill and Sea Classic</i> describes the +Chiau Yau, a tribe of cap-wearing pygmies three cubits (3 feet +3 inches) high whose country was east of the country of the +Three-headed Men. This is perhaps the country now inhabited +by the Yau tribes, who are short of stature and may be this +long-sought-for pygmy race. Individuals of the Chiau Yau +tribe, “diminutive black slaves,” were sent to the Chinese court +from the coasts of Indo-China in the reign of Ming Tu (A.D. 58-76). +There was also a pygmy people whom the Annamese +called the Phong. They were only two cubits, or twenty-six +inches, high, and although they were cave dwellers a fragrant +perfume emanated from their skins. As hunters they paid their +dues to the state in camphor, rhinoceros horns, and elephant +tusks. Both of these races Gerini locates in “the mysterious +country of the pygmies” in French Indo-China, between the +Mekong and the Black rivers, under the twenty-first parallel of +north latitude. North of this district on the Red River dwell the +dark, dwarfish Pu-lu tribes which seem to be the remnants of a +once widely spread pygmy race. The Santom aborigines of +Yun-nan and Laos are also of inferior stature, with flat faces<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span> +and black skins. In China itself ancient writings speak of the +black dwarfs of Shantung province as early as the twenty-third +century B.C.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the first record of the Aetas, or Philippine negritos, +appears in Chao Fu-Kua, a Chinese author of the early thirteenth +century, who told of a tribe of small black men with frizzly hair, +round yellow eyes, and teeth that showed through their lips, who +lived in remote valleys of the archipelago. A Chinese work on +novelties, published in 1636, has several passages on the black +dwarfs of Cochin-China. Anywhere from Annam to Siam, it +says, “there are pygmies whose stature is not over three feet +seven inches, who are regarded as of animal origin, who sell +themselves for longer or shorter periods to dealers in aloes. +When engaged they are provisioned, supplied with hatchets and +saws, and sent into the mountains. These dwarfs are very submissive +and servile.”</p> + +<p>Ibn Khordadbeh and Idrisi tell of the Rami, a pygmy race of +Sumatra, who go naked, find shelter in thickets, avoid intercourse +with other people, and use a hissing speech. They are +swift runners and adept tree climbers. They have red frizzly hair +and a stature of but three feet. Curled hair of this color had +been ascribed from the seventh century A.D. to the clawed +negrito savages on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula, and a +traveler of the last generation reports hairy dwarfs on the southwest +coast of Sumatra. Dunashki (about A.D. 1300) has this +note: “When ships approach Volcano Island at the beginning of +a squall, tiny black dwarfs, five spans (nearly four feet) or less +in stature, resembling negroes, appear and climb aboard, without +harming anyone.” All three of these travel notes may be +reflected in the incident in the third voyage of Sindbad, when his +ship, driven by a storm amid strange islands, is boarded by “an +innumerable multitude of frightful savages about two feet high, +covered all over with red hair,” who compel the crew to follow +them to the palace of a giant cannibal.</p> + +<p>Accounts of several other travelers bring the pygmy tradition +down to the era of modern disbelief. Odoric, the fourteenth-century +missionary monk, reports that the Yangste Kiang waters +the Country of the Pygmies, whom he describes as an innumerable +folk, three spans high, and foremost of all cotton workers.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span> +Their city of Chatan is one of the fairest of places. Æthicus of +Istria declares that he sailed northwest from Ceylon and passed, +among other islands in the Northern Sea, Bridinno, the land of +dwarfs. Marco Polo tells how pygmies were fabricated from +monkeys in Sumatra and sold to curio collectors.</p> + +<p>Maundeville makes the pygmies subject to “the great Chan.” +“The River Dalay,” he says, “goeth through the land of Pygmies, +where that the Folk be of little Stature, and be but three Span +long, and they be right fair and gentle. And they marry them +when they be half a Year of Age and get Children. And they +live not but six Year or seven at the most; and he that liveth +eight Year, Men hold him there right passing old. These Men +be workers of Gold, Silver, Cotton, Silk and of all such Things, +the best of any other that be in the World.” Men of larger size +work their lands and mines for them.</p> + +<p>In another passage Sir John populates an isle with “Little +Folk,” who have no mouths and only an adder speech. Pigafetta, +who went with the Magellan expedition around the world +and wrote its story, reports two races of dwarfs in the Philippines, +one with gigantic ears. The latter were shaven, naked, +shrill-voiced troglodytes, whose food was the sago tree.</p> + +<p>Ludovico Varthema, an Italian Mohammedan, a contemporary +of Columbus and a wide-ranging traveler, tells an incident of his +pilgrimage to Mecca, which may or may not shed light on the +moot question of the Middle Ages and since, as to what became +of the lost Ten Tribes. There was a mountain in the Hedjaz, he +said, inhabited by pygmy Jews, color black, who skipped from +crag to crag like goats—he watched them from a distance—and +when they caught a Moslem skinned him alive.</p> + +<p>In Madagascar in 1770 the French naturalist Commerson, +who accompanied Bougainville in his voyage around the world, +found evidences of a pygmy tribe with an average stature of +three and a half feet, all traces of which vanished in the following +century. His report was corroborated by Count de Modave, +governor of Fort Dauphin. The men of this tribe wore long +beards and were workers in iron and steel, of which they made +lances and assagais. They were brave pacifists. When from +their mountain homes they saw a formidable force approaching +on the plains below, they drove down such cattle as they could<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span> +spare to the entrances of their defiles to purchase immunity +from invasion. If, however, the enemy entered these defiles, +the little folk savagely attacked them.</p> + +<p>Near to the country of the warrior women in South America, +said the Spaniards, was pygmy land. Peru has traditions of a +race not over two cubits high. California Indians tell of a witch-like +little people in the redwood forest. The Arapahoes tell of +dark-skinned, pot-bellied, cannibal dwarfs who were only three +feet high but strongly made, and skillful trackers. They could +carry buffaloes on their backs, so the Crows said of the small +folk that once roved Montana. In the Gila Canyon in New +Mexico there have been exhumed the mummies of a true pygmy +people, some of them scarcely three feet long, with cerements of +woven cloth, sandals of yucca fiber and ornaments of hummingbird +feathers; legend speaks of thievish dwarfs who lived in +underground houses and sometimes came to the cities for supplies. +D’Orbigny described, in 1831, the so-called Chiquitos, or +Little Folk, who inhabit the heights on the divide between the +Mamore and Paraguay rivers. The men he measured averaged +only four feet ten inches, which brings them within strict pygmy +requirements—not over four feet eleven inches. They are a +broad-shouldered, robust Indian people, hospitable, sociable, +musical. D’Orbigny estimated their number at about twenty +thousand. No recent traces have been found of the Ayamanes +whom Friedemann met in the northern Andes regions and who, +he said, were no more than “five empans,” or three feet four +inches, high.</p> + +<p>There is a Chinese legend that in the remote northern mountains +of the old empire there has lived for seventeen centuries +a race of hairy dwarfs. Inscriptions on the Great Wall are said +to recite that whenever one of the millions of laborers who were +building it was found to have made a mistake in his work, he +was imbedded alive in the wall at the place of his error. +About A.D. 210, the story continues, a body of workmen rebelled +at the custom, and with their families fled to distant +forests where their descendants still live. The hardships of their +journey and their rude surroundings brought these people down +to the pygmy level.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span></p> + +<p>It is asserted that there is a race of dwarfs in Morocco in +the Atlas Mountains whose existence the Moors have kept secret +for three thousand years because they are regarded as holy men, +and great saints who bring good luck to towns. “Our Blessed +Lord,” the people call a dwarf. “It is a sin to speak about them +to you,” one Moor said to a traveler. The Moorish silence is +declared to be the remnant of a superstition older than the +Mohammedan religion.</p> + +<p>These pygmy stories, of perhaps twenty-seven centuries so +far as the record goes, of at least double that period if unwritten +tradition be included, have been brought together here in order +to assess the scientific reaction to them. Some of them on their +face are completely fabulous, some have an admixture of truth, +some are good enough history. To all except the very latest +of them the scientific reaction was unfavorable until a deluge +of facts made this attitude impossible.</p> + +<p>Strabo among the ancients was in his rights when he complained +that nobody had seen any pygmies, but his facts were +incomplete, for long before his day civilized peoples had seen +them. Browne summarizes in his stiff but elegant English the +unbelief of the scholars of the Renaissance: “Julius Scaliger, a +diligent enquirer, accounts thereof, but as a poetical fiction. +Ulysses Aldrovandus, a most exact geographer, in an express +discourse hereon, concludes the story fabulous and a poetical +account of Homer. Albertus Magnus, a man ofttimes too +credulous, herein was more than dubious; for he affirmeth if any +such dwarfs were ever extant, they were surely some kind +of apes; which is a conceit allowed by Cardan and not esteemed +improbable by many others.” “There is as much reality,” concludes +Browne, “in the pygmies of Paracelsus, that is, his non-adamical +men, or middle natures betwixt men and spirits.”</p> + +<p>Two towering names in natural history, Buffon and Cuvier, +are ranged against the pygmy tradition. Here is Buffon’s conclusion: +“Deceived by some optical illusion, the ancient historians +gravely mention whole nations of pygmies as existing in +remote quarters of the world. The more accurate observation +of the moderns, however, convinces us that these accounts are +entirely fabulous. The existence, therefore, of a pygmy race of +mankind, being founded in error or in fable, we can expect<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span> +to find men of diminutive stature only by accident, among men +of the ordinary size.”</p> + +<p>Buffon’s explanation of the fable that the pygmies war with +the cranes is so plausible that men would accept it, as his own +generation did, if they did not know that these little folk are +human and not simian. Even so, there may be truth in the +theory advanced. “One knows,” says Buffon, “that the monkeys, +which go in large bands in Africa and India, carry on +continual warfare against birds; they seek to surprise their +nests, and without ceasing prepare ambushes for them. The +storks defend themselves vigorously. But the monkeys, anxious +to carry off the eggs and the young birds, return constantly, and +in bands, to the combat; and as by their tricks, their feints and +movements they seem to imitate human actions, they would +appear to ignorant people to be a band of little men. Behold +the origin and the history of these fables!”</p> + +<p>Roulin was equally ingenious in his explanation of the pygmy +populations and their campaigns against the birds. He noted +the squat frames of the Lapps and Eskimos who dwell within, +or not far from, the Arctic Circle. The pygmies, he decided, +were a circumpolar population. Homer placed their home and +their battles at the southern end of the crane path; Roulin placed +them at the northern terminus, in that Scythia of misty boundaries +one of which was supposed to be the boreal ocean. Pliny had +told that every year the pygmies rode down to the seashore to +destroy the eggs and young of the cranes. Very well, here was +the story explained, for every year the Lapps and Eskimos come +down to the sea and return to the interior, and these people +partly subsist on the eggs of aquatic birds.</p> + +<p>Cuvier is reproachful of Pliny. “I am not surprised,” he +says, “at finding the pygmies in the works of Homer; but to +find them in Pliny I am surprised indeed.” The great French +naturalist has contributed more, perhaps, than any other man to +find the basis of truth or the source of error in classic fables. +His explanation of the pygmy legend, like that of Buffon, is +more convincing almost than truth itself, but its teaching is +error. He finds the source of a fable in a flattering convention +of ancient sculpture: “The custom of exhibiting in the same +sculpture, in bas-relief, men of very different heights—of making<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span> +kings and conquerors gigantic while their subjects and +vassals are represented as only one-fourth or one-fifth of their +size—must have given rise to the fable of the pygmies.”</p> + +<p>Cuvier died in 1832. Chambers’ <i>Journal</i> in 1844 voiced with +less reserve the unbelief of that period. In a scoffing article it +declares that “the world has long been haunted with the idea that +somewhere in Africa there is a nation of Tom Thumbs”; but +“the grand difficulty about the African nation of dwarfs is the +fact that not a single specimen has been seen either in Abyssinia +or Egypt.” “The pygmy dream, one of the last lingering superstitions +of travel, has been puffed away,” confidently asserts this +periodical. These so-called pygmies were monkeys, not men.</p> + +<p>In 1863 Paul du Chaillu explored the coast lands of West +Africa and in 1871 published the results in <i>The Country of the +Dwarfs</i>. The scientific skepticism of the ages delivered its last +stroke in the attacks that met this book, for already, although the +world did not know it, Schweinfurth, farther east in the equatorial +region, had reviewed an entire pygmy army. The <i>London +Graphic</i> wonders whether or not “Mr. du Chaillu means us to +accept the book as a bona-fide narrative of what he has himself +seen.” Thus cautiously this periodical registers its doubts: +“The first part of the book reads very much like other descriptions +of African exploration; but further on Mr. du Chaillu +represents himself as having arrived at the country of the +dwarfs, whom he considers to be identical with the supposed +fabulous pygmies. This strange race, who average only from +four feet to four feet seven inches high, live a perfectly wild +life in the forests of equatorial Africa, feeding on snakes, rats, +mice, and berries. They go entirely naked, and inhabit huts +made by bending branches of trees in the shape of a bow. The +height of the huts is just enough to keep the head of a man from +touching the roof when he is seated. These dwarfs are very shy +of being seen and hold no communion with the negro tribes +about them, by whom they are called Obongos. Truly we have +here a strange tale.”</p> + +<p>Truly, there are not only lost arts, but lost records, forgotten +histories. Forty-four centuries before du Chaillu was scoffed +at for a true tale, an authentic pygmy testimony was set down +in a letter which a king of Egypt wrote to a vassal chief, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span>which is still in existence. The world believed in pygmies then +because sometimes it saw them; and their descendants still hunt +the elephant in the forests of equatorial Africa.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f13"> +<img src="images/fig13.jpg" alt="pygmies"> +<p class="caption">“THE SWARTHY MEN CALLED PYGMIES”</p> +</div> + +<p>To the Egyptians of that time the country beyond the Second +Cataract of the Nile was the Land of Ghosts, whence the negroes +brought to the markets of Assuan strange stories of shadowy folk +who dwelt there. Into this land a prince of Elephantine named +Herkhuf marched with a little force. An account of his journey +has been written by Arthur E. P. Weigall, of the Department of +Antiquities of Egypt.</p> + +<p>In the country which Herkhuf penetrated he found pygmies +dwelling, and one he secured. He sent word back to the boy +Pharaoh, Pepy II, and had from him a letter believed to be the +earliest example of a private communication. Yet life still +throbs through its lines and the colors glow in the picture of +an excited royal lad awaiting the coming of this wonder of the +south, directing that his meals shall be ample, that his slumbers +shall be guarded, and that on taking ship at Memphis there +shall be men to see he does not fall into the water. The Pharaoh’s +letter follows:</p> + +<p>“You say in your letter that you have brought a dancing +pygmy of the god from the Land of Ghosts, like the pygmy which +the Treasurer Baurded brought from the Land of Pount in the +time of Asesa. You say to my majesty, ‘Never before has one +like him been brought by anyone who has visited Aam.’ Come +northward, therefore, to the court immediately, and bring this +pygmy with you, which you must bring living, prosperous, and +healthy, from the Land of Ghosts, to dance for the King and to +rejoice and gladden the heart of the King. When he goes down +with you into the vessel, appoint trustworthy people to be beside +him at either side of the vessel: take care that he does not fall +into the water. When he sleeps at night, appoint trustworthy +people who shall sleep beside him in his cabin; and make an +inspection ten times each night. My majesty desires to see +this pygmy more than the gifts of Sinai and of Pount. If you +arrive at court, the pygmy being with you, alive, prosperous, and +healthy, my majesty will do for you a greater thing than that +which was done for the Treasurer Baurded in the time of Asesa, +according to the heart’s desire of my majesty to see this pygmy.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span> +Orders have been sent to the chief of the New Towns to arrange +that food shall be taken from every store-city and every temple +(on the road) without stinting.”</p> + +<p>A Nubian Highway, so Weigall calls the ancient road down +which the dancing pygmy came to civilization about B.C. 2500. +In A. D. 1878 a little farther south, Stanley followed what he +calls a Pygmy Highway, “along which quite a tribe must have +passed. It was lined with amoma fruit skins, and shells of nuts, +and the crimson rinds of phrynia berries. Our elephant and +game track had brought us across another track leading easterly +from Andari, and both joined presently, developing to a highway +much patronized by the pygmy tribes. We could tell where they +had stopped to light their pipes, and to crack nuts, and trap +game, and halted to gossip. The twigs were broken three feet +from the ground, showing that they were snapped by dwarfs. +Where it was a little muddy the path showed high, delicate +insteps, proving their ancient ancestry and aristocratic descent, +and small feet not larger than those of young English misses +of eight years old.” Later Stanley met individuals of this +tribe.</p> + +<p>These were the Akkas, or Mambuti, the same pygmy tribe, it +would appear, whose sculptured reliefs on monuments of Egypt +going back as far as B.C. 3366 were dwarfed, so Cuvier had +thought, merely to make a conqueror seem larger than life and +indicate their own inferior estate. When a regiment of several +hundred of these little warriors marched behind Moummeri in +1870 to do homage to Munza, the East African negro monarch, +the pygmy tradition marched with them out of the mists of fable +across the border of geographical knowledge. For Schweinfurth, +a European explorer, was there to behold these “grasshopper +warriors,” as he called them.</p> + +<p>The revolution in scientific opinion since that day appears in +the statement that the ninth edition of the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i> +prints one paragraph about the pygmies, nearly all of which +is an exposition of myths and a statement of doubts, while the +eleventh edition prints two full pages of ascertained facts.</p> + +<p>Although science always balked at the name of pygmy and +refused as long as it could to admit that the African forests +concealed a race of tiny men, yet the world had long known<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span> +something of the little peoples. The Spaniards rightly reported +that pygmy Indians had lived in Peru, and they found negritos +in the Philippines. Although Arab traders gave the Andamans +a wide berth because, as they believed, these islands contained +cannibals and no cocoanuts, yet they knew even before the +Middle Ages that a dwarfish people dwelt there. The Dutch +found the Bushmen when they settled South Africa, and hunted +them for sport as if they were jackals; they found also the still +smaller Vaalpens, or “dusty-bellies.” The Lapps of Russia +and Scandinavia were known to mediæval travelers, who were +terrified by their diminutive stature and witch repute. These +mongoloid people, whose mean stature is only five feet, and +their kinsmen, the Eskimos, who are a little taller, are, however, +not classified among the true pygmies, a term which an arbitrary +convention restricts to Little Black Men.</p> + +<p>The pygmies of Asia and Oceania are called negritos, the +pygmies of equatorial Africa negrillos. They vary by tribes in +average height from four feet eight inches to five feet two inches, +with the women smaller and many individuals only a little above +four feet. A full-grown Akka adult, says Stanley, may weigh +ninety pounds. Another explorer estimated the average weight +of six of these adults at seventy-seven pounds and found that +two of them weighed but fifty-three pounds apiece.</p> + +<p>Wherever seen, the tribes of little people have certain things +in common beside their stature. One of these is their discontinuous +distribution. They do not adjoin each other in a continuous +zone of population as the taller races do, but are dotted +here and there across the earth like islands in a sea of alien +populations. Always they occupy the less desirable districts. +The Spaniards called the Philippine pygmies Negritos del +Monte, for they had retired before the Malays to the mountain +gorges. The Lapps rove the tundras of northern Europe. The +Bushmen dwell in the deserts of South Africa. The Akkas inhabit +the steaming forests of equatorial Africa, in parallels of +latitude deadly to the white man. The Batwas live on volcanic +uplands in the Tanganyika country. In the Malay Peninsula +and New Guinea, one seeks in vain for littoral-dwelling +negritos; they have been driven inland and to the mountain +recesses.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span></p> + +<p>Almost everywhere the little people somewhat resemble in +feature the races that surround them. This is due to unions, +temporary or otherwise, between the pygmy women and the +men of the neighbor tribes, by which various streams of strange +blood have poured into the veins of the lesser stock. Among +the Lapps of earlier generations it almost seemed as if it were +conscious tribal policy to promote a taller stature by encouraging +women and girls to form irregular connections with men of +other European races. There is Bushman blood in the Hottentots, +or Hottentot blood in the Bushmen. In the so-called +Bastards of the Kalahari Desert—a term whereof the wearers +are proud because it concedes to them a Caucasian strain—the +blood of the Bushmen meets the blood of the Boers in the halfway +house of the Hottentot.</p> + +<p>Herbert Long, who spent six years in Central Africa with +an expedition from the American Museum of Natural History, +notes in its <i>Journal</i> for 1919 the fact that the pygmy men he +saw were often much taller than their mates, and gives a reason, +that may explain the same phenomenon in related tribes. +Comely pygmy girls enter the harems of the chiefs of the tall +negro tribes. Their half-breed sons are sent back to their own +people. Since women are valuable chattels, the daughters are +retained by the father’s tribe. The custom increases pygmy +prestige; but the little men must not wed the women of their +tall friends.</p> + +<p>The small black folk of the forest have thus won a right to +the marked regional resemblance they bear to the larger black +folk of the yam and breadfruit clearings, whom they serve as +scouts against the approach of an enemy and as allies in forest +warfare. “In western Africa, as in the Philippines and in the +two Gangetic peninsulas,” asserts Quatrefages, “the pygmies +have played an ethnological rôle, at times important, in crossing +with superior races and in giving birth to half-breed populations.” +The Pandavas, or heroes of the oldest Indian times, +set the example of these unions with lower races.</p> + +<p>The Dravidians of southern India, Quatrefages declares, occupy +the territory formerly populated by the negritos—and +carry their blood. He also thinks that the blood of these little +blacks shows itself in the skin and stature of natives in parts<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span> +of Japan. Relics of a pygmy race are supposed to exist in +Sicily and Sardinia, “along the highroad between Pleistocene +Africa and Europe”; fifteen per cent of the men of South Italy +and Sardinia are rejected for military service because less than +sixty-one and one half inches high. South of Salamanca in western +Spain, the valley called Las Jurdes is peopled by men and +women said to be little more than three feet high, whose shrunken +stature is attributed to unwholesome surroundings.</p> + +<p>No true pygmy race has developed a pronounced nose bridge, +and only the lozenge-faced Bushmen have salient chins. Among +nearly all of the tribes there is a deficiency in the fatty tissues +which affect the skin, so that, even before old age comes, they +present a wrinkled appearance as if the skin fitted too loosely. +This is true even of the Lapps. The countenances of these +northern dwarfs are mongoloid, but without the slanting eyes of +the Chinese and Tartars, and their heads are the roundest of +any race of men. The negrito and negrillo tribes have rounder +heads than the tall negroes. The bodies of many of the little +people in Central Africa and New Guinea are covered with a +downy growth. Pygmy complexions show olive in the Lapps, +light yellow in the Bushmen, yellow brown in the Indonesians, +dark brown in the negritos of the Andamans and Philippines, +and among the Akkas, as Schweinfurth puts it, the color of +coffee slightly roasted.</p> + +<p>Small hands and in some cases small feet characterize these +tribes, and grown girls of the Bushmen show, under measurement, +feet but little more than four inches long. Their bodies +are long in proportion to their legs, and the legs are slim. +The mid-point of the body is above the navel instead of below, +as it is in the tall races. The pygmies of Africa are pot-bellied; +this is due to diet, and is corrected by regular and wholesome +food.</p> + +<p>In other respects the pygmies differ from the rest of mankind +chiefly in what they lack. Save in the case of the Semangs +of the Malay Peninsula they may have no separate language; +and they use always the speech of their taller neighbors. There +is no pygmy state, or king, and often no tribal organization; +even among the Lapps there was a nomad tribe called the “twice +and thrice tributary Lapps,” because its members paid tribute<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span> +to two, sometimes to three states—Russia, Denmark, and Sweden. +The Andaman negritos and the Akkas of the West African +Rain Forest are the only races that never devised a means of +making fire, though both know its use. The Andamanese are also +the only people that never made a musical instrument and +the only people that never domesticated a food animal or cultivated +a plant.</p> + +<p>One or two things, however, may be said for the culture of +the little folk. There are no pygmy cannibals. Although the +Bushman houses, mere mats suspended on stakes, are the most +primitive known, yet these are the most skilled artists in South +Africa, and some of their figures suggest that they may have +known hieroglyphic writing. All the little peoples treat their +women kindly, and reverence gray hairs. The Andamanese +are monogamous and believe in an omniscient deity. On the +other hand, the highest religious concept among the polygamous +Akkas is of a pygmy devil. The Bushmen live in a state approaching +sexual promiscuity; it used to be the custom, when +a man wished a temporary mate, to kidnap a small child, and +the mother would follow the child into his home. The Andamanese +have the peculiar custom of manifesting joy by weeping, +and it is said the Veddahs never laugh.</p> + +<p>No certain statements may be made as to the aggregate numbers +of the dwarf nations. There are about 50,000 Bushmen, +27,000 Lapps, 20,000 Aetas, 2,000 Mincoupies, 2,000 Veddahs. +It may be that the equatorial pygmies are half as numerous as +the Aetas. Everywhere the number of these people is diminishing.</p> + +<p>As to their origin and the cause of their shrunken stature, +there is no agreement among ethnologists. The small blacks +may have come into existence in South India and spread thence +east and west, peopling Melanesia and Africa. Once they +formed a belt of population clear across equatorial Africa. On +the evidences of crania which he examined, Professor Kollman +believes that, about b.c. 5000, they dwelt as far down the Nile +Valley as the Thebaid. The Oriental branch of the race, pure or +mixed, extends, says Quatrefages, from the extreme southeast +of New Guinea to the archipelago of the Andamans and from +the Sunda Islands to Japan, and on the Asiatic continent from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span> +Annam and the peninsula of Malacca to the western Ghauts, and +from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas. This grandiose geography +is challenged by later scholarship.</p> + +<p>Yet over all these wide spaces, and over the Dark Continent, +pygmies may have been the first settlers. Once it was surmised +that the tall negritoes sprang from them; but this is a moot +point. To accept it would be to assert that short stature is a +primitive trait, and that all the tall races are in this respect +abnormal. British anthropologists hold that the Bushmen are +a distinct people, but that the Congo pygmies, though of livelier +intelligence than the tall blacks, are yet special groups of the +Nilotic or Bantu negroes, arrested or degenerated by the inhospitable +forest. Their diminished stature, Stanley urges, is +the result of “three thousand years of isolation, intermarriage, +and a precarious diet of fungi, wild fruit, lean fibrous meat of +animals, and dried insects; in a word, of the utter absence of +sunshine and the lack of gluten and saccharine bodies in their +food.”</p> + +<p>Handicapping conditions may have produced the Lapps of +the Arctic Circle, the vanished Indian dwarfs of the Andes, the +enigmatic Bushmen, and the little black men of Africa, the +Malay Peninsula, and various isles of the eastern sea. But in +old fables pygmyland is hard by the country of the giants. It +happens that the diminutive Lapp is neighbor to the tall +Karelian, the Bushman and Akka to the stalwart Bantu. There +are little people of the frigid zone, the tropics, and the south +temperate. There were dwarfs of rich ocean littorals as well as +of the tundra, the mountain glen, the desert, and the equatorial +forest.</p> + +<p>“I believe mankind was originally a dwarf,” says Leland. +Churchward, in his <i>Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man</i>, +holds that paleolithic man was a pygmy, “the first little earth +man or red man,” and that he was evolved near the Nile springs, +and thence overspread the earth. Sign language and articulate +sounds, the Masonic writer thinks, were worked out by these +little folk. After talking with representatives of their race, he +concludes that they have a monosyllabic speech, and words with +the same sounds as the Egyptian hieroglyphs. The resemblance +of living pygmies to the long-armed, short-legged, paunchy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span> +dwarf-gods of Egypt and Phœnicia, and notably to Bes, has been +remarked. These squat divinities may have owed their being +to ancient fear of small men, the elder brothers of historic +man. Sir Harry Johnston thinks it possible that the little blacks +once overspread Europe and, by their prankish good nature and +curious power of becoming invisible in herbage and behind +rocks, gave rise to folk-tales of gnomes, kobolds, and fairies. +Kollman, the Basle anatomist, contends that the pygmies were +the child race of mankind, and that each tall race was preceded +by a small one. The common opinion, that healthy dwarf +tribes have been produced by degeneration from men of larger +mold, is not fully satisfying. Yet the oldest human skeletons +found thus far are of men of normal size.</p> + +<p>There are pygmies, but why? The one riddle succeeds the +other.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c12">Chapter XII. The Amazons of Legend</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">Men</span> gave up with regret, and not so long ago, and not until +they had ransacked all the horizons of geography, the belief +that somewhere in the world there is a state of warrior women. +They are reluctant to admit, nor have they quite admitted, that +there never was such a state; and still they ransack the horizons +of history and folk-lore for proof that at one time Amazons +were.</p> + +<p>Myth has mapped the woman’s commonwealth in western +Africa, in Armenia on the Black Sea, in the Caucasus, in Russia +along the lower Don, in islands of the Baltic, the Indian Ocean, +and the Caribbean, and upon the River of the Amazons. There +is report of it in Greek, Turanian, Arab, Negro, and American +legend. It figures in the poetry of Arctinus, the history of +Herodotus, the mendacities of Maundeville, the narrative of +Marco Milioni, the visions of Columbus, the journal of Orellana +and the Guiana prospectus of Raleigh.</p> + +<p>Unlike other ancient tales, the Amazon story, instead of +slowly fading, has grown in definiteness of outline as it approached +to-day. The men who discarded utterly the belief that +there is a woman state lived not long after the men who thought +the state had at last been found.</p> + +<p>The Amazons—so runs tradition everywhere substantially +the same—were a tribe of women ruled by a queen and subsisting +by the chase and by wars of pillage. They fought both +on foot and on horseback, using the bow, the spear, the javelin, +and the double-headed ax. Their garb consisted of a short tunic +clearing the knee and fastened over the left shoulder, leaving +the right breast bare. Their outlines were powerful and beautiful. +There was a dispute, never composed, between art and +etymology, as to their bosoms. The word Amazon, though of +barbarian origin, was thought to derive from <i>alpha</i>, privative, +and <i>mazos</i>, the Greek for breast. On this derivation the grammarians<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span> +built up the legend that the right breast of the women +militant was either amputated, or seared, or compressed in +youth, so as not to interfere with the recoil of the bow string. +But the sculptors would not accept this deformation, and statues +and bas-reliefs represent the women with bosoms entirely +womanly. There are recent etymologies wherein “Amazon” is +supposed to mean “full busted,” “moon daughter,” “vestal,” +“girdle-bearer,” or “game-eater.”</p> + +<p>One feature of the myth shows the working of inference. +The woman state must sustain its numbers. There must be children +even if there were no men, or the tribe would become extinct. +In place of husbands, therefore, there were what Sir +Walter Raleigh called “Valentines.” Once a year the women +paid a visit to the men of neighbor tribes, or once a year these +men called on them. The women retained the girl children born +of these excursions. As to the boy children, customs differed. +In some cases the mothers nurtured them until they were weaned, +and returned them to their fathers when these came back the +following year, as always they did. In other cases the mothers +put the male infants to death, or maimed them and raised them +as slaves of the state.</p> + +<p>The Greek treatment of the myth had a certain other-worldliness. +The Amazons figured in epic events; their struggles were +with demigods. They came to the relief of Troy, and their +subjugation was one of the dozen labors of Hercules. With +him they fought, and with Achilles, and with Theseus, slayer of +the Minotaur, and with Bellerophon, rider of the winged +Pegasus, and with the griffins which guarded Scythia’s fabled +gold; and they invaded Attica to attempt another <i>Iliad</i> in +revenge for the capture of a queen. Greek sculptures and +decorative pottery show the national feeling that these were a +people far removed in time and space. The figures are beautiful, +but something of barbarian wildness animates the features. +Earlier art had represented them as bloodthirsty mænads, raiders +of the borders, but the Greek humanizing spirit wrought +itself upon the legend until the story the sculptors tell is of +men’s regret that they need smite these beautiful savages.</p> + +<p>This spirit is in the <i>Æthiopis</i> of Arctinus of Miletus, wherein +Amazons appear on the side of beleaguered Troy. Their queen,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span> +Penthesilea, spreads death among the large-limbed Argives +and overwhelms Achilles with abusive words. The angered +hero slays her, but when he removes her helmet the charm of +her strikes him to the heart and he grieves over his victim.</p> + +<p>The story, with its fine human touch, recedes into the mists in +a tale which in effect is its epilogue. After his own death and +the ruin of Troy, Achilles reigns over the isle of Leuke, an +Avalon of the East in the Black Sea at the Danube’s mouth. +Thither, even to the land of shades, the rage of the Amazons +for the death of their queen follows him. At their capital on +the river Thermodon in Pontus they seize on ships and compel +the sailors to steer them to the enchanted isle. But as they +approach a temple in the grove their horses take fright and +bolt over a cliff into the sea. A terrible storm shatters the +fleet and few of the vengeful women escape.</p> + +<p>In classic legend, there were three woman states—the countries +of the Gorgons and Amazons in the west of Libya, and an +Amazon state in the northeast of Asia Minor near the modern +Trebizond; the capital of the latter was the mythical Themiscyra +on the banks of the river Thermodon, now called the Termeh. +The African Amazons subjugated the Gorgons, and under their +queen, Myrina, marched in triumph through Egypt, Arabia, and +Asia Minor into Thrace, where they were defeated and turned +back by Mopsus. Ephesus, Smyrna, Cyme, and Myrina claimed +them as their founders. This horde was wiped out by Hercules +at the time when he erected the pillar in Africa, for, says +Diodorus Siculus, “it was a thing intolerable to him, who made +it his business to be renowned all the world over, to suffer any +nation to be governed any longer by women.”</p> + +<p>It was the Black Sea Amazons whom the Greeks mainly +limned in art and legend. These women, whose earlier home +had been the Caucasus, raided the coasts of Asia Minor and +came to the relief of Troy. The ninth labor of Hercules was +to bring back the girdle of their queen, Hippolyte, a task equivalent +to the subjugation of the state. Theseus carried off another +queen, Antiope, and this led to the Amazonian invasion of Attica; +the fierce women were not halted until they had penetrated +Athens.</p> + +<p>This expedition and that of their African sisters were interpreted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span> +by the Greeks as allegories of barbarian menace. In +the tread of Amazonian horse they may have had a presage of +the hoofs of Hunnish, Turkish, and Tartar cavalry that in after +ages was to ride across their world. Literally taken, the tales +seemed to Strabo incredible. “For who can believe,” he asks, +“that an army of women, or a city, or a nation, could ever subsist +without men, and even dispatch an expedition across the +sea to Attica? This is as much as to say that the men of those +days were women, and the women men.”</p> + +<p>Twice, however, in the field of legend over which Strabo cast +an unbelieving backward glance, the note of reality, or perhaps +of realism, had been sounded. When Alexander the Great was +in Parthia, Thalestris, the Amazon queen, paid him a Sheba-like +visit at the head of a hundred women carrying double-headed +axes and the traditional half-moon shield. He was the +bravest of men, said the lady, and she the bravest of women. +They owed a duty to posterity to raise offspring in whom the +two strains should conjoin. The appeal flattered the vanity of +the Macedonian, nor was he averse to meeting its conditions. +So runs a Greek story like unto others with which the Alexander +legend was embroidered. But Arrian explains that the +so-called queen and her followers had been sent as a present +by the governor of the next province—a time-honored Asiatic +gift.</p> + +<p>There was a battalion of death perhaps three thousand years +before the young women of Russia took the field in the World +War, and those of Poland in the war that followed it. The +story is told by Herodotus in a chapter which begins in myth +and seems to pass into history. In the opening scene three +shiploads of Amazons, captured in the Attic campaign already +noted, overpower the Greek sailors and slay them all. They let +the ships drift across the Black Sea and beach on the shores of +the Palus Mæotis (Sea of Azov), where the women seize a herd +of horses. Mounting them, they fall to plundering the land of +the free Scythians. Herodotus continues:</p> + +<p>“The Scyths could not tell what to make of the attack upon +them—the dress, the language, the nation itself were alike unknown; +whence the enemy had come, even, was a marvel. +Imagining, however, that they were all men of about the same<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span> +age, they went out against them and fought a battle. Some of +the bodies of the slain fell into their hands, whereby they discovered +the truth. Hereupon they deliberated, and made a +resolve to kill no more of them, but to send against them a +detachment of their youngest men, as near as they could guess +equal to the women in number, with orders to encamp in their +neighbourhood and do as they saw them do. When the +Amazons advanced against them, they were to retire and avoid +a fight. When they halted, the young men were to approach and +pitch their camp near the camp of the enemy. All this they +did on account of their strong desire to obtain children from +so notable a race.”</p> + +<p>The Scythian youths were sent out. The Amazons saw that +no harm was meditated against them and desisted from further +attack; and slowly the romance unfolded. Day after day the +camps were pitched nearer each other, and both parties, having +naught but arms and horses, supported themselves by the chase. +“At last,” says Herodotus, “an incident brought two of them +together. The man easily gained the good graces of the woman, +who bade him by signs to bring a friend the next day, promising +on her part to bring with her another woman. He did so, and +the woman kept her word. When the rest of the youths heard +what had taken place they also sought and gained the favor of +the other Amazons.</p> + +<p>“The two camps were then joined in one, the Amazons living +with the Scythians as their wives; and the men were unable to +learn the tongue of the women, but the women soon caught the +tongue of the men. Then the Scyths said: ‘We have parents and +properties; let us therefore give up this mode of life, and return +to our nation, and live with them; you shall be our wives there +no less than here, and we promise you to have no others.’”</p> + +<p>But the young women would not go home with their husbands +to live with their mothers-in-law. “Of womanly employments +we know nothing,” they said. “To draw the bow, to hurl the +javelin, to bestride the horse, these are our arts. Your women +stay at home in their wagons engaged in womanish tasks and +never go out to hunt or to do anything. We should never agree.” +So they bade the bridegrooms go back to their parents, ask for +their inheritances, and return. This the youths did, and then<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span> +the Amazons told them they could no more get along with their +fathers than with their mothers. They had stolen horses and +wasted the ancestral lands. “As you like us for wives,” they +pleaded, “grant the request that we leave the country together, +and go and dwell beyond the Tanais” (the river Don).</p> + +<p>Again the Scythian youths consented, and all fared to a region +three days’ journey east and three north of the Sea of Azov. +Thus was founded the race of Sarmatians. From that day +to this, concludes Herodotus, the Sarmatian women ride with +their husbands in the chase, and in war take the field with +them. Nor does a girl marry until she has killed a man in +battle, so that among them are women of advanced years, +celibates because they have never struck down a foe. Also, the +Sarmatians do not speak the tongue of Scythia correctly, because +the Amazons learned it incorrectly at the first.</p> + +<p>At least the topography of the tale has been confirmed. +Sarmatia is the ancient name of Poland and Niebuhr has traced +the westward drift of the tribes from the Don steppes to the +great Hungarian plain, whence they overspread Poland and Russia. +One could wish to believe that Maria Botchkareva, commander +of the Battalion of Death that took the field against +Germany when the manhood of Soviet Russia faltered and +grounded arms, is of the high Amazonian strain.</p> + +<p>The Indian epic of the <i>Mahabharata</i> has a similar tale, although +in less realistic vein. There was a religious rite known +as the Aswamedha, in which a leader would loose a horse, and +follow it for a twelvemonth into whatever adventures and countries +it might go—a quest entailing wanderings and warrings. +Rajah Arjuna of the Gangetic city of Hatusapur took the pledge, +and in the fifth stage of his adventure followed the ranging horse +into the Country of Women. He entered it with heavy heart, +knowing its danger.</p> + +<p>These were not like other women, but rakshasis, or goblin +women. Their queen, the Rani Paranunta, was a beautiful +young creature, and so were all her women. But their customs +were worse than Circean. When men entered the land they were +kindly entreated and beguiled into remaining for a month or +more; and, indeed, there were guards to prevent their escape. +After thirty days they were killed, and such of the women as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span> +had entertained them, but were not expectant mothers, took their +own lives—the suttee. Thus was it assured that the Country of +Women should always be also the Country of Young Women.</p> + +<p>The roving rajah and his train were gloomily pondering these +customs when they saw a troop of Amazons appear, and lead +away the Aswamedha horse to the stables of their queen. These +were young girls, all between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, +arrayed in pearls and rich stuffs, with bows in their hands and +quivers at their waists and proud horses under them. Among +them rode their queen on an elephant. And she bade Arjuna to +cease his quest. “Become my slave, drink with me, and pass +your time in pleasure,” said the young Rani.</p> + +<p>Arjuna reminded her that this was an invitation to die thirty +days later. To which the Rani replied that really it should make +little difference to him: “If you resist me you fall by my arrows; +if you remain you have to face the light of my eyes.” Already +her beauty had overcome his heart, but his mind made a last +appeal. Let her permit him to fulfill his vow and he would +come back to wed her and would find noble husbands for all +her women. The young queen liked the speech and sped him on +his way to other adventures, and the tale itself to its ultimate +happy ending.</p> + +<p>In a fortified palace in an iron city of Ceylon—Hiouen +Thsang tells the story—dwelt other goblin women to the number +of five hundred. On their towers flags flew to attract passing +ships. When merchants were sighted, the rakshasis took the +form of beautiful maidens holding flowers and strewing scents, +and with music welcomed them to the iron city. There was a +prelude of wanton pleasure and then the strangers were shut up +in an iron prison and devoured at leisure.</p> + +<p>Hither came Simhala, prince of the merchants, and five hundred +of the trader-folk, while the lucky signals waved on the +towers of the siren host. Simhala mated with their queen, and +each of the men found a companion, and of each union a son +was born. But an evil dream came to the prince, and he went +in the night to the iron stronghold, whence a captive’s voice told +him who the women were and what he might expect. If he would +escape, there was a divine horse on the seaboard that would +carry him away.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span></p> + +<p>The next scene shows the goblin women, each with her child, +questing the air in search of their fugitive husbands and by +blandishments persuading them to return. Simhala alone stands +out. But his deserted queen, hastening before him to his father’s +house, wins the elder man for her husband, and then brings on +the demon women for a carnival of death. In the morning the +royal ministers find in the palace hall no living thing, but only +gnawed bones. The remainder of the story tells of the vengeance +of the son in a second expedition to the Isle of Gems.</p> + +<p>“Then,” says the narrative, “the rakshasis were driven back, +and fled precipitately to rocky isles of the sea.” There for a +while we must seek the warrior women.</p> + +<p>Marco Polo found them “about five hundred miles toward +the south in the ocean” from Sind. Here were two islands thirty +miles apart, supposed by modern geographers to be the Two +Sisters lying near Socotra. One, inhabited solely by men, was +called the Island of Males; the other, inhabited solely by women, +was called the Island of Females. In March, April, and May the +men lived with the women, and at the same time sowed grain +in the fields. The rest of the year, because of the climate, the +men lived in their own island, knowing that if they stayed with +the women it would be “at the risk of falling a sacrifice.”</p> + +<p>In Siamese folk-lore the Amazon island is farther to the east, +in the Mergui archipelago, where lies the Country of Widows, +or See-Saw Country of Widows—a vanishing city where are +women only, and nothing can float on water. Still farther east, +legend—Arabic, mediæval, and modern—tells of women commonwealths +in Engano; in the “Sea of Malatu,” identified as +a bay of North Borneo; and in an island not far from Samar +in the eastern Philippines. Even in the Ladrones and the Carolines +the Jesuits heard of female islands. Pigafetta was told by +a pilot of an island called Acoloro, which lies below Java Major, +where are found no persons but women, and these become pregnant +from the wind. They kill their male offspring and any +men who visit their island.</p> + +<p>The name of California, borne by an American state, was +given by mediæval legend to an Amazon island “on the right +hand of the Indies very near to the terrestrial paradise.” Although +troglodytes, the pirate women who inhabited it lived<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span> +luxuriously. Their arms and armor were of gold and their +caves were richly tapestried and adorned with gems and feather-work, +won by plunder of passing ships.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Arabian Nights</i> the Amazon legend becomes entangled +in other myths. Hassan el Bassorah loves and weds a strange +and beautiful woman, but she flies away to the farthest of an +archipelago of seven islands ruled by her father. He has an +army of twenty-five thousand women, “smiters with swords and +lungers with lances.” The daughter queens it over the island +of Wak-wak. Here there is a forest the trees of which bear +fruit with the faces of the sons of Adam. When the sun arises, +these exclaim, “Wak-wak, Glory to the Creating King,” and +when it sets, “Wak-wak, Glory to God.”</p> + +<p>Lane, translator of the <i>Thousand and One Nights</i>, adds a +note that the island of Wak-wak, familiar to Arab legend, lay +near Borneo. A queen swayed it and her warriors were beautiful +women. Even the trees bore women who hung by their hair +from the branches and syllabled, “Wak-wak”; if their hair was +severed, they died. Another editor, Burton, holds that there +were two Wak-waks. One was the peninsula of Guardafui +where the pagan Gallas cried “Wak” as the Moslems cried +“Allah”; the vocal fruit tree was the calabash tree, “a vegetable +elephant,” the gourds of which hang by slender filaments. The +other Wak-wak was an island identified as Madagascar, as +Malacca, and as Sumatra. Sometimes the Cantonese speak of +Japan as Wo-kwok, and in New Guinea birds of paradise, +settling on trees, are supposed to cry out “Wak-wak.” This is +also the name of the Falcon-man among the First People of +American myth, and of Philippine sorcerers who could disconnect +their legs and fly about like bats.</p> + +<p>The narrative of Maundeville brings legend west again. Beside +the Land of Chaldea is the Land of Amazonia. The woman +state emerged when the king and all his nobles were slain in +war. The high-born relicts slew all the men left, “for they +would that all the Women were Widows as they were.” Thereafter, +“they never would suffer Man to dwell amongst them +longer than seven Days and seven Nights,” and when they met +their lovers in neighboring realms they lived with them only +“an eight Days or ten.” These “wise noble and worthy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span> +Women” fought valiantly as mercenary soldiers for neighbor +states.</p> + +<p>There was an island of women in the Baltic, according to +Adam of Bremen, but he perhaps confused Gwenland, or Fenland, +with the land of gwens—that is to say, the land of women.</p> + +<p>That there was an Amazon nation in America the Chinese +were first to report. Buddhist travelers of the sixth century +told of a Land of Women beyond the Pacific in what may have +been Mexico. Of this report the Spaniards knew nothing when +they gave the legend a home in the Caribbean Sea, in islands +that were halfway houses in time and space to its wild but +splendid domicile on the mainland of South America.</p> + +<p>The maps which Columbus knew had drawn into their contours +of the Orient the outlines of various islands of women. +In the Catalan map of 1375 the <i>regio feminarum</i> was placed in +Ceylon. The fifteenth-century Catalan map placed the <i>insula +de bene faminill</i> in the west of the Indian Ocean and off the +African coast. A map of 1489 now in the British Museum had +the <i>insula mulierum</i> and the <i>insula virorum</i> not far from +Zanzibar. These were islands of the east, and Columbus +thought he was sailing into the east, and he had with him the +<i>Travels</i> of Marco Polo with their account of the isles of men +and women. It was confirmation of his hopes that shortly after +his landfall in the Bahamas the natives spoke, or seemed to +speak, of the island of women.</p> + +<p>Through January and February of 1493 the journal of +Columbus has much to say of the <i>Isla de Mugeres</i>, of which +many Indians had told him. Its name was Madanino, the modern +island of Montserrat. There was a companion island of men +called Carib, a dozen leagues away. Columbus wanted to visit +both, although the men were cannibals, and to carry away a few +of the Amazons as a present to his sovereigns. But somehow +he never made this expedition.</p> + +<p>On the second voyage Columbus unwittingly touched at another +island of women. It was Guadeloupe, where “abundance +of women [his son Ferdinand is the narrator] came out of +a wood, with bows and arrows and feathers, as if they would +defend their island.” They were naked, with long hair falling +over their shoulders. The admiral sent two Haytian women<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span> +swimming ashore to barter for food. The armed women bade +them go to the north side of the island “where their husbands +were.” But a landing party of Spaniards brought back ten +women and three boys—and report of an adventure. One of +the captives, wife of a cacique, had been pursued by a swift-footed +Canaryman, and him she threw down and had nearly +throttled before his companions pulled her off. Although +nimble, the women were excessively fat, “and there were some +thicker than a man could grasp.”</p> + +<p>The cacique’s wife told the Spaniards that the island was inhabited +only by women, and that four men they had seen were +there by chance from another island; “for at a certain time in +the year they come to sport with them.” There was another +Amazon island called “Matrimonio.” Having seen the prowess +of these women, the admiral readily believed their stories. He +dismissed them with presents, but the Amazonian wrestler had +conceived a passion for a Haytian prince whom he held captive, +and remained with the Spaniards.</p> + +<p>Other explorers after Columbus mistook for Amazons various +island women who fought them when their husbands were away. +The conquistadors even imagined that the convents of Mexican +virgins, who followed the austere rule of Quetzalcoatl, were +Amazon barracks in which, at seasons, men were made welcome. +Thus by a succession of reports the stage was prepared for +the revelation made by Orellana, when in 1542 he slipped away +with a party of men from the spice-hunter, Gonzalo Pizarro, +who was encamped near the headwaters of the great river—from +that time forth called the River of the Amazons—and +descended its broadening bosom to the sea.</p> + +<p>At the mouth of its affluent, the Rio Negro, Orellana had a +spirited fight with a band led by a number of women. An Indian +captured farther downstream told him that this was a district of +women. Their five Houses of the Sun were plated with gold, +their dwellings were of gold, and strong walls encompassed their +cities; and their country was neighbor to El Dorado. This +story, brought back to Europe with much corroborative detail, +inflamed it, and Spain gave its author a commission to conquer +and colonize the lands he had skirted afloat. But he died on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span> +his outward passage, and these lands, falling within the territories +of Portugal, Spain had no profit of them.</p> + +<p>Thenceforth the legend of the American Amazons followed +its curious course for three centuries, while the credulity and +cupidity of men wove for it a background bizarre in its colors +and stiff with fabled gold.</p> + +<p>Raleigh’s is the best account—such a recital as must interest +his sovereign, the Virgin Queen. The nations of these warlike +women, he said, were on the south side of a northern affluent of +the Amazon in the province of Topago, “and their chiefest +strengths and retracts are in the Islands situated on the South +side of the entrance some sixty leagues within the mouth of the +sayd river. They accompany with men but once in a yere, +and for the time of one moneth, which I gather by their relation +to be in April; and that time all kings of the borders assemble, +and queenes of the Amazones; and after the queenes have +chosen, the rest cast lots for their Valentines. This one moneth, +they feed, dance, and drinke of their wines in abundance; and +the Moone being done, they all depart to their owne provinces.</p> + +<p>“It was farther tolde me, that if in the warres they took any +prisoners, that they used to accompany with those also at what +time soever, but in the end for certeine they put them to death; +for they are sayd to be very cruell and bloodthirsty, especially +to such as offer to invade their territories. These Amazones +have likewise great store of these plates of golde, which they +recover by exchange chiefly for a kinde of greene stones which +the Spaniards call Piedras hijades, and we use for spleene +stones.”</p> + +<p>Even without the imported wealth of Old World legend—the +tales of pygmies and vampires and headless folk with which +adventurers decorated their narrative—it was a singular backdrop +of tradition before which the female warriors of America +were paraded. Through its colors ran the primitive lusts of +men—for gold and women. The English sought gold, the Indians +sought women, and the Spaniards, so Raleigh said, sought +both gold and women. The natives were fighting over women +a succession of Trojan wars, in which copper-hued Helens passed +back and forth as the booty of the victors. Indian nobles +with a dozen wives envied the polity of other tribes where the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span> +caciques had half a hundred apiece. When Raleigh asked +Topiawara’s people what he should wrest from the Epuremi, +they replied “their women for us, and their gold for you.”</p> + +<p>Of such a world anything might be true, and Amazon proof +kept coming. The soldiers of de Agira, as Lopez Vaz records, +“did finde that to be true which Orellana had reported, that there +were Amazons, but these women fight to aide their husbands.” +Father de Acunha, who went with Teixera on his great journey +of exploration, asserted (1698) that the large ladies of fable +had “treasures enough to enrich the entire world.” Their +realm was the summits of the Cordilleras of Guiana. The +males of the neighboring Guacaris were “the happy tribe +which enjoys the favor of the valiant Amazons,” and these dwelt +well up the sides of the mountains where the women throned it. +When the men made their yearly call, their hostesses met them +on the frontier with arms in their hands, which, however, they +soon put aside. Each Amazon chose a hammock at random +from the canoes of the men, and its owner followed her to her +lodge.</p> + +<p>Brazilian folk-lore fitted into the legend. The devil-mask of +the Jurupary is supposed to represent the mythical hero who +came from the Antilles and overthrew the Amazons. All along +their great river bands of women attacked him, but, like another +Hercules, he destroyed them utterly. The cuirass of the conqueror +became a sacred mask, and it was said that Indian +women would hide in the forests rather than look upon it, so +poignant was its reminder of their overthrow.</p> + +<p>In another story, found upon the middle Amazon, the Indian +women abandoned their lords and retired to the hills, taking +one old man with them. The oldster became the father of all +children born to them, and only girl babies were reared. One +mother, however, had a crippled son, and in pity she secreted +and reared him, and cured his deformity. When his retreat was +discovered there began, says Rothery, a long and tender persecution +from the women, though the boy remained unmoved. To +escape this he agreed that his mother should throw him into a +lake, where he became a fish. Whenever the mother called him +he swam ashore, changed to his beautiful human form and took +food from her hands. This secret, also, was discovered, and the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span> +other women would imitate the call and inveigle the deceived +youth into their arms. The old man, sole tribal husband of +record, noted the neglect of the women, divined the reason, and +went fishing. Other nets failed to hold his prey, but a net of +woman’s hair caught the boy-fish, and youth was no longer +served; the old man killed him.</p> + +<p>Navaho myth tells a related story of the secession of the +women, their cohabitation with a water-monster, and their return +to their natural mates. Fragmentary tales of the woman state +come also from Colombia, Nicaragua, Sinaloa, and the two +Californias.</p> + +<p>The Amazon exodus is related in a third story of Brazil, +told by Barboza Rodriguez. When the women abandoned their +husbands, flood and fell barred the way of the pursuers and the +very monkeys pelted them from the trees. After a while the +female republic relented so far as to admit the men once a +year. At length it disappeared into the land of shadows, the +women going down into a hole in the earth, led by an armadillo.</p> + +<p>La Condamine, the French geographer and mathematician, +went to Peru in 1735 to determine the length of a degree of the +meridian at the equator, and on his homeward journey made +the first scientific exploration of the river Amazon. He returned +with one certainty and two doubts. He was sure there +had been a woman state, but he did not know whether there +still was, nor where it could then be found, for the Amazons +were nomads who shifted their camps.</p> + +<p>The distinguished scientist arrays his evidence: testimony of +an Indian whose grandfather had seen an Amazon band pass by +at the entrance of the Cuchura River and spoken with four of +them; like testimony from other natives; statement of the +Topayos that the green stones called Amazon stones which they +wore were inherited from forefathers who had them from a +tribe of women; statement of an old soldier that he had seen +necklaces of Amazon stones among a tribe of long-eared Indians +and learned they had procured them from the women without +husbands, whose territories were seven marches west; native +name of these women, Cougnantainsecouima, meaning “the independent +women who receive men into their society only in +the month of April”; offer of a native of Mortigua to guide La<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span> +Condamine up the river Irijo which flows hard by the woman +state; passages in the Jesuit <i>Relations</i> of 1726 and reports of +two Spanish governors of Venezuela, Don Diego Portales and +Don Francisco Torralva.</p> + +<p>Where are the Amazons now? asks La Condamine. He notes +that while different accounts designate the point of their retreat, +some toward the east, others the north, and others again +the west, these several routes converge in one common center, +the mountains in the midst of Guiana. But without further +proof he will not credit the existence of the woman state there +in his time. The tribe may have moved again. “Or, what to +me appears a more probable event than any other, it will have +forsaken its ancient habits, either in consequence of being overpowered +by some other nation, or of the maidens’ having at +length lost the aversion of their mothers to the company of men. +Thus, though no remaining vestige should be found of this +feminine republic, this would not yet prove that none such had +ever existed.”</p> + +<p>The majority of the natives of South America, La Condamine +declares, are liars, credulous, and prone to the marvelous. But +none of them, he urges, could have heard of the Amazons of +Diodorus Siculus, and Justin previous to the arrival of the +Spaniards; yet even then Amazons were spoken of as existing +in the center of the country, and later reports come from tribes +that never had held commerce with Europeans.</p> + +<p>If ever there was such a nation, concludes La Condamine, it +must have been in America. The Indians were constantly +wandering. Their wives often went with them to war. They +had plenty of chances to get away from the men, and provocation +enough in the hard estate of slavery in which they were +held. Why could not these aboriginal women do what even +imported slaves had done? Negroes in Latin America had fled +from their taskmasters into the tropical forests, and there had +reared a dozen Cimarron republics. Thus, weighing evidence, +common report and probabilities, La Condamine casts the weight +of his name in favor of the Amazons.</p> + +<p>Two generations later the woman state received the allegiance +of Alexander von Humboldt, founder of the science of physical +geography and largest name among the savants of the nineteenth<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span> +century. He had spent five years in tropical America at the +opening of the century, and in his <i>Personal Narrative</i> of travel +there he records affirmative answer to the question: Did he +accept the conclusions of La Condamine? There was exaggeration, +he thinks, in the stories of Raleigh and Oviedo; but +nevertheless he cannot entirely reject “a tradition which is +spread among various nations having no communication with +each other.”</p> + +<p>Ribeiro, the Portuguese astronomer who had traversed the +Amazon basin, entering it a disbeliever of the story, had found +the same traditions of the woman state among the Indians, and +confirmed all that La Condamine reported a generation before, +Humboldt notes. He is impressed with the contemporary testimony +of Father Gili. The friar had asked a Quaqua Indian +what tribes inhabited the Rio Cuchiviro and the Indian named +three, one of them the Aikeambenanos. The missionary knew +the Tamanac tongue, and in that tongue the word signified +“women living alone.” The Indian confirmed his translation, +and explained that these were a community of women who made +blow-tubes and other weapons of war. After the familiar +Amazon custom they had seasonal amatory relations with the +neighboring nation of Vokearos and sent their men visitors +back with presents, but killed their male offspring. This tale, +says Humboldt, seems framed on the traditions which are rife +among the Indians of the Maranon and among the Caribs; yet +the Quaqua who told it knew no Castilian, had never before +talked to a white man and certainly did not know that below +the Orinoco was the river of the Amazons.</p> + +<p>“What must we conclude?” asks Humboldt. “Not that there +are Amazons on the banks of the Cuchivero, but that women in +different parts of America, wearied of the state of slavery in +which they were held by the men, united themselves together; +that the desire of preserving their independence rendered them +warriors; and that they received visits from a neighboring and +friendly horde. This society of women may have acquired some +power in one part of Guiana. The Caribs of the continent held +intercourse with those of the islands; and no doubt in this +way the traditions of the Maranon and the Orinoco were propagated<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span> +toward the north,” so that Columbus and other +navigators who followed him heard of them repeatedly before +reaching the mainland of America.</p> + +<p>A generation later the woman state is spoken of by Schomburgk, +who traversed Guiana in 1835-43. Everywhere the +Caribs told him of the Woruisamocos, a tribe of warlike women +who lived near the sources of the Corentyne in a district where +no white man had been. They shot with the bow and arrow +and used the blow-pipe. Their own fields they cultivated, and +men came thither only as their lovers, and but once a year. +Schomburgk pushed on to the district where the women should +have been; they were not there.</p> + +<p>In the remote regions of the River Amazon’s northern affluents, +says a recent geographer, the women warriors are still +vainly sought.</p> + +<p>Thus this world-wide, world-old story has been followed +through perhaps thirty centuries of tradition on four continents +and in five seas; and the end is a doubt. Men have fought with +parties of armed women, but none has found the City of Women. +Stories of male and female islands may have arisen from the +custom of naming companion islets “brother” isles and “sister” +isles, like North Brother and South Brother islands in New +York’s East River. It is contended that Orellana concocted his +tale to divert attention from his desertion of Pizarro; that +Spaniards mistook young Indian braves, with topknots and +berry-bracelets on their arms, for women; and that the prose +behind the poetry of the American Amazons is the tribe of +Naupes, which still wears green stones for amulets. It is even +suggested that the New World legend grew out of the coast +Indian word, <i>Amazuni</i>, to denote a tidal bore upon the great +waterway of Brazil.</p> + +<p>It has happened that the vivid imagination of the conquistadors +projected stories among the Indians which came back +later with such a wealth of detail as to seem native stuff. Is the +New World Amazon tradition merely Book III, Chapter XXXIV +of the <i>Travels of Marco Polo</i>, writ large upon the wax-like minds +of savages by the curiosity of Columbus and his great companions?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span></p> + +<p>Before answering, it will be well to turn from stories of a +woman state to authentic records of women who were less than +the Amazons of fable, but more, or rather other, than women of +the hearth. Perhaps the answer is there.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c13">Chapter XIII. The Amazons of History</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">Whether</span> there have been Amazon states or no, there have +been Amazon queens—warrior women who knew how to lead +and whom men were willing to follow. The portrait gallery of +history has set aside its more spacious halls for women of another +kind, for Helen, Cleopatra, Messalina, Theodora, and +their sisters of blandishment. But women militant have also a +place. Tomyris, queen of the Massagetæ, defeated and slew +Cyrus the Great. Semiramis, legendary queen of Assyria, +matched her adulteries with her victories in arms, won all her +campaigns except the Indian, and, in the words of Strabo, left +her monuments in “earthworks, walls, and strongholds, +aqueducts, bridges, and stair-like roads over mountains.” +Boadicea led the Britons in momentarily successful revolt +against Nero. Zenobia, Arab queen, established the Palmyrene +power over the trade routes of the east and swayed Egypt, Syria, +Mesopotamia, and part of Asia Minor, until the arms and gold +of Aurelian encompassed her downfall. Under the poetess +Telesilla the women of Argos repelled a Spartan attack. Joan +of Arc led the armies of France as a girl of nineteen.</p> + +<p>Women have gone to war as single soldiers or in troops, in +disguise, or with husbands, brothers, and lovers. When the +Goths crossed the Roman frontiers their families came with +them in ponderous wagons, and their yellow-haired wives figured +in the Roman triumphs. American Indian women, as the +Spaniards found, were able to use the bow, and defended their +homes when their husbands were away, and sometimes went with +them in battle. The aftermath of a victory among various tribes +of North American Indians—the scalping of the dead, the torture +of the living—was intrusted to the women. They bear +their part in the Mexican revolutions. Thus Ibanez puts it: +“The army is composed of men and women. No one has ever +decided which of the sexes makes the better soldier.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span></p> + +<p>To count the women, the Spanish author says, is to count the +Mexican soldiers, for every one has a wife along, and more +often than not a string of children. The woman is called a +“soldierette” or a “hard-tack,” and if her man is tiring of her, +“the Indian”; and generals have their “generalettes.” Women +constitute the commissary of the army. Each carries bedding +for herself and man, a basket, and perhaps a parrot. With +her sisters she forms an advance guard several miles ahead of +the main force when the troops are on the march. When the +latter reach camp they find the fires burning and a stew in the +pot. The stew comes out of the basket and the basket is filled +by foraging along the way. The Mexican hard-tack does this +thoroughly, Ibanez thinks: “She passes over the country like +a scourge of God. Along her path not a tree remains with a +piece of fruit, not a garden with a turnip, not a coop with a +chicken, not a barnyard with a pig.” When a soldier dies his +companion passes to another through the swift courtship of +circumstance; and sometimes she seizes the rifle of her fallen +mate and uses it in his stead.</p> + +<p>Among nomad peoples women have always shared the activities +of the men; the seclusion of the harem is for settled folk. +The chronicles and legends of High Asia have their instances +of feminine prowess in arms. Marco Polo devotes a chapter +to Aigiarm, daughter of Kaidu, king of Great Turkey and +nephew to the Grand Khan. She would marry no man, she +said, who could not overcome her by force. Suitors came from +other lands and wrestled with her before the court. Her hand +was the prize of success and a hundred horses were the forfeit +of failure. “In this manner,” says Marco, “the damsel gained +more than ten thousand horses, which was no wonder, for she +was so well made in all her limbs, and so tall and strongly +built, that she might almost be taken for a giantess.” In war she +fought beside her father.</p> + +<p>From Usbeck ambassadors at Delhi François Bernier heard +vaunts of the Amazonian ferocity of the Tartar women. One of +their stories was of the campaign of Aurungzebe against the +Khan of Samarcand. A score of Mogul horsemen had plundered +a village and were binding its people to sell them as +slaves, when an old woman said: “My children, be not so cruel.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span> +My daughter, who is not greatly addicted to mercy, will be here +presently. Should she meet with you, you are undone.” With +a laugh the horsemen tied her up also, and started with their +captives across the plain. The old woman kept looking behind +her, and at last uttered a scream of joy.</p> + +<p>The raiders turned and beheld a cloud of dust, and in the +midst of it a young woman furiously riding. Raising her great +voice, like the heroines of Russian epic, she bade them loose their +captives and she would spare them. The horsemen heeding +not, her bowstring twanged and twanged again. Four men +tumbled from the saddle, shot at a range beyond their own +arrows. The young Amazon galloped in among the others, slew +the greater part with her unerring bow, and with her saber cut +down the rest.</p> + +<p>There may be an element of romantic exaggeration in each of +these stories. But they make the point that the women of the +Asiatic highlands knew the bow as well as the distaff, and they +bring the tradition of female warriors into the region where +Greek fable placed the Amazons. There are continued references +to women bearing arms in Armenia, in Kurdistan, and in +the early wars of Islam in Arabia. Women in armor fought +with Miltiades of Pontus against the Romans. The seventeenth-century +traveler, Sir John Chardin, had adventure with a ragamuffin +and lewd-tongued queen of the Mingrelians. The Prince +of Georgia said the women of the Caucasus rode as well as the +men, and he accepted the Amazon legend. When Father Angelo +Lamberti was in Mingrelia in 1654, word came that among the +dead in a raiding force from the Caucasus were a large number +of women. They wore complete coats of armor over bright-red +woolen skirts. Their half-boots were adorned with brass +disks and their gilded arrow-shafts bore heads shaped like +the new moon.</p> + +<p>As late as the Crimean war “the Black Virgin,” a Kurdish +woman, paraded at the head of a thousand horsemen before the +palace of the Sultan in Constantinople, and led them away to the +campaign on the Danube.</p> + +<p>The outlines of a veritable woman’s state almost take shape in +Bohemian chronicle and legend of the eighth century. There +was a Slavic queen named Libussa who is supposed to have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span> +founded Prague and built its imperial palace. She exercised +her sovereign will by marrying a peasant, instituting a Council +of Virgins, and giving women preference in the posts of state. +When she died in 838 and affairs returned to the old footing, +Valasca, her chief woman counselor, undertook to found a +female commonwealth. Thus far more or less authentic history; +legend adds that for a while the commonwealth really was, and +that under it girls were trained to arms, while boys lost their +right eyes and thumbs.</p> + +<p>St. Bernard organized the Female Crusade in 1147, in which +bodies of armed women marched. The tradition of fighting +women was kept alive in western Europe in the Middle Ages by +girls who accompanied their knightly lovers as pages, and with +them entered the chants of balladry. It was nurtured by the +romances of chivalry, in which disguised female warriors like +Bradamante, “in prowess equal to the best of knights,” figured. +But when, for the first time in the modern era, the Amazonian +impulse seized upon masses of women, there was needed, not the +modulated voice of the <i>trouvères</i>, but the Gothic accent of a +Carlyle to tell of it. The phenomenon is known as the Insurrection +of Women, the march on Versailles of October, 1789.</p> + +<p>This was the sudden inspiration of perhaps ten thousand +women drawn from the Central Markets and other rallying +places—“robust dames of the Halle, slim mantua-makers, +ancient virginity tripping to matins, the housemaid with early +broom.” The mob, continues Carlyle, storms tumultuous, wild-shrilling, +toward the Hôtel de Ville. There Theroigne de Mericourt +leaps astride a cannon, her chariot on to Versailles. +Mænads clamor behind. It is the cause of all Eve’s daughters, +mothers that are or that ought to be. “Paris is marching on +us,” exclaims Mirabeau in the National Assembly as the sinister +murmurs come from afar. Soon the esplanade is covered with +“groups of squalid, dripping women, of lank-haired male +rascality.” They break into the assembly, they compel the king +and queen to show themselves, and they bring them back to +Paris, leaving the monarchy in ruins behind them. The return, +says Carlyle, is “one boundless, inarticulate ha-ha—transcendent +world-laughter, comparable to the saturnalia of the +ancients.”</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f14"> +<img src="images/fig14.jpg" alt="rome"> +<p class="caption">THUSNELDA AT THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY OF GERMANICUS INTO ROME<br> +<i>By</i> C. T. von Piloty</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span></p> +<p>Not as idealized figures of the Greek friezes, but as turbulent, +blood-hungry corybantes of earlier Greek story the Amazons +of France emerged, almost on the threshold of the nineteenth +century—vanguard of the Revolution. Later the market women +were enrolled in a brigade which wore the Phrygian cap, the +tricolor, a baldric, a short skirt of red, white, and blue, and +sabots. With pike and cutlass, it was their task to escort the +carts which bore condemned royalists to the guillotine. There +were also armed battalions of women and girls in the provinces. +In the external wars of the Revolution about half a hundred +women are known to have fought, young girls in the infantry, +middle-aged women in the cavalry.</p> + +<p>French Amazonism was partly portrayed, partly parodied in +the person of Theroigne de Mericourt. She was a popular +actress, in Carlyle’s phrase “brown-locked, light-behaved, fire-hearted,” +who had “only the limited earnings of her profession +of unfortunate female.” At Versailles she cajoled the guard, +“crushing down musketoons with soft arms.” This woman rose +high, and fell far. Suspected of being a Girondist, “the extreme +she-patriots” seized, stripped, and chastised her on the terrace +of the Tuileries, with Paris looking on agrin. Theroigne lost +her wits from brooding over it, and passed out of the Revolution +into a mad-house.</p> + +<p>Olympe de Gonges, widow at sixteen, blue stocking, pretended +natural daughter of Louis XV, entered the Revolution at middle +age and countervailed the declaration of the Rights of Man +with a declaration of the Rights of Woman. She tried the +patience of Robespierre and he sent her to the guillotine, after +a jury of matrons had found against her plea that she was “about +to give the Republic a citizen.”</p> + +<p>Younger women aped men’s attire and men’s ways. <i>Les +Merveilleuses</i> indecently imitated Roman costumes, going about +in sandals with rings on their bare toes. When a man clad +only in a loin-cloth paraded between two stark-naked women, +the lurking sense of propriety, or of humor, was affronted, and +the group was mobbed. La Maillard, the opera-singer, who was +Goddess of Liberty at the Feast of Reason, wore trousers, fought +duels, and with her female followers went about the streets +to compel other women to dress as she did. This provoked reaction<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span> +and the Committee of Safety decreed that women’s political +clubs should disband and no woman henceforth have part +in government. Thus disappear the Amazons of France.</p> + +<p>In domestic insurrections and in the defense of besieged +cities, women, as might be expected, figure more largely than +in field operations. Plutarch had told of the women of Argos +who defended their city with such courage that a public decree +gave to them the right to dedicate a statue to Mars, and to their +daughters henceforth the singular privilege of wearing false +beards on their wedding day. The Feast of the Valiant Women +is celebrated in Majorca to commemorate the part taken by +two women in repelling a pirate attack upon an island town. +Spanish women manned the walls of Barcelona during the War +of Succession and provided most of the soldiers that held Saragossa +against the lieutenants of Napoleon. On the maid +Agostina was conferred the honor of bearing the name and arms +of Saragossa.</p> + +<p>The most remarkable woman in the Amazon story and, save +Joan of Arc, perhaps the most dramatic figure in the whole +story of her sex, was born in July, 1889, in the Russian province +of Novgorod. The attempt of Maria Botchkareva to prevent the +suicide of her country in 1917, by taking the field with a force of +women soldiers—the Battalion of Death—who were pledged to +obey and not to debate, to shoot the foe and not to embrace him, +has the romance of a lost cause and more. It is related in +<i>Yashka</i>, her utterly frank autobiography, transcribed for her +by Isaac Don Levine.</p> + +<p>Out of her old life as misused peasant girl and misused wife +this daughter of Russia marched away into another world where +she could strike as well as be stricken. In the Tsar’s uniform +she seemed just a tall, powerfully built, round-cheeked young +soldier. But under the hoyden of the surface there were commanding +qualities; and it would almost seem that Yashka, as the +soldiers nicknamed her, could see straighter than any man in the +empire.</p> + +<p>Her early experiences as a woman soldier in a men’s regiment +were such as perhaps might have been anticipated. She +describes her first night’s slumber in barracks and the blows +and kicks she had to administer to the men on either side. “All<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span> +night long,” she says, “my nerves were taut and my fists busy.” +Soon, however, she won the respect and then the affection of her +comrades, and a corner of the regimental bathhouse was reserved +for her ablutions. She joined in trench raids, herself +bayoneted a German, killed several more with handgrenades, +was captured and escaped, was wounded and shell-shocked, repeatedly +was commended for acts of bravery or mercy; and +kisses greeted her when she returned from hospital.</p> + +<p>Then came the revolution, committee rule in the army, incessant +soldiers’ meetings, refusal to attack. With Russia dying +before her eyes, Yashka proposed to Rodzianko, president of the +Duma, a desperate expedient—the formation of the Battalion +of Death. Let the women organize a small command free from +committees and subject to full military discipline. The men +would neither fight nor take orders, but perhaps if their women +attacked the enemy, the men might be shamed into moving +forward behind them.</p> + +<p>Rodzianko saw a gleam of hope in the project; Brusilov, +commander-in-chief, approved; Kerensky set his seal on it; and +Maria Botchkareva found herself at the head of two thousand +women of all classes from princesses to peasant girls and +domestic servants. “Who will guarantee,” asked a delegate +at the meeting that authorized this step, “that the presence of +women soldiers at the front will not yield little soldiers there?” +“I will hold myself responsible for every member of the command,” +was Yashka’s spirited reply. “Only discipline can save +the Russian army. In my battalion I shall have it.” And she +did, although the securing it reduced the command she led to +the front to three hundred girls.</p> + +<p>“I had a vision,” she said. “I saw millions of Russian +soldiers rise in an invincible advance, after I and my women +had disappeared in No Man’s Land on the way to the German +trenches.”</p> + +<p>There was a day in July, 1917, when it looked as if the vision +was to become fact. Artillery had prepared the way for a +general attack. Then the committees began to debate, precious +hours passed, the day declined. Into the Battalion of Death +came nearly a hundred men officers, followed by soldiers who +would rather fight behind a woman than not at all.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span></p> + +<p>Rifles were placed in the officers’ hands, and, a thousand +strong, the detachment formed its battle line, every girl flanked +by two men. Coarse jests rose around them, but the laughter +died in men’s throats when the little command leaped the +trenches and went swiftly forward, alone, as it seemed. “Suddenly,” +says Yashka, “we caught the sound of a great commotion +in the rear. In a few moments the front to the right and left +of us became a swaying mass of soldiers. First our regiment +poured out, and then, on both sides, the contagion spread, so +that almost the entire corps was on the move.”</p> + +<p>The German first line was overwhelmed and the second, and +the third, Yashka’s regiment alone taking two thousand prisoners. +Then word came that the Ninth Corps, which was to +relieve the attacking troops and continue pursuit, was debating +instead of advancing!</p> + +<p>They must needs run for it, for the German counter-attack +was forming. Back over all the trenches they had won at such +cost fled the Russians, the enemy reoccupying them without a +fight. Yashka, shell-shocked, was carried in on the shoulders +of her adjutant.</p> + +<p>Thus the great moment of the Battalion of Death came—and +went. Russian manhood was still capable of a heroic thing. +But the chaos which it had made its world could not resolve +into order even at the poignant drama of Russian women marching +alone.</p> + +<p>What went before and was to come after was all in keeping. +The tread of the little battalion resounds through scene after +scene of delirium. Behind the lines one hears agitators haranguing +the women. One beholds Kerensky banging his table and, +forgetful he has just abolished capital punishment, threatening +to have Yashka shot because she will not tolerate committee rule +in her command. One glimpses snipers in Petrograd firing on +her women as they leave for the front. Her own angry scorn +flashes out in a violent scene when she reviews the Moscow +Woman’s Battalion—committee ruled—and notes the rouge, the +slippers, the fancy stockings, the evidences of a dubious +familiarity with the men.</p> + +<p>There was worse at the front—the men killing their officers +and embracing the enemy; No Man’s Land “a boulevard for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span> +promenading agitators and drunkards.” Resolved that there +should be some real fighting, Yashka shot a German in the leg +as nonchalantly he approached the lines. Real fighting did +follow; the Russian soldiers turned their machine guns on +their own women. The latter were sent to another sector, and +when the men heard that Lenin and Trotzky had seized control +they celebrated; they tried to lynch the little command. Twenty +girls were killed, the rest fled into the woods.</p> + +<p>It was the end. The Battalion of Death disbanded and Yashka +was seized and brought before the duumvirs. They bade her +join them in “bringing happiness to Russia,” and laughed at her +fierce scorn. But they let her go, and she follows her command +out of these pages. One salutes with pride and pain.</p> + +<p>About four hundred other Russian women, most of them +Siberians, served in men’s regiments, and the colonel of the +Sixth Ural Cossack Regiment was a woman. There was a +smaller number of female fighters in the Austrian armies, a +few in the German. Women figured also in the conflicts that +followed the World War. The Vilna unit of girl soldiers, about +a thousand strong, suffered heavy losses in the defense of Poland +against Soviet Russia. “Their heads thrown back, they seemed +the very spirit of Poland,” said one who saw them in action.</p> + +<p>These were Amazon volunteers. Until yesterday there were +professional Amazons at many of the courts of Asia. The +Celestial King of the Tae-Pings had a regiment of fighting +women. For centuries Indian princes, notably of Hyderabad +and the Deccan, had female guards called Urdu-begani, or +“camp-followers,” on whose loyalty they could rely utterly. A +body-guard of one hundred and fifty girl archers, the loveliest +that could be found in Cashmere, Persia, and the Punjab, rode +milk-white steeds in the service of Ranjeet Singh of Lahore. +There were female sepoys in the palace at Lucknow, female +guards at Bangkok and in Bantam. With their slender bodies +incased in tunics and trousers of rich Eastern colors, with +plumed caps on their small dark heads, and with their erect +and slightly swaggering carriage, these palace troops gave an +added effect of theatricalism to the lesser courts of the Orient. +The Amazon march of the modern stage mimics a reality of Ind.</p> + +<p>The <i>Chronicle of the Cid</i> may provide a prologue for the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span> +motley spectacle of Africa’s warrior women which follows here. +Six-and-thirty kings of the Moors and one Moorish queen attacked +Valencia. The queen was a negress, and two hundred +mounted negresses rode behind her, all with hair shorn save a +tuft on the top. They wore coats of mail and wielded Turkish +bows, and their queen drew hers so skillfully that they called +her the Star of the Archers. The Christians centered their attack +on this female cavalry, slew the leader, and dispersed her +force.</p> + +<p>Through legend and doubtful chronicle of enterprises Amazonian, +one moves in Africa to a basis of fact as completely +documented as the recent deeds of warrior women in Russia +and Poland. Father Alvares, who went with the Portuguese +ambassador to the Abyssinian court (1520-27), gives it on +hearsay that to the south of the kingdom is a country where +the women have husbands but dispense them from fighting. +Their queen has “no special husband, but withal does not omit +having sons and daughters.” “They say,” says this traveler, +“that they are women of a very warlike disposition and they +fight riding on certain animals, light, strong, and agile, like +cows, and are great archers.”</p> + +<p>In his history of Ethiopia, Father Giovanni Cavazzi has two +stories of negro Amazons in the Congo country of the seventeenth +century. One is of the Princess Lliuga, who refused to submit +to the Portuguese and fought until she won a favorable peace. +Her garb was skins; her weapons were the bow, the ax, and the +sword; her battle custom was to sacrifice a man—cutting off his +head and drinking his blood—before attacking the enemy. The +other story is of Tembandumba, a royal negress who must have +known the Amazonian tradition and who sought to establish the +Amazon state. Like Semiramis, she had a procession of lovers, +and slew them as she tired of them. She ruled her state through +women. All male infants, all twins, and all village-born babies +were killed by her orders, and a magic ointment was made from +their macerated bodies mingled with herbs. The queen set the +example by destroying her own boy baby. She told the young +girls that their temporary matrimonial alliances should be +marriages by capture, they to do the capturing in war. The +turbulent career of this one-eyed queen of a cannibal tribe was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span> +ended by a husband who poisoned her before she had quite +reached the point of doing for him.</p> + +<p>Until, in some instances, less than a generation ago, the courts +of Negroland maintained palace troops and other fighting forces +of women. Burton and Rothery have collected their stories. In +the Congo empire of Monomotapa, Lopez found in 1680 +battalions of women, armed members of the royal harem. A +generation before, Jinga, queen of Angola, maintained a harem +of half a hundred young men. The monarch of Yoruba boasted +that if the members of his female bodyguard clasped hands, they +could span his kingdom. In the time of the traveler Bosman +the king of Whydah on the Slave Coast had four thousand armed +wives. On the Gle’ lagoon of the Ivory Coast rumor placed a +community of fetish women ruled by a queen who was able with +herbs to develop artificial elephantiasis. These women put +their male infants to death. Dahomey, which lies back of +Whydah, and which became a French protectorate in 1894, was +the best known of African kingdoms—and known for two related +things, its annual Customs of blood sacrifice and its army +of Amazons.</p> + +<p>Sir Richard Burton, who went on mission to King Gélélé in +1863, bearing Queen Victoria’s urgent request that he abolish +the slave trade and human sacrifice in his dominions, has written +the account of this nearest modern approach to the Amazon +state. It is a veracious report and it reads like an evil dream. +The <i>Thousand and One Nights</i> has been called a blend of blood, +musk, and hasheesh. The Dahomey story is an African <i>Arabian +Nights</i>, with native beer and trader’s rum in place of hasheesh, +with blood flowing in more turbid torrents than at Bagdad, and +with a ranker musk—and under the musk the overpowering reek +of the body odors of Negroland.</p> + +<p>In this nightmare state, half hid behind the swamps and +forests of the coast, one senses the controlling and corrupting +presence of some primitive and abominable religion. Africans, +says Burton, worship everything except their Creator. Those +of Dahomey worshiped, among other things, their ancestors. +The Dahoman sovereign must enter Deadland in royal state, +with a ghostly retinue of leopard wives, head wives, birthday +wives, eunuchs, singers, drummers, bards, soldiers. The retinue<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span> +was swollen yearly at Customs time when criminals and prisoners +of war, publicly sacrificed under the king’s eye, went +drunken and giggling to their doom, while at the same hour +the palace Amazons dispatched female victims to the land of +shades. Throughout the year, whenever the king would send a +message to his deceased father, he killed a subject and forwarded +his soul with it. If he had invented a new drum, or +received a visit from a white man, or even removed from one +palace to another, the soul of some man or woman, slain for the +purpose, must carry the news to the paternal ghost.</p> + +<p>It was impossible, says Lady Burton, to venture from one’s +hut without seeing something appalling—skulls on posts, living +victims impaled, evidences of cannibal feasts, animals tied in +every agonizing position and left to die. Burton himself figured +that there was an annual slaughter of at least five hundred +persons, and during the year of the Grand Customs perhaps a +thousand. The institution was strenuously upheld by a powerful +and interested priesthood; “to abolish human sacrifice was to +abolish Dahomey.”</p> + +<p>This was the woman’s state, somewhat as early Greek legend +pictured the Amazon commonwealth of the Black Sea, before +art and song refined the fable. Women in Dahomey took precedence +over men and the warrior women called themselves +men. When one of the king’s Amazons walked abroad, a slave +girl with a bell went ahead, and men had to get out of the way. +It seemed to Burton, when he went up from the coast to the +capital city of Abomey, that the older and uglier the slave girl +the louder she rang the bell, and the more she enjoyed the +ignoble scamper of his interpreters and hammock men. The +popular name of these women was Our Mothers. Their official +name was The King’s Wives, a title of courtesy only, for the +monarch had his own harem and these other women were supposed +to be a kind of fighting nuns.</p> + +<p>The Amazon army consisted of the Fanto company of the +king’s bodyguard, and the right and left wings, comprising five +arms. The former were distinguished by a headdress in the +form of a narrow white fillet on which was the figure of a crocodile +in blue, and their hair was cropped instead of shaven. +The body of the force was composed of blunderbus women,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span> +elephant hunters, razor women carrying eighteen-inch blades +attached to a two-foot handle, archers with poisoned arrows, and +infantry with tower muskets. The archers were little more than +heavily tattooed, lightly clad camp followers with knives lashed +to their wrists. The elephant hunters were the élite. They +wore knickers under short skirts, their breasts were bound with +linen strips, and antlers were attached to their caps. Other +Amazons had the same uniform, but wore on their shaven heads +small caps on which were blue tortoise figures.</p> + +<p>Travelers of two centuries ago computed the female army as +about ten thousand strong. The court may have deceived them +by having the women march like a stage army across the parade +ground, slip around, and come back again; or the kingdom may +have been depopulated by its incessant wars, its blood sacrifices, +the slave trade, and the dedication of a fourth of the females +to the celibacy of arms. When Burton was there in 1863 he +figured the total number of Amazons at about twenty-five hundred, +of whom one-third were unarmed.</p> + +<p>The nature of this force seems to have varied from generation +to generation. Travelers report in turn that the Amazons are +cadets of the leading families; that they are slaves made in +war; that they are criminals, common scolds, and women taken +in adultery; that they are loose in morals and that they are +celibates; and that the custom of permitting those no longer +young enough to bear arms to marry was a thrifty substitute for +a state pension. Burton recites the common belief that two-thirds +of them are maidens, the remainder unfaithful wives +condemned to soldiering. He thinks pretty well of their morals, +which were protected by tabu, although while he was in Dahomey +the king had to judge the cases of more than a hundred Amazons +about to become mothers. The crime was lèse majesté, for in +theory these were royal brides, but the punishment was moderate—a +few beheadings, and imprisonment, banishment, or +pardon for the rest.</p> + +<p>Dahomans themselves supposed that their peculiar institution +was of their own time, had forgotten, what Europe knew, that +women guarded their court two centuries before, did not dream +that back to an unfathomed antiquity, it may be, theirs had +been a woman state.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span></p> + +<p>Burton was present at the annual saturnalia of the Customs, +and to his sometimes sardonic vision all was invested in African +grotesqueness. He noted the immense thighs of the women +officers and found it hard to reconcile celibacy and corpulency. +He described their dances, for also they danced before the king, +“clapping palms on thighs, or on something fleshier.” The +women stamped, wriggled, kicked the dust, and ended with a +violent movement of the shoulders, hips, and loins—an anticipation +of the most modern of popular terpsichorean contortions. +One captain is pictured in terms that approach admiration—a +fine, tall woman with glittering teeth and a gait that was partly +a military swagger and partly a sensuous dance. But the +costumes of all had a phantasmagoric quality—Amazons with +beards of monkey skin, with men’s nightcaps, with red liberty +caps, with fools’ caps, with human skulls, or the lower jaw of +a skull, dangling at the waist.</p> + +<p>These women paraded past the king while Burton looked on. +It may be he tried to take notes and tired at the task. His +narrative reads as if his own head whirled with the dancers, +until he could no longer frame complete sentences. He concludes +that it was something like a pawnshop, for the King’s +Valuables went by with his women.</p> + +<p>About in his own words and manner, but condensed, this is +the picture:</p> + +<p>“Sixteen brilliant banners held horizontally, preceding a +wheelbarrow with a fancy red-and-blue flag. Five huge fans, +followed by razor women. Eight images, of which three were +apparently ships’ figureheads whitewashed, and the rest very +hideous efforts of native art. Sixty-seven women with brown +faces and bead mittens. Twenty-one girls carrying cylinders of +red and white beads. Seventeen women with silver plates +fastened to the sides of their skulls, habited in red clothes and +handling bead cat-ó-nine tails. Twelve women, also in red. +Seventeen fetish pots, three jars, one silver plated urn, attended +by singing women. Twenty casque women with red tunics and +plumes and black horse tails. Eight helmet girls with red +plumes, dark coats, and white loin cloths. Six pieces of plate, +a tree, a crane, a monkey. After singers and dancers, a huge +drum carried by a woman porter. Three large chairs, preceding<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span> +about fifty heavily armed elephant huntresses, clad in chocolate +and dark blue, with bustles of talismans behind and strings of +cowries before. Four pots. A bullock trunk. Fourteen fetish +women in white caps and tunics and bright yellow grass cloth. +Five black girls dressed in blue. A line of 703 women and +girls with country pots of native beer and bottles of trade rum +and gin. A motley group surrounding two women in big felt +hats. A band and a troop of bardesses. Two girls with serpent +flags. Seven troubadour women dancing. Two warming pans. +An escort of bayonet women. Royal equipages hauled by men +harnessed with ropes. A body of armed women preceding +seven umbrellas and drinking rum. A troop of girls with jugs, +ewers, and jars. Twenty blunderbus women in red caps. Six +kettledrum girls in scarlet caps and bodices and blue skirts. +A calabash with a pyramid of four skulls. Two dancing women +with long switching tails. Fifty captive female dancers. An +old cut-glass chandelier. Living representatives of the mothers +of the Dahoman dynasty. A company of singers commanded by +an old woman in a broad-brimmed hat. A stunning salute of +blunderbuses. Good night after seven mortal hours.”</p> + +<p>Yet there was no doubt that these fantastic women could fight. +Their frames were as powerful as those of the men, whose military +organization their own paralleled; and their hearts were +higher. They were the king’s own troops with his favor to +vindicate and a tradition to sustain. They had greater ferocity +as well as greater courage than the men—“savage as wounded +gorillas,” Burton called them, and he laid this to their enforced +chastity. With them, two centuries ago, Dahomey conquered +the joint forces of Whydah and Popos, and the women fought +bravely against the French. Travelers who saw them in +maneuver at the annual Customs tell how they charged barefoot +and half naked through barriers of thorny acacia, and emerging, +torn and bleeding, but with impassive faces, passed in review +before their sovereign.</p> + +<p>Out of one passage in the history of Dahomey a ray of light +streams. When a king died at Abomey a wild orgy began among +the Amazons of the palace. They took their own lives and they +slew one another. When Sinmenkpen passed to his fathers, +five hundred and ninety-five Amazons died with him; only by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span> +extorting a solemn fetish oath did Gezo end this custom. There +were similar practices elsewhere. Among the Behrs of the +White Nile, Rawlinson reports, a woman’s guard prevented any +man from approaching the king, except the ministers who came +to strangle him when his end was near. Megasthenes, Greek +ambassador to the court of Sandrokotos at about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 300, says +that the Indian king was surrounded by armed women who +guarded his chamber and attended his hunts in chariots or upon +horses and elephants. Sometimes it was their right to kill their +lord, and the slayer married his successor. In Bantam half a +century ago the king was escorted by a girlish cavalry that rode +astride and carried muskets and lances; it was said that if he +died without issue the custom was for them to meet and elect a +new sovereign.</p> + +<p>When kings died, their women guards functioned. It was +the function of priestesses of death. This is the secret of the +Amazon legend and the key to practises of human sacrifice and +periodic and indiscriminate sexual intercourse with which, alike +in Asia, Africa and America, the legend is associated.</p> + +<p>Before fitting the key into the lock of legend it will be well +to let the rule of reason say its word. That large bodies of +women should withdraw themselves from the state, abjure the +society of men altogether or except at stated intervals, live their +own lives and develop their own social tradition, has seemed +to skeptical opinion in all ages a thing not to be believed because +against nature. Yet in all ages women have done before the +eyes of men something very like this. Thousands of them have +gathered in great convents, or as temple harlots have served at +the vast shrines of the Farther East, or as armed priestesses of +the Nearer East have loosed the leash of fable. Their periodic +withdrawals from society for the performance of the Eleusinian +and other mysteries were a routine of the classic civilizations.</p> + +<p>There have been times when the woman state was a fact of a +season, or of a year, or more—as when the men of an island +were fishing elsewhere, or the able-bodied members of a tribe +were away on the annual hunt, or the warriors were on a long +campaign; and the traveler, seeing none but women, might misread +what he saw. Doubtless there have been instances where +the men of a tribe were exterminated in war, and their women,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span> +retiring to inaccessible retreats, maintained their independence +for a while. Time was when everywhere the women commanded +and the men obeyed. It is not beyond imagination that, sometimes +and in some places, with the memory of the matriarchate +to inspire them, women have revolted against the cruel lot which +was theirs in primitive society, and set up for themselves; for +they were the daughters as well as the wives of the hard-headed +men of the caves. This is perhaps as plausible as the conjecture +that savage man merely concocted the story to dramatize the +natural antipathy of the sexes, to account for the deep groove +of division which this sentiment had run through primitive +society and to justify the fact that society gave men so much +the better of it.</p> + +<p>The roots of the Amazon tradition, however, lie deeper than +what may be called the politics of sex. The truth underlying +the several legends is to be found where, according to report, +the fighting women had their commonwealth. The descendants +of the Cappadocian Amazons who came to the aid of Troy are +to be found in the Armenian highlands. The descendants of +the West African Amazons, on whom, as Diodorus fables, the +vengeance of Hercules fell, are to be found in Dahomey and +near-by negro states. The secret of the Brazilian Amazons is +to be sought, among other places, in Mexico.</p> + +<p>With a single word out of the Old Testament the door of +legend opens. Of the Hittites the Hebrew writers seemed to +know only that they occupied mountainous districts in the land +flowing with milk and honey; that for a space the Jews dwelt +with them and “served Baalim and the groves”; and that +Solomon put a tribute upon them. From the rock carvings of +Asia Minor and from Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions the +present age has learned more. The discovery by Sayce and +other modern scholars of the important place once held by the +Hittites has been called the romance of ancient history.</p> + +<p>That place may be likened to the place held by the Ottoman +Empire in its strength. Like the Turks, the Hittites were a +Turanian people who planted themselves across the great roads +of Asia Minor and absorbed and crudely reproduced the culture +of more civilized neighbor peoples. Their capitals were at +Carchemish, where they commanded the fords of the Euphrates,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span> +and at Kadesh on the Orontes, whence they ruled Syria and the +cities of the Ægean. They were mountaineers from the Taurus, +with olive skins, mongoloid features, and the Chinese cue. Their +double-headed eagle passed through the Turkomans and the +Crusaders into the imperial arms of Russia, Austria, and Germany; +the Phrygian cap of their successors has become the +headgear of revolutionary woman, and the Turks still wear +their peaked shoes.</p> + +<p>The Hittite Empire flourished in the Bronze Age, when it +met Egypt, Babylon and afterward Assyria on equal terms. +It began to loom in the sixteenth century B.C. and it was a +power to be reckoned with until well into the first millennium +before Christ. On its ruins arose Cappadocia, Phrygia, Lydia, +and later Pontus. The rock carvings that proclaimed its sway, +and that Herodotus described but misread, still look down on +the Pass of Karabel along an old road of empire.</p> + +<p>The Amazons of Greek legend, according to the convincing +scholarship of Sayce, were the armed priestesses of the Hittites. +Their fabled capital of Themiscyra is the ruined city of Boghaz +Keui in Asiatic Turkey not far from the Black Sea. The authentic +likenesses of the warrior women are to be found, not in +the temple friezes of Attica, but in the rock carvings on the hills +that overlook this ancient ruin. Yet Greek art reflects correct +observation or trustworthy report, for its warrior maidens wear +the kilt of the mountain-dwelling Hittites and carry the same +double-headed ax that is seen in their crude sculptures.</p> + +<p>In the service of the Asiatic goddess, known variously as +Astarte, Derceto, Cybele, the Great Mother, and Diana of the +Ephesians, was a multitude of armed priestesses so numerous +that to the Greeks they seemed not a cult but a nation. Whole +cities were in effect mere temple precincts populated by these +women and by eunuch priests; the high priestess of the temple +ruled the city and the surrounding country, and had some claim, +therefore, to the title of Amazon queen. At Komana were +six thousand of these armed maidens of the shrine. At Ephesus +vast throngs of them served a high priestess who called herself +the Queen Bee.</p> + +<p>These Hittite women worshiped the Asiatic goddess with orgiastic +frenzies that simulated, or literally repeated, the primal<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span> +processes of dissolution and reproduction. It was easy for the +Greek mariners who saw them dancing to the goddess and flourishing +their weapons on the shores of the Black Sea to infer that +a woman’s capital lay a short distance inland. It was natural, +also, to attribute to them the actual feats of the Hittite armies, +and fable that the cities founded or subjugated by that empire +on the Ægean—Ephesus, Smyrna, Cyme, Myrina—were colonies +of Amazonian origin.</p> + +<p>The Amazon legends of Africa and South America and the +customs of the female palace troops of Africa and Asia are +made clear if one goes behind the cult of the Asiatic goddess +to the domain of primitive magic whence it arose. There one +finds beliefs that belt the earth and are reflected not only in +ancient tradition, but in modern practises associated with May +day and Midsummer Eve, with sowing and harvest, with the +summer and winter solstices. Frazer’s examination of these in +the <i>Golden Bough</i> is deeply illuminating.</p> + +<p>Following the laws of sympathetic magic, men believed that +in order to make the grain flourish and the grass renew itself +in the annual death and resurrection of nature, it was necessary +by some drama of their own to repeat the phenomena of decay +and of new life. There must be a noteworthy human death +and a resurrection. Sometimes men killed a scapegoat, sometimes +a divine animal, sometimes a divine man—a god-king, as +he was called—such an impersonation of divinity, for example, +as the Grand Lama of Tibet. The killing of the god-king was +preferred as a magic more constraining than any other upon +the forces of nature.</p> + +<p>There were several means of simulating the phenomena of +resurrection. This might be done by having two couples appear +in the annual drama—two sets of divine and royal mates. +Frazer suggests that the book of <i>Esther</i>, names and all, is based +on a Babylonian religious festival of this kind—that the gentle +Esther is none other than the lustful Astarte, that Mordecai is the +god Merodach, that Haman is Hannum the Aramite god, and +Vashti a goddess unidentified. The triumph of one set of characters +and the humiliation and death of the other are supposed +to represent the bourgeoning of spring after the long death of +winter.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span></p> + +<p>The common means of symbolizing and constraining the +reproduction of new life in nature was through a period of +promiscuous sexual intercourse in which designated persons or +whole populations took part. It was deemed necessary to set +an example to the woods and fields, and in the woods and +fields it was set. The saturnalia, the carnivals, the May Days +and St. John’s Eves of old time were not, in intent, excursions +into debauchery; they were exercises in sympathetic magic. So +it befell that in savage vision the withered leaf and the green +shoot, winter and spring, death and resurrection, came to mean +two things—periodic murder and lust.</p> + +<p>After a while the priest-kings sought escape from the custom +that gave them only a year of life upon their throne of grace. +They chose substitutes—a son, a slave, a malefactor—who for +a few days reigned in their stead, and as a sign of kingship +were made free of their harems, as Absalom went in unto King +David’s concubines in the sight of Israel. The king, or the +mock-king, devoted to death but attended by beautiful women, +crowned with flowers and worshiped as a god—this spectacle, as +profoundly ironical as life itself, was staged in Mexico when +Cortez came; and when Huc visited Lhasa in 1846 he found the +Tibetans electing a monarch of misrule to carouse and suffer +in place of the pope of Buddhism, God’s vicar for Asia.</p> + +<p>The bacchic procession of the doomed king and his women, +this dance of death that went around the world, was the real +Amazon march. It was the part of the warrior women to kill +the man-god whose last days they had beguiled. It was their +part, also, to co-operate with a multitude of men in a lustful +drama, so that every acorn and grass root and grain of corn +might heed the command to bring forth and multiply; back of +the myth of annual Amazon matings with neighbor tribes was +this reality of the saturnalia. In places the legend has suffered +confusing changes, as in the Dahoman Customs, where the king +kills instead of being killed. But the same meaning underlies +the Phrygian worship of the Great Mother, the lethal privileges +of the female palace guards in Hindostan, the self-slaughter +of the warrior women when a king died at Abomey, the going of +women into the hills of Brazil with one old man as companion, +and the recurrent tragedy of the god-man of Mexico, who dismissed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span> +the fair partners of his revelry, snapped the strings of +his harp, flung away his chaplet of flowers, and ascended the +altar where an Aztec with a knife awaited him.</p> + +<p>The meaning is death and life in nature, and the Amazon as +priestess of both.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c14">Chapter XIV. The Folk of Tradition</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">Among</span> the peoples of prodigy there were races without +deformity and yet set apart from other men by their peculiar +habits or habitat, or, as in the case of the giants of geography, +by their unusual stature. Men who dwelt in caves or whose diet +was too much unlike their fellows’ were themes of marvel. +Under fables told about them the outlines of historical peoples +may often be discerned.</p> + +<p>While the tall men merge on the one side into the colossal +creatures of mythology, on the other they approach mortal size +and the human quality. Their tradition has been shaped by +nature myths growing out of volcanic eruptions, the phenomena +of frost and darkness, and storms in the desert. But popular +beliefs rest mainly on more tangible things—on the argument +that since there are giant individuals there may well be giant +races; on the actual existence of tall races; on the presumption +that men of old time were taller than those of to-day; on dim +memories of tall vanished races such as the Cromagnous, and +on an ancient notion that the fossil remains of extinct animals +were the bones of giants. Travelers have done much to build +the legend. Almost always they underestimate the mean stature +of a people with many small individuals and overestimate that +of a people with many tall individuals, the usual margin of +error running from two to four inches.</p> + +<p>Above all, there has been the witness of geological strata +uncovered to eyes that misread their record. On the basis of +a five-pound tooth and an eleven-foot thigh bone, found in +New England in 1712 and supposed to have been a mastodon’s, +Increase Mather reported to the Royal Society of London that +men of prodigious stature had inhabited the New World. Other +fossil bones found in Switzerland in 1577 became the basis of +a legend, which is commemorated in the colossal statues of +Basle and in the figures supporting the arms of Lucerne, that a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span> +race of giants from sixteen to nineteen feet high lived in the +Alps.</p> + +<p>Ctesias reported that the Seres, whom he located in upper +India, reached a stature of fourteen feet and an age of two +hundred years. Onesicritus declared that in those parts of India +where the sun cast no shadow the men were eight feet high. But +ancient writers were neither so specific nor so insistent upon the +existence of a colossal race as later writers have been. Near +the Vale Perilous, says Maundeville, are two islands occupied +by giants. The tenants of the first of these are of comparatively +modest stature, from twenty-eight to thirty feet. Those of the +farther isle are from forty-five to fifty feet.</p> + +<p>“I saw none of these,” admits Sir John, “for I had no Lust to +go to those Parts. But men have seen many times those Giants +take Men in the Sea out of their Ships, and bring them to Land, +two in one Hand and two in another, eating them going, all raw +and all alive.”</p> + +<p>Amerigo Vespucci found a prodigious people in the island of +Curaçoa off the coast of Venezuela, “every woman appearing as +a Penthesilea, and every man an Antæus.” Pigafetta, writing +of Magellan’s cruise, is responsible for the belief, long held in +Europe, that the tall Patagonians were true Titans. One of them +he pictures as advancing to greet the white men, dancing and +singing and putting dust on his head, as if in token of peace. +The savage towered above the Spaniards, who came only to his +waist. Dismissed with gifts, he returned at length with other +men of a like stature, and two of these the mariners decoyed on +shipboard. Leg irons were placed on them on the pretext that +they were ornaments, but when the Spanish purpose was disclosed +they broke in pieces as easily as if they were the baubles +they were represented to be.</p> + +<p>Herrera, Van Noort, Le Maire and other travelers confirmed +the account of the size of the antipodal Indians. Lopez Vaz +described them as “very mightie men of bodie of ten or eleven +foot high, and good bow-men, but no man-eaters.” It remained +for Drake to correct report when he made his own circumnavigation +of the globe. This was one of the “notorious lies” which +the Spaniards disseminated; the Patagonians were “but of the +height of Englishmen”; they are, however, somewhat above it.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span> +Five feet eleven inches is the average among them and individuals +reach the height of six feet seven.</p> + +<p>At the other extremity of South America the natives of the +northern Andes have a legend of a monstrous race that arrived +in huge boats at Cape Santa Elena about the beginning of the +Christian era. Their knees stood as high as the heads of other +men and their eyes were like small plates. They abused the +Indians, their habits were abominable, and fire from heaven +destroyed them. This is perhaps a reminiscence of an extinct +civilization, the grotesque art of which has been brought to +light by recent excavations. There is an Oregon tradition of an +underground village of gigantic Indians on Coos Bay. They +bashed each other over the head with heavy bone knives without +being hurt. When the smaller Indians attacked them they fled +down the river and out to sea on two rafts and never came back.</p> + +<p>Buffon, who would not credit the pygmies, believed there had +been giants of from ten to perhaps fifteen feet in height. The +Bible narrative giving Goliath, the Philistine bravo, the stature +of six cubits and a span, or three inches above seven feet, is +conservatively phrased. Buffon to the contrary notwithstanding, +it is generally thought that no man ever lived who reached the +stature of ten feet, and no race that reached the mean stature of +seven. A very few individuals have exceeded the height of eight +feet and there is record of one or two who have passed nine +feet. According to the principles governing the distribution +of the overlarge individuals of a race, as worked out by +Quetelet, the appearance of a twenty-foot giant would imply +the existence of a race with a mean stature of from twelve +to fourteen feet.</p> + +<p>If there was once a race a foot or so above the stature of +modern man, it may be that the tall individuals who appear in +each generation are not the product of a favorable environment +and fortunate combination of elemental forces, but represent +remote ancestors of unusual size. Zell in his <i>Polyphem ein +Gorilla</i> argues that if races of average height are the normal, +and if there are dwarf races, then there must have been giant +ones to strike the balance. At any rate, tales of such races are +world-wide and a tang as of reality is in some of them. The +Celt, for example, said that giants had a strong body odor.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span> +“Giants,” says Grimm in his summary of their tradition, “consider +themselves the old masters of the land, live up in the +castle, and look down upon the peasant;” the picture might be +of something fabled, or of something vanished.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Macrobians</i></p> + +<p>As report gave certain races a great stature, so it gave others +a great age. These were known as the Macrobians. Herodotus +mentions such a people in Ethiopia; “the venerable and harmless +men of Ethiopia,” Walt Whitman calls them. Such also +were the Hyperboreans, on the other side of the north wind. +The tall Seres lived to be two hundred years old. In tropical +India another tall race lived to the age of one hundred and +thirty years, and died just as if they were in the middle period +of life. Some writers called the elderly Indians Gymnetæ, +or Naked Folk. Another Indian people, the Cyrni, were reported +to attain four hundred years. Holding that the Indians +were exceedingly just, and that the just are long lived, the +ancients credited the general statement of Ctesias that the nations +of the Indus live to one hundred twenty, one hundred thirty, +and one hundred fifty years, and the very old to two hundred +years. Pliny adds that they never expectorate and are subject +to no pains in the head, teeth, or eyes. There were Macrobians +in Brazil. A German woodcut of 1505 pictures them at +a cannibal feast, and the accompanying legend says, “They +become a hundred and fifty years old, and have no government.”</p> + +<p>There was a reason, named by Isogonus, for the longevity of +the inhabitants of Mount Athos in the Balkans. They used the +flesh of vipers for food, and hence were “free from all noxious +animals both in their hair and their garments.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Albinos</i></p> + +<p>The Albania of the ancients was a country of Asia in the +eastern part of the Caucasus. Somehow the early writers confused +its inhabitants, the Alani, with Albinos. Beeton says that +there is in Albania “a certain race of men whose eyes are of +a sea-green color, who have white hair from childhood, and who +see better by night than by day.” In the kingdom that men call +Mancy in “Ind the More,” says Maundeville, “they be full fair<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span> +Folk, but they be all pale. And the Men have thin Beards and +few Hairs, but they be long. In that Land be many fairer +Women than in any other Country beyond the Sea, and therefore +Men call that Land Albany.” Also, the hens are white.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Sun-hating Folk</i></p> + +<p>There were sun-haters as well as sun-worshipers in the sun-smitten +lands of the older day. Carpini tells of the troglodytes +of the Caucasus who “lived in terror of the mysterious and fatal +sound which accompanied the rising of the sun.” Herodotus +and Pliny describe the Moroccan peoples called the Atlantes. +When they look upon the rising and the setting sun they “utter +direful imprecations against it as being fatal to themselves and +their lands.” If one believes what is said of these tribes beside +the western sea, says Pliny, they have lost all characteristics of +humanity. They do not distinguish one another by names, “nor +are they visited with dreams, like the rest of mortals.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>A Poisonous Nation</i></p> + +<p>The Psylli were a nation dwelling near the Great Syrtis on +the North African coast. Pliny, who sponsors them and says +they were exterminated by the Nasamonians, tells a story which +reveals the two great obsessions of the ancients—a curious +credulity as to poisons, and an incredulous curiosity as to the +continence of women. In the bodies of the Psylli, there was by +nature a certain kind of poison that was fatal to serpents and +the odor of which rendered them instantly torpid. It was the +custom to expose newly born infants to the fiercest serpents “and +in this manner to make proof of the fidelity of their wives, the +serpents not being repelled by such children as were the offspring +of adultery.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Troglodytes</i></p> + +<p>What the moderns call cave-men the ancients called troglodytes. +In the phrase of Æschylus they knew not how to build a +house against the sun, but “lived like silly ants, beneath the +ground, in hollow caves unsunned.” Because they shared the +habitations of bats and snakes, their voices were bat-like in their +shrillness, and with hissing tones; and they ate reptiles and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span> +crickets. They were fleet-footed like the creatures of the rocks, +the troglodyte Ethiopians being, says Herodotus, the swiftest +of men. The inhabitants of the country of the Robbers (Lestai) +in Farther Asia, says Ptolemy, were savages, living in +caves, and “having skins like the hide of the hippopotamus +which darts cannot pierce.” Artemidorus speaks of naked night-traveling +troglodytes of Arabia who put away their dead amid +laughter. There are cave-dwellers to this day in southern Cambodia, +and a Chinese account of the thirteenth century tells of +the skin breastplates which they wore.</p> + +<p>The ancients knew of various races of troglodytes, notably +those along both shores of the Red Sea. Others were in Syria, +and upon the Nile, and in Fezzan, and in the Caucasus. The +voiceless troglodytes of Pliny are supposed to be the Rock Tibboos +on whose whistling speech their neighbors still comment. +The best account of the elder cave-dwellers happens to be +authentic history. When Xenophon was retreating with the Ten +Thousand to the Black Sea he found upon the Armenian frontier +a people who lived in underground burrows with vertical +entrances like wells, up and down which they passed on ladders. +Their beasts used a sloping path and lived with them underground, +cattle, goats, and sheep thriving there on green fodder +gathered above. These subterranean habitations were also +granaries and wine-cellars.</p> + +<p>With all their lively interest in the ways of troglodytes, the +ancients knew less than the moderns about them, and were perhaps +farther in spirit from the cave-man. In the caverns of +western Europe men of to-day have studied his household +economy, his art, and the animals he tamed or hunted. Travelers +in various lands have come upon underground chambers, +many of them still occupied. In the Berber rock-towns these +subterranean dwellings number thousands, and the ravines which +furrow the plateaus serve as their streets. On the Cappadocian +plain deserted subterranean villages, called <i>kataphugia</i>, or +places of refuge, underlie occupied villages of the surface, and +thither the cattle descend in severe weather, as in Xenophon’s +time twenty-three centuries ago. The peoples of the surface are +supposed to be descendants of true troglodytes.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span></p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Anthropophagi</i></p> + +<p>It never occurred to the early writers to classify men according +to the color of their skins, or the breadth of their skulls, +or fundamental differences in their languages; and the Greeks +and Romans were ignorant of the Noachian genealogy and heedless +of the apportionment of the earth among the sons of Shem, +Ham and Japheth. But they had a rough-and-ready method of +cataloguing savage races according to what they ate, in the +thought that whatsoever a man ate, that in some degree he became. +After naming the races of fable from the size of their +feet or ears or other bodily peculiarity, they grouped and +named, according to their supposed diet, various races of reality +that dwelt at a distance.</p> + +<p>Classic writers took passing note of the Anthropophagi, or +tribes that ate human flesh. There were such peoples in Africa +and in Asia. The best known account is the description in +Herodotus of the Issedones. These Scythians of Central Asia +ate the flesh of their deceased relatives prepared with other +meat, and made gold-rimmed drinking cups of their skulls—a +rite of honor to the dead. A tribe in northern Tibet is supposed +to be descended from them.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Ichthyophagi</i></p> + +<p>The races that subsisted on fish, the Ichthyophagi, were described +by the ancients with unusual detail. One of the first +accounts is by Herodotus, who tells of the folk that lived on +platforms above Lake Prasias. They drew their fish through +trap-doors from the water beneath, and the custom was that for +every woman a man took to wife he drove three piles into the +lake.</p> + +<p>All along the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea there were tribes +of Ichthyophagi. Their very cattle ate dried fish and the beef +had a fishy flavor; Ibn Batuta remarked this in Yemen, and it +is still true of the Coromandel Coast. Arrian’s account of the +voyage of Nearchus describes the Ichthyophagi as occupying for +four hundred miles the barren shores of the Mekran; they had +few boats and were indifferent fishermen, but by intercepting +the ebb tide with palm-bark nets they obtained their food.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span></p> + +<p>Arrian repeats a legend of the origin of these tribes in whose +lines one hears faintly the wild music of the Sirens. The island +of Nosala, off the Mekran coast, was the residence of a Nereid +“whose practice was to seduce such mariners as landed there to +her embraces, and then, after transforming them into fish, to +throw them into the sea.” But the sun ordered the nymph to +quit the island and himself changed the fish back into men. +These were the first Ichthyophagi.</p> + +<p>Farther west, in Ariana, were fish-eating tribes who made +their dwellings, Strabo says, of shells and of the bones of large +whales, the ribs furnishing the beams and supports, and the +jawbones the doorways. Sections of the backbones of whales +were used as mortars wherein sun-dried fish were pounded.</p> + +<p>Diodorus Siculus has a spirited account of the Ichthyophagi +along the Red Sea. This people, he says, do not use nets, but +so wall the caverns and gullies of their rocky shore that the receding +tide leaves the fish imprisoned there. Whereupon, with +a shout, the tribe assembles on the beach. Women and children +gather the little fish next the shore; with sharp goats’ horns the +men dispatch the larger ones, throwing all upon the land. The +booty is put into stone pots tilted toward the south and the fish +are fried by the sun until the flesh drops off. The bones are cast +into a pile and the meat boiled with fruit seeds. Then everybody +falls to and gorges. The heap of bones is a dietary reserve +which the tribe pulverizes and devours when storms shut +off the shore.</p> + +<p>The life of these Ichthyophagi is thrown into a sort of rhythm +by the need, every fifth day, of going inland on an extended +journey for fresh water. For four days they fish continually +and make merry in great throngs, “congratulating one another +with harsh and discordant songs; then they fall promiscuously, +as every man’s lot chances, to company with their women for +procreation sake.” On the fifth day the tribe goes in a body to +a district lying under the foot of the mountains where there are +springs of sweet water. Hither, also, the shepherds drive the +flocks. Nor do the shore folk differ much from the herds, for +“they go making a horrid noise and without articulate voice.” +Arrived at the springs, they throw themselves on their faces and +“drink as beasts until their stomachs are distended like a drum.”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span> +Slowly they wend their way back to salt water, and for a day +recline without tasting food. The following day they begin anew +their fishing and feeding. Such is the round of their lives.</p> + +<p>Diodorus remarks, apparently to commend, that these fish-eaters +“far exceed all other men in freedom from boisterous +passions.” They give no heed to a stranger, nor even look at +one when he addresses them: “Nay, if they be assaulted with +drawn swords they will not stir; and though they are hurt and +wounded, yet they are not in the least provoked. Even though +their wives and children be killed before their eyes, they show +no sign of anger.”</p> + +<p>These accounts are not fables. But there is fabulous admixture, +most of it arising from the primitive belief that a fish diet +makes men as cool-blooded as the creatures upon which they +live.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Other Dietary Nations</i></p> + +<p>Akin to these nations were the Chelonophagi, or turtle-eaters, +concerning whom Strabo recites facts entirely in keeping. This +tribe lives under the cover of turtle shells, which also it uses as +boats. Some of its members, however, collect seaweed in heaps, +hollow the heaps, and dwell under them. Their dead are cast +into the sea, and carried away by the tide to become food in +turn for the fish and turtles.</p> + +<p>The Acridophagi were grasshopper-eaters—insectivorous, ornithologists +would call them. The locust was, and is, a favorite +diet of desert peoples, a staple food of the Arab, as well as of +the pygmy folk and other singular breeds. Niebuhr likens its +taste to that of “a small sardine of the Baltic, which is dried in +some towns of Holstein.” What Dampier has to say of customs +he found in two Pacific islands in 1687 may stand without essential +change for the ways of earlier acridophagi: “They had another +dish made of a sort of locusts, whose bodies are about +one and one-half inches long, and as thick as the top of one’s +little finger; with large thin wings, and long and small legs. +These came in great swarms to devour their potato leaves and +other herbs; and the natives would go out with small nets and +take a quart at one sweep. When they had enough they would +parch them in an earthen pan; and then their wings and legs<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span> +would fall off, and their heads and backs would turn red like +boiled shrimp. Their bodies, being full, would eat very moist, +their heads would crackle in one’s teeth. I did once eat of this +dish, and like it well enough.”</p> + +<p>Certain other races living in Africa the ancients knew chiefly +as specialists in diet. Pomponius places the Ophiophagi, or +snake-eaters, on the Red Sea. Homer gives the Lotophagi, or +lotus-eaters, a habitat on the Mediterranean coast. Agatharcides +names the Rhizophagi or root-eaters who dwell on the banks +of the Atbara and subsist on reed roots; and the Elephantophagi, +farther inland, who hunt and eat the elephant. Also in the interior +Diodorus places the ostrich-eating Struthophagi, and there +Pliny places the Agriophagi “who live principally on the flesh +of panthers and lions,” and the Pamphagi “who will eat anything.”</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Geographical Glimpses</i></p> + +<p>The citations below, from classical, mediæval and modern +writers, are reproduced because of their flavor and for whatever +they are worth:</p> + +<p>The Gamphasantes, who go naked, are unacquainted with war +and hold no intercourse with strangers.</p> + +<p>In the African deserts “men are frequently seen to all appearance +and then vanish in an instant,” says Pliny—perhaps +the mirage.</p> + +<p>“On the one side of the Senegal,” says John Lok, “the inhabitants +are of high stature and black, and on the other side of +browne or tawnie colour.” The latter are the “tawny Moors” +of Prince Henry’s ship captains.</p> + +<p>The Annamese of pure stock have a peculiar formation of +the great toe whereby they are able to pick up small objects +with their prehensile feet, says Keane. Their ancient Chinese +name was Giao-chi, which signifies “with the big toe.”</p> + +<p>“Many of Canton and Quansi Provinces,” says a Jesuit missionary +in Purchas, “on their little toes have two nailes, as they +have generally in Cochin-China.”</p> + +<p>On the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, says the seventh-century +<i>History of the T’ang Dynasty</i>, is a naked swarthy race<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span> +with red frizzled hair, bestial teeth, and hawk claws who hold +their markets at night with veiled faces.</p> + +<p>The Korwars of India, according to a local legend, “derive +from scarecrows animated by a prowling demon.”</p> + +<p class="gtb">******</p> + +<p>Because they are recognizable peoples with representatives +who may still be studied, the folk of tradition are useful exhibits +in the museum of history.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c15">Chapter XV. The Horizon Lands</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">Not</span> until yesterday did men encompass the earth. But their +minds were always more adventurous than their feet, and from +the beginning, almost, the sense of remote horizons was in them. +Fantastic though its form might be, there was a divine breadth +in their speculation as to the earth and its peoples. The peasant +of antiquity, who knew only his township in Europe or his mountain +canton in high Asia, had yet a vision of continents and distant +seas. His imagination explored the waste places, ascended +the high places, descended into the earth. Its product was the +geography of legend, which gave ground but slowly to the geography +of reality.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Beyond the North Wind</i></p> + +<p>One of the earliest countries to find a place in the geography +of legend was that of the Hyperboreans. It lay on the other +side of the north wind. These people lived so far toward the +pole that they were beyond the icy blasts, and beyond all contacts +of war or commerce with the peoples of the south. Only +the priests and the poets knew of them.</p> + +<p>The priests knew of them because of the yearly offerings sent +in to the temples of Tempe, Delphi, and Delos. These were +gifts of amber, and virgins bore them from nation to nation +across the whole of Europe. For many years the holy maidens +had honor and hospitality from all the countries along their +path. When violence was done them the journeys ceased. Not, +however, the offerings. The Hyperboreans deposited these upon +the boundary of the people who adjoined them. The latter carried +them to their neighbors; and so by successive stages the +tribute came to the shrines of Apollo, whom the distant nation +held in especial honor. At last the custom fell into disuse.</p> + +<p>No return visits were made from the south, for the way was +hard. Yet the poets had, as always, their own means of information.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span> +Homer has nothing to say of the Hyperboreans, but +Hesiod speaks of them, and Pindar, and Æschylus, and a host +of later and lesser voices. From these authorities it appeared +that the Riphæan Rocks, an imaginary prolongation of the Ural +group westward across Europe, shut the Hyperboreans off from +the south. Out of the rocks the north wind came sweeping down +over the lower latitudes, but on the farther side of the range was +summer. It was a favored land, and this a favored people. +“The muse is no stranger to their manners,” says Pindar. “The +dances of girls and the sweet melody of the lyre and pipe resound +on every side, and twining their hair with the glittering +bay, they dance joyously. There is no doom of sickness or disease +for this sacred race; but they live apart from toil and +battles, undisturbed by exacting Nemesis.” Isidore adds that +when the cithara players smite their instruments the swans fly +up and sing very harmoniously.</p> + +<p>Rightly discerning that this was no region of the earth, Herodotus +assigns its inhabitants to the realms of fable. But Hecatæus, +Damastes, Diodorus, Pliny and others credit the legend, +though sometimes with a note of doubt, as when Pliny begins, +“Beyond the region of the northern winds, there dwells, if we +choose to believe it, a happy race known as the Hyperboreans.” +From their country Hercules brought the olive. They were a +pious folk, loving justice, dwelling in woods and fields, living +on the fruits of the earth and abstaining from taking even animal +life. No rude winds agitated this delicious land. Here +were “the hinges upon which the world revolves, and the extreme +limits of the revolutions of the stars.” There was but one rising +of the sun for the year, and that at the summer solstice, and but +one setting, and that at the winter solstice; and the day and night +each lasted six months. In the morning of the long day the +people sowed, at midday they reaped, at sunset they gathered +the fruits of their trees; and the long night they spent in caverns; +and so their lives were passed.</p> + +<p>They lived to be very old in the country beyond the north +wind, sometimes as much as one thousand years. But a fateful +note runs through all accounts of them. The happy Hyperboreans +were wont to tire at last of their felicity. They ended a +career of feasting and an old age sated with every luxury by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span> +leaping from a rock into the sea. At the close of each life lay +the rock and the sea.</p> + +<p>Just where was this worshipful nation? The answers are +vague and conflicting. On the left bank of the Danube, it was +first thought; on the very verge of Asia, others said. Later its +home was fixed “midway between the two suns, at the spot where +it sets to the antipodes and rises toward us.” There were Greek +writers who confused the Riphæan Rocks with the Alps and Pyrenees, +and confounded the Hyperboreans with the Etruscans +and the Gauls. Hecatæus gives them an island home as large as +Sicily, lying under the arctic pole, over against Gaul. Here +Apollo has a stately grove and a renowned temple in a city where +all the residents are harpers. This is the Britain of the bards and +druids, of whose people it was said in later time that they take +their pleasures sadly.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>At the Cardinal Points</i></p> + +<p>While the ancients peopled the rim of the earth with deformed +races and monstrous animals, their pictures of the nations +that dwelt at the cardinal points show mainly the ideal +treatment. In the far east, in the far west, in the far south, there +were men like unto the Hyperboreans of the far north. Of the +Indians, the Ethiopians, and the Iberians of early story the same +report was had. They were “just” and “blameless”—these +words recur again and again—and they were long-lived and +fortunate. Thus real races took on some quality of myth. The +classic sense of equilibrium demanded this equal reverence to +the four quarters of heaven, just as it was fancied that, to balance +the Pillars of Hercules in the west, Bacchus had set up +two columns “by the farthest shore of the Ocean stream, on +the remotest mountains of India, where the Ganges pours down +its white waters to the Nysæan shore.”</p> + +<p>This cast of thought did not die with the ancients. The epithets, +“just” and “blameless,” reappear in the writings of +eighteenth-century philosophers when they speak of the Chinese. +A little later the beautiful and artless natives of the South Seas +laid upon the thought of more sophisticated lands a spell that +endures. Now, as always, the four points of the compass are +points of fable, and the primitive worship that was paid them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span> +lurks in the magic with which the number four is invested. The +rising and setting of the sun fixed two of these points and the +course of the Nile northward through Egypt may have fixed +the other two.</p> + +<p>“All evil comes from the northeast,” say the Japanese. +Thoreau usually walked southwest. “Eastward,” he said, “I go +only by force; but westward I go free.” Tartar tent doors, as +Marco Polo notes, face south. The mythical Irish voyages were +toward the west. In the thought of many races witchcraft is of +the north. In Norse mythology hell-way is always downward +and northward. When cutting black hellebore the hedge doctors +of Greece faced eastward and cursed. “Altars should regard +the east,” said Vitruvius. Thither the Mohammedan turns +in prayer. The manifestations of God are in the west, says the +Talmud. The Babylonian temples lay due east and west so that +the rising sun would illumine their altars at the equinoxes. +Some of the Egyptian temples were so planned that this would +happen only on Midsummer Day. The older Christian churches +lie east and west, although some of them are oriented to permit +the rising sun to gild their altars on the day of the saint whose +name they bear. The west was the seat of darkness and hence +the rose-window was placed high in the cathedral’s western wall +to illumine the benighted, with the bell-towers flanking it to summon +them to Christ. The eastern side with its altar and the +southern with walls and windows consecrated to saints and +martyrs were both sacred. But the northern, or Black Side, was +Satan’s, and effigies of unclean beasts and sculptured allegories +of lascivious deeds proclaimed it.</p> + +<p>The cities of ancient Yucatan had gates toward each of the +cardinal points. With the Aztecs all the world directions were +significant—the north standing for emptiness, the east for sterility, +the west for fertility, the south for good fortune. In the +symbolism of the Navahos, white, the dawn color, stands for +the east; blue, the sky color, for the south; yellow, the sunset +color, for the west; and black, the curtain of night, for the north. +The Pueblo Indians assigned the north to the air, the west to +water, the south to fire, and the east to earth and the seeds of +life. In old Chinese writings the men of the north are called +brave, the men of the south wise, the men of the east kind and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span> +friendly, the men of the west upright and honest. Over the +four cardinal points the old Brahman gods presided.</p> + +<p>Thus by a primitive law of the mind illusion lurks in every +corner of the heaven. It lies deepest in the track of the sun. +From east to west go the great wanderers—Hercules, Ulysses, +and the rest—and solar myths thicken along their path through +legendary lands. The east and west dominate the thoughts of +men with their eternal spectacles of sunrise and sunset. Whatever +commerce, geography, or political history may teach them, +the east is still the region of the morning sunlight and the west +of the evening shadow. Though their steps turn westward, men’s +thoughts drift eastward. Though the east be hunger-bitten and +poverty-stricken and its subjugated millions seem to count but +little, it is still the gorgeous east, “the dancing-place of the +dawn.”</p> + +<p>Beyond the curtains of the west lie the realms of repose: “If +sunrise,” says Max Müller, “inspired the first prayers, called +forth the first sacrificial flames, sunset was the other time when +again the whole frame of man would tremble. The shadows of +night approach, the irresistible power of sleep grasps man in +the midst of his pleasures, his friends depart, and in his loneliness +his thoughts turn again to higher powers. When the day +departs the poet bewails the untimely death of his bright friend; +nay, he sees in its short career the likeness of his own life. Perhaps, +when he has fallen asleep, his sun may never rise again, +and thus the place to which the setting sun withdraws in the far +west rises before his mind as the abode where he himself would +go after death.”</p> + +<p>Though the westward journeys of the sun are but a seeming, +their trail lies broad across the spiritual life of mankind.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>On the Mountains</i></p> + +<p>Half of history has been written in the passes of the mountains. +What lies above these deep saddles of the ranges belongs +in the main to legend. Not much, even now, is known of +the mountain tops, for men do not dwell there. Antiquity seldom +went up to see. The high places of old sacrifice were hilltops, +not mountain peaks.</p> + +<p>Men have been content to travel the valleys and, where necessity<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span> +impelled, to cross the passes. The steeps overhead +seemed fit abode for the elder gods, for giants and dwarfs and +griffins, for dragons whose breath was the avalanche, for ghosts +whose voice was the echo, for the carnal revels of Satan and his +witches; sometimes, also—since legend is its own law—for +cities of enchantment, invisible and beautiful.</p> + +<p>Most famous mountain of classic story was the Atlas; the most +fabulous locality, even in Africa, is the superlative of Pliny. +Its summit reached beyond the clouds and well nigh approached +the very orb of the moon. Rugged and precipitous on the side +of the ocean to which it gave a name, it fell by a gentler slope +on the side toward Africa, and dense groves covered its flanks +where streams flashed and fruits abounded. But in the daytime +men were never seen there. All was silent like the dreadful +stillness of the desert. A religious horror stole over those who +drew near. At night, fires innumerable gleamed upon its sides. +“It is then,” says Pliny, “the scene of the gambols of the +Ægipans and the Satyr crew, while it re-echoes with the notes +of the flute and the pipe, and the clash of drums and cymbals.”</p> + +<p>The legend of a mountain of nightly tumult and illumination +recurs in Arab and Christian chronicle. Solinus repeats +it. The mountain is Felfel in the Sahara, says an Arab +author of the twelfth century, and genii hold court in towns on +its slopes whence the people have fled. Ibn Khordadbeh places +the realm of nocturnal revel in the Southern Ocean. Argensola, +writing of the Moluccas in the sixteenth century, reports +that for ages “cries, whistles, and roarings” had been heard +from a mountain in Banda. The spot is inhabited by devils, +he concludes. Sindbad tells of an island, called Kasil, where +nightly resounds the drumbeat of rebellious djinns. So was +Prospero’s isle full of noises, but these were “sound, and sweet +airs that give delight and hurt not.”</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f15"> +<img src="images/fig15.jpg" alt="steeps"> +<p class="caption"><i>The Steeps Overhead Seemed Fit Abode for Giants and Dwarfs and<br> +Griffins—for Cities of Enchantment</i></p> +</div> + +<p>It may be that the Atlas story grew out of the habits of the +Kabyles who tenant the mountain’s recesses. During the heat +of the day they would retire to their dwellings, coming out at +night to dance about the village fires to the music of drums. +Similar legends among the Indians of South America of strange +lights seen upon the mountains appear to have a basis of fact. +Sir Martin Conway tells of a village where the bells were rung +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span>and the people flocked to church in dreadful fear because, after +sunset, the peak of Illampu glowed red like fire and the end of +the world seemed at hand. In Venezuela Im Thurn beheld a +mountain strangely luminous at night. Humboldt saw a similar +spectacle in Venezuela and guessed it might be the burning +of hydrogen gases. In Colombia, Zahm saw brilliant lights +along the crest of the Cordilleras, and judged it was an electric +phenomenon, the summits acting as a vast condenser from which +electricity escaped by a silent glow or brush discharge—St. +Elmo’s fire. Here, perhaps, is the key to the Old World story.</p> + +<p>The Mountains of the Moon, which lift their snowy peaks on +the line of the equator in East Africa not far from the springs +of the Nile, bear a myth-engendering name. It was given them +by Ptolemy, who perhaps translated it from native words of +the same meaning. Lying within the sphere of Arabic mediæval +geography, Eastern fable enveloped them. One story was that +whoever looked upon them was drawn to them as by a magnetic +influence and only death would release him. According to an +Arab compiler, “a certain king sent an expedition to discover +the Nile sources, and they reached the copper mountains, and +when the sun rose, the rays reflected were so strong that they +were burnt.”</p> + +<p>To the early Greeks the Caucasus was the end of the world; +beyond it was naught but the Ocean Stream. Æschylus describes +it in his <i>Prometheus Bound</i> as the loftiest of mountains and +speaks of its “star-neighboring summits.” Here he pictures the +fire-stealing Titan as chained to a rock with a vulture at his +vitals. Herodotus repeats that these peaks are higher than any +other. No Roman general ever passed them. And they stood +for things dreaded and unknown—the sanguinary Amazons, +fugitive and barbaric tribes of Israel, and the sinister nations +of Gog and Magog. These are perhaps the mountains of Aaf of +Malay tradition, which run their ramparts of green chrysolite +clear about the earth and the encompassing sea.</p> + +<p>The high places of American Indian tradition lay in the west. +The plains savages and some of the forest tribes looked upon the +Rocky Mountains as the boundary of the known world. These +peaks held up the sky; the spirits of the storm haunted them, +and stone giants, and huge-bellied anthropophagi. Into this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span> +west ran the underground trail to the land of the dead. In +South Dakota was the Hill of Little Devils, malignant pygmies +with unduly large heads, of whose arrows the prairie tribes stood +in awe.</p> + +<p>There were seven sacred mountains in the land of the Navahos—four +at the cardinal points, and three at the center; and +legend gave each its own color, jewels, birds, and plants. One +mountain was fastened to the earth with a lightning flash, another +with a stone knife, another with a sunbeam, a fourth with +a rainbow. Almost in the Greek spirit the Indians of Guiana +chanted the glories of “Roraima of the red rocks, wrapped in +clouds, ever-fertile source of streams.” White jaguars and +white eagles were upon it, a magic circle surrounded it, and +demons guarded its sanctuary.</p> + +<p>Whenever the Kirghiz pass by Mustaghata, loftiest of the +Pamirs, they fall upon their knees in prayer, for threescore and +ten saints live there. Sven Hedin, who made four attempts to +ascend it, repeats its legends. One story tells of a holy man +who, climbing it, found on its slopes a garden with plum trees +where old men in white garments were walking. He plucked +and ate the fruit. One of the graybeards told him it was well he +had done so, for had he despised the fruit, as they had done, it +would have been his fate to stay, as they must, walking up and +down the garden till time was no more. Then a rider on a white +horse dashed into the garden, and seizing the holy man, galloped +with him down the mountain side, leaving him in the valley, +dazed and with only a confused memory of what he had seen. +Another story tells of forty giant horsemen who swept down +the mountain and routed a Chinese army.</p> + +<p>On the summit of Mustaghata, to which neither Sven Hedin, +nor the holy man, nor the graybeards could climb, the Kirghiz +say is the ancient city of Janaidar, built in a golden age when +everyone was happy and men were at peace. Its inhabitants had +no intercourse afterward with the peoples below, and all the ills +and woes of life are stranger to them. Their groves bear fruit +the year around, their flowers are unfading, their women never +grow old. Cold, darkness, and death are alike unknown to them. +The ramparts of Mustaghata are one of the seats of the realm +of eternal youth.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span></p> + +<p>Though its name is but the Latin word for “bald,” a grim +Swiss legend has it that Mount Pilatus is the burial place of the +Roman viceroy who surrendered Jesus to the mob. When he +took his own life, neither the Tiber nor the Rhone, into which +in succession his body was flung, would contain it. Evil and +sordid spirits raised such storms that it was carried farther. An +uncanonical book of the thirteenth century recites that it was +dropped at last “into a well surrounded by mountains, where, +according to some accounts, certain diabolic machinations and +ebullitions are still seen.” This spot was identified with a +marshy pool near the summit of Pilatus.</p> + +<p>Throughout the Middle Ages it was believed that if anyone +threw a stone in this little lake, a tempest would follow. Once +a year Pilate left it and sat on a rock arrayed in scarlet. Whoever +beheld him died in a twelvemonth. The fearful burghers of +Lucerne made an ordinance that no one should approach the +pool unless one of their number went with him to see that he +cast no stone. At length, in 1585, Johann Mueller, state pastor +of Lucerne, climbed the mountain with a party of friends, flung +stones into the water, and derisively challenged the evil spirit +to come forth. Nothing happened, and the legend lapsed.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>In the Desert</i></p> + +<p>The desert holds the green surprise of the oases, the promise +of mysteries beyond its veil, and, as men have thought, the memory +of wonderful things that were. Tradition broods over it, +legends of caravans that never came back, of armies swallowed +up in its silences, of vast cities buried in the sand. Where there +is so little for the eye to see, the most haunting things are those +the ear has heard—music that steals from the under edges of the +dunes; voices, mocking or beguiling, which call to caravan +stragglers; the crash of ghostly drums and the clash of arms +heard afar.</p> + +<p>Any survey of the deserts of history reveals the stuff of wonder. +There each man’s hand is turned against his brother, and +yet in every tent all are safe; masked tribesmen roam the waste; +stealthy slave columns cross it by abandoned routes; hereditary +clans of dancing girls supply the streets of women in the environing +lands; hermits wither in rocky cells and militant<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span> +fanatics range the plateaus; the bustard and the wild camel show +along the uncertain skyline, and remnants of forgotten peoples +rove below it. These are momentous details; legend has done +much with less to work upon. It needs only that thirsty wayfarers +shall have, as sometimes they do, the sudden vision of +lakes of water shimmering in the distance, with palms fringing +them and temples mirrored in them. Realities of an instant +only, their passing leaves a sense of wonder that expects, and +invents.</p> + +<p>Much of the tradition of the waste places has been set down +by Marco the Venetian in his account of the passage of the desert +of Lop. It is asserted as a well-known fact, he recites, that here +is the abode of evil spirits “which amuse travelers to their +destruction with most extraordinary illusions.” During the daytime, +if men fall behind the caravan, or are overtaken by sleep +so that the column has passed a hill and is out of sight, they hear +voices calling their names in tones to which they are accustomed. +Following these, they are lured from the direct road and perish +alone. At night men seem to hear the march of a large cavalcade +on one side or the other of the road. Again they follow, +in the belief that the camel bells are of their own party; the daybreak +finds them pursuing strange paths alone. Day or night, +evil spirits take the shape of their companions and seek to decoy +them from the proper route. Ghostly bodies of armed men +seem to rush upon them, and in the terror of flight they lose +the way.</p> + +<p>“Marvelous indeed,” concludes Marco, “and almost passing +belief are the stories related of these spirits of the desert, which +are said at times to fill the air with the sounds of all kinds of +musical instruments, and also of drums and the clash of arms, +obliging the travelers to close their line of march and to proceed +in more compact order.”</p> + +<p>This is such a recital as one would rather have expected concerning +the desert of ancient Egypt. There were the graves of +the dead, and report had it that their spirits, doomed to a miserable +existence in an inhospitable land, developed into predatory +demons who meant no good to the traveler.</p> + +<p>Stories still current in Asia, however, have the flavor of +Marco’s report of seven centuries ago. Doughty tells of the fantasy +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span>they have at Teyma of a neighboring spectral oasis, often +beheld by the Bedouins. Slaves and horses issue from the enchanted +appearance of palms; “but all fadeth soon if a man +approach them.”</p> + +<p>In the little desert of Reig Rawan at the foot of the heights +of Kohistan the wind-blown sands sweep through the rocky fissures +with a sound that is like the music of an æolian harp +accompanied by the distant beating of drums. These wild harmonies +of the wind in open spaces are the source of many +strange tales. In Reig Rawan they are fabled to be the martial +strains of armies which have been swallowed up in the sands, +but march on to unknown destinies.</p> + +<p>The kingdom of Prester John has been mapped in Asia, in +Africa, and in the imagination of men. In the latter domain +lies the Gravelly Sea, a desert phenomenon which Maundeville +describes: “It is all Gravel and Sand, without any Drop of +Water, and it ebbeth and floweth in great waves as other Seas do, +and it is never still nor at Peace, in any Manner of Season. And +no Man may pass that Sea by Ship, nor by any Manner of Craft, +and therefore may no Man know what Land is beyond that Sea. +And albeit that it have no Water, yet Men find therein and on +the Banks full good Fishes of other Manner of Nature and +Shape, than Men find in any other Sea, and they be of right +good Taste and delicious for Man’s Meat.”</p> + +<p>What lies beyond it? Mezzoramia, it may be, if it is accepted +that Prester John was an Abyssinian. This is an earthly paradise, +situated somewhere in Africa. Only one road leads to it, +and the road is hard to find and easy to lose again. No man +ever found this secret highway save Gaudentio di Lucca. He +traveled it to its end, and for twenty years lived behind the desert’s +curtains in a country of every felicity.</p> + +<p>Fables of the waste tell of cities on which some sudden curse +has fallen and turned their people into stone. The sand has not +covered them with the decent pity of its mantle. They lie open +to the air. The sunshine falls on their silent market places and +only the wind wanders in their streets. The stony figures of the +men and women that once lived there stand where the curse had +found them, disquieting things in their semblance to statuary +and their ancient caricature of humanity.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span></p> + +<p>The map on which Anthony Jenkinson recorded his travels in +Tartary makes note of a petrified city in the plains of Central +Asia. Garcilasso de la Vega, Inca historian, tells a like tale +of petrification based on a numerous group of stone images. +The Museum Metallicum of Aldrovandi pictures an assemblage +of men, sheep, and camels converted into stone. The Arabs +have a story of a petrified camp at Hamam Meskouteen in Numidia, +where they assert that stony tents are pitched and stony +sheep dot the plain. Most circumstantial of all such legends is +that of Ras Sem, an extensive petrified village in the Cyrenaica. +It was surmised that this might be the region of the Gorgons +of classic story, whose frightful glance turned everything into +stone.</p> + +<p>This village figures in old travel books, one of them dating +as far back as 1594, and Sir Kenelm Digby may have had +access to these when he printed in the <i>Mercurius Politicus</i> his +travel tale of a petrified city in northern Africa. The Tripolitan +ambassador in London asserted that a thousand persons +had seen the wonders of Ras Sem. It was a large town of +circular outline, with streets and shops and a central palace.</p> + +<p>The olive and the palm stood in the courtyards, but the trees +had been turned into a cinder-colored stone. There were men +also in different postures. Some were plying their trade and +occupations in the bazaars or holding fabrics and breadstuffs in +their hands, as if to attract the passer-by. There were women +suckling their children or kneeling at the kneading trough. In +the palace a man was lying on a bed of state, and guards armed +with pike and spear stood at the door. The tenants of the palace, +and the men and women without—they, too, were of the +same bluish stone. The heads of some were wanting and others +of the Silent People had lost a leg or an arm.</p> + +<p>There were camels, oxen, asses, horses, and sheep in the market +place, there were large birds perched on the walls, and in +the houses there were dogs, cats, and even mice—and all these, +like their masters and hosts, were petrified. The pieces of +money which had been brought thence were “of the bigness of +an English shilling, charged with a horse’s head on one side +and with some unknown characters on the other.”</p> + +<p>The quotation is from Shaw’s <i>Travels in Barbary</i>. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span> +writer tells of an inquiry into these stories by order of the French +court made some time before by M. Le Maire, consul at Tripoli. +The Turkish janizaries who gathered the tribute would not bring +him the body of an adult person from Ras Sem, alleging it +would be cumbersome to carry. But for a thousand dollars they +did bring the body of a little child. They declared they had run +the risk of being strangled by their companions for having delivered +to an infidel the mortal remains of one of their unfortunate +Mohammedan brethren, as they deemed these people to be. +What they brought was the statue of a small Cupid taken from +the ruins of Leptus.</p> + +<p>The consul sent other persons, but none could find a trace of +walls, buildings, animals, or utensils where Ras Sem was said +to be. They did find one thing he could not explain. This was +what seemed to be tiny loaves of petrified bread; but Shaw declares +these were fossil echinites of the discoid kind. Little +pools of “heavy and ponderous water” were also come upon, +which the wind had uncovered. This, continues Shaw, “may be +the petrifying fluid which has contributed to the conversion of +the palm trees into stone.” He thinks the country of the Gorgons +was farther west.</p> + +<p>From any one of several causes the fable of stony cities might +arise. While sand does not petrify, it does preserve; and sometimes, +with the winds for its artisans, it has wrought its own +architecture and sculpture in the living rock, repeating in the +infinite chances of its labors the outlines of minarets and templed +columns, and other contours in which fantasy may find the +forms of bygone worshipers. There seem to have been cases +where peoples of a higher culture have built their cities in the +desert, and have passed; and a ruder race, coming later upon the +scene, mistook their statuary for the breathing handiwork of +nature stricken into stillness and stone.</p> + +<p>The typical desert legends are of splendid cities that the sands +have covered. There is truth under them, as there are ruins +under the sand; how much truth and how many ruins is a secret +the desert yields but grudgingly. In a series of striking passages +the Jewish Scriptures have sketched these dead capitals of the +waste with their jackal tenants. The Arab deems them the home +of evil spirits and hastens by. The nomads of Central Asia<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span> +speak of opulent cities which sandstorms have blotted out in a +night and of treasure to be found in them if one digs for it under +a fortunate star. But there are unearthly chances to be faced, +and treasure-seekers will not invite them by venturing many +days’ march from the desert’s rim. One legend tells of the vanished +city of Ho-lao-lo-kia and the princes who came from many +lands to excavate the site. “But every time they try to dig the +sand away a violent wind arises, setting up whirlwinds of smoke +and a thick mist, which sweeps away the path and leads the +workmen astray into the desert.”</p> + +<p>A passage from an antique Indian script, describing a city +which perished two thousand years ago, may stand for a silhouette +of the buried cities of Iran and of Turkestan, as legend +has pictured them: “The temples and the palaces of Anuradhapura +are numberless, and their golden cupolas and pavilions +shimmer in the sun. In the streets are crowds of soldiers armed +with bows and arrows. Elephants, horses, chariots, and countless +multitudes pass in a continual turmoil. There are jugglers, +dancers, and musicians from many lands, whose timbals gleam +with golden ornaments.”</p> + +<p>It is more than conjecture that in these ancient lands not only +cities but states have disappeared under the sand. Gradually +they have yielded to their fate, as the desert has moved upon +them through periodic cycles of deficient rainfall. It may be +that sometimes destruction came with almost its fabled swiftness. +MacGregor saw the sands in the very act of billowing +over the walls and rolling through the streets of the Persian +town of Yazd. Much may have happened, must have happened, +in forgotten times in the great space of fifteen hundred miles +of longitude and four hundred miles of latitude comprised in +the Lop basin; and many and circumstantial are the legends +thereof.</p> + +<p>In the Gobi Desert Sven Hedin discovered one of these buried +cities—God-accursed he calls it—over which the wind had flung +the sands, only to sweep them away and leave the site bare to +the sun after uncounted centuries had passed. Its walls had +once been washed by a powerful stream along which millstones +turned under the shade of luxuriant groves. There were apricot +trees in the gardens, and mulberry trees where the silkworm fed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span> +and spun its cocoon. There were bazaars loud with the tumult +of craftsmen. This was the city of Takla-makan.</p> + +<p>What the explorer found was a dead forest, and ruins several +miles across. The timbers of hundreds of houses were still +standing, chalk-white poplar wood brittle as glass. Among them +were fragments of images in gypsum, showing the Buddha and +praying women with faces of the Aryan type, all executed with +refinement of taste; and there were even figures of boats rocking +on the waves of vanished seas.</p> + +<p>“At what period,” asks its discoverer, “was this mysterious +city inhabited? When did its last crop of russet apricots ripen +in the sun? When did the sour green leaves of its poplars yellow +for their last fall? When was the trickling hum of its millwheels +silenced forever? When did its despairing people finally +abandon their dwellings to the ravenous maw of the desert king? +Who were the people who lived here? What was the tongue +they spoke? Whence came the unknown inhabitants of this +Tadmor in the wilderness? How long did their city flourish, +and whither did they go when they saw that within its walls they +could no longer have a safe abiding place?”</p> + +<p>Passing the ruins of other cities, the nomad has asked himself +these and stranger questions. And out of the answers which his +superstition and fancy have suggested has been woven the myth +of the desert.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>In the Forest</i></p> + +<p>Men can lose their way in the deep forest, easily become confused +there, and make it a proverb that friends are not to be +met in a wood. There races that have passed out of the primitive +culture do not feel at home. Through successive stages of +their history the forest was held to be sacred, then enchanted, +then ill-omened and haunted.</p> + +<p>In the beginning men worshiped trees and groves. Pan, with +his attendant fauns and satyrs, presided in the forest. The +hamadryads lived in trees, and died with them; and they might +contract marriages with mortal youths. Sometimes the tree had +its own soul, sometimes it was possessed by a spirit which had +entered it, sometimes it was the symbol, sometimes the sanctuary, +of a god. Deity dwelt in the oak of Dodona. Diana in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span> +Autun was a midday demon of the forests and crossroads. In +the tabooed grove near Marseilles the trees were stained with +sacrificial blood, the flames burned without consuming the boscage, +and even the priests dared not venture there at midnight +or midday. The sacred bo tree is still worshiped in India. The +mistletoe is magical above all other objects. Savages hang offerings +upon trees, and in the same spirit the gypsy spits when +he passes under them.</p> + +<p>The wood spirits of the primitive mythologies became at +length the stuff of folklore and travel tale—degenerate Pans and +dryads that wanderers saw sometimes in the shadows of trees. +The Old Man of the Woods, lame, hairy, green-eyed, ranges +many countries and is most clearly pictured in the tales of the +Brazilian Indians and the eastern Slavs. A mocker, misleader, +and seducer, he cast a spell of terror upon the forest. In the +wild women of Russian story it had still other perturbing tenants. +These were good-looking creatures with shaggy bodies, +square heads, and long hair. Sometimes they came into the +villages to borrow kneading troughs, but it was dangerous to +meet them in their own domain, for they turned the solitary intruder +round and round until he lost his way. They were fond +of music and might invite lads and lasses to dance with them; +whistling, however, they could not endure. Polish tales picture +them as tall, thin-faced, sensual females, with disheveled hair +and garments in constant disarray. When groups of them encountered +human beings they tickled the adults to death and took +the youths with them for their lovers; wherefore young people +never went singly to the woods. In Swedish tradition this was +the terrible Skogfrau, or Woman of the Thicket.</p> + +<p>These beings personified the mystery of forest shadows and +what Ruskin called the mediæval dread of thick foliage. “Forest +in every semicivilized land,” says Belloc, “is ever a word +of fear.” There the knights of old tale had adventure with +giants and dwarfs and spell-weaving witches, and there the +younger sons of folklore followed lonely paths with beasts and +birds to counsel them. As the enchanted woods of romance with +their goblin glooms and talking trees faded from the minds of +men, in their place appeared the real terrors of thickets where +robbers, banished men, and fugitive peoples beset the ways with +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span>danger. The conception of forests as sanctuaries of peace is +modern.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f16"> +<img src="images/fig16.jpg" alt="trees"> +<p class="caption"><i>The Enchanted Woods of Romance with Their Goblin Glooms and Talking<br> +Trees Faded from the Minds of Men</i></p> +</div> + + +<p class="large"><i>Under the Ground</i></p> + +<p>The cellar strain that is in human nature betrays itself in the +satisfaction men take in roaring songs and drinking bitter +liquors in rat-haunted sunken spaces. If groves were God’s first +temples, grottoes were men’s first dwellings. They came out of +caves, and in flight sometimes they return to them. For their +extremity mother earth has provided a rocky roof, a bedchamber, +a storeroom, and a fireplace. Wherefore they deem no +habitation complete until they have dug a cave under it.</p> + +<p>“Men,” said the Caribs, “should avoid places which are enlightened +neither by the sun nor by the moon.” Yet there are +races whose legends have dug a cellar under the entire earth; +if its surface is the floor of one world, it is the roof of another. +Beneath it are the happy hunting grounds of the Indian. According +to Cherokee myth the living can descend thereto if, after +fasting, they follow back the streams to their springs and have +one of the underground folk to guide them, for the springs are +doorways to the world below. There one finds people, animals, +and plants about as they are above, but the seasons are different, +for are not the springs warmer than the air in winter, and cooler +in summer? Navaho legend makes the surface of the earth the +top story of a structure five stories high. Beginning as ants, +beetles, dragonflies, locusts, and bats, mankind climbed from +one story to another, or rather was expelled from each, usually +for sexual sin.</p> + +<p>The gods’ land, or Elysium, of the Celts was commonly placed +upon far islands of the west, but sometimes in the hollow hills +called Sid. Here were fair meadows and stately palaces and +musical trees and a beautiful people whose berry diet kept them +ever young; in the song of the magic birds of this underworld +there were seven years of joy and oblivion. These people were +the Tuatha Dé Danann. Giraldus Cambrensis describes a like +people, but of fairy stature, dwelling underground, swearing no +oaths, forswearing human ambition and inconstancy, and subsisting +on milk and saffron. Yet the Nagas of Hindoo story and +the gnomes of European folk-tale may be true historical races.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span></p> + +<p>With his keen sense of an earthly origin primitive man was +deeply interested in burrowing creatures—in the scarab with his +little round ball that symbolized the sun in Egypt; in the beetle +of the South American pampas, which symbolized the Creator; +in the rats and mice which various tribes worshiped; in the runway +of the armadillo which in Brazil was an entrance to the +land of shades; in the tunnel of the mole, and the cities of the +marmot. This underground world of tiny animals figures large +in the folklore of early peoples, shaping their genealogies, influencing +their councils, intervening in their affairs for good and +ill, at times deciding their destinies.</p> + +<p>There was sorcery underground. Life came from it with +each recurring spring. The dead were laid there, and far beneath +were the abodes of their spirits. In the caverns were +witches who had some command over life and death. There +also were the haunts of necromancers, and though their dens +were squalid, all the riches of the world were around them. +Legend became sumptuous and prodigal when it left the surface +of the earth and plunged into the darkness under it.</p> + +<p>The story of Aladdin’s descent into this realm carries nearly +all the elements of subterranean myth. His false uncle, the +African magician, conducted him to a valley between mountains +near a large Chinese town. When he muttered a spell the +earth opened, and the lad went down a stone staircase into a +palace where were brazen cisterns brimming with gold and silver. +Beyond in a terraced garden was a magic lamp. Securing +the latter and starting back, the youth paused to look at the +fruits that hung from trees in the garden. These were of various +hues, and though he did not know it, they were precious stones. +Aladdin would have wished they were figs or grapes or pomegranates; +but he filled his purse with them and crammed them +in his bosom.</p> + +<p>Because the youth was slow in passing up the lamp, the magician +who was waiting without lowered the stone over the staircase, +and Aladdin was left in darkness. But a genie of frightful +aspect appeared when he chanced to rub a ring his false +uncle had given him. The apparition was a slave of the ring, +and with it began the cycle of deeds and gifts that won the Chinese +gamin a princess and a throne.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span></p> + +<p>One element is missing in this descent, type otherwise of a +thousand others. That is women. There were beautiful enchantresses +as well as foul witches under the ground. They +figure in a characteristic story of India told by Hiouen Thsiang. +A good-natured fellow, versed in magic formulas, entered a +cavern with thirteen companions. They came to a walled city +with towers and lookouts of gold, silver, and lapis-lazuli. +Young, laughing maidens greeted them at the outer gates, and +at the inner gates were two slave girls each holding a golden vessel +full of flowers and scents. Before the men went farther, these +told them they must bathe in the tank that stood there, anoint +themselves with perfumes, and crown themselves with flowers. +But they must wait awhile before they bathed; only the master +of magic could immerse at once. Of course the thirteen ignored +the warning, and when they entered the tank they became confused. +They were found afterward, says the Chinese author, +“sitting in the middle of a rice-field distant from this due north, +over a level country, about thirty or forty li,” with no recollection +of how they got there.</p> + +<p>The sorceress and enchantress motives are developed into +drama in the great myth of Tannhäuser. This minnesinger of +the Middle Ages was riding through the dusk toward Wartburg, +where minstrels were to compete for a prize, when he saw a +glimmering figure on the slopes of the mountain called the +Hörselberg. White arms were stretched to him in the gesture +that is always more eloquent than words, and, leaving his +charger, he followed the woman. Flowers bloomed in her footsteps, +nymphs attended her, and a rosy light lay on the path as +she led the knight to a cavern’s mouth and thence to her palace +in the heart of the mountain. There for seven years he was +the willing slave of the pagan Goddess of Love, and partner +in the revels of her court.</p> + +<p>Satiety and an awakened conscience came together. The minstrel +longed for a breath of pure mountain air, for the tinkle +of sheep bells, for the sky of night and its stars. When Venus +would not release her thrall, he spoke the Virgin’s name—and +the mountain-side opened. He found himself again aboveground +and heard the chime of church bells.</p> + +<p>To one priest after another Tannhäuser made confession of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span> +his great sin, but the shocked clerics dared not give him absolution, +and at length he stood before the Pope.</p> + +<p>“Sooner shall this staff in my hand grow green and blossom,” +said the stern vicar of Heaven, “than that God should pardon +thee.” With darkness in his soul, Tannhäuser turned away. +Three days afterward the papal staff put forth buds and blossoms, +and messengers were sent in haste from Rome. They +reached the Hörselberg only to learn that a haggard wayfarer +had just entered the mountain. The minstrel was never seen +again.</p> + +<p>The golden age will issue from underground, according to a +noble legend of the mediæval time which concerns Frederick +Barbarossa, head of the Holy Roman Empire. He was not +drowned in Cilicia while on crusade, as report had it. He is +sleeping in a cavernous chamber in the Kyffhäuser Berg which +rises from the emerald meadows of Thuringia. His long red +beard has grown quite through the stone table where he sits in +slumber. The good knights surround him, and once in a hundred +years he rouses himself and asks if the ravens still fly +around the mountain. When the birds of omen no longer call +about the steeps he shall awake and sally forth with his horsemen, +and the peace of all men shall follow.</p> + +<p>Thus at times has legend walked the earth, as men might cross +the flat housetops of an Eastern city, with the thought that what +counted most was just beneath its immense roof.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Darkness</i></p> + +<p>The dark has other creatures besides the bat and owl, other +spectacles than those that pass in dreams. Sometimes in Celtic +legend a mist descended on a man, and until it lifted the towers +and orchards of elysium were all about him. There is a class of +Eastern legends which tell of men around whom a sudden +shadow fell, so that they were seen no more, or next were seen +in another place. Maundeville has a tale of a cloud which settled +down upon a land and did not lift again. This was a +province called Hanyson in the kingdom of Abchaz which is +next to the kingdom of Georgia. One must travel three days to +ride around the province, and one dare not ride through it, for +thick twilight covers it. Out of the gloom the people of neighboring<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span> +lands hear voices of folk, and horses neighing, and cocks +crowing.</p> + +<p>The story is that a cursed emperor of Persia that was hight +Saures overtook a Christian host in the plain that was hight +Megon and would have destroyed it. “But anon a thick Cloud +came and covered the Emperor and all his Host. And so they +endure in that Manner that they must not go out on any Side; +and so shall they evermore abide in Darkness till the Day of +Doom, by the Miracle of God. And then the Christian Men +went where liked them best. Also ye shall understand that out +of that Land of Darkness goeth out a great River that sheweth +well that there be Folk dwelling there by many Tokens; but no +Man dare enter into it.”</p> + +<p>Some report of the long Arctic night reached the Asiatic countries +of lower latitudes, and Marco Polo when he traversed them. +He gives a hearsay account of what he calls the Region of Darkness. +It is distant fourteen journeys by dog-sled across the tundras +from the country of the Tartars. The atmosphere in this +twilight land is “as we find it just about the dawn of day, when +we may be said to see and not to see.” Its people are tall and +well made, but pale, stupid, and brutish, and without prince or +other governance. They have great stores of furs of ermines, +martins, and foxes. Under cover of the prevailing darkness +the Tartars raid them, plundering them of their furs and driving +off their cattle. That they may not become lost forever in +the gloom, the raiders ride mares that have young foals, and +these are left on the frontiers. When the Tartars would return, +they lay the bridles on the necks of the dams, and maternal instinct +finds the homeward track.</p> + +<p>Fable and fact ride abreast through this narrative, as horsemen +through the chill obscurity of dawn, and a great thing has +come of it. Marco’s account of the peltry of the north had more +to do than aught else, tradition says, with the founding of the +Hudson Bay Company and the opening of the northern half of +the American continent.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Distance</i></p> + +<p>The haze on all these horizon lands is the haze of distance. +There are two phrases which come to the ear with the sound of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span> +unlocking doors. One is Once upon a Time, which children +hear; it is distance measured in years. The other is Beyond +the Mountains, which plainsmen use; it is distance measured in +miles and difficulties. For either distance, fetters fall.</p> + +<p>Three tales may declare this as well as a thousand, and a +thousand might be told. Russian peasants speak of a land which +they call Bielovodye, and which lies, as they think, somewhere +on the borders of Mongolia in the distant east. It is a country +of peace and plenty, and nobody lives there.</p> + +<p>Rubruquis gives just a glimpse, as of something seen afar +through a narrow window. “A Chinese priest,” he says, “told +me also for truth (which neverthelesse, I doe not believe) that +there is a province beyond Cataia, into the which, at whatsoever +age a man enters, he continueth in the same age wherein he +entred.”</p> + +<p>The widest horizons of time and space are reached in a single +artless sentence in a gypsy folk tale: “They went then further +than I can remember, till they reached the knoll of the country +at the back of the wind and the face of the sun, that was in +the realm of Big Women.” The men who made this journey +skirted all the coasts of illusion.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c16">Chapter XVI. Lands of Legend</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">There</span> are countries whose boundaries have not been fixed +by armies or treaties, nor their ways marked out by trade. The +dreams of men have made them. Their substance is reality, yet +their effect is vision. By a sort of conspiracy of wish, to which +men of imaginative mind have been parties and all others have +yielded assent, these countries have been supposed to be different +from what any was or could be. It has been easy enough +to create the illusion, for one’s view of another land is always +more or less a symbolic drawing.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Ophir</i></p> + +<p>The geographical table in the tenth chapter of Genesis tells +a straight tale which men debated for something more than two +thousand years and only in the present century have accepted +at its face value. In one phrase the Scriptures link Ophir and +Havilah, and then add that “their dwelling was from Mesha, as +thou goest unto Sephar, a mount of the East.” Where was +Ophir? Perhaps the learned men of Alexandria were the first +to ask the question. What was Ophir? This question nobody +thought of putting, and it was vital.</p> + +<p>Ophir was a magic word which let no man rest once he had +heard it. The spell of gold was in it. Even as they wrote, it +seemed to intoxicate the Jewish prophets, poets, and chroniclers. +Isaiah speaks of the “golden wedge of Ophir.” It is said of wisdom +in the Book of Job that it cannot be valued with the gold +of Ophir, with the precious onyx or the sapphire. “Then shalt +thou lay up gold as dust, and the gold of Ophir as the stones +of the brooks,” says another passage Oriental in its opulence +of suggestion.</p> + +<p>From Ophir came the fleet of Solomon and Hiram of Tyre, +fetching gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and sandalwood. +The arrival of the treasure fleet is associated in the narrative,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span> +for some reason one may only guess, with the coming to Jerusalem +of the Queen of Sheba. The two incidents constitute the +most gorgeous episode in Jewish history.</p> + +<p>Sheba’s queen comes to visit Solomon with a very great train, +with camels that bear spices, and very much gold and precious +stones. She sees the meat of his table, the sitting of his servants, +and the attendance of his ministers. She proves him with +hard questions, and pride dies in her. The report she has heard +in her own land of his wealth and wisdom was a true report, she +declares, but the half had not been told. Then she goes back, +and her camels take across the deserts gifts richer than they had +brought. Gold of Ophir travels north, and south again, and +legend follows it.</p> + +<p>Two other place-names appear on this piece of Hebrew brocade. +One is Ezion-geber, Solomon’s port on the Red Sea in +the land of Edom. The other is Tharshish, where the king had +ships. Once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing +gold and silver, ivory and apes and peacocks. There was nothing +in these imports that one might eat or drink or use for shelter +or raiment. The commodities were typical of ancient commerce +in their magnificence, their vain show, and their uselessness—and +the cargo has freighted the imagination of men ever since. +There was contraband in the ships of Tharshish. Among the +elephants’ teeth and peacocks was stowed away the spirit of the +East.</p> + +<p>Where was Tharshish? Where was Ophir? Where was Havilah, +mentioned rarely, but in a significant context?</p> + +<p>It was long thought that Tharshish was the Carthaginian port +of Tartessus beyond the Pillars, where now is the Spanish port +of Cadiz. But Spain had few apes, little gold, and no ivory. +The text of Genesis seemed to point to the Arabian coast as the +seat of Ophir. But Araby had no elephants and its gold came +from elsewhere. Ophir was sought also in the African spiceland +of Punt, in the Midian country of northern Arabia, and at +the mouth of the Indus in Hindostan. Once in every three years +came the fleet, so said the text; and into this was read the meaning, +not of periodic sailings, but of voyages that covered three +years. Ophir, therefore, must lie in the far East, and men +sought it in the Malay Peninsula, in that Golden Chersonese<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span> +where were ivory and apes and peacocks, as well as precious +metals.</p> + +<p>For one splendid century it was Portugese instinct to advance +steadily, to see clearly, and to do great things easily—the legacy, +perhaps, of that incomparable spirit, Prince Henry the Navigator. +Within the century after his death, his countrymen had +gone around Africa, opened a sea route to the Indies, and made +the coveted Spice Islands their own. Also, they had discovered +Ophir, or rather almost discovered it. What they found was +the missing port of Tharshish, and Havilah, the land which +scriptural writers linked with Ophir, and dismissed.</p> + +<p>A Portugese squadron, outbound for the Indies in 1505, put +in at the little African port of Sofala on the Mozambique Channel, +looking east toward Madagascar. Learning that the Arabs, +or Moors, as they called them, were trafficking here for gold +brought down to the coast from the interior, its captains said that +this must be Ophir. It has taken four centuries to show how +near this casual judgment was to the truth. The gold of Ophir +reached the Indian Ocean through the African port once named +Tharshish and now called Sofala, and came from the Mashona +and Matabele region between the lower Zambesi and the Limpopo +rivers in what is now Rhodesia. It was Hottentot gold, +not gold of Araby.</p> + +<p>What was Ophir? When at length this question was asked, +the Scripture texts, which pointed eastward toward Arabian regions +where gold was not, slowly yielded their paradox. Ophir +was not a country at all. It was a port, perhaps the greatest of +the ancient world. Here the products of India, of Africa, and +of the Eastern Mediterranean were interchanged. The gold of +ancient Rhodesia (Havilah) became gold of Ophir, just as figs +of the Levant become Smyrna figs and the white grapes of Spain +become Malaga grapes, when freighted on ships outbound from +those ports.</p> + +<p>In the days of its decline Ophir was known to Ptolemy, the +Alexandrian geographer, as the Sapphar Metropolis; to Arrian, +the Greek geographer, as Portus Nobilis, and to the Romans as +Moscha. It lay where Genesis places it: “and their dwelling +was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar a mount of the +east.” There, under the shadow of Mount Sephar, nearly opposite<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span> +the island of Socotra and about midway along the southern +coast of Arabia, its ruins lie around a silted inlet of the sea. +Mesha, or Moscha, signifies a wharf or landing place, and was +at the inlet’s mouth. Ophir stood at the head of the inlet. The +name signifies simply The City, The Metropolis, as the Roman +used the single word <i>urbs</i> to designate his capital.</p> + +<p>This was the great mart of Himyaritic civilization. The +Himyarites were the settled folk of southern Arabia—the +Minæans and their successors, the Sabæans. It may be that their +civilization was the earliest in the world, still older than the +Egyptian and Chaldean. There is reason to believe that the +carrying trade of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean was in their +hands for a greater part of the period during which it has been +assumed that the Phœnicians controlled it. The merchants of +Tyre and Sidon were brief interlopers in a sea-borne commerce +which for thousands of years had been the monopoly of the +Sabæan Arabs. That the latter worked the mines of ancient +Rhodesia in the land they called Havilah is the simple and unavoidable +inference from facts which nevertheless required +about a generation of archæological research to establish, and +which the geographer, A. H. Keane, has summarized in his striking +monograph. The Himyaritic inscriptions in southern +Arabia and the inscriptions on the extensive ruins of ancient +gold workings between the Zambesi and the Limpopo were made +by the same people.</p> + +<p>The going of Solomon’s ships and the ships of his Tyrian ally +to Ophir and on to Tharshish, and the coming of Sabæa’s queen +to Jerusalem, were what they are represented to be, brilliant +and exotic incidents in the troubled march of Jewish history. +This traffic covered only about a century, and millenniums of +Arab commerce between Ophir and Tharshish envelop it. After +that century Israel and Phœnicia disappear from the Indian +Ocean, and the South Arab takes up the gold trade anew. At +this task the Portuguese found him.</p> + +<p>The Jew was the prosperous visitor of an hour at the port of +the Sabæans. Perhaps their queen made a return call to learn +why he had come and whence the gold in his wallet. The answer +was not in Solomon himself; truly, indeed, the half was never +told her. It was David whose conquest of Edom had given<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span> +Israel temporary control of important trade routes. The wealth +of Solomon was in part a transportation charge, and in part a +police tax upon “the traffick of the spice merchants and all the +kings of Arabia.” They paid it rather than have their caravans +plundered on the roads the Jew controlled. The gold that +Israel and Phœnicia brought from Tharshish direct, like the gold +which Spain brought from Peru, was not obtained in trade exchanges. +It was wrung from slave labor, Hottentots and Bushmen—whose +present physiognomy and complexion show an Asiatic +strain—toiling for taskmasters, as since they have toiled, +under the sjambok.</p> + +<p>Ezion-geber, the Jewish port, lay at the head of the Red Sea. +Tharshish lay nearly six thousand miles to the south as coasting +vessels made it, and voyages were probably by way of some +port in the west of Madagascar, where Semitic influences have +been discovered. Midway between Tharshish and Ezion-geber, +and midway between the east and west of antiquity, lay Ophir. +The age-long vision of a golden land lifts from its name. In its +stead loom the shadowy outlines of a mighty port, with strange +ships at anchor, and clinking bags and odorous bales upon the +wharves, and hawk-faced merchants at their traffic, where now +are ruins and the oblivious sea.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Lotus-land</i></p> + +<p>The country of the lotus-eaters was a promontory jutting out +into the Mediterranean Sea from the land of the Gindanes. +Whoso tastes the fruit of the lotus, Homer said, forgets his native +shore, his family, and his friends. In an age that avows +a world-weariness to which the wandering Greeks were strangers, +this brief glimpse of a land released from remembrance +has been an arresting thing.</p> + +<p>Later poets expanded the Odyssey legend, wrote new significances +into it, and sometimes provided it with a different ending, +as in the fine poem of Tennyson. The Victorian gives no +hint that the companions of Ulysses fled from Lotus-land. It +seemed to them better to stay there. They had traveled unto +fatigue, and their island homes were still far beyond the wave. +Dear as were the last embraces of their wives, it was likely that +themselves were now all but forgotten, that their sons had inherited<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span> +them, and that their deeds before Troy were sung by +minstrels as things of long ago. Why return like ghosts to trouble +joy? So the mariners burst into choric song declaring the +delights of long rest and dreamful ease and mild-minded melancholy +upon a slumbrous shore. Then the rhythm changes to +carry their resolve:</p> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">We have had enough of action, and of motion we,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething free,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined</div> + <div class="verse indent0">On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + + +<p>In the Homeric story the lotus strand was a halting place for +Ulysses and his men on the way from the Ciconian coast to their +adventure with the giant Polyphemus. Their momentary pause +in the enchanted Libyan land is the slightest episode in the +Odyssey. After nine days of stormy faring they anchor by a +fragrant beach and go ashore for water and a feast. Three of +their number wander farther and hospitable natives bid them +eat the fruit of their trees. Having eaten, a spell of oblivion +falls on them and they would travel no more; but their comrades +bind them and carry them aboard the ships, and hastily +the company sails away.</p> + +<p>Herodotus locates the land of the lotus-eaters in the Syrtic +district of the North African coast, whence a caravan route leads +to Egypt. This people, he says, live entirely on the fruit of the +lotus tree. The fruit is about the size of the lentisk berry, and +in sweetness resembles the date. The lotophagi even succeed in +obtaining from it a sort of wine. Rawlinson, who identifies the +lotus with the rhamnus, asserts, however, that it looks and tastes +“rather like a bad crab apple.”</p> + +<p>There has been controversy as to what the ancients meant by +the lotus. Some writers said it was a kind of clover, the poa of +Strabo. The lotus of Egypt and India is a water lily whose +roots and seeds are eaten by the poor. Pliny says that the lotus +of Homer was a tree “the size of a pear tree, though Cornelius +Nepos calls it low.” The latter describes its fruit as yellow,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span> +the size of a bean, and sweet and pleasant to the taste. It was +pounded into a paste and stored for food, and a wine like mead +was made from it. In the district where Ulysses anchored, and +which has been identified with the modern Jerba, the tree still +flourishes; Arabs eat its fruit and make a wine of it. Its commercial +name is jujube, and in the Mediterranean countries it +is prized as a winter dessert fruit.</p> + +<p>If there were poppy dreams in the orchards of Africa, the +secret of them passed with the wine the ancients brewed there. +The longing for forgetfulness remains. Those who have come +by it honestly through toil have found, as Ulysses did, that +lotus-land is a port of call upon struggling seas.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Incense Country</i></p> + +<p>The world commerce of ancient times was in four commodities—gold, +amber, precious stones, and incense. With transportation +by pack, caravan, and small coasting craft, nothing +of greater bulk or less intrinsic worth could be carried far at +a profit. The first three of these commodities were come upon +more or less by accident. Incense was the root, bark, gum, +seeds, dried leaves, or flowers of various trees, shrubs, and +plants, and was gathered at stated seasons of the year. The business +had the element of certainty, so far as anything could be +certain in ages when land and water travel were pursuits of +hazard, when there was little law upon the desert and none upon +the sea. The incense trade was therefore the great trade of antiquity. +By it the nations of the east, west and south first came +to know one another.</p> + +<p>How important was this traffic Pliny bears witness in his +<i>Natural History</i>. Page after page, chapter after chapter, book +after book are devoted to the incense, perfumes, and unguents +of the East. It is an impatient, although a faithful, testimony. +The Latin writer groans over the enormous prices the precious +gums command, recites how they are sophisticated in the Alexandrian +warehouses with resin, turpentine, and Cyprian wax, +lists the nine substances with which Indian nard is imitated, and +rails at the superstition which uses scents for sacrifice, the sinful +luxury which drenches the body with them, and even mingles +them in the wines of the table. Consider, he says, the vast<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span> +number of funerals celebrated every year throughout the world, +the heaps of incense piled up in honor of the dead, the quantities +offered to the gods. Is anybody the better off? It seems +to Pliny that the immortal ones were kinder to men when a +salted cake was the best they could hope to find on their altars. +At the very lowest the Indians, Seres, and Arabians took from +the empire one hundred million sesterces every year—“so +dearly do we pay for our luxury and our women.”</p> + +<p>Not content with the prodigality of nature, Pliny continues, +luxury has seen fit to combine all pleasant odors into a single +whole, and hence have come unguents. The Persians quite +soak themselves in these blended perfumes, to conceal from +themselves that they live in dirt. There are Romans who go +still further, for they plaster themselves with unguents. Some +of them, and Nero of the number, even sprinkle therewith the +soles of their feet. On festival days the very eagles on battle +standards, thick with the dust of the camps, are anointed. +Pearls and jewels have a value that lasts, but scents die as +soon as they are born. To what good is this all, Pliny asks +again.</p> + +<p>Few others put this question. For the living, for the dead, +and for the very gods, there must be a savor of satisfaction. +Gums were burned to purify the air of dwellings, to mask the +odors of burnt sacrifice, to disguise the intimations of mortality +when the bodies of the dead smoked on funeral pyres. Their +use to these ends was the primitive sanitary science of the +East. In the rites of embalming, their fumes reanimated +mummy and mortuary statue and nourished the souls of the +departed on the journey to the spirit-land. The gods above were +fed by the smoke of sacrifice and their favor was flattered +for the projects of men. So it befell in Egypt, and the pages of +Herodotus are in evidence that the whole country had become +a vast drug shop.</p> + +<p>Musk came from the highlands of China, and from India, +gum benzoin from Java, sandalwood from the Golden Chersonese, +cloves from Eastern islands unknown. Balm of Gilead, +the most precious of odoriferous substances, came from Judea, +and according to Pliny battles had been fought over it between +Jews and Romans. There were other spicy roots, leaves, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span> +petals that grew in desert gardens or mountain parks of the +East; the geography of scents was wide and vague and little +known. But the true incense land of the ancients had definite +bounds. It lay on both sides of the promontory known variously +as the Aromatic Cape and as the Cape of Spices and now +as Cape Guardafui, where the continent of Africa juts farthest +into the Indian Ocean. This land had two provinces—Punt, +which is the modern Somaliland, and Sabæa, which is southern +Arabia.</p> + +<p>Cinnamon and cassia were taken from Punt, and some frankincense, +the “true incense,” as the name signifies and as the +Christian altars of Europe afterward came to know it. From +Sabæa were taken large quantities of frankincense, as well as +myrrh and ladanum. The latter country had credit also in the +ancient world for a long list of balms that came from elsewhere. +The secret, never more than half known, was that +Sabæa imported odorous things as well as grew them. It +brought them in from more eastern countries and sent them +forth on its ships, or on the camels that traveled the incense +route northward to Petra, whence they were dispensed to the +Mediterranean peoples. The incense land was the center of +world commerce, which was above all a traffic in sweet savors, +and the countries commanding the southern approach to the Red +Sea had the same significant relation to it that now belongs to +Suez, the northern approach to that sea.</p> + +<p>The air of incense-land was as heavy with traditions as it +was reported to be with odors. The desert hemmed in both Punt +and Sabæa, and its mysteries stole in with the sands. The rites +of a dim religion were wrapped around the harvest of the +precious gums. Merchant subtleties spread afar the stories of +more than mortal perils to be met by those who entered the +places of fragrance. The effect of these fables was to enhance +prices and confirm the Arab monopoly. To the ancient world +the land of incense was an enchanting, and yet a forbidding +and a forbidden land.</p> + +<p>Its enchantments were felt even at a distance. The whole +country of Arabia, says Herodotus, is scented with spices, and +exhales an odor marvelously sweet. Diodorus declares that even +before the mariner sights this coast its delights come out to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span> +meet him upon the sea. The breezes of spring waft to him +the fragrant breath of trees and shrubs, and keener satisfactions +than he may have elsewhere, for these are no old and stored +aromatics, but fresh from new-blown flowers. Pliny is skeptical, +yet repeats the story with further detail. Under the rays +of the noonday sun, he says, the entire peninsula gives forth +an indescribable perfume, the blend of many beguiling odors. +Thus it was, while still far out, the fleet of Alexander knew it +was nearing Araby the Happy.</p> + +<p>The languors of incense floated through the towns and villages +of Sabæa and enveloped its lofty capital. Timbers and +floors of the houses were of sweet-scented woods, and fagots of +frankincense and sticks of myrrh, burning in the fireplaces, gave +them a perpetual fragrance of sacrifice. To counteract these +bland but debilitating suavities the Arabians of the south +brought the gum of storax down from Syria. This they burned +in goat skins and found its pungent smell a reviving thing.</p> + +<p>Saba, the country’s capital, was a dream-city of spices and +gold. From a steep which commanded the surrounding lands +its temples and palaces reared their roofs amid delightful +groves. The trade of countless centuries had drawn vast riches +to the incense metropolis. The houses of the merchants were +resplendent with precious metals and precious stones. Reclining +upon couches inlaid with silver, they drank from gem-studded +goblets of gold. The camels padding northward, and +the ships faring north, east, and south, brought back the wherewithal +to sustain a life of sensual magnificence. Chief among +the voluptuaries was the Sabæan king. From his seat of judgment +in a gorgeous palace he determined all disputes with the +authority of an absolute sovereign. Yet his own freedom of +movement was restrained by the priestly class. He was a prisoner +of the palace, and, should he venture outside its scented +courts and shaded gardens, the rabble assailed him with stones +and drove him back to them. So an oracle had prescribed.</p> + +<p>Over the gathering of incense, and its coming and going in +the land of the Sabæans, priestly tradition had flung a mantle +rich in fable and somber with fear. Eight days’ journey to +the northeast from the capital, in a district a hundred miles +long by fifty miles wide, stood the sacred groves in a soil of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span> +milky white a little inclining to red. Thither at the time of +the rising of the Dog Star, when the heat was most intense, +went the Arabians to make incisions in the trees. The unctuous +foam which gathered on the bark was permitted to remain and +harden; nor was it removed until autumn. The gum which +assumed the form of globular drops was called male incense. +More esteemed were the pieces where two drops had adhered +into the semblance of breasts, which were called female incense.</p> + +<p>By inherited right the harvest was the privilege of three thousand +families. Their persons were deemed to be holy. While +pruning the trees and gathering the gum they must receive no +pollution either by intercourse with women or by coming in +contact with the dead. They carried their produce to the capital +upon camels by an appointed road and were admitted at a single +gate. It was death to deviate from this road.</p> + +<p>Various deductions were made from the camel loads to pay +for carriage, the service of the temples, the expenses of the state, +and the transportation taxes laid by other countries through +which the overland caravans were to pass. The entertainment +of strangers at the capital was provided for out of a tithe taken +from frankincense. In its journey of more than a thousand +miles northward from Saba to Petra in the land of the Nabatheans, +successive peoples, beginning with the Minæans, received +the freight and passed it on. Mecca and Medina, afterward holy +places of Islam, were stations on the incense route. It was a +drowsy traffic that went up and down this ancient road. The +suns of the desert, falling upon the bales, drew from them that +which made the carriers nod upon their beasts in a dream of +delight. They revived themselves, legend continues, by inhaling +the pungent fumes of bitumen and goat’s-beard.</p> + +<p>There were other than ritual terrors in gathering frankincense +and the related substances. Herodotus heard the story +that the groves were infested by small winged serpents of the +same sort that invade Egypt. These clung to every branch, but +if one burned gum storax under the tree they were dislodged; +a like report had it that in Malabar great serpents coiled themselves +about the sandalwood trees.</p> + +<p>The cinnamon and cassia which the Sabæans imported from +Punt, on the African side of the Gulf of Aden, or themselves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span> +gathered there, were harvested with difficulty and peril, and only +after the consent of the god had been given. The entrails of +forty-four oxen, goats, and rams were offered up, nothing could +be done before sunrise or after sunset, and when the harvest was +made a priest set aside the god’s portion with the point of a +spear. A third portion was devoted to the sun, and this burst +at once into flame.</p> + +<p>There were great birds which collected sticks of cinnamon for +their nests, which were fastened with mud to a sheer face of +rock that foot of man could not climb. Sometimes these nests +were broken down by means of leaden arrows. Sometimes the +merchants, like the diamond-seekers in the Sindbad tale, placed +large pieces of meat on the ground, and their weight caused the +nests to fall when the mother birds bore the meat aloft to their +young. The Arabians, returning, collected the cinnamon.</p> + +<p>Cassia grew on the marshy shores of a lake where were a +number of winged animals much resembling bats, which +screeched horribly and were very valiant. The Arabians covered +their bodies and faces with the hides of oxen, leaving only +holes for their eyes. While they gathered the bark they were +kept busy shielding their eyes from assault from the air.</p> + +<p>There was still a long journey for these aromatic stuffs before +they reached the marts of Arabia, at least when the people of +Punt themselves made it. They put forth over vast tracts of sea +upon rafts which were neither steered by rudder nor impelled +by oar or sail. At the time of the winter equinox they went to +sea on a wind from the southeast, and when they doubled the +promontory of Arabia the northeast wind met them and took them +from gulf to gulf. They skirted shores where forests, set afire +by the heat of the sun, were blazing. It might be five years +before their rafts, laden with copper, cloths, bracelets, and necklaces, +were hauled up again on the beaches of Somaliland.</p> + +<p>There may have been a memory of musk in stories told about +cassia and about ladanum. The ends of cassia branches of the +length of two fingers were cut off and sewn in fresh skins of +cattle. When the skins putrified, maggots ate away the woody +parts but left the bark, which was too bitter to invite their attack. +As to the ladanum of northern Arabia, Herodotus remarks that, +although found in a most inodorous place, it is the sweetest-scented<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span> +of all substances. Goats gathered it. These animals +cropped the sprouting shoots of mastic branches when they were +swollen with a juice of remarkable sweetness. Drops thereof +were wiped up by their unlucky beards, and became clotted with +dust and dry from the sun. Men with shears collected it, and +that was why the Romans found goats’ hairs therein.</p> + +<p>Out of such stories were framed the geography, polity, and +ritual of the land of incense. What came of them was a monopoly, +a mystery, a spell that was slow to pass. In the smoke +of altars one may almost glimpse the temples of this dim +domain, and in the tinkle of the censing bell hear the bells of +camels along an ancient path.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Gog and Magog of the North</i></p> + +<p>The pastures of High Asia were the range of Gog and Magog. +The Caucasus was their prison home. Sometimes these formidable +races were pictured as roving the steppes and deserts of +the north, sometimes as swinging back and forth against the +walls of mountain valleys, where the policy of Alexander or +divine compassion for the rest of mankind had confined them. +Always they were seeking a way out, and sometime they would +find it, and the world would shudder down in ruin under their +tread.</p> + +<p>These races were the nightmare vision of two thousand years. +There are words the very sound of which evokes the myths of +fear. Such are Gog and Magog, with their harsh internal echo +and inhuman suggestion. They were associated with the terrors +of Scythia, known and unknown—the incursions of dwarfish, +shrill-voiced nomads upon the civilizations of the south, the +sense of vast desolate spaces where prodigious things had their +beginning. These misgivings, made definite by biblical imagery +and by the literal statements of the Koran, grew into legends +which were enriched by contributions from classic fable and +shared by the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem worlds.</p> + +<p>Magog was a son of Japheth, says Genesis. In the book of +<i>Ezekiel</i> it is declared that the Lord will bring Gog with his horses +and horsemen out of the north, and Persia, Ethiopia and Libya +with them. They shall ascend and come like a storm and like a +cloud shall cover the land. They shall think an evil thought, to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span> +take a spoil and to take a prey. But the fury of the Lord shall +come up in His face and there shall be a great shaking in the +land of Israel. Gog shall fall upon the open field, and a fire +will be sent upon Magog and among them that dwell carelessly +in the isles. The wreckage of their shields and staves shall burn +for seven years, and Gog shall have a place of graves in Israel, +the valley of the passengers on the east of the sea.</p> + +<p>The burden of prophecy is taken up anew in <i>Revelation</i>. +When the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed +from his prison and shall go out to deceive the nations which are +in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them +together to battle. They shall compass the camp of the saints +about, and fire will come down out of heaven to devour them.</p> + +<p>The Koran buttressed biblical prophecy with a historical narrative. +It concerns the journeys of Doul-Karnain, the Lord of +the Two Horns, a personage variously identified with Alexander, +Julius Cæsar and Augustus, but by the east believed to be Alexander. +When he went forth with his army he marched to the +going down of the sun and found it set in a miry fount. He +marched to the farthest east and found a people oppressed by +the heat. Then he marched north and in a valley between two +mountains he found a people who told him that Gog and Magog +laid waste their land. “Build us, O Doul-Karnain,” they +begged, “a rampart between us and them.” He bade them bring +him blocks of iron, and when he had filled the space between the +mountains, he caused them to blow upon the wall with bellows, +and heated it fiery hot, and poured molten brass upon it. Gog +and Magog could not scale it, nor were they able to dig +through it.</p> + +<p>Ezekiel wrote when the memory of an invasion of Scythian +horsemen was still fresh in Asia the Less, and he drew his imagery +from it; to him, and to John after him, Gog and Magog +were symbols of earthly power opposed to Jehovah. But the +Semitic world, Jew and Arab alike, scanned the vigorous picture +of a nation from the steppes riding over the world, and saw in it +inspired prophecy of a Mongol devastation of civilization. So +Josephus thought: Gog and Magog were Scythian peoples. +Thrice and four times, on the immense canvases of Asia and +eastern Europe, the fading colors of the Ezekiel vision took on +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span>the freshness of actuality—and the restoring brush was wielded +in turn by Genghis Khan, Othman, Tamerlane and Akbar. Thus +history has been kind to men of literal minds; but it has seen a +misshapen fable grow up in its shadow. The north had been +the home of the monstrous races of classic myth, and all their +bestial and godless traits were merged in the Tartar tradition.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f17"> +<img src="images/fig17.jpg" alt="rampart"> +<p class="caption">“BUILD US, O DOUL-KARNAIN,” THEY BEGGED, “A RAMPART BETWEEN US AND THEM”</p> +</div> + +<p>Bald, deformed anthropophagi mustered behind the barrier +of the Scythian mountains. Gog was the Turkish race, Magog +was the Mongol. The campaigns of Alexander had left legends +that persist to this day in Central Asia, and these were gathered +up in the accumulating myth. Alexander had also left earthworks +and monuments of his marches in those regions, and these +became memorials of the terrible peoples of Ezekiel. At first +the two races were placed a little to the north of Palestine, but +tradition moved them farther to the north and east to bring them +within the Alexander cycle. As Eden was at the end of the east, +so Gog and Magog were in the farther north, “in Scythia beyond +the Caucasus and near the Caspian Sea,” says St. Jerome, writing +in an age when that sea was thought to be a gulf of the +Arctic Ocean.</p> + +<p>Confused reports about the Chinese wall grew into a fable of +Iskander’s wall, which at one time was deemed to be in the Far +East, and again was identified with the fortifications which the +Sassanid kings had built in the passes of the Caucasus, fragments +of which are still to be seen at Derbent. It seemed most +fitting that the Caucasus with its towering peaks, its broken valleys, +and its remnants of diverse peoples should be the mountain +prison of these predestined scourges of mankind. There +also were to be found the Ten Lost Tribes, who had joined them. +Maundeville merges the two traditions and connects them with +a third; Gog and Magog and their Jewish associates all paid +tribute to the queen of Amazonia. According to Ricold of +Monte Croce, they could not with patience hear Alexander’s +name.</p> + +<p>There was a legend that both races escaped, guided by an owl +and a hare over their mountain walls; wherefore the Tartars +wear owl feathers in honor of their deliverance. But Astrakhan +has the story that they are prisoned still in remote valleys of the +Caucasus, where twelve trumpets, blown by the winds, keep them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span> +in terror against the day when they shall break forth and destroy +the world.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Prester John’s Kingdom</i></p> + +<p>When the Christian world was hard put to hold its own in its +crusading adventure in the Holy Land, word came to it that it +had an ally in the rear of Islam. Somewhere in the remote east, +on the farther side of Persia and Armenia, there was a king and +priest who ruled over a Christian people. He had taken the field +with a great army, defeated the Moslem kings of Media and +Persia, seized their capital of Ecbatana, and marched to the +relief of Jerusalem. Without boats to cross the Tigris, he had +gone north into colder lands, intending to cross upon the ice and +reach the holy city by a roundabout road. But the winters +proved too mild, and after waiting several years he had gone +home again.</p> + +<p>Thus the Europe of the twelfth century heard the story of +Prester John. In one form or another it was repeated by Otto +of Freisingen, by Maimonides, and by Benjamin of Tudela. +In the travels of the latter, John is a Jewish king reigning in +gorgeous state over a Jewish nation of the deserts. Popular +tradition had it that the royal Christian of Asia had addressed +a letter to the Pope of Rome and to the Greek and Roman emperors. +Its recital of splendors and prodigies was a challenge +to the spirit of wonder.</p> + +<p>“I, Presbyter Joannes, the Lord of Lords, surpass all under +heaven in virtue, in riches and in power,” runs the letter. “In +the three Indies our Magnificence rules, and our land extends +beyond India; it reaches towards the sunrise over the wastes, and +it trends towards deserted Babylon near the tower of Babel. +Seventy-two provinces, of which only a few are Christian, serve +us. Each has its own king but all are tributary to us. Our land +streams with honey, and is overflowing with milk. In one region +grows no poisonous herb, nor does a querulous frog ever quack +in it, no scorpion exists, nor does the serpent glide amongst the +grass, nor can any poisonous animals exist in it or injure any +one. With us no one lies, for he who speaks a lie is thenceforth +regarded as dead.”</p> + +<p>The royal letter writer recites that in his dominions is the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span> +earthly paradise, claims as his subjects all the peoples of +prodigy, and describes in detail his human menagerie in the +Caucasus. The accursed fifteen nations imprisoned there eat +their foes, only desisting at Prester John’s word. They will +“burst forth at the end of the world, in the time of Antichrist, +and overrun all the abodes of the Saints as well as the great city +Rome, which, by the way, we are prepared to give our son who +will be born, along with all Italy, Germany, the two Gauls, +Britain and Scotland.”</p> + +<p>Whether this letter was ever received or no, Pope Alexander +III did dispatch to Prester John a letter which, between the lines, +reads like the reply to an irritating missive. It asserted the +papal claims to universal dominion and demanded that the +priest-king recognize them. The messenger who bore it eastward +in 1177 was never heard of again. Meanwhile the pagan +Mongols had broken into Europe and it became papal policy to +conciliate their good will and if possible win them over as allies +of the Cross against the Crescent. The monkish envoys who +penetrated the heart of Asia found a power as vast as that +claimed for the Christian monarch, but it was in the hands of +the sons of Genghis Khan; and there was no Prester John.</p> + +<p>This was a Nestorian fable, said Rubruquis; “about nothing +they make a great fuss.” As to their King John, “I traversed his +pastures and no one knew anything about him.” Rubruquis +speaks of Ung-Khan, prince of a province in Mongolia southeast +of Lake Baikal. According to Marco Polo, who entered +Asia in the same generation, this was Prester John. The Christian +chief of a Hunnish tribe, he was defeated and slain by +Genghis Khan. The legend faded out of the consciousness of +the west, only to be revived and domiciled in Abyssinia when +Europe learned of the power of its sovereigns and that they were +Christians of the Coptic faith.</p> + +<p>The tale of this Asiatic priest-king who wanted to put his +armies at the disposal of the hard-beset Christians of the west +has the irony and pathos of allegory. Without purporting to do +so, it tells the story of a great eastern adventure of the church +which the Greek and Roman communions had almost forgotten. +The Nestorians had been cast into outer darkness in one of the +schisms of the Eastern Empire in the unhappy sixth century,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span> +when, as Gibbon says, Christians were “more solicitous to explore +the nature, than to practice the laws, of their founder.” +The offense of Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, was that +he called Mary the Mother of Jesus and not the Mother of God, +and contended that in Christ the divine and human natures subsisted +independently of each other. He was excommunicated, +and died in exile.</p> + +<p>His followers, driven from the empire, went forth into Asia +and established an empire of the spirit wide as that afterward +claimed for the Prester John of legend. They founded churches +in Persia, Bokhara, Siam, and Sumatra. They penetrated India +and contended with Buddhism in Tibet. They won millions of +followers in Cathay, where their religion was tolerated under an +imperial edict of the seventh century as “virtuous, mysterious, +and pacific.” From Palestine to China they held the field for +the Christian faith, and their communicants were more numerous +than those of either the Greek or Roman church. There are +places in Asia which have not seen a Christian missionary since +the Nestorians passed, as soon they did. In Kurdistan and +Persia their faith survives in the affections of perhaps three +hundred thousand worshipers.</p> + +<p>It was the weakness of this faith that it nowhere had a country +of its own, and therefore no powerful central hierarchy sleepless +in its cause. For better or worse it was never able to draw the +sword; it spread itself only by persuasion and the tolerance of +pagan countries whose princes followed other cults. It must be +that some dreamy Nestorian monk, familiar with the west and +its ways, and pondering what his church had done in Asia and +might have done had the fates been kinder, wrote in the days +of its decline the letter which gave it the country it lacked and +set forth its spiritual dominion in terms the west would understand.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Witch Realm of Lapland</i></p> + +<p>In the dark ages a tradition arose that there was a witch +nation in the north of Europe. Its citizens were the Lapps, +whose descendants still fish, hunt and pasture their reindeer in +the wilder districts of Norway, Sweden, Russia, and Finland. +They are the most timid and inoffensive of men. They seem<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span> +never to have had government of their own, but have been overtaxed, +exploited, and at times enslaved by stronger neighbors. +Swarthy, dwarfish, and shrill-spoken, with broad heads, upturned +noses, and bandy legs, they may be the survivors of the +small, dark race that once overspread the continent. Such a +people would need supernatural powers to overcome their manifold +handicaps, and with these legend endowed them.</p> + +<p>Their sinister reputation came to them because of their +gnome-like aspect, because they were still in the stone age of +culture, and perhaps because they were pagans after the remainder +of Europe had become Christian. Their magic drums +were the terror of settled lands. They could make themselves +invisible. They could raise the winds. “They tye three knottes +on a strynge hangying at a whyp,” wrote Richard Eden in 1577. +“When they lose one of these they rayse tollerable wynds. +When they lose another the wynd is more vehement; but by +losing the thyrd they rayse playne tempests as in old time they +were accustomed to rayse thunder and lyghtnyng.” Tales of +ships which went too near to Lapland and were heard of no +more were rife among the seafaring states. Yet Ivan the Terrible +sent for Lapp magicians to read the portent of a comet, +and the Norse princess Gunhild lived in their country to learn +its lore.</p> + +<p>Much of the superstition of the neighbor Finns has entered +into the Lapland tradition. Their magic songs picture their +small cousins as living in almost legendary lands—Lapland +itself, a dark, vague northern country where the people wore +tall hats and spoke in whining, mumbling voices: Turja Fells, +with its wonder-working maidens; and Pohjola, “home of the +north,” where the old woman, Louhiatar, “the blind whore of +Pohjola,” queened it in a realm that had neither sun nor moon. +These songs have much to say of hazy headlands and spells +wrought upon them and on the main. A furious old wife sweeps +the sea, with a cloth of sparks on her head, and on her shoulders +a cloak of foam. Four maidens of the air mow grass on a cloudy +cape in a foggy island. The sharp maiden Terhetar sifts the +mist on a shrouded promontory. A wood spirit shrieks at people +and fills the forest with murk when they wander there.</p> + +<p>In the Orkney and Shetland islands, the Lapps were known<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span> +as Finn-folk. Sometimes they crossed the North Sea and, hiding +their identity, appeared among the islanders, with whom they intermarried; +skilled persons, however, detected them by their +wrinkled visages and the odd blemishes upon their skins. The +visitors knew the language of birds and beasts, into which, +indeed, they could transform themselves; and with impunity +they rode the tricky water-horse. They could control the +weather, predict the future, cure diseases of men and cattle. It +was a slight task for them to make the passage from the continent. +Most people believed they swam across—for either they +were seals who took human form, or men who could take the +seal form. Sometimes when fisher folk harpooned a large seal +they found a strange little man struggling in the waves.</p> + +<p>These credulous island tales carry the legend of a witch +nation of the north almost into the twentieth century.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Spice Islands</i></p> + +<p>The ninth edition of the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i> forgot to +mention the Moluccas. A standard atlas of the world published +in the United States neglects to describe them. A day’s sail to +the southeast from the large Philippine island of Mindanao +brings one to them, but American travelers do not make this +trip. Only a strait, to the right and to the left, separates the +group from New Guinea and Celebes, and narrow are the seas +between it and Java to the south; yet these are names of consequence +in modern geography, while it is a name all but unknown. +There is magic, modern magic, in the tropic islands of +the Pacific. These islands do not share it, though they lie on +both sides of the Line in the fairest of summer seas.</p> + +<p>They have another name, the Spice Islands. For the space +of two centuries men who followed the great waters thought of +them and of little else. It was spices that Columbus sought +when he sailed west from Palos in 1492 and the man who discovered +sassafras in America had honors comparable to his own. +It was an eastern route to the spice regions that engaged Portuguese +endeavor and conducted the ships of da Gama into the +Indian Ocean in 1497. It was a western route to the Spice +Islands that Magellan sought in his voyage around the world a +score of years afterward. The royal grant to del Cano, who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span> +brought one ship home from that expedition, was conditioned +on the annual payment of two cinnamon sticks, three nutmegs, +and twelve cloves; and the coat of arms which he was licensed +to bear had the effigies of two Malay kings holding spice +branches; to have gone around the world seemed to Spain a +lesser thing than to have discovered a route to these islands. +To reach them was the object of the attempts to open a northeast +passage around Asia and a northwest passage around +America. To determine their ownership was the subject of two +papal bulls and a dynastic agreement between the royalties of +Spain and Portugal; and they fell at last as a prize of war to +Holland.</p> + +<p>In the age of discovery India and China were small words +compared with the Spice Islands. The place this forgotten group +once held in the imagination of men is one of the great illusions +of commercial geography.</p> + +<p>Nor was it all illusion. If the world trade of antiquity was +mainly in incense, the world trade of the Middle Ages was +mainly in spices, and for a similar cause—with the primitive +transportation of the period, less valuable and more bulky things +could not be carried far at a profit. Nowadays the meats, +grains, vegetables, and fruits of all climes travel long distances +to the dinner table, and men’s diet has both variety and quality. +In former times the range of eatables was small, the quality +poor. The service of spices was to improve and diversify the +flavors of viands, to disguise the shortcomings of mediæval +cookery as well as mediæval larders. The salt-fish diet of +European winters created the spice trade with the east.</p> + +<p>When the Turkish seizure of Egypt in 1521 closed the +southern overland route to the east the same year that both the +Portuguese and the Spanish reached the Moluccas, the stage was +set for the romance of spice. Passing from unknown sources +through various hands, it had reached the west at a tenfold price. +Here was opportunity to deal direct in what all Europe wanted.</p> + +<p>It was known that these were not the only spice lands. Cassia +grew in Somaliland and cinnamon in Ceylon, and both were +used in food as well as incense. The ginger root came from a +reed of Cochin-China. Benjamin of Tudela, Ibn Batuta, and +Friar Odoric had described the pepper “forests” of Malabar,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span> +and Marignolli had even told of pepper wars between Jews and +Christians. Through the Chinese port of Amoy, so Polo thought, +there passed a hundred times as much pepper as came to all +Christendom. But somehow the Moluccas, whence came cloves, +nutmegs, and mace—the husks of nutmegs—seemed to be the +kingdom of spicery.</p> + +<p>They had won this distinction centuries before the first western +ship entered those seas. Although the islands have an area of +only twenty-five thousand square miles and a population of less +than four hundred thousand persons, their two sultanates of +Tidor and Ternate achieved dominion at about the same time +as the Italian republics of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, which in +power they paralleled; and the one group of states, no less than +the other, lived on the spice trade. The colonial empire of the +Moluccas extended over the neighboring archipelagoes and penetrated +the continent; their trading settlements dotted the wide +spaces of Malaysia. Java was their export market, and there +Polo saw the testimonials of their power in a spice trade that +seemed to him to account for the greater part of the world’s +supply of aromatic and pungent vegetable substances. They had +already entered into a political decline when the Europeans +came, and this eastern venture of the Portuguese executed for +them the same decree of fate that it was to do for the maritime +states of the Mediterranean.</p> + +<p>When Serrano reached the Moluccas he wrote to his friend, +Magellan: “I have discovered yet another new world, larger and +richer than that found by Vasco da Gama.” The caravels of +Portugal went no farther, and the nation took such pains as it +could that none others should go so far. It was Portuguese +policy in the spice trade, as it had been Arab policy in the incense +trade, that the sources of supply should remain unknown. +Always the unknown is magnified. Robert Thorne, writing from +the Spanish court in 1527, declared that the islands abounded +not only in cloves, nutmegs, mace, and cinnamon, but in “Golde, +Rubies, Diamondes, Balasses, Garnates, Jacincts, and other +stones and pearles.” The precious commodities he thought the +simple natives would part with on equal terms for the lead, tin, +and iron of the north; and, measure for measure, they would +traffic their spices for corn, their diamonds for pieces of glass.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span></p> + +<p>In these islands fable found another home. Here, it was said, +were men having spurs on their ankles like cocks, horned hogs, +hens that laid their eggs several feet under ground, oysters so +large that the shells were used as baptismal fonts for children, +crabs with claws so strong that they could break the iron of a +pick-ax, stones which grew like fish and out of which men made +lime, and a river well stored with finny creatures and yet so hot +that it scalded the unwary bather. Drake, refitting here in his +voyage around the world, saw “an infinite swarme of fiery +wormes flying at night making such a shew and light as if every +twigge or tree had been a burning candle.” Also he saw bats as +big as hens and crayfish that dug holes like conies, and one of +which was a meal for four hungry men.</p> + +<p>These decorations of fancy can add but little to the great +theme of forgotten islands once the goal of the world’s desire.</p> + +<p>There was another curious chapter written when Dutch succeeded +Portuguese. It was such a chapter as monopoly writes, +and it comes down into the nineteenth century. The ships of +Holland cruised in the surrounding seas, cutting down spice +groves wherever they found them. Before they were exported, +all nutmegs were treated with fire and lime, so that no plantations +could be started elsewhere—but pigeons carried them to +other islands and mother cloves were taken away in hollow bamboos, +and the produce of home orchards multiplied, and the +world spice trade dwindled in relative importance as the food +of mankind became more varied.</p> + +<p>Dampier tells of an island where the ground under the trees +was carpeted with cloves several inches thick, left there to decay. +Another traveler tells of seeing three heaps of nutmegs burning +at one time, each of which would have filled a church. So the +Dutch East India Company reduced supplies in striving to maintain +prices. The spicy odors that floated over the seas surrounding +the Araby of fable became, on occasion, a fact of the +Molucca group. It was the incense neither of nature nor of +religion, but of a dying commerce.</p> + +<p>The nutmegs of to-day are grown mainly in the island of +Penang in the British East Indies and in the island of Grenada +in the British West Indies, while cloves come from the African +island of Zanzibar.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span></p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Arcadia</i></p> + +<p>Arcadia is at once a country and a province of the +imagination.</p> + +<p>The real Arcadia is a mountainous plateau some forty miles +square in the central part of the Peloponnessus of Greece. Its +chief exports in the old time were asses. Its inhabitants were—and +are—gruff-spoken herdsmen and peasants, equally scornful +of letters and politics. They seldom went outside their own valleys, +and few strangers came among them. They had no central +government and no relations with the other states of Greece, +and they wanted to be let alone. Yet they were willing to fight—for +pay; and sometimes they had to fight because Sparta was +their neighbor and they were on a war track. When Arcadia +took the field in force as the ally of another state, almost always +it espoused the wrong side. In the quarrels of the Greek republics, +and in the series of wars in which Pompey, Julius Cæsar, +Mark Antony, and Augustus figured, it shared the hard lot of +the vanquished. Although it lay remote and its spirit was aloof, +the plateau had at least its share of the troubles of the world.</p> + +<p>The Arcadia of poetry occupies the same boundaries, but has +had a different history. All that the poets have done has been +to stress certain facts and forget the others. This land, as it +seemed to them, stood like a fortress of rustic innocence above +the turmoil of politics and the bustle of maritime trade that was +ancient Greece. At each of the corners of the plateau, like bastions, +rose a group of mountain peaks, from which, on a fair +morning, one might see the whole of Arcadia, the neighbor +states of the coastal plains, and beyond them the Mediterranean. +Great groves of gnarled oaks grew upon the mountain sides, +there were pine forests, and in the open fields stood the graceful +plane tree, beloved of the classic world. Though the Arcadians +were unlettered, pastoral song had its birth among them, before +the inspiration of Theocritus gave it a home in Sicily. Pan was +their tutelar deity, and it seemed to the rustics sometimes that +they could hear the plaintive music of his pipes as the goat-god +reclined under the plane tree. In this artless land, myth has it, +Hermes strung cords across the shell of a giant tortoise and +made the harp.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span></p> + +<p>Arcadia was equally skilled at the harp and the flute, and to +these the shepherds sang their simple lays. Aside from their +love of music, they seemed to the Greeks of the towns men of +ignorant rusticity, and they figure as simpletons—“acorn eaters”—in +the Middle Comedy. The Romans copied this as they did +everything else in Greek drama, and the dull Arcadian of the +stage moved Latin audiences to laughter; “Arcades ambo,” both +sweet innocents, is a phrase of the period. But the Romans +caught also the spirit of their rustic song, and the Arkady of +poetry was born in the Virgilian bucolics. Its outlines are disclosed +in the Tenth <i>Eclogue</i>, in passages which tell of browsing +goats, and clover-rifling bees, and bubbling springs where dark-blue +violets blow, and, animating the scene, the vintagers of +mellow grapes and Pan himself, red with elderberries and with +cinnabar. “Arcadians, none but ye can sing!” exclaims the +poet.</p> + +<p>On this delicate outline the Renaissance laid the rich colorings +of its fancy. The rugged, troubled mountain land became +the one land in all the world of simple peace and rustic innocence +and wistful charm of things ideal. Sanazzaro’s Arcadian +pastoral went through sixty editions in a century. France, +Spain, England, and Holland, following Italy, all made their +excursions into Arkady. There was a succession of romantic +sketches wherein lyrics declaring the loves of swains and bewailing +the death of virgins are interspersed with dialogues that +tell in prose the poetry of pastoral life. The classic work of this +school is the <i>Arcadia</i> of Sir Philip Sidney. There, and not in +the Morea, the Arkady that is a province of the imagination may +best be explored.</p> + +<p>It is a tale of knightly youths and dainty maidens and one +sentence will declare its quality. When Pamela disrobed for +the bath and set foot in a stream “the touch of cold water made +a pretty kind of shrugging come over her body, like the twinkling +of the fairest of the fixed stars.”</p> + +<p>Here, says Sidney, the very shepherds have their fancies +lifted to so high conceits as the learned of other nations are +content both to borrow their names and imitate their cunning. +The hills garnish their proud delights with stately trees, the +humble estate of valleys is comforted with the refreshing of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span> +rivers, and the thickets declare the cheerful disposition of well-tuned +birds. Sheep pasture with sober security and by them +are pretty lambs whose bleating oratory craves the dam’s comfort. +The herd girls sing their lays, while on the uplands pipes +the shepherd boy “as though he shall never be old.”</p> + +<p>This is vision, all of it, sunshine and haze working their spell +upon a rocky hillside. There are wolves in the sheepfolds of +life.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Bohemia</i></p> + +<p>Bohemia is a subtler Arcadia, another province of youth and +love and dreams; but youth passes thence, and love is a brief +madness, and the dream may fail of fulfillment. Like Arcadia, +the Bohemia that is a state of mind has its reality in a mountain-girdled +land, but, unlike Arcadia, it has shifted on the map, +refusing to be confined by any boundaries known to geography.</p> + +<p>Now even the name of it, with its music and implications of +poetry, is lost to geography, and in its stead is the harshly +named Czecho-Slovakia. Wherefore the Bohemians of art and +literature, and unregulated impulse and fantasy, have no homeland +they can call their own. This is a fitting thing. In a sense +there never was a Bohemia, although there was always the +fortress land which nature placed at the headwaters of the Elbe +on the borders of Germany. The Celtic tribe whence it was +named is only a shadow in history, and the Bohemians who +fought with Poles and Germans, who wanted to be Protestant, +who started the Thirty Years’ War, who were a dukedom, and +a kingdom, and a part of the Holy Roman Empire, were Slavs +who called themselves Czechs.</p> + +<p>Their literature is older than the German, their university at +Prague was one of the earliest centers of European culture, their +capital is the westernmost outpost of the east in Europe, their +patriotism is a proverb, and their glass fabrics, their beer, and +their beet sugar are staples of world commerce. Upon this +people and their hill-walled home the name of Bohemia and the +traditions of “the gayest and most melancholy country of the +world” fit but loosely. Whence the Bohemia that is a haunting +word on the lips of youth?</p> + +<p>Shakespeare budded it, and the gypsies, and Frenchmen who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span> +knew too little, and Frenchmen who may have known too much. +<i>Winter’s Tale</i> gave Bohemia a seacoast and centuries of +critics a chance to say its author nodded. Yet under the puissant +Ottokar the country did have coasts on both the north and +south of Europe. The scene of the play is near the head of the +Adriatic. The Bohemia it pictures, instead of lying inland, is +probably the maritime province of Istria, and historically the +background is correctly named.</p> + +<p>From <i>Winter’s Tale</i> the Bohemians of the studio and pothouse +got themselves a coast, a glamour, and their First Citizen. +“Places remote enough are in Bohemia,” the poet says. Here +again is shepherd’s love, and a prince whose courtship of a +“queen of curds and cream” is timed by the flowers as they pass—“daffodils +that come before the swallow dares, and take the +winds of March with beauty,” and violets dim, pale primroses, +bold ox-lips and the flower de luce. “The fanned snow that’s +bolted by the northern blasts” is far away.</p> + +<p>On this scene of Arkady enters a figure in no wise Arcadian—Autolycus, +earliest Bohemian, citizen of no country and of +all. He is a vagabond, a minstrel, a ballad-monger, a ribbon +peddler, a cut-purse. His is the footpath way, and his revenue, +he explains, is the silly cheat. “Enter Autolycus singing” is the +stage direction. Exit Autolycus also, singing, “A merry heart +goes all the day, your sad tires in a mile-a.”</p> + +<p>Here is a blood-brother of Villon, and Bohemia is already a +province of his song. It becomes a kingdom with the coming of +the gypsies. Mediæval France called them Bohemians, and +thought them such, as other countries thought them Egyptians. +The roadside was their home, the world was their country, they +paid no taxes or rents, and report had it that they had written +the canons of their creed on cabbage leaves which a donkey +found and devoured. They practiced the wandering arts, were +musicians, metal-workers, horse-dealers, bear-leaders, snake-charmers, +herb-venders; their women read palms, and were +“pleasaunt dauncers.”</p> + +<p>The gypsy philosophy found its first devotees in rogues of old +Paris, who called themselves dukes in Bohemia; Hugo has +sketched their lawless commonwealth in his <i>Notre Dame</i>. The +Bohemia of artists and dreamers, like many a country of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</span> +map, had ruffians, cheats, and vagrants for its early colonists. +It was left to Murger to fix its frontiers, write its laws, and treat +for its admission into the league of ideal lands. The results are +spread at large in his <i>Scenes de la Vie de Bohème</i>.</p> + +<p>Much has been written of the whereabouts of this land and +of the conditions by which one becomes a citizen, but the matter +is found entire in Murger’s preface and in Arthur Symons’s introduction +to this preface. “Any man,” says Murger, “who +enters the path of Art, with his art as his sole means of support, +is bound to pass by way of Bohemia.” To Symons, Bohemia is +“the sentiment youth has of itself at the flowering moment of its +existence”; the sadness of it is the consciousness of the flight of +youth.</p> + +<p>The whereabouts of the country that has been mapped as +neighbor both to Germany and Italy? Murger answers that +Bohemia “neither exists nor can exist anywhere save in Paris.” +But that is only Murger’s answer.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c17">Chapter XVII. Islands of Enchantment</h2> +</div> + + +<p>“<span class="smcap large">The</span> thirteenth day of May we passed by the Island of Paris, +and the Island of the bankes of Helicon, and the Island called +Ditter, where are many boares and the women bee witches.” +This glimpse of Mediterranean travel from one of the sixteenth-century +wanderers whose voyages are recorded in Hakluyt +might be paralleled from the outer Atlantic, the Caribbean, the +Indian Ocean, or the South Seas. In the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, for +example, Sayf Al-Muluk and his companions came in turn to +the isle of the old men of the sea; to the isle of ghouls who sleep +under cover of their ears; to the isle of gigantic blackamoors +with protruding eyeteeth; and to the isle of trained apes “bigger +than he-mules.”</p> + +<p>Such folk seem at home in the wilderness of waters. These +distant spaces of the sea are little worlds of their own which +imagination feels free to dower with peculiar institutions and +stock with peculiar peoples. In islands of reality or fantasy +men place their ideal states, their pirate realms, their abodes of +exile, their refuges from the restraints and traditions of life—the +sanctuaries of pursuits and companionships other than those +of which they have tired. In them, also, they place the regions +of repose; to reach felicity one must cross water.</p> + +<p>On journeys thither one might sight the shores of the folk of +prodigy. There were islands of men, and islands of women, +and islands of hermits, and islands of witches, and islands of +satyrs, and islands of giants, and islands of dwarfs, and islands +of dog-headed, ox-worshiping cannibals. The impulse thus to +set aside a maritime domicile for the nondescript nations was +strongest with Arab geographers and Celtic story-tellers. It +culminates in the romancing narrative of Maundeville, who +dotted the eastern seas with the archipelagoes of his fancy and +settled them with the creatures of fable.</p> + +<p>When the spell of terror woven in classic times began to lift<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span> +from the Atlantic, its islands swam into sight as to the strains +of harp music. They appeared to belong equally to geography +and to poetry. Of Madeira, the discovery of which is associated +with the romance of fugitive English lovers, an old writer +declared that such a delightful land “could only have been discovered +by love.” For reasons as yet unexplained, nearly all +the newly found islands of the eastern Atlantic bore the names +of animals or birds. About them, Sir John Hawkins wrote, “are +certaine flitting Ilands which have been oftentimes seene, and +when men approched neere them, they vanished.” The older +maps show one such island which was called St. Brendan’s. It +is a memory of the Irish sea epics, and the latter are themselves +a review of the entire island story.</p> + +<p>In these five wander-tales the empty spaces of the Atlantic are +filled in with islands which were loaned to the Irish by Homer +from the Odyssey and Plato from his Atlantis; by the Greek, +Lucian, from his Rabelaisian <i>True History</i>; by the Roman, +Seneca, with his vision of a continent in the west; by him who +saw the Sea of Glass from the rock of Patmos; by Arab story-tellers, +and by early Moorish and Spanish chroniclers from their +narratives of the shadowy Antillia, the Isle of the Seven Bishops, +and the legendary journey of the Deluded Folk. Celtic fancy +passed a wand over this jumble of material, and a strange new +world appeared. Headlands of snow and ice and islands of +perpetual summer were within a day’s sail of one another, +pagan fables and monkish marvels were domiciled together, +there was much mist and much sunshine, and around all was +“the mighty and intolerable ocean” which St. Brendan saw at +Sliabh Daidche.</p> + +<p>Tennyson has set one of these tales, <i>The Voyage of Mældune</i>, +to his own music. It was a journey of revenge a chieftain +made with his men to slay the man who has slain his father. +They came to the Silent Isle, where their voices were thinner and +fainter than any flittermouse shriek; to the Isle of Shouting +where wild birds cried from its summit till the steer fell down +at the plow and the harvest died in the field; to the Isle of +Flowers where were blossom and promise of blossom and never +a fruit; to the Isle of Fruits, and in every berry and fruit the +poisonous pleasure of wine; to the Isle of Fire, which shuddered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span> +and shook like a man in a mortal affright; to the Bounteous Isle, +where the men began to be weary, to sigh and to stretch and +yawn; to the Isle of Witches, naked as heaven, who bosomed the +burst of the spray; to the Isle of the Double Towers, that shocked +on each other and butted each other with clashing of bells; and +to the Isle of a Saint, who told the men, “Go back to the Isle of +Finn, and suffer the past to be past.”</p> + +<p>This narrative may stand with variations for all of the Irish +sea tales. Under the sway of some overmastering motive the +hero puts forth upon the deep—for revenge, or to save a comrade +condemned, or to seek a woman, or to reach the Land of +Promise, or to find the Lord upon the sea. The voyagers pass +from island to island. Complaisant Circes greet them from one +shore and indignant female virtue repels them from another. +They come to the isle called the Delicious, to the Isle of Sheep, +to the Isle of Laughter, to the Moving Isle which was a whale’s +back, to the isle which is the mouth of hell. They see demons +racing their horses on a magic course, and red-hot swine issuing +from caves, and stinging cats, and Judas on his rock, and ants +the size of foals. A griffin assaults them, the Cyclopes threaten +them, birds sing psalms to them. Repentant, or triumphant, or +prophetic, or stricken in years, they come back at last to an +Ireland that has forgotten them.</p> + +<p>Who fares on from island to island with these Celtic dreamers +may visit the whole realm of fable.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Sunken Lands</i></p> + +<p>Gazing into the ocean depths in warm latitudes one sees the +fronds of tall aquatic plants sway slightly as if a slow breeze +stirred them. Walls of coral rise there with a wavering semblance +to palaces. The purple mullet swims in and out of sunken +grottos. Such sunlight as reaches them is subdued to softness, +like that admitted by cathedral windows when it is late afternoon. +These seem to be groves and gardens and habitations +under the sea. Beings like one’s fellow mortals, but more beautiful +and gentle, might live there and rove in the dim peace of +meadows beneath the foam and tumult of the reefs.</p> + +<p>Such thoughts come without bidding. Always men have +sought the land of heart’s desire, and sometimes they told themselves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span> +that it was under the sea; or perhaps that what they saw +there was not the promise of what should be but the wreck of +what had been.</p> + +<p>The sea is a mirror as well as a window. It repeats the +curves of shore and sky and all that is between—cornfields, and +grazing cattle, and the burden of orchards, and cottage smoke, +and the loom of church towers. Here is an underworld, though +it be but the simple magic of light upon smooth water. There is +a subtler magic of mist and water and uncertain sun gleams +when one stands on the west coast of Ireland and looks seaward +through the eyes of a people in whom wonder never flickered +down in doubt.</p> + +<p>Dwelling alone on the outer coast of the world as the ancients +knew it, these folk had beheld strange things in the great waters +that roared along their cliffs. Shadowy islands showed themselves +in thick weather, and, though no trace of them remained +when the cloud bank lifted, these were no tricks of mirage +wrought by fog and muffled sunlight. They were isles of enchantment +that might have floated out of sight, but more likely +had sunk beneath the wave, not to emerge again until another +seven years were gone. The glints of splendor upon the distant +sea were not the track of the sun in broken water. They came +from the golden roofs and spires of a sunken city.</p> + +<p>So out of things seen—as in a glass darkly—upon, above, and +under the billow, and out of things imagined or hoped for, men +have wrought the legend of cities that sleep beneath the ocean. +The tale of Atlantis is the oldest form of the legend. But the +tales of lost cities are not legend altogether and the tale of +Atlantis may not be legend altogether. There are submerged +ruins on which romance bases itself as upon reality, there are +authentic historical happenings, and there are local traditions +which, it may be, retain the memory of cities that were upon +islands or coasts engulfed by the sea.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f18"> +<img src="images/fig18.jpg" alt="islands"> +<p class="caption"><i>In Islands Men Placed Their Ideal States.... To Reach Felicity One Must<br> +Cross Water</i></p> +</div> + +<p>Along the Italian coast the columns of sunken Roman villas +have given rise to stories of drowned cities. The ruins of towns +lie under the Zuyder Zee. Some inroad of the deep may be +preserved in the legend of Vineta, the fabled city beneath the +Baltic near the Holstein coast. There have been subsidences +within historical time in the waters about the British Isles, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span>the ocean has taken toll of the English coast itself. The Channel +shoal called the Goodwin Sands, and Seal Rock, fragment of the +Irish island of Inis Fitæ which was split into three pieces in the +eighth century, are tokens of these subsidences. In the Azores +group, scene of the Atlantis legend, four islands appeared in +the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and sank again. Expedition +Island, northwest of Australia, which Dutch naturalists +visited within a generation, lies under seven fathoms of water. +The populous island of Torca in the Indian Ocean went out of +sight in a sheet of flame in 1693. Tuanaki, an island in South +Polar waters, has not been seen in ninety years. The cloud bank +which Peary called Crocker Land has been removed from maps +of the Arctic region. Three new islands have been born in the +Aleutian group, one of them as late as 1909. The strange +stone images on Easter Island have given rise to conjecture that +it might be the remnant of a continent and a civilization lost +beneath the Pacific.</p> + +<p>Thus there is a broad basis of fact for the legends of sunken +cities. Some of these are of great beauty. Whether the product +of pagan or Christian brooding, the sound of church bells is in +them—peals that come floating solemnly to the surface from +towers through which deep waters are moving. When the sunshine +falls upon calm seas, so fisherman say, they can discern +these towers, and rising about them the peaked roofs of houses +like those of the Middle Ages.</p> + +<p>Beyond all others the Celts are the people of the lost lands. +These seem part of the Celtic heritage of defeat and dreams. +The legends of Wales tell of a fair land sunken by the folly of +a drunken prince. The lost Lyonesse, a great promontory of +Cornwall, was such another land, and the Scilly Islands are the +remnants. Tennyson and Swinburne have rescued its memory +from oblivion and Walter de la Mare pictures a scene “in sea-cold +Lyonesse, when the Sabbath eve shafts down on the roofs, +walls and belfries of the foundered town.” The story of Is, +the vanished Breton capital, has been told in folk-song, in +poetry, in stately music. It is one of the haunting fables of +men, and back of it, as of so many tales of ruin and overthrow, +is the figure of a beautiful and wicked woman.</p> + +<p>The city of Is lay far in the west of France, where the coast<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</span> +of Brittany makes its great thrust into the Atlantic. Peasants +point out the blocks, visible at low tide in the Bay of Douarnenez, +which they say are its foundations. The city was builded +in a wide plain below the level of the sea, and strong walls, controlled +by sluice gates, defended it from the encroaching waves. +It was an habitation of vice and pleasure, and it had a king as +blameless as Arthur, and he a daughter as cruel, as lustful, and +as fair of face as Arthur’s sister, Morgan le Fay. King Gradlon +and Princess Dahut are the central figures in the drama of Is.</p> + +<p>Dahut dwelt in a tower, where she entertained a long train +of lovers, drowning each as she tired of him. To please a paramour +she stole from her father’s neck in his sleep the silver key +which unlocked the sluice gates and let in the sea. Awakened +by the warning tumult of the waters, Gradlon mounted a horse +and fled, bearing his daughter with him. But the floods moved +after him and a voice bade him sacrifice to the sea the beautiful +demon who rode with him. Dahut fell to her death in the +waves, and their course was stayed. At Quimper the king rebuilt +his seat, but Is was lost forever beneath the Atlantic. +Though it happened fifteen centuries ago, there are Bretons who +say that the faint chime of bells still comes to them when wind +and tide move shoreward together.</p> + +<p>Nine is the number of islands under the sea to the west of +Erin. They appear above the surface once in seven years. +Though a man may descry them from the coast, yet might he go +toward them in a currach for two days and not come up with +them. Some of them are larger than Ireland itself. They have +been seen by trustworthy observers,—Otway, for example. In +a paper read before the Royal Irish Society, Westropp describes +O Brasile, the best known of these, as he saw it in 1872: “It was +a clear evening with a fine golden sunset, when, just as the sun +went down, a dark island suddenly appeared far out to sea, but +not on the horizon. It had two hills, one wooded; between these, +from a low plain, rose towers and curls of smoke. My mother, +brother, and several friends saw it at the same time. One cried +out that he could see New York!”</p> + +<p>Illusion, but for thousands of years Irish eyes have beheld +these phantom islands lift and fade in the west, and the Celtic +glamour is in the legends that tell them. “Lost Kilsapheen,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span> +sighs the poet, “its palaces and towers of pride ... all buried +in the rushing tide and deep sea waters green.” Churches and +convents and castles are in these islands, and those who have +seen them or thought they saw them report more intimate touches—an +old woman coming out of a cabin to cut a cabbage; the +bleating of sheep and lambs heard in a fog on the open sea; the +apparition of “an old Scotch gentleman” wearing the raiment +of another century upon an enchanted shore. Sometimes a +seeming of tumult troubles these realms of shadow. There are +flames and smoke and fugitives. Then the spell passes and there +is naught but the slant of the gull’s wing and the roll of a porpoise +on a distant billow.</p> + +<p>The inhabitants of the islands are people of a vanished time, +and sealmen, and mermen, and giants, and the prisoners of +giants. If you can find the golden key to one of the sunken +lands it will rise to the surface and remain there; but the key +has been hidden under a cairn or is buried in the ruins of a +Druid temple. There are other ways of lifting the spell. +Casting a clod of earth upon an island when it is above water +may disenchant it. Another way is by dropping a coal of fire +upon it, or knocking the glowing ashes from your pipe upon the +shore, or shooting a red-hot arrow from a boat, for “fire is hostile +to anything phantasmal.” So was Inishbofin fixed above the +surface of the sea. Fishermen landed upon it in a fog and lit +a fire. Then the fog cleared and they saw an old woman driving +a white cow to drink. One of them seized the cow’s tail and +found in his hand a spray of seaweed; and the woman and cow +were turned into rocks. This was ages ago.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Where Eden Lies</i></p> + +<p>Eden, Elysium, and the Fortunate Isles are one. They are +upon the earth and yet not of it. They are no part of the realm +of shades and it is not through the gates of death that one enters +them. Mortal men have dwelt in them, or may reach them, and +thither the heroes pass without leaving “the warm precincts of +the cheerful day.” These are the ideal lands of afternoon sunshine +and airs that are at once a sigh and a caress. The poetry +and pity of men created them that there might be some place of +happiness with portals less somber than those of the tomb, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span> +without the sadness of irrevocable farewells upon the paths that +lead to it.</p> + +<p>So the realms of bliss were placed afar, at the end of difficult +journeys which yet might be attained, or at least attempted. +Eden lay eastward. The Fortunate Isles of the Roman and the +Elysian lands of the Greek and Celt lay westward. In the conception +of men these were islands, Eden almost as much as the +others. The four sacred rivers flowed from it and around it, +and in later times, what men who came near to it particularly +noticed was the sound of falling water.</p> + +<p>It seemed to Columbus that the rushing current of the Orinoco +flowed down from Eden’s steeps. It seemed to men before him +that paradise might lie in the southern hemisphere, deemed “the +noblest and happiest part of the globe,” and perhaps in the +South Seas. There were those who made Eden a coast on the +northern ocean, and others who placed it among the fountains of +Armenia. To most men the island of Ceylon was its seat. +There Carpini heard the plash of its waters, and Maundeville +drank thereof, as he reports, to his bodily betterment.</p> + +<p>The Fortunate Isles, the Elysian abode of the heroes, were +placed by the Greeks in the extreme west, near the river +Oceanus. Their position receded with the advance of world-knowledge +and finally was fixed in the Canary and Madeira +islands, furthest outpost of Roman discovery. Satire though it +is, the <i>True History</i> of Lucian describes the Blessed Islands in +the very term men used when they were glad to believe. As his +party approached these islands, odorous airs came out from +shore, in which one could detect the mingled breath of the rose, +the narcissus, the hyacinth, and the lily. There was music from +harp and lute, and then, as the boat grounded on the beach, “the +guardians of the isle immediately chained us with manacles of +roses, their only fetters.”</p> + +<p>These were the same islands which the Celts called by many +beautiful names and whither the coracles of legend journeyed. +It is hard to tell where the sunken islands of their history give +way to the imaginary islands of their geography, and these to +the ideal lands of their myths. The three groups seem to lie one +behind the other in the outer seas of the <i>Imrama</i>. The farthest +group was the Celtic other-world, and yet so near was it to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span> +coasts of the New World, that a claim for the discovery of +America is based on St. Brendan’s voyage to the Land of +Promise. The group may best be called an archipelago where +pagan and Christian ideals shared dominion. Therein was not +only the Land of Promise, but “Magh Mell of many flowers,” +the Land of Truth, “whose truth was sung without falsehood.” +There was the Land of the Living, and the sensuous Land of +Fair Women. In all these happy islands music swelled, and +laughter, and there was neither wailing nor treachery, and death +was not; and the magic food was unsalted pork, new milk, and +mead.</p> + +<p>It was the singular fate of this god’s land of the Celt to +become confused with the geographical story of both Europe and +America. The memory of actual Irish voyages to the New +World may be in the legend, and inference from wreckage carried +from afar, along with the stuff of old dreams. Of the +latter is a Spanish story wherein the Celtic paradise masks itself +as the Island of the Seven Cities to which seven bishops had led +their flocks to escape the Moor. Men whose hap it was to sight +this shadowy coast were carried in a barge to the shore and +entertained in a lofty hall by men who spoke their own tongue, +though with the antique accent. Europe credited the tale, nor +guessed that the barge was the same as that which bore the +wounded Arthur unto Avalon.</p> + +<p>These dream isles, at once aspiration and allegory, were +found also, or rather they were sought, in the eastern seas. It +is recited in the Buddhist records that the king of Udyana had +a true report of the silver walls and golden roofs of an island +of the sages in distant waters. The Chinese emperor, Tshe +Huan Ti, of the third century before Christ, heard of a happy +land seven hundred miles to the eastward in the Yellow Sea, +and sent young men out to find it. They saw it on a far horizon +and a roseate light was upon it. But storms drove them back. +The Japanese tell of such a land lying toward the sunrise, and +call it Oraisan.</p> + +<p>Maundeville knew of an island in the eastern ocean. It was +something like the places of eternal bliss in the far west, and +yet was the home of people who were much as other men are +except that they were better. When Alexander would have conquered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</span> +them, an embassy bore him this message, “Nothing may +thou take from us but our good Peace,” and he let them alone. +In this isle of Bragman was “No Thief, nor Murderer, nor common +Woman, nor poor Beggar, nor ever was Man slain in that +Country. And because they be so true and so righteous, and so +full of all good Conditions, they were never grieved with Tempests, +nor with Thunder, nor with Lightning, nor with Hail, nor +with Pestilence, nor with War, nor with Hunger, nor with any +other Tribulation, as we be, many Times, amongst us, for our +Sins.”</p> + +<p>The island paradises of mankind lie upon many waters and +in every quarter of the earth. Alike for the Indians of Chile +and of the American Northwest, Elysium was in the distant +Pacific. The natives of Haiti believed it was in western valleys +of their own island. The natives of Australia called it “the +gum-tree country.” The Semang of the Malay Peninsula said +it was across the sea in a land of screw pines and thatch palms. +It was their ancient island home, said the people of the Celebes. +It was northwest of Tonga, the Friendly Islanders thought, and +Bulotu was the name they gave it; yams and breadfruit were +plentiful there, hogs abounded, and there were reefs for shark-catching. +Many Kanaka tribes named it Havaika, which is +perhaps Java, or the Samoan island of Savaii, points of dispersion +in their migrations. The natives of Torres Straits called +it the island of Kibu; in its treetops ghosts sat twittering. But +the Solomon Islander could hear their laughter as they bathed +in the surf of his own sea-befriended paradise. “These Marquesas,” +a nun said to Frederick O’Brien, “make no more of +death than of a journey to another island, and much less than +of a journey to Tahiti.”</p> + +<p>Among races of higher culture Elysium takes on a more +ordered beauty, yet remains naïve. Annwfn is its Brythonic +name and it lies at the end of a long voyage; no infirmity is +there, and sweeter than white wine is the drink from its mighty +well. Before men embarked for it, they said in Babylon, there +was a formidable land journey to take, over a high pass guarded +by scorpion men in the mountains of Masu, along a road of +black darkness, through a park of precious stones, across a +bitter river—and then the waters of death; these may have been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</span> +the Atlantic, or the sea of the Arabs. Elysium was far to the +east in some mellow clime beyond the ocean, so the Slavs +thought; and thither the birds and insects went in autumn. It +is a land of lotus lakes in the west, and its name is Sukhavati, +say the Buddhists of Nippon; out of it comes a continual harmony +of flowing rivers, murmuring leaves, and soft bells swung +by softer winds. It is a kingdom in the northern ocean and its +name is Vaikuntha, some Hindus say. Others speak of a paradise +which they call Svetadvipa, “the white island” that is +somewhere in the north beyond the Sea of Milk.</p> + +<p>For inland peoples the thought of a sea to be crossed, as +every day the sun crosses the sea to its rest, gave way at times +to the thought of a river with a difficult bridge, and paradise on +the farther side. Such in the Hindu classics was the land of the +Uttarakarus which lay on the shores of the northern ocean beyond +the radiance of the sun and the moon. A river that petrified +whatever entered it flowed between it and the countries +of the south. Lakes with golden lotuses and tanks of crystal +water shimmered in the light airs of this favored land. In its +odorous orchards birds always sang, and beautiful maidens, +hanging by their long hair, grew among the blossom-burdened +branches—another glimpse of the enigmatic women of Wak-wak. +Amid the sound of music and laughter these Indian +Hyperboreans did their pious deeds, nor shed the god-unlawful +tear, until ten thousand and ten hundred years had passed. +Then they died, and fowls with sharp beaks carried their bodies +to mountain caves.</p> + +<p>An Irish myth of the Middle Ages holds closer to the facts +of existence than any of these stories of terrestrial felicity, and +there is a note of sadness in the beauty of it. In a lake in +Munster were the islands of life and death. There was no port +for death to enter the first island, but age and pain and sickness +were there, and all the wearinesses of years. Its inhabitants +learned at last to look on the opposite island as the place of +repose, and, steering their barks to its shore, they entered upon +eternal rest.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c18">Chapter XVIII. The Terrible Ocean</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">In</span> some of its moods the sea presents itself as a symbol of +eternity. For ages it was more than the symbol; it was eternity +itself. Men shrank from contemplation of it, as they might +shrink from contemplation of the hereafter. A voyage into its +outer spaces was like the voyage of the soul into the shadows +that lie beyond life. Still, this conception shapes the imagery +and colors the faith of the race. Life is a passage down a river +that reaches an immeasurable sea. Death is a journey upon +dark waters. The bark of salvation spreads its sails for the pure +of heart, and favoring winds waft them to the Beautiful Shore. +In the songs of Christendom one hears soft winds blowing over +expanses of peaceful water. The earth geography of Homer is +the heavenly geography of Bunyan. The Ocean Stream that +flowed around the world is the river that flows by the Throne of +God.</p> + +<p>Classic mythology ties up the sea’s infinities with those of +time through the medium of the Styx, which was at once a +branch of the Ocean Stream and the river that encircled the +land of shades. The lake of Avernus which afforded entrance +to the nether world, Charon’s ferry, the rivers Cocytus, Acheron, +and Phlegethon, and the Stygian Pool itself, all gave to a Roman +death the aspect of maritime adventure, although underground. +The freer Greek fancy placed the Elysium of the soul somewhere +in the western ocean, where the sun sank to rest. There +were the Isles of the Blessed, or Fortunate Isles, where there was +neither rain nor snow, but the shrilly-breathing west wind fanned +and watered the land.</p> + +<p>Other isles were there, the abodes of formidable men and +dangerous women and prodigious animals. But one could get +along very well by accepting the fictions of the poets as good +enough geography and ethnography without launching maritime +expeditions to confirm them. The western ocean offered the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span> +peoples of the Mediterranean no present promise or profit to +match its terrors, and to alloy delights that had too spectral a +cast. Unlike the Indian Ocean, it was not a great highway of +trade. Thick clouds covered it, perpetual darkness reigned +upon it. It was an unnavigable morass and a confusion; so +said Hesiod, Pindar, and Euripides, voicing the beliefs of their +time.</p> + +<p>There was one race that without fear put forth upon the sea. +This was the Phœnicians, and their rich African colony, the +Carthaginians. Their adventures beyond the Pillars of Hercules +brought profit to them, and they saw to it that the tidings +of them should bring dismay to others. A Phœnician fleet sent +out by Necho, a Pharaoh of the XXXVIth dynasty, seems to +have sailed around Africa. About <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 500 a Carthaginian +fleet under Hanno explored the African west coast as far as the +mouths of the Senegal and Gambia. At nearly the same time +another Carthaginian fleet under Himilco discovered the British +Isles, but it brought back depressing stories. The islands were +four months’ distant from the Straits of Gibraltar, and the +voyage thither was through waters haunted by frightful monsters +and thick with entangling seaweed, where wild storms and +protracted calms succeeded one another.</p> + +<p>These were not true tales, but other nations believed them, +and the seafaring Semites were permitted to build up trading +stations along the coasts of the outer ocean—in western Africa, +in Lusitania, in the Scilly Islands, and in Cornwall. None challenged +their monopoly of the tin trade of the Cassiterides. +They covered their tracks so that whoever had the temerity to +test their fables, or seek to tap their sources of raw material, +would not know whither to go. Strabo tells how the Carthaginians +concealed from everyone the passage to the Tin Islands: +“When the Romans followed a certain shipmaster, that they also +might find the market, the shipmaster of jealousy purposely ran +his vessel upon a shoal, leading on those who followed him into +the same destructive disaster. He himself escaped by means of +a fragment of the ship, and received from the state the value of +the cargo he had lost.”</p> + +<p>According to Eratosthenes, the Carthaginians went further: +“They drown any strangers who sail past on their voyage to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</span> +Sardinia or to the Pillars.” Thus through piracy, stratagem, +and fable they maintained their monopoly on the waters of the +west, and for once Greek curiosity played into a rival’s hands. +Tyrian and Punic marvel tales were elaborated and adorned by +the poets of Attica, until everyone felt that a journey beyond the +Pillars was a thing not to be undertaken. All that the earlier +Greeks knew, even of the western Mediterranean, was that near +it was a mountain called Atlas on which the sky rested, and that +the world ended at the pillars set up by Hercules.</p> + +<p>One Greek was determined to learn more, and see if his countrymen +could not also profit from the tin and amber trades. +The journey of Pytheas of Massilia, at about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 333, along +the coasts of northern Europe is one of the noteworthy scientific +expeditions of history. He is the first to speak of Thule. He +found where amber came from. He noted that the cereals +gradually disappeared as one traveled north, that the northern +grain was threshed in barns instead of upon open threshing +floors, and that fermented drinks there were made from corn +and honey. In a peculiar passage he asserted that beyond +Britain there was neither earth, air, nor sea, but a mixture of +all three—something like the element which held the universe +together. This substance, which he compared to the jellyfish, +rendered navigation impossible and led the Romans later to +name those waters the Sluggish Sea. The apparently fabulous +statement, made on hearsay, has been interpreted as referring +to the dense fogs of the northern seas, to the blended effects of +mist and light, and to the broken ice or slush that floats there in +a translucent state. The reference to the jellyfish may be either +to its translucence or its luminosity.</p> + +<p>All that Pytheas reported of northern Europe was discredited. +How, asks Polybius, could a private individual conduct such a +vast expedition with his narrow means? Strabo accuses the +Massilian of having forged his tales, “making use of his acquaintance +with astronomy and mathematics to fabricate his +false narration.” His complete vindication is the work of +modern scholarship.</p> + +<p>The next report of consequence from the outer seas comes +nearly three centuries later and was made to Sertorius, the +Marian general under whom for a time Spain maintained its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</span> +independence of Rome. A tale of the Fortunate Islands—probably +of the Canaries—drifted in through the Straits and found +the great soldier weary of life in camp and field. Two sailors +had arrived from islands which they described as about twelve +hundred miles west of the coast of Africa. Rains seldom fell +there, they said. The dews watered the earth, which yielded its +fruits in abundance without the labor of man. The seasons were +temperate, the air was serene and pleasant, and soft winds blowing +from the west and south brought days of bright moist +weather. Even the barbarians believed that this was the seat of +the blessed.</p> + +<p>There was that in the jaded commander which lifted to the +thought of new horizons. Sertorius, says Plutarch, was seized +with a wonderful passion for these islands and had an extreme +desire to go and live there in peace and quietness, safe from +oppression and unending wars. But the Cilician pirates, who +were his allies, wanted not peace, but spoils. So the remainder +of his life was spent in wars and government, and the world +was denied an adventure instinct with romance and pregnant +with the potencies of great discovery.</p> + +<p>With the voyage of Polybius in the fleet of Scipio along the +west African coast, the campaigns of Cæsar in Gaul and Britain +and the reduction of both into imperial provinces, even the +incurious Roman became possessed of adequate geographical +knowledge of the western coasts of Europe and the waters near +them. This knowledge, however, was tinctured with the marvelous, +and was not long retained. Strabo, for example, pictures +the men of the Scilly, or Tin, Islands as wearing black +cloaks and tunics reaching to the feet, and as walking with +staves, thus “resembling the Furies we see in tragic representations.” +He must have meant the Druids.</p> + +<p>In the same century in which the legions were withdrawn +from Britain, Procopius, the foremost historian of the Eastern +Roman Empire, was born. Yet in that century of dissolution +most of what the ancient world had learned of the coasts and +waters of the Atlantic was forgotten. The western ocean had +been a domain over which mists of ignorance and superstition +hovered, sometimes rising for a moment of distant vision, sometimes +falling like a blank curtain. In the sixth century <span class="allsmcap">A.D.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</span></span> +they drew so closely to the shores of Europe that even England +was lost behind them. It had ceased to be a Roman province +and was become a land of ghosts.</p> + +<p>Procopius tells his story with due note of its dreamlike quality; +and yet, he says, numberless men vouch for its truth. It +is the story of the English Channel become the ferry of souls. +The fisher folk on the continental side are subject to the Franks, +but pay no tribute, because it is their task in regular turn to +transport the souls of the dead to Britain. Those on duty for +each night keep indoors until a knocking is heard and a mysterious +voice summons them. Arising from sleep, they go down +to the beach, where they find strange boats awaiting them. These +seem to be empty, but when they seize the oars and push off they +find the gunwales only an inch above the water. In silence they +make the journey and in an hour find themselves on the opposite +shore, although their own skiffs could scarcely cross in a night +and a day. When the keels grate on the beach, suddenly the +boats ride high on the waves. There is none to greet them, but +again a voice is heard, announcing the name and station of the +spectral passengers.</p> + +<p>Thus the end of the ancient world found men knowing only +a little more about the western ocean than they did at the beginning. +The chief advance over the Homeric age was that they +knew it was an ocean and not a circumfluent river. The old +idea was not dead that it was a morass made unnavigable by +seaweed and mud, too thick and too shallow for sailing ships +to venture upon. This notion was fostered by observing the +unfamiliar phenomena of ebb tides, with the long windrows of +weed and the wide expanses of muddy flats they laid bare upon +the coasts. Plato had deepened the belief and provided a reason +for it in his story of Atlantis. “That is the reason,” he concludes, +“why the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, +because there is such a quantity of shallow mud in the +way.”</p> + +<p>Men had no such notions, or fears of the open seas to the +east, although they were careful not to get too far from their +shores. They knew that inhabited lands were beyond them, and +that by not impossible shores and islands they could reach these. +The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea had full accounts of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</span> +coasts from Aden clear to the mouth of the Ganges, and reports +also on Indo-China and China itself. There were pirate-haunted +archipelagoes and islands tenanted by the monsters of Oriental +fancy. But these were Eastern waters and it behooved men to +know something about them and to take a chance upon them, for +a great traffic moved across them—silken fabrics, spices, pepper, +gold and silver and precious stones from the hidden storehouses +of Asia. Wherefore men faced the seas of sunrise with no such +fears as invaded them when they looked out upon the empty and +spectral Atlantic.</p> + +<p>Another race beside the Phœnician was unafraid of the western +sea. This was the Northmen, of whom it was said that they +never slept under a smoke-blackened roof, nor ate and drank at +any hearth. Their tradition looked outward, where that of the +Mediterranean races looked inward. The ocean was the whale +path of their skalds, and their hearts sang along it. Its waters +carried the challenge and promise of the present, not the glooms +or pallors of the hereafter. When their long boats drove +through the Straits of Gibraltar into the old Roman world to +pillage and rule there, it was the return visit of the men of the +outer spaces, ferocious and blithe sea-rovers who thus requited +the trafficking and timid excursions of Phœnician and Roman +into the seas that washed the continent.</p> + +<p>The very names of Viking chieftains—Sigurd Snake-eye, +Thord the Yeller, Ottar the Swart, Harold Blue-tooth, Eric +Blood-ax, Thorfinn Skull-cleaver, Sweyn Split-beard—sketched +a hardihood that made light of supernatural terrors upon the sea +and knew none other. These men of the viks or fjords rid the +coasts of Europe in the eighth and ninth centuries of every fear +except of themselves. Then they went westward to America.</p> + +<p>There is a bolder note in their geographical tradition than in +aught that had been before. One catches the swing of the Atlantic +surges and the pulses of people at home there in the chapter, +“On the Situation of Countries,” which begins the chronicle +of the <i>Heimskring’la</i>: “It is said that the earth circle which the +human race inhabits is much cut asunder with bights and bays, +and that great seas run into the land from the outer ocean. Of +a certainty, it is known that a sea goes in at the Norva Sound +(Gibraltar) right up to the land of Jerusalem; and from that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</span> +sea, again, a long bay, which is called the Black Sea, goes off +to the northeast, and it divides the two World-Ridings, that is +to say, Asia on the east from Europe on the west. To the north +of the Black Sea lies Sweden the Great, or the Cold (Russia); +and this is reckoned by some as not less in size than the Great +Saracen Land, or even the Great Land of the Bluemen (the +Moors). And the northern parts of this Sweden are unpeopled, +by reason of the frost and the cold, just as the southern parts +of Blue-Land are waste because of the sun’s burning. Mighty +lordships are there in this Sweden, and people of manifold kind +and speech; there are giants and there are dwarfs—aye, and +Bluemen, and folk of many kinds and marvellous, and wild +beasts, and dragons wondrous great.”</p> + +<p>When the pagan Northmen became Christians their ferocity +was moderated, and their spirit of enterprise, as it seemed, almost +extinguished. Their old contempt of the sea did not pass +into the veins of the peoples over whom for a time they had +dominion. Rather the confused and credulous views of the +churchmen became their own, henceforth occupying the entire +field of European thought. Adam of Bremen, eleventh-century +churchman, pictures the sea as his time conceived it—the old +forbidding canvas of classic legend framed with the icicles of +Gothic discovery.</p> + +<p>Terra Firma, says Adam, is entirely surrounded by the infinite +and terrible ocean. The northern spaces of the deep are +covered with ice and darkness and this expanse is called the +frozen, glutinous, or darkling sea. It is stiff with salt and covered +with black ice, formed long before and so dry that it will +burn like peat.</p> + +<p>The German bishop even borrows a tale from the Northmen +to engender terrors to which they had been stranger. Their +king, Harald Hardrada, the most daring of men, had reports +from Frisian mariners which caused him to set sail for the limits +of the earth. In the darkness he arrived at the North Pole—a +profound vortex into which the ebb tides were sucked and out +of which the flood tides were disgorged. His ship plunged +down into the boiling chaos, but the sea which took could also +give, and the outward heave of its vast bosom flung the vessel +back again beyond the clutch of the whirlpool.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f19"> +<img src="images/fig19.jpg" alt="roaring"> +<p class="caption">ROARING FORTIES<br> <i>By</i> F. J. Waugh</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</span></p> + +<p>As late as 1406 a chronicler tells of English ships, bound for +Bordeaux, which penetrated an unfrequented sea where four +vessels from Lynn were swallowed up in a whirlpool, which +thrice a day drew in and cast out the flood. When fishermen of +that time went a few miles from land they used only haaf-words—a +sea speech in which persons, animals, and things had +other names than what they bore ashore; so might they avoid +offense to whatever was astir in the deep.</p> + +<p>It is refreshing to turn from the gloomy imaginings of the +West to Indian and Chinese legends of the Seven Seas. In the +quainter fancy that animates them, at least the note of fear is +missing. From the Puranas, Gerini has made these identifications: +The Sea of Salt Water surrounds India. The Sea of +Sugar Cane Juice surrounds Burma. The Sea of Wine surrounds +the Malay Peninsula. The Sea of Clarified Butter surrounds +the Sunda Archipelago. The Sea of Milk surrounds +Siam and Cambodia. The Sea of Curds or Whey surrounds +South China. The Sea of Fresh Water surrounds North China +and Mongolia.</p> + +<p>Fear of the ocean, and above all of the Atlantic, is, however, +the distinctive note in mediæval Arab geography. This was +perhaps a native growth of the desert, and its spirit is in the +Koran passage which speaks of “black night upon the deep, +which wave on wave doth cover, cloud upon cloud, gloom upon +gloom.” Arab merchants and pilgrims ranged to the ends of +the Moslem world. Save Marco Polo, Ibn Batuta was the earth’s +greatest and most curious traveler. To the Arab port of Bassorah, +sailors from the Nile, the Mediterranean, and even the +China Sea brought the gossip of mankind. Yet a dread of the +deep sounds through the works of Arab geographers, as through +the saga of Sindbad, with the effect of a refrain.</p> + +<p>Around the fair meadows of the world swung the terrible +ocean, the Sea of Darkness as the Arabs called it. To Massoudy +the Atlantic was the Green Sea of Gloom. None dwelt +there, none could sail there, none knew to what infinite distances +it reached. Ibn Khaldun described it as the boundless, impenetrable +limit of the west. Other lights of Islam spoke of the +whirlpools into which vessels were drawn, and argued that even +if sailors knew the direction of the winds they did not know<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</span> +whither the winds would carry them; nor could they carry them +anywhere, for there was nowhere to go, and in the realms of +mist no prospect of getting back. Sane men would not attempt +a venture out of sight of land, said certain of the doctors. To +plan such a journey, it was asserted, was evidence of an unsound +mind; to embark upon it was ground for depriving a man +of his civil rights.</p> + +<p>Idrisi, Mohammedan savant in the service of King Roger of +Sicily in the twelfth century and the greatest of Arab geographers, +utters the authoritative Arab word upon the sea: “The +ocean encircles the ultimate bounds of the inhabited earth, and +all beyond it is unknown. No one has been able to verify anything +concerning it, on account of its difficult and perilous navigation, +its great obscurity, its profound depth and frequent +tempests; through fear of its mighty fishes and its haughty +winds; yet there are many islands in it, some peopled, others +uninhabited. There is no mariner who dares to enter its deep +waters; or if any have done so, they have merely kept along its +coasts, fearful of departing from them.”</p> + +<p>Whether this was in some part a literary convention—a gesture +of geography—or the expression of an unshakable dread, +the sentiment limited the service of Islam to mankind. The +Arab coasting trade had reached as far as China and as far +down the eastern side of Africa as Zanzibar. But this people, +so resourceful on land, never pushed their coasting adventures +around the Cape of Good Hope, as Prince Henry and his Portuguese +successors did from a farther north on the other side of +Africa. Nor did they attempt, as Columbus did, the crossing +of a great sea. Nor did they essay, as Magellan did, to prove +by a circumnavigation the rotundity of the earth on which their +own geographers had spoken with the clearest voices of the +Middle Ages.</p> + +<p>A group of remarkable legends illustrates the later annals of +the western ocean and carries them on to the Columbian adventure. +Idrisi tells a story of the eight Deluded Folk, or Lisbon +Wanderers, who went out to sea when the wind blew from the +east and for more than a month were carried before it. They +reached an island supposed to be one of the Canaries, where +they found a people who spoke Arabic and who sent them back<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</span> +when a wind arose from the west. St. Brendan voyaged for +seven years among seven islands of the west, according to a +story widely circulated in the eleventh century. The tenth-century +tale of the island of the Seven Spanish Bishops who had left +Spain to escape Moslem rule was revived by a Portuguese ship +captain who claimed to have reached the island; but when Prince +Henry bade him go back for proofs, the romancer took refuge +in flight.</p> + +<p>It may have been that the Phœnicians made atonement at last +for the fables of paralyzing fear which they had spread abroad, +and on the outer verge of the Old World in the days of their +decline left their secret as a legacy for the bold to profit from. +The scene is Corvo, westernmost of the Islands of the Sun, as the +Azores were called; and the passage, though from a Portuguese +writer of the seventeenth century, refers to events a generation +before the Columbian discovery. Says Manoel de Faria y +Souza: “On the summit of a mountain called the Crow was found +the statue of a man on horseback, without saddle, bareheaded, +the left hand on the horse’s mane, the right pointing to the west. +It stood on a slab of the same stone as itself; beneath it, on a +rock, were engraved some letters in an unknown language.”</p> + +<p>One explanation of the legend is given by a traveler of the +last century, who said that the superstitious folk of the island +fancied they saw in a promontory which reaches far into the sea +the semblance of a person with his hand stretched out toward +the New World. This, they declared, was the work of Providence, +and Columbus read the sign aright. But the tale may +not so easily be interpreted and dismissed. A hoard of Carthaginian +coins, so runs a report which Humboldt accepts, was discovered +in Corvo in 1749; and there are other stories of equestrian +statues of Carthaginian design erected upon Atlantic +islands. Against the utter drama of the legend—the parting +gesture of good will of a bold and subtle race of ancient time—may +be set another legend, more in keeping with the superstition +and fears of the Middle Ages. This was no equestrian +statue pointing westward, if the Pizzani map of 1367 was to be +believed. It was the figure of a saint with his back to the sunset +and his outstretched hand warning mariners away from the unnavigable +seas behind him.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</span></p> + +<p>The monkish monument was the parable of a twilight time. +To the fifteenth century the deep was an eerie domain where the +creatures of pagan and Christian story couched upon the ocean +floor, showed their unholy shapes among the waves, chattered on +desert island strands, and wove their enchantments in the mists. +In the north the witches of Lapland raised storms and wrecked +the ships that passed their shores. To the south none might sail +beyond Cape Bojador on the African Gold Coast. Who did so +was turned from white to black, and never came back. There +the flaming sword of the sun was laid across the paths of the sea. +What was beyond it was boiling brine and air heated into a flame—a +landless firmament of water and a starless firmament of sky.</p> + +<p>Looking westward, men cowered before visions of the Hand +of Satan, thrust upward from far horizons to drag ships into +the depths. Or “the wind that blows between the worlds” might +carry mariners away on a journey from which was no returning. +Or currents, setting always in one direction, might sweep them +into illimitable space. If the world was flat, one might sail off +its edge. If it was round, its very rotundity would present a +sort of mountain up which no ship could climb on the backward +voyage. As to the Atlantic races, the mediæval maps told one +what to expect. What chance of succor, or agreeable converse, +or a profitable traffic from spouting monsters, satyrs, sirens and +conch-blowing tritons? Could one warm his hands at the witch-fires +of the sea?</p> + +<p>Out of these gray forebodings the ships of Columbus, with +one stout heart and many questioning ones aboard, sailed into +the unknown, as vessels move through the sluggish dark before +the dawn breeze springs up and the sky reddens toward sunrise. +Ere long the caravels were steering among isles fanned by soft +breezes and bathed in tropical sunshine, and naked, kindly peoples +were hailing the mariners as visitors from the skies. Morning +had broken at last upon the western ocean, and in its level +rays a path lay sparkling clear across the sea—the path of enterprise, +of conquest, of gold, the path of victorious dreams. +Along that highway hardy spirits soon would press on great +adventures. In the stead of ghost-ridden hearth-keepers, mumblers +of old fable, shrinkers from the outer surges, there were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</span> +men who dared go round the earth in flimsy barks and lead a +handful of followers against the haughty empires of the +Cordilleras.</p> + +<p>Terror was dead upon the deep. Somewhat of fable remained.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c19">Chapter XIX. The Sargasso Sea</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">If</span> there were no Sargasso Sea there would still have been a +legend of one to satisfy the demand of the mind, in a world of +change and motion, for a place where there was neither. Conscious +of the flight of time, noting the flow of rivers, the wind’s +wandering, and the climbing and falling of the waves of the +ocean, the mind has created realms where time stands still, +countries of morning calm and afternoon sunshine, and spaces +where the pulse of the sea is asleep. Peace there was in the +grave, but what was sought was a paradox—something alive and +yet motionless in time and space. There were stagnant pools +in the imagination, grotesqueries, junk heaps, a sense of silences +and of slow decay that was no decay at all but the serenity of +noon in a swamp. The outward symbol of these moods men +would have in the world about them.</p> + +<p>For uncounted ages that symbol had been a fact of the mid-Atlantic. +People must have known of the Sargasso thousands of +years ago, though the memory of the voyages in which they +learned of it is no more, and the tales that seem to speak of it +are not accepted as facts. Plato had told of the thick waters +that rolled over the sunken Atlantis, preventing the passage of +ships. When Columbus entered this sea and saw tunny fish +playing about his caravels, he remembered a story of Aristotle +that certain ships of the Semites, coasting beyond the Pillars of +Hercules, were driven before a gale from the east until they +reached a weedy sea, resembling sunken islands, among which +were tunny fish. On his voyage to Britain Himilco reported that +he found vast fields of floating weeds which retarded his vessels +and brought them to danger.</p> + +<p>The ancient view of the Atlantic was that it was a region of +baffling calms and shallow water and mud and seaweed. This +was based on Punic reports, and the Carthaginians told such +tales of the open seas as would frighten other nations from them.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</span> +Yet their distorted statements had so much of truth intermixed +with error that it is hard to believe they intended altogether +falsely, and were vindicated only by coincidence when a grassy +sea, greater than their dominions at their widest, was found west +of the Azores. With flagrant exaggeration, however, they had +spoken of sea grasses with needle-like tops, a sort of marine +wheat with stalks as close together as in sheaves of grain. In +<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 300 Theophrastus had written of wide-leaved weeds that +drifted from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean. In his poetic +account of the African west coast Festus Avienus described in +detail the weedy impediments to navigation, using, so he says, +the journals of Punic ships. Scylax recited that the sea beyond +Cerne on the coast of Mauretania could not be navigated “in +consequence of its shallowness, its muddiness, and its sea grass.” +With easy exuberance of fancy Lucian had told in his <i>True History</i> +of encountering a floating forest in the sea and of sailing +right over the tops of the trees toward “that continent which we +supposed lies opposite our own”—a reference which gains in +significance from its casual character.</p> + +<p>Though most of them have been lost, there were strange Sargasso +legends in the ancient world, based on reports of floating +seaweed and the claims of captains that this had put them in +hazard. What weedy growths could do in restless water men +knew by observing their effects in rivers, notably on the upper +Nile. The envoys of Nero had been halted there by a sea of +floating vegetation; a long line of travelers thereafter had a like +experience, and a tragedy of this floating greenery is of our +own time. By the blocking of the Nile channel in 1880 Gessi +was held prisoner for three months with five companies of soldiers +and a multitude of freed slaves, and most of them died +before help came.</p> + +<p>The burden of these old fables was of a stagnant death in +silent spaces of the sea where nothing ever happened. The +weedy continent was a trap which closed in upon ships and +suffered no escape, even though with double banks of oars the +rowers strove. Death claimed the crew, and slowly the sea +claimed the galleys. Marine plants crept over bow and stern +and writhed into the cabins and climbed the masts and swathed +all in a green decay; and silently, as the timbers parted below<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</span> +and the weight of vegetation massed above, the vessel sank, +perhaps into some harbor of the lost Atlantis.</p> + +<p>A prison for lost souls, the St. Brendan legend calls the +grassy sea of the west. The ferment was working in men’s +imaginations. There must be a spectral haven in the sea, a place +into which vessels might come, out of which they could not go. +For a while in the waters of the east this was the Island of Lodestone, +which drew and held to itself all craft that had iron +in their timbers. In Maundeville the legend of the Sargasso Sea +is full blown, though with him it is truth—travel truth—of a +magnetic rock.</p> + +<p>“I myself,” he said, “have seen afar off in that Sea as though +it had been a great Isle full of Trees and Bush, full of Thorns +and Briars, great Plenty. And the Shipmen told us, that all that +was of Ships that were drawn thither by the Adamants, for the +Iron that was in them. And from the Rottenness and other +Things that were within the Ships, grew such Bush, and Thorns +and Briars and green Grass and such manner of Things, and +from the Masts and the Sail-yards it seemed a great Wood or +a Grove. And such Rocks be in many Places thereabouts. And +therefore dare not the Merchants pass there, but if they know +well the Passages, or else that they have good Pilots. And also +they dread the long Way more far by many dreadful Days’ +journeys than Cathay.”</p> + +<p>Thus the Port of Missing Ships came into view as the creation +of classic and mediæval legend, to which modern exploration +had given a sure place in the sea. It fulfilled a stagnant something +in the souls of men. It offered harbor to certain of their +dreams. It yielded a last resting place to derelicts that had +wandered far, among them the derelicts of fancy. It gave reply +to questions that arose whenever the argosies went out and did +not come back. Against the eternal restlessness and fated journeyings +of the Flying Dutchman it summoned up the picture of +a fated and eternal calm. It added to the terrors of the sea a +horror that was half poetry. This became poetry altogether +when men had ceased to believe and yet wanted to believe, and +in their art evoked the vision of ruinous hulks of Tyrian, Roman, +and Spanish ships side by side upon a spectral main, silent +witnesses of all the maritime adventures of mankind.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</span></p> + +<p>The actuality behind the mask of legend, a vast expanse of +sea in the Atlantic, in many places resembling an inundated +meadow, Columbus discovered on his first voyage, when for +three weeks he traversed it. But instead of having misgivings, +he rejoiced at what he conceived to be evidence that land was +not far distant. On one of the floating weed masses he saw a +white tropical bird of a kind that does not sleep upon the sea. +His journal speaks little of the apprehensions of the sailors, +but his son Fernando recites these—their fears that the weeds, +which plainly retarded the ships, would halt them altogether; +that the marine growths might conceal the lurking rocks, shoals +and quicksands of a shallowing ocean; and that, run aground +or fatally entangled in gulfweed, the ships might rot and fall +apart far from any shore or any hope of aid. Memories of the +Atlantis legend raised in their minds the menace of drowned +lands and the monumental ruins of a lost continent.</p> + +<p>To Columbus, however, the Sargasso Sea stood, not for a lost +continent, but for the boundary between the worlds. Where it +began, west of the Azores, the New World began also, and the +Old World ended. This was no theoretical meridian, he +thought, but a true physical line of demarcation drawn by nature +between the hemispheres. He could sense a difference in +climatic conditions in crossing the line, and the compass seemed +to show magnetic deviations. On his return he believed that +he could determine his longitude by observing the first floating +masses of tangled seaweed. So persuasive was his imaginative +force, so great his influence in Europe, that soon after his +arrival there the eastern boundary of the weedy sea became the +globe’s first, and last, political boundary of an all-embracing +kind. Title to newly discovered lands east of it was awarded +by a papal bull to Portugal. Title to newly discovered lands +west of it was awarded to Spain.</p> + +<p>Oviedo gave this expanse the name of Sargasso Sea, from +Sargaço, the Portuguese word for seaweed. It was freely +traversed by the explorers who followed Columbus. The world-rounding +expedition of Drake reports that for five days “wee +sayled through the sea of Weedes, about the space of one hundred +leagues, being under the Tropicke of Cancer.” The size +and exact location of the sea were long a matter of conjecture.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</span> +Varenius, for example, placed its northern limit opposite the +mid-Sahara and its southern opposite the Cape of Good Hope. +The note of Humboldt in his <i>Views of Nature</i>, published near +the middle of the nineteenth century, is the first scientific account +of it. This was based on rather scanty observations of English +and Dutch sailing vessels which took a course through it from +the West Indies to Europe. Humboldt thought the Sargasso +Sea comprised two weed banks, the larger one west of the +Azores, the smaller between the Bermudas and Bahamas, with +a transverse band connecting them. Fuller reports, since made +by steamers, with the careful records of the German Hydrographic +Office, have enabled scientists, and particularly Doctor +Krümmel, to correct these conclusions and plot the true outlines +of the sea.</p> + +<p>The Equatorial Current sets west from the coast of Africa. +The Gulf Stream sets north and east from the Straits of Florida—still +following the direction, Donnelly ingeniously contended, +that was given it by the lost continent of Atlantis, around which +it flowed. The two currents, moving in nearly opposite directions, +impart a circular motion to the waters that lie between, +so that all things adrift over an area of millions of square miles, +seaweed, driftwood, and hulks of ships are drawn toward a +common center, which may be called the floating storehouse of +the North Atlantic. Banks of weed are found as far west as +the Bermudas, and this outer grassy sea covers an expanse of +about three million square miles, or as much as continental +United States. But the true Sargasso Sea of dead waters, where +gulfweed is found thickly, covers an area of about one million +two hundred thousand square miles, or the size of the Mississippi +Valley. It is an ellipse with the Tropic of Cancer as +its longer axis. The sea stretches through fifteen degrees of +latitude and more than twenty-five degrees of longitude, the two +foci of the ellipse being near 45° and 70° west.</p> + +<p>With the shift of winds and calms the weedy sea itself shifts +somewhat, but its mean location remains unchanged. Humboldt +was convinced that in his time it was precisely where Columbus +had found it three and a half centuries before, and Maury’s +study of marine observations leads to the conclusion that there +has been no change in the last fifty years. Of all the larger<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</span> +aspects of nature this is perhaps the only one that is just as it +was in the time of Columbus. During thousands of years, when +the ocean was battering at the coasts of the continents, breaking +down or building up the shore; when earthquakes and volcanoes +were causing islands to appear and disappear; when the wind +and rain were at their unending tasks of bearing everything terrestrial +into the deeps; and when races of men were remodeling +some small portions of the earth’s surface with roads and ports +and bridges, the Sargasso Sea may have been the only thing immune +from change. This eternal vortex might well be called +the true Navel of the World.</p> + +<p>Even now, when many ships ply these waters, and after the +records of centuries seem to have assured that there are no +reefs or shoals under their greenery, travelers admit a sense of +uneasiness as their craft plunges into what seems a sunken +meadow. Nearer view, however, discloses that the patches of +vegetation are discontinuous. The larger single masses may be +several acres in extent, or may not be more than a hundred feet +across. The weeds commonly lie in long parallel rows that tail +to the prevailing winds. By noting the rows, the mariner can +tell whether the wind has been blowing steadily, or has recently +shifted, and in which direction. The lines are sometimes so +near together as to seem one mass, or they may be as far apart +as two hundred feet. In some places the weeds in them barely +touch, in others they are so crowded that their tops are thrust +a little distance above the water.</p> + +<p>A distinctive fauna, sparse in species but unnumbered in individuals, +has been developed among these masses. The floating +berries are thickly incrusted with white polyzoa. About +sixty animal species peculiar to the area have been noted, among +them small fish, shrimps, crabs, molluscs, gastropods, and one +insect. The fishes have developed a strong protective resemblance +to the shapeless weeds among which they feed. Strangest +of these is the <i>Antennarius marmoratus</i>, a little creature not +more than four inches long and indistinguishable from a plant +spray. It seems half adapted for walking; its fins, which suggest +the extremities of four-footed creatures, have real toes, and +the front fins have the form of arms with elbows and fingered +hands.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</span></p> + +<p>The Prince of Monaco conducted a scientific expedition into +these waters in 1905, and in 1911 the United States Hydrographic +Service sent a party of scientists for a three months’ +study of them; but adequate knowledge is still wanting.</p> + +<p>There is a Sargasso question: How does the weed get into the +sea? The old theory was that it is a true oceanic plant. To +those who held to the belief in a sunken continent the grassy +domain was a sort of canopy suspended over it, the flying banners +of the lost Atlantis. There is still good scientific opinion +of which the French are the leaders, that the weed grows in the +area where it is found, reproducing itself by fissure, the parent +stem throwing off branches which multiply in turn. The bulk +of scientific opinion outside of France is that these meadows of +the sea are the spoil of the neighboring islands and continents. +The gulfweed which covers them, it is held, has been torn from +the shores of northern Brazil, of the West Indies, and of North +America as far as Cape Cod, and has drifted into this vortex—a +journey that may take almost half a year. The French contend +that even without these admitted contributions from America +there would still be a weedy sea about the Tropic of the Crab.</p> + +<p>From time to time commercial enterprise has canvassed the +possibilities of a Sargasso adventure. It may be that a profitable +fishery will yet be established there with the Azores for +its base, and that the kelp will be converted into potash for fertilizer +or for gunpowder. Thus would the arts of war and peace +draw support from the sea, that, if legend speaks truly, sleeps +over the continent which spread them through the antediluvian +world.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c20">Chapter XX. Atlantis</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">Under</span> the Sargasso Sea, if a few accomplished thinkers, a +somewhat larger number of speculative scientists, and a host +of dreamers are right, lies the lost Atlantis. This legend of a +continent beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which reached a high +level of civilization, extended its rule along both shores of the +Mediterranean, sent its armies to battle with Egypt and Athens, +and “in a day and a fatal night” sank beneath the sea eleven +thousand years ago, is the most haunting and poignant thing +that has come down from antiquity.</p> + +<p>The story derives from Plato, who attributes it to his relative, +Solon, who had it from a priest of Egypt. It is told briefly and +completely in the <i>Timæus</i> and with much greater detail in the +<i>Critias</i>; unfortunately, the latter portion of this work is wanting +and the narrative ends abruptly, before recounting the +cataclysm outlined in the earlier work. Both are built upon +the conversation between Solon and the Egyptian priest. Discoursing +on the ignorance of the Greeks concerning their own +history, the priest said that they knew nothing of a thing which +was preserved in the sacred books of the temple at Sais—that, +nine thousand years before, the Athenians had repelled an +invading force which threatened the conquest of Europe and +Asia. This force had come in through the Straits of Gibraltar +from the Atlantic Sea, “which was at that time navigable.”</p> + +<p>Beyond the Straits, according to the <i>Timæus</i>, lay the island +of Atlantis, greater than Libya and Asia (Minor) together. Other +islands surrounded it, and farther west was a continent. Between +Atlantis and this continent rolled an ocean so great that, +compared with it, the land-locked Mediterranean was merely a +harbor. A powerful dynasty of kings arose on the island, subjugated +the surrounding archipelagoes and a part of the unnamed +continent beyond, and in the Old World swayed Libya +up to Egypt and the northern shore of the Mediterranean as far<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</span> +as Tuscany. They undertook to complete their conquest of the +Mediterranean coasts, but the Athenians, though deserted by +their allies, beat off their ships. While the fleet from beyond +the Straits was still in the Inland Sea, it would seem, the island +of Atlantis was sunk, and the earthquakes that submerged it +and the monstrous waves that followed spread ruin all along +the Mediterranean shores.</p> + +<p>Here is the passage in which Plato records the concluding +words of the priest of Solon: “But after (the battle) there occurred +violent earthquakes and floods, and in a single day and +night of rain all your warlike men in a body sunk into the earth, +and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared and was +sunk beneath the sea. And that is the reason why the sea in +those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is +such a quantity of shallow mud in the way; and this was caused +by the subsidence of the island.... There are remaining in +small islets only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be +called, all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen +away, and the mere skeleton of the country being left.”</p> + +<p>The longer account in the <i>Critias</i> describes the civilization +of Atlantis. It begins, as all chronicles used to do, with the +affairs of the gods, and their amorous interest in the daughters +of men (<i>Gen.</i> vi: 2). The sea god Poseidon fell in love with +Cleito, a mortal island maiden, and she bore him five sets of +twins. The ten sons became kings, each ruler of a tenth part of +Atlantis, but all subject to the eldest son, Atlas. The capital +of the island became his abode, as it had been his mother’s before +him. Poseidon himself had laid out the palace compound, +making alternate zones of sea and land; “there were two of land +and three of water which he turned as with a lathe out of the +center of the island.”</p> + +<p>At this point in the account, the divine figures disappear and +it becomes seemingly a straight historical narrative. Its picture +of the capital is more exact in its topographical, architectural, +and engineering detail than many that have come down to us +of the older capitals of Asia, or than any biblical picture of +Jerusalem. The laws, religion, and arts of the people are all +adequately noticed.</p> + +<p>There was a barrier of lofty mountains around the shores of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</span> +the island, their flanks sloping precipitously to the sea. In the +upland valleys were rich and populous villages. The middle +of the island was a great and fertile plain surrounded by a +ditch one hundred feet deep. Abundant rivers coursed the plain +and the moisture of the rainy season was supplemented in the +summer by a system of aqueducts. In the center of the plain +was a magnificent city.</p> + +<p>Assuming that this is no dream geography, it is necessary +to determine the size of Atlantis, and in doing so to reconcile a +conflict of statements in Plato’s story. He speaks of it as a +large island, though small as compared with a land domain west +of it, which “may be most truly called a continent”; yet he says +Atlantis was larger than Libya and Asia combined. The tale +becomes incredible if Libya receives its common Greek extension +as the whole of Africa, and if Asia is taken in the larger +sense; for such an island there would not be room in the Atlantic. +The passage is brought into harmony with the context +if other ancient definitions are followed, so that Libya is made +to mean the district immediately west of Egypt and Asia to +mean Asia Minor. This would give the legendary Atlantis a +territory of perhaps three hundred thousand square miles, or +about twice that of the state of California.</p> + +<p>There are precise figures for the great central plain and they +harmonize with such an estimate of the island area. The plain +was three hundred and forty miles long by two hundred and +thirty wide—in other words, exactly the size of the state of +Washington, but with its greater dimension from south to north. +The topography of the whole island suggests that of California, +although its shape was more compact. Its central plain lay +within its mountain barriers as the San Joaquin and Sacramento +valleys lie between the Sierras and the Coast Range. And in +its mineral riches, its mild climate, its system of irrigation, and +in the products of its fields, orchards, and vineyards it was very +like the Pacific coast state.</p> + +<p>“Whatever fragrant things there are in the earth,” says Plato, +“whether roots or herbage or woods, grew and thrived in that +land.” He mentions melons—“fruits with a hard rind”—chestnuts, +and “the pleasant kinds of dessert which console us after +dinner when we are full and tired of eating,” which may mean,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</span> +among other things, grapes and oranges; and all these “the +sacred island lying beneath the sun brought forth fair and wondrous +in infinite abundance.” In this picture there is but one +unfamiliar figure. Herds of elephants roved there, where California +can show only the fossil remains of the mastodon.</p> + +<p>In the account of the capital city it is illuminating to recur to +the Pacific state, for the metropolis of Atlantis lay in the midst +of a mountain-girdled plain, and yet, like Sacramento, had access +to the sea, in this case by a ship canal perhaps connecting +with a river. If one can imagine the buildings and grounds of +the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915 with the wharves and +commerce of San Francisco removed to Sacramento, one may +glimpse the legendary metropolis. In the center of the city, +on an artificial island, were temples and palaces like those of +the exposition, but of a barbaric splendor. Greatest of these +was the temple to Poseidon, a structure about as large as one of +the palaces surrounding the Court of the Universe at the exposition, +and doubtless of no greater height, for this was a region +of earthquake, and within the temple was one statue that reached +quite to the roof. Its walls were silvered, with gilded pinnacles, +and under the ivory roof the interior blazed with gold and silver +and “orichalcum”—copper, or an alloy of it, and esteemed next +to gold.</p> + +<p>The wall that encircled this inner island or citadel “flashed +with the red light of orichalcum.” There was a broad canal +around it, and then an encircling zone of land, about which was +a wall sheeted with tin. Around this was still another canal encircled +by another land zone, and here was a wall coated with +brass, beside which ran a racecourse two hundred yards wide +where horses contended. Encircling this again was the outermost +canal. Beyond it lay the city.</p> + +<p>The buildings of the outer city, as well as those of its sacred +citadel, were of stones in three colors—white, black and red—which, +with all the minerals useful to man, were taken from the +bosom of the island. There were hot and cold springs, with +baths and with pools for horses and cattle; the surplus water +was conveyed by aqueducts to the grove of Poseidon. Around +the harbor front were docks, triremes, and naval stores. Back +of them the plain was densely crowded with habitations. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</span> +harbors were full of vessels, and merchants coming from all +parts who from their numbers kept up “a multitudinous sound of +human voices and din of all sorts night and day.”</p> + +<p>A copper column stood in the temple of Poseidon, on which +the laws of the land were graven. The chief of these were that +the people should not take up arms against one another, and +that they should all come to the rescue if anyone in any city attempted +to overthrow the royal house. On the plain and in the +populous mountain valleys there was a system of military service +by districts and chiefs of districts, somewhat like that of +ancient Peru; and when Atlantis went to war ten thousand +chariots moved in front of its armies, and twelve hundred vessels +swept the sea lanes east and west. It was a powerful nation and +a happy—so long as the divine nature of their founder retained +its force among the people. Says Plato:</p> + +<p>“They despised everything but virtue, not caring for their +present state of life and thinking lightly on the possession of +gold and other property which seemed only a burden to them; +neither were they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive +them of their self-control; but they were sober and saw clearly +that all these goods are increased by virtuous friendship with +one another, and that by excessive zeal for them, and honor of +them, the good of them is lost and friendship perishes with +them.”</p> + +<p>At length, however, the divine nature in the Atlantines became +diluted by mortal admixture. They were filled with avarice, +pride, the lusts of the flesh; and “the fairest of their precious +gifts” departed from them. Base to men of insight, they still +appeared to others as glorious and blessed. In order to effect +their chastisement and correction, says Plato, returning to the +mythological vein, a council of the gods was called, and Zeus +“spoke as follows.” What the Olympian said will never be +known, for here the <i>Critias</i> ends, and for the fate of the Atlantines +one must recur to the <i>Timæus</i>.</p> + +<p>The mythical prologue and epilogue excepted, the whole account +reads as if the author believed it himself. It is singularly +free from fantasy—this is no Cloud-Cuckoo Land of an Aristophanes. +The transcriber of the legend was perhaps the largest +mind of antiquity and a man of unblemished character; and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</span> +“strange but altogether true” he calls his own story. He was, +however, a constructive dreamer, and in his <i>Republic</i> he has +given a detailed sketch of an ideal state. Was this another +essay of a like nature? Might not the narrative carry further +if it came from a man of less imaginative sweep—from the contemporary +Xenophon, or from Plutarch, both of them vivacious +chroniclers with their eyes on facts? Phædrus had said to Socrates, +“You can easily invent a tale of Egypt.” Has the great +disciple of Socrates done this?</p> + +<p>These questions are asked still, and antiquity asked them. +Proclus in his commentary on the <i>Timæus</i> assumed that the legend +was a symbol of the contest between the primeval forces and +the spirit of art and science; he recites that Crantor, the first +commentator, accepted it as literal history and was ridiculed +for it. Strabo and Pliny barely mention the story. Thus Plutarch +sets down the circumstances of its relation: “Solon attempted +in verse a large description, or rather fabulous account +of the Atlantic Island, which he had learned from the wise men +of Sais; but by reason of his age he did not go through with it. +Plato laid out magnificent courts and inclosures, and erected a +grand entrance to it, such as no other story, fable, or poem ever +had. But he began it late, he ended his life before the work, +so that the more the reader is delighted with the part that is +written, the more regret he has to find it unfinished.”</p> + +<p>There is evidence that at any rate the legend is not an invention +of Plato. It was claimed by Plato himself that the victory +of the Athenians over the Atlantines was depicted on one of the +ceremonial tunics which were borne in the midsummer festival +of the Panathenæa. Diodorus has a reference to this war. +Ælian says that Theopompus heard a similar story in Phrygia, +in which, however, the island was called Meropis. Proclus +quotes from the <i>Æthiopica</i> of Marcellus a tale of ten islands +in the outer sea, the inhabitants of which preserved the memory +of a large island that had ruled over the archipelago and was +sacred to Poseidon.</p> + +<p>The following are the main explanations, ancient and modern, +of the legend: 1. Atlantis was no island, but a part of either +Europe or Africa—the Iberian peninsula, or Senegal, for example—so +remote from Egypt as to seem an island to mariners<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</span> +who reached it after beating about beyond the Straits. 2. Atlantis +was Minoan Crete, resembling Plato’s island in its configuration +if not in its site; the ancient Cretan civilization was +destroyed about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 1500, almost as completely as if by a +submergence in the sea. 3. “Atlantis is too obviously an earlier +and equally colossal Persia, western instead of eastern.” 4. Atlantis +is pure fiction, arising, like the tales of Homer and Hesiod, +in the belief that the abodes of the heroes were in the extreme +west. 5. Atlantis is a variant of the old tradition of a Golden +Age. 6. Atlantis and the Fortunate Islands and the Azores are +one, but tradition placed them too near the Straits, and the +legend of a great sunken island arose when no land was found +where people thought land should be. 7. Atlantis is another +form of the solar myth—the setting of the sun in the red ruin +of evening, and the coming of dark upon the deep. 8. Atlantis +and the Republic are companion realms, the one no less imaginary +than the other, and each intended to illustrate Plato’s conception +of ideal polity.</p> + +<p>These are the conjectures of a skepticism which properly refuses +to believe that so great a thing has happened and left such +slight traces in monuments or in tradition. Yet there are some +details in Plato’s story not so easily disposed of, and they appear +more distinctly when Atlantis itself is erased from it. +These are the islands on both sides of the legendary continent, +the impassable sea that covers its site, the great ocean beyond it, +and the continent in the west which hems in that ocean. None +of these things the men of Plato’s time knew of, but, to give +them their modern names, they seem to be Madeira, the Canaries, +the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores on the one side +of the Sargasso Sea, the West Indies on the other, the Sargasso +Sea itself, the open Atlantic, and the American continent.</p> + +<p>If the classic world had few and faint traditions of a sunken +continent and ignored them or dismissed them as idle tales, it +had one overmastering feeling that could not be called a superstition +because it never took a tangible form. The feeling was +a blind terror of the Atlantic Ocean, as if something dreadful +had happened there, but so long before that nobody knew what +it was.</p> + +<p>Nothing has developed in Europe itself that makes Plato’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</span> +story of a lost continent a whit more probable or less plausible +than it was when he wrote it; but there have been contributions +to the legend from the ocean floor and from the New World. +The variations, and in a measure the shifts, of opinion on the +Atlantis story in the last hundred years are represented by three +names—Humboldt, Ignatius Donnelly, and Pierre Termier. +Writing in 1826, the German savant noted evidences of an external +influence in the historical monuments of Central America. +In his book, <i>Atlantis: The Antediluvian World</i>, Donnelly boldly +contended that a continent had disappeared in the mid-Atlantic, +that this sunken domain had been the cradle of civilization, and +that the widespread traditions of a deluge were race memories +of its disappearance. This writer’s identification with the Baconian +cipher theory, and his espousal of fanciful beliefs and +lost causes, political or other, together with his credulity and +his snap judgments, obscured the industry, the wide range of +information, and the real gift of generalization to which his +book bore witness. It came with something like a shock to the +scientific world when the French scholar, Prof. Pierre Termier, +Director of the Geological Survey of France, read his paper on +Atlantis before the Oceanographic Institute of France in 1912. +This was published at Monaco in the Bulletin of the Institute of +Oceanography in 1913, and a translation, included in the annual +report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1915, provoked a discussion +among geographers in America that continued for several +years.</p> + +<p>“It seems more and more evident,” concluded Termier, “that +a vast region, continental or made up of great islands, has collapsed +west of the Pillars of Hercules, and that its collapse occurred +in the not distant past.”</p> + +<p>In support of this inference Termier arrays the evidence of +the Atlantic’s surface and of the floor which its waters conceal. +A ship sailing due west from the Straits of Gibraltar four thousand +miles to Cape Hatteras would meet with no land. But if +it lengthened its course a little by making a detour, first toward +the southwest, then toward the northwest, then again toward the +southwest, it would bring in view Madeira, the more southern +Azores, and the Bermudas. And if it took soundings it would +discover that, the marine depths over which it was passing were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</span> +strangely unequal. If the ocean were drained dry, what would +be seen would be a long elevated region lying between the Old +and New Worlds, separated from both by two enormous valleys, +the wider and deeper one on the American side. This is the +revelation of oceanography—a hidden continent in the Atlantic +basin with the islands named above as its mountain peaks.</p> + +<p>Geology adds that the eastern region of the Atlantic over all +its length and probably from pole to pole is a great volcanic +zone. “Everywhere,” says the French geologist, “earthquakes +are frequent, here and there islets may spring up abruptly from +the sea, or rocks long known may disappear.” The ocean may +conceal the continuity of these changes, but to geological science +they are incontestable and they affect a zone which reaches from +Iceland to the Cape Verde Islands and is about 1,875 miles +broad.</p> + +<p>When a ship was laying the cable between Brest and Cape +Cod in 1898, the cable broke and was recovered by grappling. +The grappling irons encountered various submerged rocks with +hard points and sharp edges, and brought to the surface fragments +of the vitreous lava called tachylyte. These “precious +fragments,” as Termier calls them, are in the Museum of the +School of Mines in Paris. The significance of their structure +is that if they had solidified under water they would have been +composed of confused crystals. In the form in which they were +found they must have cooled when they were still above the +sea’s surface. The sharp edges of the marine rocks, whence these +fragments came, argue that the region collapsed suddenly and +recently. Had they remained after the volcanic disturbance a +long time above the sea, they would have been smoothed by +atmospheric erosion. Had they been a long time under the +sea, they would have been smoothed by marine abrasion. The +inference is that “the entire region north of the Azores and +perhaps the very region of the Azores, of which they may be +only the visible ruins, was very recently submerged, probably +during the epoch which the geologists call the present, because +it is so recent, and which for us, the living beings of to-day, is +the same as yesterday.”</p> + +<p>The evidence of zoölogy has been arrayed by another French +scholar, M. Louis Germain, briefly as follows: The present<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</span> +fauna of the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape Verde +Islands originated in Africa; the Quaternary formations of the +Canaries resemble those of Mauretania and inclose the same +species of mollusca. Therefore these archipelagoes were connected +with Africa up to an epoch near our own, at the very +least until toward the end of the Tertiary. Among the present +mollusca of the archipelagoes are some species which seem to +be survivors of the European Tertiary. Therefore there was a +bond between the islands and Spain which was severed during +the Pliocene. The <i>Pulmonata mollusca</i>, called oleacinidæ, are +found only in Central America, the West Indies, the Mediterranean +Basin, and the Canaries, Madeira, and the Azores, and +are larger in America than in these other regions. Therefore +the continent which included these islands had extended to the +West Indies at the beginning of the Miocene, but had been separated +from them during the Miocene. Fifteen species of marine +mollusca lived at the same time both in the West Indies +and on the coast of Senegal, and nowhere else. Therefore until +very near the present time a maritime shore extended from the +West Indies to Senegal.</p> + +<p>The arguments of geology and zoölogy may be combined. +Termier is of those geologists who believe the ancient alignment +of continents was east and west instead of north and south. +There was a North Atlantic continent comprising Russia, Scandinavia, +Great Britain, Greenland and Canada, and later a +large part of central and western Europe and of the United +States. There was also a South Atlantic or African-Brazilian +continent extending northward to the Atlas, eastward to the Persian +Gulf, westward to the Andes. Between the two continents +was the Mediterranean depression, the ancient maritime furrow +still marked in the present Mediterranean and Caribbean seas. +These continents were broken up by foldings and collapses and +a new design appeared, the general direction of which is from +north to south.</p> + +<p>M. Germain, confining himself mainly to the middle region +between these two supposed continental areas, infers the existence +of an Atlantic continent connected with Spain and Morocco +and prolonging itself so far south as to take in regions of desert +climate. During the Miocene this continent reaches the West<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</span> +Indies. It is then broken up and portioned off, at first in the +direction of the West Indies; then in the south, by the establishment +of a marine shore which reaches Senegal; then in the +east, probably during the Pliocene, along the coast of Africa. +“The last great fragment, finally engulfed and no longer having +left any further vestiges than the four archipelagoes, would be +the Atlantis of Plato,” says Termier, himself reviewing the conclusions +of Germain.</p> + +<p>Thus the geological and zoölogical arguments correspond +very closely. To Termier there is no doubt at all that until +an epoch near our own there was a continental domain in the +Atlantic west of the Pillars of Hercules, and that it was sunk +in a cataclysm. There is only one question left: “Did men then +live who could withstand the reaction and transmit the memory +of it?” Geology and zoölogy have perhaps told all they could +tell by way of answer. “It is from anthropology, from ethnography, +and lastly from oceanography,” says Termier, “that +I am now awaiting the final answer.”</p> + +<p>Anthropology and ethnography have provided some hints, +such as they are. Men of scientific or of speculative cast have +noted cranial and other correspondences in the subtropics on +both sides of the Atlantic, and what seemed to be African influences +in the civilizations of Central and South America. Quatrefages +named five races of American Indians which seemed to +him “true negroes.” Le Plongeon remarked the thick lips and +woolly hair of certain sculptured figures at Chichen Itza. Retzius +thought there were the same form of skull and the same +reddish-brown complexion in the Carib Islands and in the Canaries. +Elephant heads with trunk and tusks have been discovered +in the friezes of ruined temples in Yucatan. Wiener +contends, on the evidence of philology, that yams, manioc, peanuts +and tobacco came to America from Africa before Columbus +rather than went out from America afterward.</p> + +<p>In ancient times the people of the Old World and the New +were in contact. The belief has been that this was across the +Pacific, but the traditions of Mexico and its neighbors point in +a different direction.</p> + +<p>Two dominant notes are struck in the legends of the races +fronting on the Caribbean. One is the belief that civilization<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</span> +was brought to them by white, bearded strangers who came over +the sea from the east. The other is the tradition of a deluge +or related cataclysm. And sometimes the two stories are +grouped; the beneficent strangers are refugees from the disastrous +something that had happened upon the sea. Cataclysm +has been called the pivot of Central American myth and the +basis of the Mexican calendar.</p> + +<p>The legendary founder of the oldest Mexican civilization, the +Toltec, was Quetzalcoatl, who was worshiped as a god, but was +reputed to have been a bearded white man who came from the +east with a band of colonists and instructed the natives in the +arts and sciences; his symbol was a boat. The story was that he +was driven out by the witch doctors, but promised to return. +Aztec belief that the Cortes expedition was the return visit made +easier the Spanish conquest. Among the Mayas the divine +stranger was known as Kukulcan, and his title was Lord of the +Hollow Tree (the ark?). Coming from “Valum Chvim,” he +founded the ancient city of Palenque. His company was described +as wearing black mantles with short sleeves; the Mayas +called them “men with petticoats.”</p> + +<p>Native legends of tropic America, some of which Spence has +marshaled, present a panorama of flood, fire, hilltops of refuge, +arks, survivors. According to the Arawaks of Guiana the world +was smitten by fire, from which men hid themselves in caverns; +and then by flood, from which a leader and his followers saved +themselves in canoes. In the Carib deluge myth men escaped +to the mountain tops. In the Tupi-Guarani myth the Creator +scourged the world with fire but a great magician put it out +with a rainstorm and men took to trees (boats?). In the Karaya +myth an evil spirit invoked the deluge and sent fish to pull the +survivors down from the hill Tupimare. Various hills in Mexico +and the American southwest are pointed out as the Ararats +of flood refugees. There is even an account in the Nahuatl language +of the building of an ark. According to early Spanish +writers there were similar stories of oceanic upheaval among the +natives of the Antilles.</p> + +<p>All the New World flood myths, the Chaldean, Aramæan, and +Iranian, the Hebrew story of Noah, and the Greek story of +Deucalion, as well as the indicated ending of Plato’s tale of Atlantis,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</span> +agree in their main lines—that a malevolent spirit +sought to drown all men, or that an angered divinity sought by +a deluge to punish their lusts and pride, and that a few righteous +or lucky men escaped. One of these stories, recited in the +sacred book of the Quiche Indians of Guatemala, was believed +by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg to be an account of the disaster +to Atlantis. As the briefest of the flood myths, and not the +worst, it may be repeated:</p> + +<p>“They did not think or speak of the Creator who had created +them, and who had caused their birth. They were drowned, and +thick resin fell from heaven.</p> + +<p>“The bird Xecotcovach tore out their eyes; the bird Camulatz +cut off their heads; the bird Cotzbalam devoured their flesh; +the bird Tecumbalam broke their bones and sinews and ground +them into powder.</p> + +<p>“Because they had not thought of their mother and father, the +Heart of Heaven whose name is Hurakan, therefore the face +of the earth grew dark and a pouring rain commenced, raining +by day, raining by night.</p> + +<p>“Then all sorts of beings, little and great, gathered together +to abuse the men to their faces; and all spoke, their millstones, +their plates, their cups, their dogs, their hens,” denouncing them +and railing at them.</p> + +<p>These traditions of disaster, survival, and immigration are +the collateral support of native American myth to Plato’s narrative +of Atlantis. The monumental ruins of Central America +yield some evidence which in no wise confirms the traditions, +but into which they fit. The Maya civilization has been described +as immigrant from a region unknown. Its palaces and +temples and columns, and the figures and inscriptions upon +them, represent an art that seemingly had reached its maturity +when the earliest of them was made. There are no local evidences +of the slow evolution of skill and taste, such as would +be expected in an indigenous culture. The resemblances to the +monuments of Burmah and Siam are superficial. The evidences +of a European influence are practically <i>nil</i>. The indications of +a civilization remarkable along certain lines are convincing; +the Mexican calendar, the Maya astronomy, betray a knowledge +of the movements of the heavenly bodies which was equal to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</span> +that of Europe in the Columbian period, and yet independent +of it.</p> + +<p>The Maya monuments have one singularity which has challenged +speculation. “It has been found,” says Spence, “that +the starting point of all the dates found on the monuments, save +two, is the same. Thus all Maya reckoning dates from one definite +day in the past, a day 3,000 years prior to the first date in +Maya history which can be described as contemporary with the +monument upon which it is found. Upon this practically all +Maya scholars of repute are agreed.” It has been conjectured +that this normal date of the Mayas is the date of a cataclysm, +somewhat as the people of San Francisco, with the memory of +their earthquake and conflagration strong in them, date many +events in their conversation as since the Fire. It has also been +conjectured that this date, and a developed civilization, were +brought to the Mayas by the survivors of the cataclysm.</p> + +<p>Such is the case for Atlantis as it has been made up by men +with some rank as students or specialists. The bold guesses of +Donnelly, from whose work several of these citations have been +taken, must be added. His most interesting contention, perhaps, +is that the Bronze Age in Europe must have been preceded +by a Copper Age, since bronze is an alloy of copper and tin; +but that there is no evidence of a Copper Age in Europe. There +was, however, a Copper Age in America, from Bolivia to Lake +Superior, and therefore Atlantis was the bridge between the +Copper Age of America and the Bronze Age of Europe.</p> + +<p>With a characteristic sweep of statement Donnelly announces +his conclusions. The people of Atlantis “were the founders of +nearly all our arts and sciences; they were the parents of our +fundamental beliefs; they were the first civilizers, the first navigators, +the first merchants, the first colonizers of the earth; their +civilization was old when Egypt was young, and they had passed +away thousands of years before Babylon, Rome, or London was +dreamed of. This lost people were our ancestors, their blood +flows in our veins; the words we use every day were heard, in +the primitive form, in their cities, courts, temples. Every line +of race and thought, of blood and belief, leads back to them.”</p> + +<p>For every fact, tradition, or coincidence which seems to point +toward the disappearance of a continent in the Atlantic sea,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</span> +there are other explanations with authoritative names behind +them. The old dread of the Western Ocean is attributed to the +teaching of primitive religions that there was the land of shades, +and to the colossal trickery of Phœnician mariners who wanted +no competitors beyond the Pillars. The American legends of +bright-faced strangers coming over the water from the east are +declared to be still another form of the sun myth. The world-wide +tradition of a deluge may represent the independent thinking +of various races of men who found fossil shells on their hillsides +and reasoned that at some time a sea had covered them. +It is asserted that Termier assumed too much for his specific +evidence of a recent submersion—the fragments of tachylyte +dredged from the ocean floor—when he declared that vitreous +lava could not form under the sea. Accepting, as many +geographers do, that a great land domain has sunk near the +coast of Africa, they say that this was not a historic, nor a prehistoric, +but a geologic event.</p> + +<p>The controversy reduces itself, at last, to a question of time: +Did the large island which Plato called Atlantis disappear after +men came upon the earth? Termier does not assert this, but +thinks it possible, and in some measure the wish is father to +the thought. As an American geographer puts it, “It is well +known that Professor Termier is not only a good geologist, but +also a great lover of the beautiful and much given to the poetic +in speaking and writing.” This passage in the Termier address +is in point:</p> + +<p>“Meanwhile not only will science, most modern science, not +make it a crime for all lovers of beautiful legends to believe in +Plato’s story of Atlantis, but science herself through my voice +calls their attention to it. Science herself, taking them by the +hand and leading them along the wreck-strewn ocean shores, +spreads before their eyes, with thousands of disabled ships, the +continents submerged or reduced to remnants, and the isles +without number enshrouded in the abyss.”</p> + +<p>Beyond the appeal to poetry the Atlantis legend has another—an +appeal which is also a temptation. It explains much, perhaps +too much. There are gaps in the story of human origins, +and in the history of the arts and sciences, that are as wide as +the black voids the astronomer sees in the skies. Atlantis fills<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</span> +them all. Science has sought to fill them by assumptions—the +origin of man in a drowned continent of the Pacific called +Lemuria, of which Australia is a fragment; the origin of civilization +on the Mediterranean floor when it was dry land. These +are assumptions without a tradition behind them. Paradoxically +enough, the point of attack upon the Atlantis theory is that +a legend supports it, and other legends fit into it. The whole +matches into an ingenious and simple design, and are the affairs +of nature and man ever so simple?</p> + +<p>It is not for anyone to answer yet, perhaps ever. But one +has license from Termier to speculate, and, if one will, to dream. +If in substance Plato’s tale was true, it needs no effort of imagination +to picture the empire of Atlantis as it was eleven thousand +years ago, for all its drama save the dreadful end has been +repeated. The British Isles, with their sea-borne commerce, +their Mediterranean and Caribbean garrisons, their mines +and metal workings, their ancient Druidical religion and costume, +even their addiction to horse-racing, reproduce in the +northern seas the story of this vanished island dominion south +and west of Gibraltar.</p> + +<p>The outlines of the crowning calamity of history—if history +it was—have already been drawn by legend, and there are authentic +human experiences on a lesser scale, and in other times +and places, to fill in the canvas. In the European port nearest +the supposed site of Atlantis, on the first day of November, +1775, a sound of thunder was heard underground, and in an +earthquake that shook twelve million miles of sea and land the +city of Lisbon fell in ruins, burying sixty thousand persons +beneath it.</p> + +<p>“About one o’clock in the afternoon”—it is Pliny the Younger +speaking, the place is near Pompeii, and the time August 24th, +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> 79—“a vast and singular cloud was seen to elevate itself in +the atmosphere. It spread horizontally, in form like the +branches of the pine, and precipitated the burning materials +with which it was charged upon the many lovely but ill-fated +villages which stood upon this delightful coast.... Multitudes +crowded toward the beach, but the boisterous agitation +of the sea, alternately rolling on the shore and thrown back by +the convulsive motion of the earth, precluded every possibility<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</span> +of escape.... Now were heard the shrieks of women, screams +of children, clamors of men, all accursing their fate and imploring +death, the deliverance they feared, with outstretched +hands to the gods whom many thought about to be involved together +with themselves in the last eternal night.”</p> + +<p>Let the biblical account of the deluge speak the closing word +upon Atlantis: “And all the high hills that were under the whole +heaven were covered, and the waters prevailed upon the earth.”</p> + +<p>One turns from the convulsion and welter of the deep, and +the beautiful and dreadful thing that lay beneath it, and fixes +the gaze on archaic ships, laden with strangely robed men and +women, riding the long billows of the Caribbean toward a quiet +shore. There—if the dreamers are right—they built another +civilization, which flourished and in turn vanished, with its temples +and palaces, beneath the green mantle of the tropic forest. +If the dreamers are right.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c21">Chapter XXI. The Gilded Man</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">The</span> high plateau of Cundinamarca in the interior of Colombia +was once an inland sea. Its vestiges remain in small +lakes which the Indians held sacred, and into which they cast +offerings of emeralds and golden ornaments. There was a special +ceremony at Lake Guatavitá. When a cacique died and +another was chosen, a long procession moved down to the shore. +At the head went mourners, nude and wailing, their bodies +stained with red ochre. Behind them were other groups in +jaguar skins, their hair dressed with feathers, their limbs agleam +with barbaric jewelwork. Amid the joyful tumult of horns and +pipes followed the priests in tall black caps and long black +robes. In the rear came high priests and nobles carrying a barrow +hung with disks of gold. Upon the barrow rode El Dorado—the +Gilded Man—newly chosen chief of an obscure native +tribe, and destined to become, through no quality of his own, +the elusive central figure in the most singular chapter in exploration, +above all others the figure of fate in South America.</p> + +<p>He was well named, with the poetry wherewith Spain had +invested the very headlands and harbors that her sons had found +in the west. Like the mourners, the Gilded Man was naked, and +yet he was clad. His body had been rubbed with fragrant gums, +and priests with tubes had blown gold dust over him, until he +gleamed like the god of day incarnate. Arrived at the shore, +the enameled chief went upon a raft with his cortège and was +ferried to the middle of the lake. There he plunged in and +laved himself while the people shouted and the trumpets brayed +on the beach. The golden dust that had covered him glimmered +down through the water as an offering to its deity. In +its wake followed the bracelets and brooches which the attendant +lords flung into the pool. So the ceremony ended.</p> + +<p>This rite, beautiful and significant, is history, and not baseless +legend. Golden ornaments have been uncovered in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</span> +lake, which was drained by modern treasure-seekers; among +them was a piece wrought with some art which seems to be a +representation of the sacred raft and its passengers. Humboldt +thinks that the rite came from warmer regions and that the nude +figures and coronation bath are alien to the climate of the tableland. +But the fatal feature of the ceremony is that it was already +history when the Spaniards heard of it. The Muysca +Indians of the Bogota region subjugated the Muysca Indians of +the Guatavitá region about the time of the discovery of America. +The custom of bathing a gilded cacique passed with this small +tribal conquest. The memory of it remained. Unique among +the customs of the continent, it was talked of along the coasts +of the Caribbean when the Spaniards came. There were rumors +of it in Peru, and even farther south.</p> + +<p>“Let us go in search of that gilded Indian,” said Belalcazar +when a native of the north brought the first news of him to +Quito, which had fallen to Pizarro a few years before. The +Spaniards went, and found all there was to find—the deep +waters of Guatavitá. But this did not content them. The Gilded +Man was a symbol. He stood for something larger than a rite +that might take place once in a generation. He stood for the +very arrogance and folly of a royal and a priestly wealth that +must be beyond measure. Every sunrise the body of the +haughty savage was covered afresh with glittering dust. Every +sunset, so the Spaniards fabled, he cleansed himself in a pool, +the bottom of which had slowly paved itself with gold, as generation +after generation of his dynasty performed their ablutions. +Only a mighty nation and a rich could have so prodigal a +king; and so El Dorado came to mean not so much a man as a +golden city in a gilded land. The altars and ewers and basins +of its temples, the furnishings and plate of its palaces, the jewels +and table service of its nobles—here was promise of a booty to +match the loot of Mexico and Peru.</p> + +<p>In seeking it Spain spent more lives and sank more treasure +than in all its conquests in the New World.</p> + +<p>Somehow the land that held it seemed to recede as the exploring +columns advanced. It was sought in Colombia, in Venezuela, +in eastern Peru, in northwestern Brazil, in Bolivia, and +from Paraguay. Over a great inverted triangle the base of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</span> +which was a line nearly a thousand miles long drawn east from +the Cordilleras of Colombia nearly to the mouth of the Orinoco, +and the apex of which was in Paraguay two thousand miles to +the south, ceaselessly marched the expeditions. The El Dorado +country of the exploring parties—the region which knew their +tread—was thus a territory of about a million square miles. It +repeated the general lines of the continent itself, an enclave of +illusion surrounded by the realities of mountain and coast.</p> + +<p>Into this triangle from all sides struck the Spanish columns. +They moved east, north, and south from Quito, south from the +Caribbean, south and west from Trinidad, north from Asuncion. +They climbed mountains, forded rivers, penetrated deserts. +They froze in the passes of the Andes, sickened in the +flooded, fever-haunted valley of the Amazon, died of hunger in +the pathless plains; and everywhere the poisoned Indian arrows +found their targets. Three of the columns, one of which had +been on the road for five years, entered the plateau of Cundinamarca +at the same time—a coincidence without parallel in history. +Germans and Englishmen also essayed the adventure. As +for Spain, when de Silva appealed for funds and followers, the +country could have been depopulated, says Padre Simon, so +strong was the belief in the Gilded Land.</p> + +<p>Under the fable of the Gilded King ran other delusions. It +was thought that the northern part of South America was rich in +the precious metals. It was thought that the auriferous steeps +of Peru and New Granada swept eastward almost to the mouth +of the Orinoco. There was no comprehension of the continental +extent of intertribal trade, and the presence of gold among +Indian tribes was thought to be proof that it could be had in +their country, even when this was flat prairie or inundated +forest. Native traders followed their own path from the Andes +to the Caribbean; it is significant that the site of the legendary +city moved along it through successive generations almost from +end to end.</p> + +<p>The search for it falls into four chapters—the quest of +El Dorado of Cundinamarca; the quest of El Dorado of Canelas; +the quest of El Dorado of the Omaguas; the quest of El Dorado +of Manoa.</p> + +<p>By the chance meeting of three expeditions, already noted,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</span> +the end of the quest for El Dorado of Cundinamarca is sheer +pageantry. Belalcazar, lieutenant of Pizarro and governor of +Quito, had sent his captains in 1535 to discover what he conceived +to be a golden valley between Pasto and Popayan in the +Cordilleras of southern Colombia, not far from the South Sea. +The following year he undertook the search in person and +pushed it farther north to the plateau of Bogota. There he +found two other expeditions already in contact. Quesada had +started from Santa Marta with eight hundred men and a hundred +horses. With this command he had subjugated the Chibcha +nation, numbering a million persons if the chroniclers are right, +and dispersed an army of twenty thousand men which they had +put in the field. After difficult marching and fighting he brought +a handful of men—a hundred foot and sixty horse—to the +neighborhood of Bogota. Soon he saw approach the remnants +of an expedition which had left the coast of Venezuela five years +before. The German, Federmann, brought to the plateau a +hundred ragged men out of the four hundred well-equipped +soldiers with whom he had started.</p> + +<p>The three commands bivouacked almost within striking distance +of each other. They presented a spectacular contrast, for +the men from Peru were in Spanish steel and scarlet, those from +Santa Marta wore Indian fabrics, while the men from Venezuela +were clad in the skins of wild animals. The clergy labored +feverishly to avert the expected appeal to arms, and for once in +the history of New World exploration resolute men of the +Iberian strain settled their differences without fighting. The +three captains went back to Spain together where each laid his +claim to the governorship of New Granada before the throne. +Only Belalcazar was recognized and he only with the post of +Adelantado in the Popayan region.</p> + +<p>The quest of El Dorado of Canelas is the story of the expedition +of Gonzalo Pizarro and the secession therefrom of his lieutenant, +Orellana. Across all the history of Spanish exploration +flashes the treacherous and brilliant deed of Orellana, somewhat +as the “moving equator”—the Amazon—which he discovered, +cuts across the meridians of longitude between the Andes and +the Atlantic. Canelas was the Land of Cinnamon, and here, and +here only upon the soil of America, the two leading motives of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</span> +exploration—the search for gold, the search for spices—were +interwoven. Pizarro had heard of a fabled spiceland hard by +the territories of the Gilded King, and this was his avowed +objective. But his imagination roved further. In the valley of +the Napo, a stream which for a space forms the boundary between +Ecuador and modern Colombia, there were plains where +the inhabitants wore armor of “massy gold.” Gonzalo would +have a look at this armor. He set forth with 500 Spaniards, +4,000 Indians, 150 horses, 1,000 dogs, and 5,000 swine and +“Peruvian sheep.”</p> + +<p>While threading the passes at the very threshold of the journey +a tremendous earthquake rocked the mountains under his +feet, and an Indian village with hundreds of houses sank out of +sight. Followed the tempests, and for six weeks tropical rainstorms +with incessant thunder and lightning beat upon the men. +It was a prelude in keeping with the disasters to come. The +Land of Cinnamon was found, and left behind as too remote to +offer present profit. A brigantine was built on the Napo, and +Orellana was sent ahead with it to gather supplies in the Indian +settlements. The party never came back, but swept down the +Amazon in a wild adventure to the Atlantic sea, whence their +tales of the mighty river, its warrior women, its still stranger +peoples, and its temples roofed with gold, set Spain on fire. +Gonzalo waited for months, but he was of the strain of the +Pizarros—all hero as well as all scoundrel—and did not succumb +when he knew he had been betrayed. In a march of over +a year he led the remnant of his command back to Quito. All +his Indians had died or deserted, and only eighty Spaniards +remained. When they entered the City of the Line in June +1542, it seemed, says Prescott, as if the charnel-house had given +up its dead.</p> + +<p>El Dorado of the Omaguas had many seekers, and in some +measure unveiled itself before the eyes of Philip Von Hutten. +After him, the Gilded Land had for a time a place certain on +the map. It was the region between the Guaviare and Caqueta +rivers in southeastern Colombia and northwestern Brazil—the +territory of the Omaguas, a rich and numerous Indian nation.</p> + +<p>Von Hutten was a relative of the Welsers, the Augsburg +bankers to whom Charles V had ceded a large tract in Tierra-firma,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</span> +and who had already sent out Federmann for the adventure +of Cundinamarca. The second German expedition began +almost humbly. Von Hutten had only 130 men, and when he +found that Quesada was ahead of him with 250 men, he was content +to follow in his tracks, hoping to share the rewards of discovery. +But when Quesada reached the headwaters of the +Caqueta, he had seen enough, and Von Hutten pushed ahead +into the unknown.</p> + +<p>His Indian guide told him of a populous city called Macatoa +in a country rich with gold, and he even displayed small golden +apples which came from there. The winter rains overtook the +command on its road to this halfway house to El Dorado, and, +marooned on high ground, the men subsisted on maize and ants, +and on grubs, beetles, and roots. Their very hair and beards +fell off, but at length they reached Macatoa, and went on to the +land of the Omaguas.</p> + +<p>From a hill they saw at last the city they sought. It stretched +beyond the utmost range of the vision—long streets and densely +clustered houses, and a temple. In the temple, the guide said, +were idols of gold as tall as small children, and one golden +statue as tall as a woman, with other treasures above price. +Beyond, he assured them, lay still richer cities. What they saw +and what they heard were enough for Von Hutten and his band. +There were only forty left of them, and within the city, they +were told, was a large force of native warriors. The adventurers +clapt spurs to their horses and dashed in—and then +dashed out again, their leader wounded and fifteen thousand +Indians in pursuit. The figures are their own, as well as the +statement that they beat off the attacking force and retired. +Afterward Von Hutten was murdered by his men.</p> + +<p>To die on the march, to be stabbed by one’s companions, or +to be beheaded by one’s king, seemed the lot predestined for +captains who sought the Gilded Devil.</p> + +<p>As was proved again when the Spaniards quested for Cibola, +an Indian town is a deceptive thing when seen at a distance. +What Von Hutten really saw was probably a collection of +closely grouped villages, and among them a council house or +temple, larger than the others but no more imposing than the +bark communal houses under which at that time Algonquins<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</span> +were living upon Manhattan Island. Yet the bruit of his discovery +launched expedition after expedition from New World +and Old. Martin de Proveda, starting from Peru, reached the +country of the Omaguas and went on to Bogota. Pedro de Silva +brought a party of six hundred out of Spain, and in a six +months’ journey across the llanos of Venezuela saw all but thirty +die or desert. He tried again with another party of 170 Spaniards +going up the Orinoco. Famine, disease, and Indian +arrows accounted for every member of his party save one.</p> + +<p>There is evidence that unruly spirits were encouraged to seek +El Dorado in order to rid the settled places of the New World +of their turbulence. Such was the expedition which Pedro de +Ursua led out of Peru in 1559. A rabble of lawless adventurers +had been attracted thither by the civil wars which followed the +conquest. The viceroy was glad to commission this young +officer and see him depart with these “Gentlemen and old souldiers +of Peru” as Lopez Vaz called them. When they reached +the Indian villages of Omagua the expected happened. The +men murdered their leader, and the command fell to Aguirre, +who told them that whoever spoke further of El Dorado should +die. With his followers he set forth to reach the Atlantic and +return by way of Panama to Peru, where he purposed to seize +“riches, bread, wine, flesh, and faire women also.” His men +murdered him in turn, but not until he had done an amazing +thing. Starting down the Amazon, his boats won the sea by +way of the Orinoco, having used the Cassiquiare to cross from +one river system to the other.</p> + +<p>The Omagua chapter ends with the great and tragic expedition +of Gonsalo Ximenes de Quesada, conqueror of New Granada, +and one of the largest figures among the conquistadors, +brother of the Quesada who had sunk his means in a like search +eighteen years before. With 350 Spanish soldiers, 1,500 Indians, +a number of negro slaves, and a train of cattle and swine, +Ximenes left Bogota in 1579. Torrential rains, inundated +lands, prairie fires, mosquitoes, Indian warfare, disease, famine—the +disastrous routine of other expeditions—were repeated on +a larger canvas. Quesada got as far as the confluence of the +Guaviare and Orinoco, and then had to return. He brought +back seventy-four Spaniards and four Indians, and he left<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</span> +behind with his dead a fortune of two million dollars scattered +along the trails of the wilderness.</p> + +<p>The quest of El Dorado of Manoa lowers a curtain, rich and +somber and yet of fantastic design, upon the career of the most +remarkable Englishman of the Elizabethan age. In this last +phase of a long delusion other explorers led their thousands to +die in the jungles of the Orinoco, but their endeavor does not so +engage attention as that of Raleigh, who lost little save his own +fortune and head. There are two names, and then the Elizabethan. +Antonio de Berreo, married to Quesada’s niece, came +from New Granada down the Meta and part way down the Orinoco +for three years of dark futility. He came again and +founded towns at the confluence of the Caroni and the Orinoco, +and in the island of Trinidad at the Orinoco’s mouth. His lieutenant, +Domingo de Vera, went on to Spain and came back with +a fleet and two thousand men. These perished, all but a few, +in the two towns de Berreo had founded, or in the leagues of +turbulent river that rolled between them, or in the fever-wasted +jungles into which they set forth to find Manoa. De Berreo himself +fell a prisoner to Raleigh, who had set sail from England +about the same time that de Vera embarked from Spain.</p> + +<p>This time the Gilded Phantom, in order to make sure of victims +in an age about to grow weary of long quests and wary of +far horizons, had come almost across the continent to entrap +them. Not in the eastern foothills of the Andes, but along the +lower reaches of the Orinoco where the Atlantic tides still +throbbed, the snare was spread. In the mighty empire of +Guiana, it was said there was a lake of salt water almost as +great as the Caspian Sea, and upon it the largest, the fairest, +and the richest city of the world. A fugitive Inca had come +down from the Andes, and the nobles and merchants had followed +him, and long trains of llamas had borne their possessions +through the wilderness, and an armed host went before. +They “conquered, reedified and inlarged” Manoa, says Raleigh.</p> + +<p>So vast was the city that when the Spaniard, Juan Martinez, +was brought into it blindfold at noon, and his face then uncovered, +he moved through it all that afternoon and night, and +the next day from sun rising to sun setting, before he came to +the palace of the emigrant Inca. At the feasts of this emperor,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</span> +so de Berreo told his captor, when he “carouseth with his captaines, +tributaries and governours,” the company stripped and +were anointed with balsam and dusted off with finely powdered +gold, blown through hollow canes. So they sat, in radiant +drunkenness, for six or seven days together.</p> + +<p>Thus the striking inaugural ceremony of a vanquished Indian +tribe on the tableland of Bogota had become in the lowlands of +Venezuela the symbol of a luxurious and sensual court, and of +an intolerable splendor. Not one man, once in a lifetime, but +a host of drunken sybarites, carousing in repeated revels, wore +the golden coat; the raft on a tarn of the western plateau had +become a palace and a city greater than any other, and seated +in the eastern wilderness on a lake that was an inland sea. +Upon the mythical estate and possessions of the Gilded King +had been piled the fugitive prestige and riches of the Incas. +The magnificent and yet sordid culmination of a century of +splendid dreams and desperate endeavor, with cupidities, basenesses +and heroisms uncounted, it needed for its final victim +one who embodied in signal fashion the strength and the weaknesses +of the age. It found him in Sir Walter Raleigh.</p> + +<p>Raleigh was the most accomplished man of his time, and +every fiber of him was Elizabethan. On the scaffold he said, +“I have been a soldier, a sailor, and a courtier, all of them +courses of wickedness and vice.” Let it be added that in them +he excelled most other men. He learned soldiering under +Coligny, fighting the battles of the Huguenots. As a sailor he +took prizes of Spanish treasure ships, captured Fayal, led the +attack on the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, contributed to the strategy +that threw back the Armada; with him, as with Drake and his +companions, the ruling passion was to singe the beard of the +king of Spain. As a courtier he had his place among the vivacious +friendships of the Virgin Queen, and he was rewarded +and rebuked in turn with honors, monopolies, rustication, exile.</p> + +<p>Raleigh introduced the use of tobacco in England and the +culture of the potato in Ireland. He founded two short-lived +colonies in North Carolina, which has honored his memory in +the name of the state capital. He aided the colonizing ventures +of his stepbrother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and came to North +America with him. He encouraged and aided the poet Spenser.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</span> +He assisted Richard Hakluyt in bringing out his remarkable collection +of explorers’ manuscripts. It falls in with the picture +that Raleigh was skilled in brewing new drinks, one of which +bore his name; in the Tower of London he divided the time +between his library and a small distillery he had set up in a +hen-house.</p> + +<p>Like his great contemporaries, Raleigh was both a man of +action and a man of affairs—compound of statesman, <i>condottiere</i>, +and merchant-adventurer. He was also a writer of +noble gifts. Instead of moping in his long years of confinement +in the Tower, he wrote there his <i>History of the World</i>. +And he made beautiful poems. “If all the world and love were +young” is his line. His is the epigram, “The shallow murmur, +but the deep are dumb.” In one mood he could pen the invocation +beginning, “O eloquent, just and mightie Death,” and in +another carol,</p> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">If she undervalue me,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">What care I how fair she be?</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + + +<p>His best-known line, “Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall,” +graven by him on a windowpane for the eye of Elizabeth, was +least characteristic of Raleigh. If always he sought to climb the +heights of adventure, he had little fear to fall. This record +concerns his strangest adventure and his final fall. In most part +it is the story as recounted in his book, <i>The discoverie of the +large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of +the great and golden citie of Manoa, which the Spaniards call +El Dorado</i>. It is a fascinating book, for seldom before or +since has pen so gifted set down a travel tale; but there is +tragedy in the very title, which is the memorial of a vain dream. +Let the historian Bancroft recite the justification, or the excuse, +for the illusion of a worldly-wise man who was also an Elizabethan: +“If Elizabeth had hoped for a hyperborean Peru in the +arctic seas of America, why might not Raleigh expect to find +the city of gold on the banks of the Orinoco?”</p> + +<p>The bare narrative of Raleigh’s first quest of El Dorado of +Manoa need not long detain, for this skillful administrator, intrepid +explorer, and subtle diplomat found no golden city, lost<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</span> +no men in the wilderness, and had no trouble with the Indians, +whom his engaging bearing and politic address won to his side. +He had sent a ship to reconnoiter in 1594, and after his own +expedition came and went in 1595, he sent another ship in 1596 +to continue the exploration, while he himself took command of +the squadron that dashed in upon the Spanish shipping at Cadiz. +Raleigh’s Guiana flotilla of the year before consisted of five +ships, one of them from the British Admiralty. That there +might be no enemy behind him, he seized the Spanish settlement +at Trinidad, capturing de Berreo; anchoring his ships there, he +set off in barges with a hundred men up the stubborn current of +the Orinoco. Six months after he sailed from England, he was +back again with some Indian hostages, some pieces of golden +ore, and the marvelous stories with which his <i>Discovery</i> is +adorned.</p> + +<p>His travel narrative lays its scenes in “the insular regions +and broken world” of Guiana, which then included a good part +of Venezuela. Through its pages flows “the great rage and +increase” of the swollen Orinoco. Through them flit “birds of +all colours, some carnation, some crimson, orange-tawny, and +purple,” so that “it was unto us a great good passing of the time +to behold them.” “I never saw a more beautifull countrey, nor +more lively prospects,” exclaims Raleigh. From afar off he +gazed on a “mountaine of Christall.” “There falleth over it,” +he says, “a mighty river which toucheth no part of the side of +the mountaine, but rusheth over the toppe of it, and falleth to +the ground with so terrible a noyse and clamour, as if a thousand +great bels were knockt one against another.” Enters the note of +gold and of politics: In Guiana, it seemed, “every stone that we +stouped to take up, promised either golde or silver by his complexion.” +For “health, good ayre, pleasure and riches,” he concludes, +“this country hath no equal, East or West.” It would be +easy for the English to defend it, for the woods are so thick +along the rivers that “a mouse cannot sit in a boat unhit from +the banke.”</p> + +<p>The book holds also the statement of the large national aims +of Raleigh, into which, as he assured himself, the gold hunt +fitted. Not for him were mere “journeys of picory,” nor “to go +long voyages, to lie hard, to fare worse, to be parched and withered,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</span> +solely to “cozen myselfe.” Here was “a better Indies +for her Majestie than the King of Spaine hath any.” With the +gold of western America Spain bade fair to dominate the world. +Only by tapping the Indian treasure-house of eastern America +could the balance of power be restored. In a notable passage +Raleigh enunciates a theory of international politics that would +sound familiar to modern ears, if for the gold lust there were +substituted the lust of markets.</p> + +<p>“If we consider,” he says, “the affaires of the Spanish king, +what territories he hath purchased, what he hath added to the +acts of his predecessors, how many kingdoms he hath indangered, +how many armies, garrisons & navies he hath and doth +mainteine, the great losses which he hath repaired, as in 88 +above 100 saile of great ships with their artillery, & that no +yeere is lesse unfortunate but that many vessels, treasures, and +people are devoured, and yet notwithstanding he beginneth +againe like a storme to threaten shipwrack to us all: we shall +find that these abilities rise not from the trades of sacks, and +Sivil oringes, nor from ought else that either Spaine, Portugal, +or any of his other provinces produce: it is his Indian gold that +indangereth and disturbeth all the nations of Europe, it purchaseth +intelligence, creepeth into counsels, and setteth bound +loyaltie at libertie, in the greatest Monarchies of Europe.”</p> + +<p>This enterprise of matching gold with gold, Guiana against +Peru, Raleigh hoped would be intrusted to him, and he must +have pictured himself as viceroy, under England, of such +another India as Englishmen of later centuries were to attain. +Yet the <i>Discovery</i> is a defense, as well as a political tract and +a collection of mirabilia. Raleigh’s return, empty-handed, had +aroused the resentment of some who had put money into his +venture, and the ridicule and censure of more. It was alleged +that he had procured his golden ore in Barbary, and naught +better than marcasite from Guiana. It was even noised abroad +that he had not been with the fleet at all, but had been concealed +in Cornwall while his ships were away. The dreaming adventurer +had his enemies.</p> + +<p>After his second voyage to Guiana they were able to destroy +him. Twenty-one years had elapsed since the first expedition. +Twelve of these Raleigh had spent in the Tower, imprisoned on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</span> +one of the charges of treason which in those days meant little +save that a man was disliked by the royal favorites of the +moment. At sixty-four years of age he was paroled and went +to Guiana with a squadron of fourteen vessels and the coveted +commission of governor of the country. He spoke now of a +wonderful mine and little of a thing that was in the back of his +head, for still he dreamed of Manoa’s golden towers, which, as +many men would have it, were nowhere on earth.</p> + +<p>The expedition turned out disastrously. King James had submitted +to Spain through its ambassador at London a detailed +copy of Raleigh’s plans and had received what was represented +to Raleigh to be a pledge of unmolested passage to the up-river +country claimed by him by right of discovery. He found the +Spaniards fortified against him. There were clashes in which +his own son lost his life and also the governor of a river town, +kinsman of the Spanish ambassador.</p> + +<p>Raleigh returned to face his fate, and in effect it was Spain’s +own hand that wrote the decree of death, for the two royal +houses were about to be united by marriage, and the Stuart was +studiously complaisant to the Hapsburg. Sir Walter was tried +on a charge of masking, under a project to discover a mine, a +piratical raid on the Spanish settlements—a charge which the +national contacts of a hundred years invested with a grim +humor. But he was executed on a more serviceable pretext, the +long-suspended sentence for treason; nor did it avail him to +urge that the king’s commission for his voyage was in itself a +grant of pardon. The night before his death on the scaffold he +wrote these lines:</p> + + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">E’en such is Time, who takes in trust</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Our youth and joys and all we have,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And pays us but with age and dust.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + + +<p>Thus the great Elizabethan faced and dismissed two vanities. +Equally so he had found life itself and the mocking parable of +his New World quest—for hopes, frustration; dross for gold.</p> + +<p>With Raleigh ended the larger expeditions to find El Dorado. +There is a little more to say. Some years before, two parties +had sought the Gilded City, starting from far south. One came<span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</span> +from Buenos Aires in 1537, all the colonists leaving that ill-fated +city, and passing up the river in the hope either of finding +El Dorado or of reaching the Spanish settlements on Lake Titicaca. +A detachment of this party halted on the Paraguay and +founded Asuncion. Another detachment, numbering two hundred +persons, pushed on into Bolivia, where the Indians ambushed +and killed them all. A later party which was led by +De Chaves left Asuncion in 1560, wandered northwest into +Bolivia and there disbanded.</p> + +<p>The imaginary lake of Manoa, sometimes called Mar Eldorado +or the Golden Sea, was delineated on maps of South +America for nearly three centuries after the time of Columbus. +Periodical overflows of the Orinoco tributaries, which cover +wide regions with standing water, serve to explain the origin +and persistence of the lake legend. For the shift of the basic +legend from Colombia to Guiana, Humboldt suggests an explanation +in a custom of native tribes in the latter country. +Instead of tattooing themselves, the Indians anointed their +bodies with turtle fat and stuck spangles of mica with a metallic +luster, white as silver and red as copper, upon their skins, so +that at a distance they seemed to wear laced clothes.</p> + +<p>In 1740 Don Manuel Centurion, the Spanish governor of +Santa Thome del Agostina, made further search for the fabled +lake of Manoa and the city washed by its waters. The popular +imagination was inflamed by the reports of an Indian who came +down the river Caroni. In the southern sky he showed the +natives the dim radiance of the Clouds of Magellan. This he +said was the reflection of golden ore on an island in the lake of +legend. So may one leave the city of illusion where it belongs, +in cloudland.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c22">Chapter XXII. The Dream Quests of Spain</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">The</span> search for El Dorado was the greatest of the dream +quests of Spain. It was not the first, it was not the last. Along +with lesser ventures without number Spain sought certain grand +objects. These included the Fountain of Youth, the Earthly +Paradise, the Temple of the Sun, the Cradle of Gold, the Country +of Cinnamon, the Enchanted City of the Cæsars, the Islands +of Solomon, El Gran Moxo, El Gran Paititi, the Sepulchres of +Zenu, the Temple of Dobayba, the Seven Cities of Cibola, +Quivera the prairie capital. And Spain sought also buried cities +and phantom lakes and craters abrim with liquid gold.</p> + +<p>Through most of these quests is the flow of delusive water. +It sparkles in the youth-conferring spring which De Leon failed +to find. It moves in the River Jordan, for which red man and +white hunted in Florida. It sweeps past the mythical Quivera, +bearing huge canoes with prows of gold. It shines on the far +horizon of Cibola, and on it there are barks of Cathay. It +glimmers in the tarn of Guatavitá. In the legendary sea of +Manoa it reflects the fugitive gold of El Dorado. It laves the +enchanted City of the Cæsars hard by the lake of Nahuelhuapi. +In the Laguna de los Xarayes it ripples around the island home +of El Gran Moxo. It flashes on the beaches of fabled islands +west of the southern continent.</p> + +<p>There were reasons for the illusory lakes of Spanish adventure. +The City of Mexico was seated in a lake with causeways +crossing it and canals reaching the heart of the city. The +Empire of Peru held Lake Titicaca as sacred. The scarcely less +remarkable civilization of the Chibchas of Colombia rendered +homage to the lakes of the central plateau. So the Spaniards +thought that when they sought other golden cities in the wilderness +they would find them on the shores of inland seas.</p> + +<p>The periodic inundations of the Orinoco, the Amazon, the +Paraguay, and the tributaries of these streams deceived and disturbed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</span> +men with appearances which they could not understand. +One explorer would come upon a vast sheet of still water, and +in due time it would get upon the maps. Another would lead +his column dry shod over the same place, and men were slow to +realize that each had made correct report of what he saw. For +example, the legendary lake of Xarayas, long supposed to be +the source of the Paraguay, is merely a seasonal inundation; but +during high water this transitory sea extends three hundred and +fifty miles north and south and one hundred and fifty miles east +and west.</p> + +<p>The things of the spirit—religion, romance, pure fantasy—animated +Spain in some of the quests it followed beside the still +waters of the lakes of dream. Its rude chivalry could serve the +ideal with a whole heart. But for the most part cavalier and +muleteer sought gold alone. Gems, spices, pepper, dyewoods, +grain fields, raw materials, rubber, bananas, coffee—these are +objects of ancient or modern enterprise in strange lands. They +meant little to the Spaniard. Nor was his deepest interest in +metal that was still underground. He was looking for the gold +that for generation after generation Indian civilizations had +brought to the surface and stored in their capital cities. The +rewards of savage toil he would seize for himself who better +knew their value, or thought he did.</p> + +<p>That is why the visionary expeditions of Spain are in the +main a search for cities, or, failing these, projects to loot temples +and rifle graves. Neither the digging nor the assembling +of the golden treasure was in the scheme. The purpose was to +take the central treasure houses. So Spain had already done in +Peru. The captive Inca Atahuallpa had himself suggested a +kindred thing. For ransom he offered to fill his prison chamber, +a room seventeen feet wide and twenty-two feet long, with gold +to the depth of nine feet, or as high as the reach of the tallest +cavalier. When the bargain was made, gold began to pour in +from all corners of the empire—statues, vases, vessels, utensils, +plaques, disks, chains, temple ornaments, nuggets, and golden +dust. Of course his captors killed the Inca, and rushed on to +seek the sources whence flowed the maddening stream; and what +they found did not satisfy. Much of the treasure of the Incas +had disappeared. Nor has it been uncovered since.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</span></p> + +<p>Those vain enterprises of Spain, with which a great part of +the New World’s sixteenth century was filled, were attempts of +adventurers to lay hold of the gold which had escaped the conquistadors +in Mexico and Peru, or which it was imagined had +escaped them. It was supposed that the descendants of the +Montezumas, taking rich treasures with them, had retreated +northward to Cibola or to Quivera, and there renewed their state. +It was reported, and with some basis of fact, that princes of the +Inca blood had gone north, south, or east from Cuzco and set up +new cities in the wilderness. The basis of fact was the flight +of Manco Capac, called the Last of the Incas. This prince +raised the country against its conquerors, flung an army of two +hundred thousand warriors against the Spanish garrison in +Cuzco, and before night settled on the empire of the Andes gave +proof on the battlefield that there was valor in the Quichua +blood. At the mountain fortress of Choquequirau, the Cradle +of Gold, six thousand feet above the valley of the Apurimac, +Peruvian geographers believe the Last of the Incas made his +seat.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Fountain of Youth</i></p> + +<p>It is best to begin the recital of the dream quests of Spain +with the dream of all ages—the search for lost youth. It was +the first of those adventures in the New World in which the sons +of Spain were to show they were different from other men, in +that when they imagined a vain thing their imagination rushed +on to action.</p> + +<p>In an unfinished poem Heine sketches the beginning of this +quest. Ponce de Leon, the veteran ex-governor of Porto Rico, +lies in his hammock and an old Indian servant sings to him of +the Bahama island of Bimini with its bird song and undying +flowers, and of its interesting tenants. These were old men +restored by a magic spring to riotous youth and beldames who +had drunk of its waters and regained girlhood’s bloom; they +were afraid to return home because of the scandal their shamefully +youthful appearance would work among their friends. +Poetic license carries this sketch only a little beyond the credulity +of the period, for Peter Martyr had written at length to the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</span>bishop of Rome of an island with a youth-restoring spring some +three hundred leagues north of Hispaniola.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f20"> +<img src="images/fig20.jpg" alt="dream"> +<p class="caption"><i>The Things of the Spirit Animated Spain in Some of the Quests It Followed<br> +Beside the Still Waters of the Lakes of Dream</i></p> +</div> + +<p>The Spanish cavalier set sail with three ships in 1512, in +search of Bimini. There were nearly seven hundred islands +and islets in the Bahamas and his journey was through a labyrinth. +For a part of the voyage he had the strangest, and perhaps +the most fitting, of pilots. To a clump of islands near the +Lucayos he gave the name of La Vieja or the Old Woman group +because he found them without inhabitants save one ancient +woman. Her he took aboard to help guide him through the sea +passages. He found Florida, but he did not find Bimini, which +was discovered later by his captain, Juan Perez de Ortubia, the +sagacious old woman directing him to its shore. The water +there was like any other water. Ponce de Leon, however, +escaped the disabilities of age. A poisoned Indian arrow +launched from a Florida bow did for him when he was about +sixty-one.</p> + +<p>Before his death, the quest for a fountain from which one +might quaff the draught of youth had been broadened to include +a River Jordan of rejuvenating baths. This was somewhere on +the peninsula of Florida, where for half a century red men and +white searched for it, bathing in every stream, lagoon, and +swamp they found, in the hope that the magic water, in some +sudden transformation scene, might betray its whereabouts.</p> + +<p>Though they did not know it, the Spaniards themselves +brought to the New World the legend of the fountain of youth +and the name of Bimini, as well as that of the River Jordan. +Wiener has traced each step. In 1493, a year before the Pope +made the line of demarcation between the Spanish and Portuguese +discoveries, he had given to Spain the newly discovered +lands on condition that the natives should be baptized in the +Catholic faith. Amerigo Vespucci falsely reported that, in compliance +therewith, a fountain of baptism had been placed on an +island in the Gulf of Mexico. Peter Martyr in his <i>Decade of +1511</i> called this the <i>fonte perenni</i>, but the cartographer misread +his Latin, and on the map attached to his work a coast line +north of Cuba is called <i>isla de beimeni parte</i>. Thus the perennial +fountain became Bimini, and the fiction of a Christian +baptismal font revived a pagan myth.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</span></p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Enchanted City of the Cæsars</i></p> + +<p>The quest of the Enchanted City of the Cæsars was the southernmost +adventure of the dreaming mind of Spain. It was +prosecuted along the slopes of the southern Andes and the Patagonian +plains beyond—that mysterious and desolate region +which made so deep an impression upon Darwin. Over the +remote prairies, peopled only by huanacos and roving bands of +tall savages, Spanish commands hunted for a capital which the +natives called Trapalanda, and which, according to the oath of +those who said they had seen it, was as great as ancient Nineveh +and as populous as Peking.</p> + +<p>Outbound to the Moluccas, the story ran, a vessel belonging +to the bishop of Palancia was shipwrecked in the Straits of +Magellan. The captain of the stranded craft, Sebastian de +Arguello, found himself on the Patagonian coast with three +thousand miles of mountain and plain between his little band +and the outpost of Spanish power at Cuzco. Followed by about +two hundred soldiers and sailors, thirty adventurers, twenty-three +married women, and three priests, he struck boldly into +the heart of the pampas, moving northward. When the company +reached a region of lakes and meadows rimmed by snowy summits +resolution was taken to found there an independent state +aloof from the perturbations of the world. Other fugitives had +reached this inviting spot before the Spaniards—a numerous +native people flying from the wreck of Peru.</p> + +<p>It would seem from the rapid growth of the city which was +said to have arisen upon the shore of Lake Nahuelhuapi that red +men and white mingled their blood. The first report of the +austral capital reached Concepcion in Chile, in 1557.</p> + +<p>The Spanish settlements were led to picture a great, rich city +in the south. A strong wall ran around it, and over it the roving +Indians of the prairies could see reddish roofs that gleamed as +with gold. The houses were of cut stone and those who had +been within them spoke of beds, chairs, and table service made +of precious ores. The central edifice in the capital was a noble +church roofed with silver, and from it were decreed and regulated +the pompous festivals of the ecclesiastical year.</p> + +<p>Wishing to keep their isolation inviolate, its inhabitants had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</span> +an understanding with the Indians that the secret of the city +should be told to none. But when it received the name of <i>La +Ciudad encantada de los Cæsares</i> (the enchanted City of the +Cæsars), it was a presage that from all the Spanish settlements +of the south, expeditions should go forth to seek it out, for the +very words were a challenge to the imagination.</p> + +<p>It was called the city of the Cæsars because the men who +founded it had been subjects of Charles V of Spain, whom men +had styled the Cæsar in recognition of his world-wide dominion. +It was called enchanted because of the beauty of its lake setting +and the splendors within its walls. Soon its people became +known as the Cæsars, and the men who conducted expeditions to +reach them as the Cæsaristas.</p> + +<p>There were other motives for the quest beside the golden +treasure to be found there and the wish to visit a clime so fair +that none died save of old age. Here were a kindred people, +cut off from their fellows, and, it might be, lapsing decade after +decade into a splendid barbarism. The purity of their Christian +faith was in danger of corruption from every sort of heathen +error. Civilization and religion were both concerned in the +rescue of this fascinating creole capital, which had done so well +by itself and yet needed to renew its contacts with the world. So +said the Spaniard wherever fortune had placed him—in the +homeland, in Mexico, in the Philippines, and most of all in the +colonies of the southern Cordilleras and the eastern plains.</p> + +<p>There were a number of small expeditions to seek the legendary +city, and three of importance. Diego Flores de Leon +reached Lake Nahuelhuapi from the Pacific side, heard of savage +armies massed on his front, and went no further. Half a +century later came the Jesuit father, Nicolas Mascardi. Fearing +that the southern capital might have forgotten the mother tongue +of Spain, he collaborated with another churchman in a letter +which was translated into seven languages—Greek, Latin, Spanish, +Italian, Chilean, Puelche, and Poya. The letter was sent +ahead by an Indian courier after he reached the shores of +Nahuelhuapi. Hearing a report that the site of the city was +near the Atlantic, he crossed the continent, and then turned +southward toward the Straits of Magellan, falling at last to an +Indian arrow. This was in 1673. More than a century afterward<span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</span> +the Franciscan friar, Menendez, was sent out by the viceroy +of Peru, but found no city beside Nahuelhuapi.</p> + +<p>Thereafter faith in the fable died, save among the imaginative +and the credulous. Of the former was Charles III of Spain, +who died believing it in 1788. Of the latter are the common +people of Chile and Argentina, who see in the streams of lava +and volcanic sand at the foot of Osorno the roads of a hidden +people, and who still hear in the noise of the avalanches upon +Tronador the thunder of artillery along enchanted battlements.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Seven Cities of Cibola</i></p> + +<p>In the quest of the Seven Cities of Cibola Spain dreamed +northward, and again deluded itself by the magic and sonority +of a name. When the fable was full blown it was of a city as +great as the capital of the Montezumas and ruled by a fugitive +prince of that house. Lesser cities surrounded it, as they surrounded +Tenochtitlan on the plateau of Anahuac. It stood +beside a great inland sea out of which flowed the Colorado, and +on the coasts of this land were ships from China.</p> + +<p>The inhabitants of the plains were cattle of deformed shape +and ferocious aspect, which the Spaniards called the kine of +Cibola. The inhabitants of the seven cities, says Friar Marcos, +who saw them at a distance, were a people “somewhat white,” +clad in cotton garments and dwelling in stone houses with flat +roofs. The Franciscan continues: “They have emeralds and +other jewels, although they esteem none as much as turquoises, +wherewith they adorn the walls and porches of their houses, +and their apparel and vessels, and they use them instead of +money through all the country. They use vessels of gold and +silver, for they have no other metal, whereof there is greater +avail and more abundance than in Peru.”</p> + +<p>This capital of the buffalo country was located within the +limits of the present United States. Somewhat shrunken from +the dimensions of legend, it is still in existence and the descendants +of the men fabled to traffic with Cathay go about its streets. +Their skins are darker than Marcos reported them, but they have +the features and expression of white men.</p> + +<p>Here is another myth of a gilded land and a refugee king, but +overlaid with material of a strange texture brought from afar.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</span> +Its scene is inland where buffalo are feeding; yet one of its +windows commands the Pacific with slanting Chinese sails upon +it, and into the other comes an old tale of the open Atlantic. +The Seven Cities of Cibola are the legendary seven cities of +Antilia, founded by seven Spanish bishops who fled the Moor, +and they are the seven caves out of which came the Aztecs. But +they are also seven towns, the remains of which, waste or tenanted, +are to be found in New Mexico near the Arizona line. +The vice of the legend is that they are small towns, and poor.</p> + +<p>There are names of consequence in the quest of the Seven +Cities of Cibola, but a broad blotch of buffoonery is smeared +across it. Alone of all the visionary searches of Spain, it invites +the treatment of ironic burlesque. Yet there is heroism in +the story and a great chapter of geography.</p> + +<p>The first of these names is that of the luckless but stout-hearted +Cabeza de Vaca who left a trail of wandering mishap +clear across the continent of North America, and who was yet +to break new paths through the forests and savannas of South +America where he founded the capital of the Silver Republic. +In 1536 the outposts of Melchior Diaz, who commanded in the +northern Mexican district of Culiacan, came upon a strange +party—a white man, nearly naked, with matted hair and beard, +a negro, and eleven Indians. The white man spoke in Spanish +and with such joyful agitation as to arouse a momentary suspicion. +It was Cabeza de Vaca. His negro companion was +named Estivanico. There were three other Spaniards a day’s +march behind. In what was to follow, singularly enough, the +negro is the central figure; in what had gone before the story +is the Spanish captain’s.</p> + +<p>In 1527 he had sailed for Florida as treasurer of an expedition +with five vessels and six hundred men, in search of the +Golden Apalache, one of the minor dream quests of Spain. +Quitting the fleet in a Florida bay, three hundred men marched +inland to their objective. What they found was a collection of +forty wigwams on the Suwanee River and a rude people that +engaged them in daily skirmishes at arms. So they marched +on, became entangled in the swamps and bayous along the coasts +of Alabama and Louisiana, made one fatal attempt to build +rafts and cross the Gulf to the Mexican coast, and then succumbed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</span> +by degrees to the wilderness. All but four of the Spaniards +perished and these were buffeted from tribe to tribe in an +aimless drift westward. They had almost reached the Gulf of +California when they met the Spanish outpost, and in eight +years they had wandered from Atlantic to Pacific.</p> + +<p>What they told launched the search for the Seven Cities of +Cibola. Farther north they had found tribes of sedentary Indians +living in stone houses, wearing cotton garments and turquoise +ornaments, and with indications of stores of gold to draw +upon. Francisco Vasquez Coronado, governor of Northwest +Mexico, was commissioned by Mendoza, Viceroy of New Spain, +to explore in that direction. Distrusting the reports of Cabeza +de Vaca, his first step was a reconnaissance under the Franciscan, +Fray Marcos. As guide and attendant the negro Estevanico +went with him, and a party of Pima Indians accompanied +them. They started northward from Culiacan in 1539, following +the coast. In Sonora the friar committed the folly of sending +the negro ahead with instructions to report to him at intervals +by messenger. If he found a mean thing he was to send a cross +a hand’s length long; if a larger matter, a cross two hands’ long; +if the negro found a country better than New Spain he was to +send back a great cross.</p> + +<p>That was the last Fray Marcos saw of the negro, but he heard +from him, and from time to time he heard about him. Four +days after his departure an Indian came back bearing a wooden +cross as high as a man and the word of Estevanico that thirty +days’ march ahead were seven cities abounding in pearls and +gold, and all subject to one lord. The houses were of stone and +mortar, one, two, and three stories high, and the chief’s house +was of four stories. One of the cities was named Cibola. As +the friar proceeded, the natives brought tales which seemed to +confirm the reports, and used place names that suggested grandeur. +He heard of a province called Totoneac, of the city of +Ahacus, and of the kingdoms of Hacus and Marata.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Africa was blazing a trail far ahead into Darkest +America. It was broad, dusty with the feet of an accumulating +multitude, and finger-posted by avarice and imposture. The +negro had taken the adventure out of the hands of the too-trusting +monk. In his wanderings with Cabeza de Vaca he had won<span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</span> +assurance, some knowledge of the Indian nature, and a gourd +rattle. He moved with the state and tumult of a medicine-man, +this clapper his potent emblem of authority. The superstitious +natives met all his demands, and he demanded much—more +food than he could use, gold, green stones, women. The monk +followed, several journeys behind, in a sort of anti-climax.</p> + +<p>The procession of the black Bacchus had its inevitable ending. +Marcos learned it while he was still some days from his goal. +He met a number of the Indians who had been with Estevanico, +and they were flying toward Mexico. They told of entering +Cibola with the negro, where his arrogance and folly mounted +to new levels. Noting the lowering looks of the sedentary Indians, +several of these plains Indians went outside and, hiding +themselves, awaited the finish they foresaw. One day they +beheld their companions running from the town with men in pursuit. +The negro was not with them. His hosts had killed him.</p> + +<p>With two of the Indians Marcos went on to a hill from which +he looked down upon a valley dotted with villages. The nearest +of these and not the largest was Cibola. To Marcos it seemed +“as large as the City of Mexico.” It is situate, he says, “on a +plain at the foot of a round hill, and maketh shew to be a fair +city, and is better seated than any that I have seen in these parts. +The houses are builded in order, all made of stone with divers +storeys and flat roofs.” Then he adds from hearsay details of +golden vessels and turquoise-studded porches.</p> + +<p>Setting up a wooden cross, Marcos hastened back, rejoicing, +to make his report to the viceroy. Out of what he told, and the +far-sounding names of provinces and kingdoms which he had +heard, the Spanish mind made a thing too rich for the haggard +realities of the American southwest. It seemed to call for a +well-appointed expedition, and Coronado urged this on the +viceroy.</p> + +<p>With Marcos as his guide he was dispatched with a land force +of three hundred and twenty Spaniards, three hundred native +allies, and a thousand Indian and negro camp followers. He +left San Miguel in February, 1540, and in May a fleet under +Alarcon was sent from Acapulco to act in concert with him along +the coast of the Gulf of California. Alarcon went to the head of +the gulf with his ships, and up the Colorado, but, learning from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</span> +natives that white men had already entered Cibola, he returned +with his fleet to Acapulco.</p> + +<p>What Coronado had entered was the Indian pueblo of Zuñi +and its attendant villages in northwestern New Mexico. As soon +as his soldiers beheld these little settlements, writes Castaneda, +who went with the expedition, they “broke out in curses against +Fray Marcos.” They accused him of deceiving them, and in +fear of his life he was glad to go back with the courier who bore +to the viceroy the report of Coronado. “I can assure your +honour,” says the report, “the friar said the truth in nothing +that he reported, saving only the names of the cities and great +houses of stone; for although they be not wrought with turquoises, +nor with lime nor brick, yet are they very excellent +houses of three or four or five lofts high, wherein are good +lodgings and fair chambers. The seven cities are seven small +towns, and they stand all within four leagues together, and none +of them is called Cibola, but altogether they are called Cibola.”</p> + +<p>In his scholarly account of this expedition Bandelier defends +the credulous monk, and urges that the Spaniards had tricked +out his story with their own imaginings. He argues that the +comparison with the City of Mexico was not with the old Aztec +capital, but with the new Spanish town which, as Fray Marcos +knew it in 1539, may not have had as many as a thousand inhabitants. +As to the statement that the citizens of Cibola embellished +their houses with green stones or turquoises, it has +been learned that it was an old custom in Zuñi to decorate the +roof hatches by which the people descended to their chambers +with turquoise, malachite, phosphate of copper and other stones +or ores of green and blue. This was truthful detail, although +lending itself to exaggeration. But the golden vessels, which +most concerned the Spaniard, were fable, and the Coronado +expedition had cost $250,000.</p> + +<p>Despite the forthright words of Coronado, one conquistador +who would look facts in the face, his countrymen were unwilling +to surrender the vision all at once. The English merchant, +Henry Hawks, spent five years in Mexico and in 1572 made this +report: “The Spanyards have notice of seven cities which old +men of the Indians shew them should lie towards the northwest +from Mexico. They have used and use dayly much diligence<span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</span> +in seeking of them, but they cannot find any one of them. They +say that the witchcraft of the Indians is such, that when they +come by these townes they cast a mist upon them, so that they +cannot see them.”</p> + +<p>Zuñi lies south of the great Navaho reservation, and is a +pueblo of the same type as Taos, Acoma, Laguna, and the Hopi +towns. Its identification with the Seven Cities of Cibola rests +on the reports of the explorers themselves, on an examination +of their routes, and especially on the researches of Frank H. +Cushing, commissioner of the American Bureau of Ethnology, +who became a member of this Indian tribe in 1880 and lived +with it four years while he studied its traditions. At that time +Zuñi had sixteen hundred inhabitants.</p> + +<p>These people called their home Shivano (Spanish, Civano). +Cushing found that the sonorous Marata and Tontoneac were not +kingdoms or provinces, but directions, and that one of the distant +“cities” named by the natives was Acoma, which lies near +the Mesa Encantada. While the Spaniards had denied that +Marcos and Estevanico really made a journey to the north, +Cushing heard from the Zuñi story-tellers that a “black Mexican” +had come among them and had been killed for his rudeness +to their women. Soon afterwards the first “white Mexicans” +they had seen entered their land as conquerors.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Quivera</i></p> + +<p>Coronado was not content to bring back his costly expedition, +empty-handed, from the fiasco of Cibola. Again he dreamed +northward, and the name of his dream is Quivera. Between this +city of illusion in the Mississippi Valley, and the city of enchantment +which the Cæsars had reared on the edge of the Patagonian +plain, it is six thousand miles in a straight line. These +two capitals of the mirage are the farthest north and farthest +south of Spanish fantasy.</p> + +<p>The conqueror of Cibola drifted into the Quivera adventure +by degrees. There must be richer pueblos east of the seven +towns, he thought, and went in search of them, discovering and +occupying many. But he found New Mexico a sterile land. He +became interested in the great buffalo herds that roamed the +plains to the north and sent his lieutenant, Alvarado, on a hunt<span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</span> +to secure meat. Alvarado took with him as a guide an Indian +from somewhere far to the east whom he found living with the +Pecos tribe and who figures in Spanish writings as El Turco, +“the Turk,” which was what he looked like. The Spaniard did +not stay long among the buffalos, for the homesick Turk had an +exciting tale to tell. With it, Alvarado hastened back to his +chief, and soon, with El Turco as pathfinder, the columns started +toward the northeast and Quivera.</p> + +<p>This was another golden city in a prosperous land. Through +the land ran a river two leagues wide in which swam fish as +large as horses. There were great canoes upon the river, with +as many as forty men to drive them, and these had golden eagles +for figureheads. The native sovereign slumbered in the afternoons +beneath a tree the branches of which were hung with +golden bells, where the wind made music. The houses of +Quivera were built of stone and were like those of the pueblos +of New Mexico, but larger and fairer. The meats and drinks +of its citizens were served in vessels of precious metals.</p> + +<p>Of this land the Turk himself was a native. But there was +another Indian exile with the party. His name was Ysopete, +and he, too, spoke of Quivera. It seemed to be a different place +farther north.</p> + +<p>With one guide bent on leading him northward and the other +eastward, the expedition which Coronado conducted toward +Quivera moved like a man lost in the wilderness. It traveled +to the right for thirty-seven days and partly returned on its +tracks. Soon the Spaniards became confused and ill at ease. +In the vast monotony of the staked plains they saw no marks +by which they could guide themselves forward or find the way +back. A sense of helplessness stole over them. The very bison +that grazed around them excited a sort of fear. Their horses +went wild with terror when for the first time they saw these huge, +misshapen beasts, whose glowing eyes and hollow bellowing +were calculated to inspire awe even in men.</p> + +<p>The wanderers were in latitudes less kindly to illusion than +those where other men were seeking the Gilded King, and a +glimmer of the scientific and reasoning spirit which weighs motives +and scrutinizes facts was born in them. Was not this story +of Quivera the Golden just a tale told by the settled Indians in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</span> +order to get rid of them? Had not El Turco been instigated to +lure them by confused trails into the wilderness and leave them +to perish there? Had not one of them detected him talking to +the devil in a pitcher of water?</p> + +<p>While they harbored these distrustful forebodings the Spaniards +fell in with a party of plains Indians who knew Quivera. +It was forty days’ march ahead, they said, and the columns +would die for lack of food and water upon the way. Stone buildings +and plentiful provisions in precious vessels at the end of the +way? The prairie nomads knew of none of these things. They +spoke of an encampment where the houses were made of straw +and skins, and a little maize in them, naught else. The shifty +Turk changed his story. He had not told the truth, he admitted, +as to the houses of Quivera, but it had a numerous population +and a store of precious metals. In anger the Spaniards put +shackles upon him. They were ready to go back, but Coronado +was determined, without risking too many lives, at least to see +for himself what lay at the end of the trail. He took twenty-nine +horsemen, the manacled El Turco, and Ysopete, and rode +northward with the plains Indians.</p> + +<p>After thirty days of hard riding through a great treeless plain +dotted with buffalo herds and watered by a number of small +streams, Coronado reached Quivera, where he stayed twenty-five +days. He describes the region about it as a rich land in +which grew plums like those of Spain, mulberries, and well-flavored +grapes. But the settlement itself was merely the summer +camp of an Indian horde that followed the buffalo and supplemented +a beef diet with corn cakes, made from maize grown +in the river bottoms.</p> + +<p>The explorer tells the story with rough candor. “I had been +told,” he says, “that the houses were made of stone and were +several stories; they are only of straw, and the inhabitants are +as savage as any that I have seen. They have no clothes, nor +cotton to make them out of; they simply tan the hides of the cows +which they hunt, and which pasture around their village and +in the neighborhood of a large river. They eat their meat raw, +and are enemies to one another and war among one another. +All these men look alike.”</p> + +<p>As Estevanico had met his fate at Cibola, so the Turk met his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</span> +at Quivera. Its people did not know him, but they welcomed +Ysopete, and for his sake the Spaniards. El Turco sought to lay +the blame on the New Mexican Indians, who, he said, had engaged +him to lead the Spaniards to their fate on the prairies. +This tale failing to help his credit, he tried to raise Quivera +against his masters, who incontinently hanged him.</p> + +<p>Before turning southward to rejoin his command and take +it back to Mexico, Coronado set up a wooden cross which bore +a soldierly inscription, “Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, leader +of a campaign, came to this place.”</p> + +<p>Four states claim Quivera, and the blind wanderings of the +Spaniards give conjecture a broad field to work in. One thing +certain is that La Gran Quivera, the new Mexican mission, +established after the suppression of the Indian uprisings in +1580, does not stand on its site. Bandelier thinks the site was +in central Kansas about a hundred miles north of the Arkansas +River. It has severally been contended that Quivera was a camp +of the Wichita Indians; that it was in Nebraska not far from +the state capital; and that the place the Spaniards reached was +in the southwest corner of Missouri. Cyrus Thomas, who supports +the latter view, holds that El Turco came from some tribe +near the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi, that the +great stream of which he spoke was the latter river and Quivera +a town on its banks, while the place seen by Coronado was +simply the homeland of Ysopete. Whatever the region, it would +be as vain to seek the site as to look for the camping ground in +the desert where some forgotten Arab tribe pitched its tents for +a night, and struck them at sunrise.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Islands of Solomon</i></p> + +<p>There came a time when the New World was too small to hold +the visions of Spain. North and south the conquistadors had +marched, seeking what they did not find. So they dreamed +westward over the sea. They had plunged their hands in gold. +They might yet bathe in it at the Baths of Sunset.</p> + +<p>As always, there were stories of islands in near-by waters +where the superstition or simplicity of the natives had heaped +up treasure that more deserving men might seize. The Spaniards +went after it, at first from Mexico. Then from the harbors<span class="pagenum" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</span> +of Peru ships began to sail westward, and fantasies spread +over the deep.</p> + +<p>These voyages add two titles to the dream quests of Spain—the +Enchanted Islands and the Isles of Solomon—and the names +may stand for one reality. About six hundred miles west of the +mainland of South America, and on the line of the equator, lie +the Galapagos, comprising five large and ten smaller islands. +From the Peruvians the Spaniards learned of them, but for a +while they could not find them. They were vaguely called the +Islas Encantadas because they seemed to elude the search. The +buccaneers used them later as sallyports from which to attack +the Peruvian plate fleet. Still later whalers resorted thither, but +not until 1832 did Ecuador occupy the group.</p> + +<p>This archipelago of the west may have been the basis of the +legend that grew up among the seafaring folk of Peru. It was +told that the Inca Tupac Yupanqui had made a voyage and come +upon two islands which were called Nina-chumpi and Hahua-chumpi, +or Fire Island and Outer Island. He brought back gold +and silver, a throne of copper, black slaves, and the skin of an +animal like a horse. Another account said the islands were +distant a journey of two months, and one was so large it might +be a continent. There were sheep, llamas and deer upon it and +a bareheaded people who wore cotton and woolen garments. +Although their king dwelt in a palace with mud walls, a frieze +of gold ran around it.</p> + +<p>A later legend, purporting to tell of a Spanish discovery, is +very definite: A long time before, a ship from Chile had been +driven out of its course to a large island, which it coasted for +fifty days. One of the seamen, Juan Montanes, went ashore and +found a race of tall, bearded Indians and women whose braided +hair reached to their ankles. They lived in communal houses +four hundred feet long by one hundred feet wide. Numerous +rafts and sumptuously decorated canoes thronged with people +plied along the coasts. Because of his beard, the natives +treated the Spaniard kindly and pressed a gold plate and emeralds +upon him.</p> + +<p>The account continues with the exactness of a seaman’s chart: +“These islands must be reached from Puerto de Arica, taking +the volcano in the bay as a landmark, such being the custom of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</span> +the Indians who come and go thither. As soon as the said volcano +disappears, the desert islands are reached. Going in +among them, after two days the large island which seems to be +a continent is sighted, and what lies to the west is still to be +discovered.”</p> + +<p>There are elements in this story, such as the communal +houses and the ornate canoes, borrowed from actual expeditions +to the South Seas which the earlier legend itself had +launched. What these expeditions had set out to find was a +continent about two thousand miles to the west, which stretched +northward for three thousand miles from the latitude of Tierra +del Fuego to 15 degrees south, or almost on a line with Callao; +a domain about the size of that afterward discovered and named +Australia, but lying on the near side of the Pacific. Rumors +of such a continent passed from tavern gossip to palace conferences. +Sarmiento de Gamboa had gathered and analyzed Inca +traditions of Pacific islands and the learned men of the colony +assumed that a continental mass lay behind them. So in 1567 +the governor of Peru dispatched two small ships with one hundred +and fifty men and put his youthful nephew, Alvarado de +Mendana, in command.</p> + +<p>An incredible thing happened. These frail vessels, provisioned +for a voyage of two thousand miles, drove westward +without sighting land for seven thousand miles. In two months +they crossed the width of the Pacific, making their land-fall in +the East Indies. For six months the crews explored the capes, +creeks, and jungles of a group of islands flanking New Guinea +on the east. Then the ships started back and were off Callao +twenty months after they had left it. They brought no gold, +but stories of “a naked, cheerful people of a bright reddish +colour”—in reality, head-hunting cannibals, to this day the most +savage of men.</p> + +<p>Nearly thirty years went by before another expedition was +undertaken, and meanwhile legend was at work. It gave the +distant group the name it bears upon the map. These were +called the Isles of Solomon, says Lopez Vaz, “to the ende that +the Spaniards, supposing them to bee those Isles from whence +Solomon fetched gold to adorne the temple at Jerusalem, might +bee the more desirous to goe and inhabit the same.” But the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</span> +Portuguese writer adds that because Drake and other raiders +had entered the South Seas, it was determined not to settle them, +so that interloping vessels Molucca-bound might have no succor +on the way.</p> + +<p>In 1595 Mendana, now middle aged, undertook to colonize +the islands, going out with four ships and 368 emigrants—men, +women and children, his own wife among them. Then another +amazing thing happened. The Spaniards could not find the +Solomons. They discovered the Marquesas, and in the island +of Santa Cruz founded a short-lived colony where Mendana died +and whence the expedition went forth again to disaster. Quiros, +Mendana’s great lieutenant, returning to Peru, represented to the +viceroy that the islands come upon by his chief must screen an +unknown continent, as in fact they did. In 1605 he was sent +out to find them. He discovered the Society Islands, the Duff +group and the New Hebrides, but nowhere was there trace of the +Isles of Solomon.</p> + +<p>Dissolved into fable, for two centuries they were lost to +geography. In the waterside taverns of Peru, people still talked +of them. But it had become a maxim of the viceroys to treat +the discovery as a romance, and learned men concurred. The +group was erased from the maps of the world. Although it includes +ten great islands stretching for six hundred miles in an +almost unbroken barrier across the track of navigators, and +although the first Spanish expedition brought back information +so detailed that every headland and harbor which Mendana +passed has since been identified, yet for two hundred years nobody +could find the archipelago. When it was rediscovered it +was from the other direction. Carteret and Bougainville, rounding +Africa and entering the South Seas in the latter part of the +eighteenth century, came upon islands which were found to be +the lost lands of Spain.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Sepulchers of Zenu</i></p> + +<p>There are significant words in Raleigh’s <i>Discovery of Guiana</i>. +Here, he says, “commanders that shoot at honour and abundance +shall find more temples adorned with golden images, more +sepulchres filled with treasure, than either Cortez found in Mexico +or Pizarro in Peru.” Moreover, it is virgin soil: “the graves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</span> +have not bene opened for golde, nor the Images puld downe +out of their temples.” Spain’s hunger for gold pursued the +Indians into their sanctuaries, and even into their graves.</p> + +<p>The Bachelor Enciso and Balboa, each in turn commander of +Darien, sought golden treasures, which, as report ran, Indian +piety had heaped in the wilderness.</p> + +<p>Enciso went forth to sack the Sepulchers of Zenu. This +province lay some twenty leagues west of Cartagena. From its +steeps the rains washed gold down in such profusion that the +natives caught in nets nuggets as big as eggs. Zenu was also +the cemetery for all the tribes of the country. For ages they +had brought their dead thither for burial, and deposited golden +ornaments with the bodies in the tombs. The soil, the Spanish +lawyer thought, must have become incredibly rich from this +long accumulation. It was no sacrilege to plunder the dead, +for were these not pagans, buried according to the rites of an +idolatrous faith?</p> + +<p>Landing on the coast of Zenu, Enciso found an army under +two caciques drawn up to oppose him. The lawyer in him +prompted him to put his opponents in the wrong before appealing +to arms. So he had a formal statement read to the two +chiefs. The colloquy which followed, and which he reports +himself, is one of the most interesting incidents in all the contacts +of white men with savages. The statement recited that +there was one God who ruled in heaven, that in the Pope He +had a vicar who ruled on earth, and that the latter had awarded +Zenu to the King of Spain. The Indians replied that they accepted +the sovereignty of God in heaven, but nothing further. +The Pope, they said, must have been drunk, to give away what +did not belong to him, and the King somewhat mad, to ask of +him what was not his to give. If the King came to take it, they +would cut off his head and set it on a stake; and they pointed +to other stakes on which heads were set.</p> + +<p>Whereupon there was fighting, in which, Enciso says, the +Indians had the worse of it. But two of his men, slightly +wounded by poisoned arrows, died raving; the country was hostile +beyond what he had anticipated, and his force small. He +went away without rifling the sepulchers.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</span></p> + + +<p class="large"><i>The Temple of Dobayba</i></p> + +<p>Balboa, succeeding Enciso at Darien, heard of a province +called Dobayba forty leagues away on the banks of the Atrato. +It was named either from a goddess or from an Indian princess +to whom, after death, divine honors were paid. Her worship +was conducted in a great temple, whither natives came with +their offerings. At stated times the caciques of remote provinces +sent a golden tribute, together with slaves for sacrifice.</p> + +<p>Superstition and fear piled up treasure at this shrine. At one +time its worship had been neglected. Then a great drought fell +upon the land, the springs and rivers dried up, and a scourge of +death was visited upon the neglectful nations. The survivors +renewed their zeal and redoubled their offerings of slaves and +gold. Thus from generation to generation the wealth of many +peoples drained into the blood-stained temple. The prospect of +spoiling a heathen shrine profaned by human sacrifice and +piled high with idolatrous gold presented itself not as a desecration +but as a duty.</p> + +<p>On his first journey Balboa mistook a deserted frontier village +for the temple town. When he went again, it was at the behest +of Pedrarias, who had been made governor of the colony, and +whose jealousy prompted him to set Balboa a task that might +bring disgrace. The quest of Dobayba was now deemed an +enterprise of romantic promise but of high hazard. The way +thither led through tribes of bold and crafty savages. In the +dreary fens lurked animals to be dreaded, including monstrous +importations from classic myth. Clouds of mosquitoes swarmed +above the stagnant water, sinister lizards crawled on the banks, +crocodiles haunted the ooze. Dragons couched there, so said +report, and huge bats flitted by on vampire errands. Peter +Martyr even mentions two harpies. A later age was to discover +the enigmatic White Indians. Rather than enter this accursed +region, the coast natives were wont to shun the direct routes and +travel the steep paths of the mountains.</p> + +<p>Balboa was to win neither gold nor glory upon his forbidding +mission. Passing up the Gulf of Oraba and into the river +Atrato with a fleet of canoes, the expedition was ambushed by +Indian canoes, losing half its number. Its leader, wounded,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</span> +made shore with the remainder and at sunset began a crestfallen +retreat to Darien.</p> + +<p>The temple of Dobayba—if there was a temple—was left +inviolate, to receive the gold and shed the blood of heathen until +the tropical forest swept in and buried it in a green oblivion.</p> + + +<p class="large"><i>Other Quests</i></p> + +<p>Of certain other Spanish quests less has been recorded, because +they were incidental to larger undertakings or were conducted +by small parties of adventurers, monks, or treasure-seekers, +rather than by columns of troops sent out by provincial +governments. Pious men sought the Terrestrial Paradise toward +the headwaters of the Orinoco. From all points of the compass +explorers hunted for the Kingdom of Women. Sometimes the +conquistadors reiterated their own exploits, as when Federmann +looked for the House of the Sun in the Colombian Andes, although +under the name of the Temple of the Sun it had already +fallen to Pizarro. The adventure of the Golden Chain was attempted +on several occasions, parties of Spaniards undertaking +to drain the crater lake of Urcos, into which, tradition said, had +been flung a massive chain of gold long enough to encircle the +great square at Cuzco.</p> + +<p>The quest of the Cradle of Gold is of the last century, and +here the magic of a name again wrought its spell, two hundred +years after the feet of the conquistadors had passed. Bingham, +who climbed to this ruined mountain fortress a dozen years ago, +believes that Choquequirau is just a name of Indian poetry, +misunderstood. Seen from a distance, the ridge on which it +lies resembles a hammock, and its only gold may be that which +the setting sun flings upon it. But the name itself, and the vagueness +of knowledge as to its last defenders, led to various attempts +to reach the ruin from the valley below. One party +brought back reports of rock-built “palaces, paved squares, +temples, prisons and baths.” The prefect of the Peruvian department +of Apurimac, using a company of soldiers and Indian +carriers, built a way across the rocky gorges and up the steep +mountain side to Choquequirau. This, it is thought, was the +eyrie of the last Inca—neither temple town nor treasure house, +but a frontier fortress of the long ago.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</span></p> + +<p>The legendary Laguna de los Xarayes was indicated on the +early maps of South America as lying at the sources of the +Paraguay. In it was the splendid island home of El Gran +Moxo. The imagery of the Hebrew prophets was borrowed to +describe his palace with its golden and silvern vessels, its doors +of bronze where living lions in chains of gold kept guard, its +cloud-like tower where a disk of silver, in shape like the moon, +shed light over the waters.</p> + +<p>Explorers sought this island magnificence in vain. When +they came in the dry season, they could not find even the lake +in which it swam, for what seemed to be a vast lagoon was +merely high water on the Paraguay.</p> + +<p>One of the golden visions of Spain recoiled upon its head. +The Spaniards would not have it that with a single blow they +had struck down the power of the Incas and laid hold of all their +riches. It seemed to them they had merely precipitated a dispersal +and an exodus—the going out of Indian princes and +property to found new seats elsewhere. One of these was the +great city of Paytiti, also called the White House, which had +risen near the confluence of the Huallaga and Marañon in the +forests of Peru. The legend which the conqueror propagated +of a fugitive dynasty grown strong in exile was cherished by +the humbled Quichuas, and twice it roused them to arms.</p> + +<p>In 1740 Juan Santos assumed the name of Atahuallpa, raised +an army from the uncivilized members of various tribes, drove +out the missionaries, and for a space made the name and power +of Paytiti a fact on the borders of Peru. Again, in 1780, Tupac-Amaru, +a descendant of the Incas, appealed to the legend, +aroused the country, abolished enforced mine service and ecclesiastical +dues, and became master of most of the Peruvian +plateau. The insurrection was put down and its leader executed, +but the injustices he had fought were never restored in +full vigor, and passed altogether when Peru rose against Spain +in the War of Independence. The dream of Paytiti had become +a vision of liberation.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c23">Chapter XXIII. The Fabric of Illusion</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">The</span> traditional world, like the modern world, is a fabric +woven of many stuffs and colors, and patched with strange materials, +some old, some almost new. If one wonders how it was +all thrown together, one must consider that the type of mind +which collects and analyzes facts, which experiments in order +to discard error, which defines terms and reasons from them, +did not appear until late in the world’s history and even now +is not common. Aristotle, the chief scientist of antiquity, debated +why a dead kingfisher, suspended from a string, should +foretell the direction of the winds by turning its bill toward +that corner of the heavens whence they were to come. Sir +Thomas Browne hung a kingfisher on a string, and found that +it did not do this thing.</p> + +<p>Except when directed to its immediate problems of food and +shelter, the antique mind thought in images, rather than in definite +terms. Its processes were akin to dreams, in which one +takes strange things for granted, nor seeks to verify anything. +Save when they drove a bargain, men took one another’s statements +for granted. Much the same thing is true of the savage +to-day.</p> + +<p>The realms and races of prodigy form the main burden of +travel tale. Except when travels took the form of commercial +voyagings, or military expeditions, and with a few other exceptions, +such as the journeys of Pytheas the Massilian and Marco +the Venetian, their theme, almost until modern times, was wonder. +Home-keeping folks wanted to hear, as still they do, of +countries and customs, and men and animals, that were different. +The myths of geography have come out of the contacts of +the dreaming mind of savagery and early civilization with the +unknown. They represent men in the process of getting acquainted +with the world about them.</p> + +<p>For primitive man they began at the very boundary of his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</span> +district. Mystery was there, and forbidding things were suspected; +and if waste lands lay beyond, these got themselves +uncouth populations. The stranger that crossed the boundary +was dreaded and hated as something not quite human, or at +least as wielder of a magic that might work harm. It is said +of wild tribesmen in Borneo that when they meet a stranger they +turn their backs and hide their faces because the sight of him +makes them dizzy. “The stranger is for the wolf,” is an Arab +saying, and the early rule of the world was that he must die +in the interest of those upon whom he had thrust himself. “He +had salt water in his eyes,” was the Fiji formula when castaways +were clubbed to death. Many tribes call themselves by +names which mean simply “men,” as distinguished from all +other peoples, whose human nature is not conceded.</p> + +<p>But the cruel host of to-day might be the helpless guest of +to-morrow. There came a time of toleration, the limited toleration +recorded in the Slavic proverb, “A guest and a fish smell +on the third day.” As men crossed and recrossed the tribal +boundary its weird legends were shifted to remoter horizons, +became things to gossip about rather than act upon, and might +mellow into genial report. Even historical peoples living at +a distance were swathed in horizon haze. The justice of the Indians, +their freedom from bodily ailments, and their contempt +of death are favorite themes of Ctesias. Herodotus spoke of +the Egyptians as later ages have spoken of the Chinese. Adam +of Bremen gave a fantastic picture of the peoples of the far +north—small, sinister Finns, whose magic could wreck passing +ships and draw the very fish out of the sea; cruel islanders colored +bluish green by salt water, and the “most noble” Northmen, +bravest, most loyal, most temperate of men. Above all +other races in consideration, so the west agreed for some centuries +of unwonted humility, were the Chinese. Among them, +says Purchas, “is reported to be neither Thiefe nor Whore, nor +Murtherer, nor Hailes, nor Pestilence, nor such like Plagues.” +And they live to be two hundred years old.</p> + +<p>Travelers were the agents of distance, bringing the woof +which the stay-at-home worked into the warp of his fancy. Until +very recent times they were the world’s telegraph, mails and +newspapers, all in one. Their coming was an event, and their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</span> +going was remarked upon. Over rough ways, through countries +where inns were not, among peoples who had instinctive dislike +of a stranger and deemed it no fault to despoil or enslave him, +the wanderer pursued his uncertain fates as merchant, pilgrim +or mendicant. He paid his fare by the stories he took with +him—winning a precarious hospitality in strange lands and an +eager welcome when he reached home. The more curious the +tale he told, the more kindly he was entreated—Ulysses repaid +royal hospitality with royal guerdon—and in the ancient world +so little was known that one might tell almost any tale he +pleased. There was no means of checking up a report. Of +course there were skeptics here and there, and there was, and is, +a suspicion that old men and wanderers use rather more than +the truth. The Ancient Mariner, being both old and traveled, +had a great tale to tell.</p> + +<p>Whole races wandered as well as single individuals. The +migrations of peoples, and most if not all of them have had a +nomad period, have had something to do with bringing the +more beautiful of their legends into being—the tales of ideal +lands, abodes of the blest where their dead are, or whither their +heroes are translated without dying. The journeys of the sun +are tracked upon them and human wistfulness has builded there, +but so has memory. The homeland which the ancestors of a +people abandoned long before, driven out, it may be, by an +invading host, lives in its legends as a region desirable above all +others. The hardships of the exodus are remembered also, and +tradition magnifies the cruel height of the mountains, the swiftness +of deep, unfordable rivers, the terror of moonless trails +and all the heavinesses of the way. When the dead go home, +or the heroes pass to rest, the path of souls which they travel +back is the path their forefathers followed and the one journey +ends where the other began, in a land that is a province of the +Golden Age.</p> + +<p>This hypothesis, which is Herbert Spencer’s, may not explain +all the elysiums that a yearning fancy has created. Yet in the +South Seas they lie in the direction whence the islanders came; +the Hindu legend of the blissful Uttarakarus of the north is +thought to hold the memory of a migration southward from +some Himalayan valley; while the curious Persian legend of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</span> +the enclosed garden of Yima, where was neither deformity nor +iniquity, may be a note on the early movement of the Iranians +from their cold ancestral home to the Azerbaijan region, and +a halt there before renewing their march toward the sun and the +sea.</p> + +<p>Though seldom we may follow the process, religion, and symbolism, +which is its handmaiden, and magic, which is its elder +brother, traced the outlines of most of the fabulous animals and +peculiar peoples; human forgetfulness, savage logic and hearsay +have filled them in. The natural history of the traditional +world was in good part the contribution of the religions of +Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and India. The tribes of grotesque +peoples, the dog-faced generations, the satyrs, the demons of +the waste, the fowls with woman faces, the women with fish-tails, +the winged quadrupeds, all seem more like the carven +creatures which populate the walls and towers of mediæval +cathedrals than breathing tenants of fields and waters. The +seeming is significant. When the hunchback, Quasimodo, was +on the roof of Notre Dame at night, “then said the women of the +neighborhood, the whole church took on something fantastic, +supernatural, horrible; eyes and mouths were opened here and +there; one heard the dogs, the monsters, and the gargoyles of +stone, which keep watch night and day, with outstretched necks +and open jaws, around the monstrous cathedral, barking.” +When the edifice took fire, continues Hugo, “there were griffins +which had the air of laughing, gargoyles which one fancied one +heard yelping, salamanders which puffed at the fire, tarasques +which sneezed in the smoke.”</p> + +<p>In the temples of the Middle Ages the fabulous birds of the +traditional world came home to their roosts, and the fabulous +animals to their dens. They had been taken from the temples +of earlier religions and they found their way back through the +medium of an art which did not know where these creatures +came from. Nor did ancient travelers and geographers. These, +they supposed, were real races of men, real beasts and birds. +They had never seen them, for they roamed the outer spaces, +but everywhere they saw their effigies—in the porches of palaces, +upon the columns of imperial courts, and on the monuments of +princes, as well as within the shrines of strange gods.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</span></p> + +<p>Creatures of allegory these were, religious symbols, survivals +of totemistic worship of beasts. Yet the entablatures on which +their outlines were graven were mistaken for illustrated natural +history, accepted as literal records of fact, like the columns +which companioned them and which kings set up along the highways +of the east to proclaim that hither they had come and +here they had prevailed in battle.</p> + +<p>The imagery of all religions musters them. Eskimo mythology +is a witch-haunted shore, Aztec mythology a charnel-house, +Chilean mythology a forbidding menagerie. The Chiriqui +of Panama have an alligator, a jaguar, and a parrot god, +all with human bodies. In Egyptian myth one reads of the +watch-dog of Osiris in the underworld—the Swallower of the +West, mixture of crocodile, lion, and hippopotamus. On a +man’s shoulders Anubis carried a jackal head; and half human +were the bull-gods, hawk-gods, goat-gods, vulture-gods, cat-gods. +The Ægean pantheon shows human figures with the +heads of asses, lions, bulls, and birds. The god Brhaspati of +Hindu myth was seven-mouthed and seven-rayed, beautiful-tongued, +sharp-horned, blue-backed, and hundred-winged. +Hanuman was a monkey-god. The goddess Kali was a dark-blue +female with four arms and three eyes. Siva himself had +four faces, which appeared in turn when a ravishing nymph +created by Brahma walked quite around him to tempt him.</p> + +<p>The evolution of these divine beast-men, ancestors of the +fabulous races of geography, begins with the annual sacrifice +of a sacred animal and the preservation of its skin for the ensuing +year. At first this was stored, then stuffed, then drawn +over a wooden or stone image, to which, as worship lost its +primal grossness, the human form was imparted. The result +might be an ass- or goat-god, a centaur or satyr. Yet, with religious +symbolism shaping it, evolution has operated also in +reverse, dowering anthropomorphic deities with animal parts +to signify typical qualities. This is seen even in Christian +story. On the choir stalls of a Rhine church begging friars +were depicted with the cowled head of a monk, but with a pig’s +body and fox tail, while a Bible of the tenth century shows the +evangelists as beast-headed men, and the four gospels as a four-headed +composite animal called the tetramorph.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" id="f21"> +<img src="images/fig21.jpg" alt="gargoyle"> +<p class="caption">THE GARGOYLES OF STONE WHICH KEPT WATCH DAY AND<br> +NIGHT</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</span></p> + +<p>Out of the magic dances of men, as out of their temples, the +races of fable have come trooping. By donning the heads and +perhaps the tails of horses, bulls, asses, and goats, and treading +certain measures, ritual mummers became, in the thought of the +time, horse-demons, ox-demons, ass-demons, and goat-demons, +and as such semidivine. They danced to bring fertility to the +flocks and herds, while the god—it is Pindar speaking—“laughed +aloud to see the romping license of the monstrous +beasts.” The masks of wild animals and of reptiles and birds +were worn also, and the motions of these creatures were repeated +in other dances, as they are to-day, in order to propitiate dangerous +beasts, or bring luck in the chase, or constrain heat and +cold, sun and rain, through animals that were their symbols. +Possibly the First People of Indian myth, equally with the +satyrs of the classics, derive from rites in which dancers simulated +beasts, and seemed, therefore, both human and bestial. +Belief that ritual dancers donned the animal nature with their +masks; travelers’ reports; the ambiguous records of pictograph +and frieze, and tribal forgetfulness of the meaning of long-abandoned +rites—all were avenues by which the mummers +passed out of the atmosphere of a naïve township magic into +the spacious precincts of marvel. Greek tragedy and Greek +comedy grew up in their steps, flourished for some splendid +moments, and died out. But the ritual mime, whence these +came, is still danced by peasants clad in skins.</p> + +<p>If, as pragmatism claims, the intellectual world is “pervaded +and perverted by errors, lies, fictions, and illusions”—things +real only in the sense that they can be talked about—it could +not be otherwise than that the folk-mind would throng the galleries +of fable with its cruder creations. Was it not a slighter +thing to picture “gorgons, hydras, and chimæras dire” than to +give the wood its guardian deity, or to reach the poetry of Indian +belief that the echo is the Lizard-Man telling back? The +night terrors of the savage, the dream figures of an age when +dreams were very real, the hallucinations of medicine-men, +the deep reactions of the imagination to what seems abnormal +but is merely strange, even the easy success of the alarming +masks and deforming paraphernalia of tribesmen on the warpath—all +contributed to the fabulous populations. In the house<span class="pagenum" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</span> +of the mind, one chamber is a museum where it strives to improve +on nature’s handiwork. It invents no new thing, but it +shifts familiar combinations, exaggerating, deforming, recombining. +The product is either a caricature or a composite, a +grotesque or a chimæra. Nature itself has set a pattern in the +bat, which the Persians say is compounded of bird, dog, and +muskrat, since it flies like a bird, has dog teeth and lives in +holes like a muskrat.</p> + +<p>By his own handiwork has man been misled, or led away +into curious valleys of vision. Savage art seems constrained by +some obscure law of the mind to give its subjects, be they god, +man, or beast, a grotesque delineation. It may be that primitive +drawing was evolved inversely from the drawing of children, +whose first animals are usually horizontal human beings; +the first men pictured by the cave artists were more like erect +animals. Paleolithic man, so Luquet thinks, learned how to +represent animals before he did men, and gave the latter beast +countenances and misshapen members in his early attempts to +represent them. The stuff of myth is in the rock drawings. In +sculpture itself its influence is clearly marked.</p> + +<p>On the evidence of broken statues, desert peoples based tales +of forgotten races that had been turned into stone. On the evidence +of wooden idols, snow-mantled in the land of the Samoyeds, +their neighbors based tales of a northern nation frozen +into immobility with each recurring winter and thawed out by +the sun’s return. There were sculptures and bas-reliefs in +Egypt which ministered to the pride of kings by picturing them +several times as large as their subjects and vassals; and these +were evidence to the stranger that he had come into a country +which held both giants and dwarfs. Primitive drawings betray +ignorance of perspective, and this archaic style was retained +by religious conservatism after art had found itself. The sculptures +that show Egyptian countenances in profile, with eyes as +long as in the full face, also show profiles of quadrupeds having +but two legs and a single horn. Here, and not in “the wild, +white, fierce, chaste moon, whose two horns are indissolubly +twisted into one,” may be the secret of the unicorn.</p> + +<p>The power to evoke myths of the living has been in marble +statues and wooden images from the beginning, for in the beginning<span class="pagenum" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</span> +they were wrought in the thought that life would +enter them. A passage in <i>The Flame of Life</i> reveals the creative +quality in D’Annunzio reacting to their spell: “In the fruit +orchards, in the vineyards, among the vegetables, among the +pastures, rose the surviving statues. They were numberless +like a dispersed people. Some still white, some gray or yellow +with lichens or greenish with moss, or spotted; in all attitudes, +with all gestures, goddesses, heroes, nymphs, seasons, hours, +with their bows, with their arrows, their garlands, their cornucopias, +their torches, with all the emblems of their riches, +power, and pleasure, exiled from fountains, grottos, labyrinths, +harbors, porticos; friends of the evergreen, box, and myrtle, +protectors of passing loves, witnesses of eternal vows, figures of +a dream far older than the hands that had formed them and the +eyes that had seen them in the ravaged gardens.”</p> + +<p>Sovereign reason itself has sent emissaries to the courts of +fable. Science is tolerant and until it knows it speaks the language +of Montaigne, “It is a sottish presumption to disdaine and +condemne that for false, which unto us seemeth to beare no +show of likelihood or truth.” Empedocles, precursor of physical +scientists, and perhaps first to glimpse the doctrine of evolution, +provided the classic world with a working explanation +of the prodigious animals and peoples and gave a law to the +menageries of myth. He thought that the various parts of men +and animals were separately created by the elements, which were +his deities. There were heads without necks, arms without +shoulders, eyes without sockets; and as they wandered about in +space these members united, forming man-headed beasts, beast-headed +men, and various bizarre beings which because of their +maladjustment did not survive in competition with normal men +and animals. The doctrine has been echoed in modern times +in the contention that the composite creatures of fable—part +reptile, part bird, and part beast—represent intermediate forms, +experiments which nature inaugurated and abandoned in evolving +higher types of life. The marsupial kangaroo, the duck-billed +platypus, and the flying lizard are surviving testimony to +such experiment.</p> + +<p>A kindred philosophy may be discerned here and there in the +folklore of aboriginal Americans. In the deluge legend of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</span> +Pimas, Fox and Sister, escaping in two arks, set to work to +fashion a new world of men out of mud; Fox molds manikins +with one arm, one leg, one eye, but Sister derides these and tells +him to put his journeyman’s product away behind the ocean in +another world; then she breathes into her own better handiwork +the breath of life; these deformed folk are still living somewhere, +the Pimas think. The haunting Indian myth of a First +People, who had the human form but the beast nature, and from +whom the animals derive, and the companion myth of a First +People who had the brute form, but discarded it for the human, +are things with the Empedoclean quality, but reach deeper; +and a true note of observation is in them. Somewhere in every +man one catches a glimpse of some animal. All created things +are reflected in his form, his gait, his face. “Somewhat of +me down there?” was the question of Emerson when he caught +a dog’s understanding glance; and in men’s countenances he +had seen, he thought, “the features of the mink, of the bull, +of the rat, and the barnyard fowl.”</p> + +<p>Thus the <i>Metamorphoses</i> of Ovid take on a tinge of plausibility. +“What keeps these wild tales in circulation for thousands +of years?” asks Emerson. “What but the wild fact to +which they suggest some approximation of theory!” In lighter +vein in <i>Penguin Island</i> Anatole France sketches the metamorphosis +of birds into men: “Immediately the penguins were +transformed. Their foreheads enlarged and their heads grew +round like the dome of St. Maria Rotunda in Rome. Their +oval eyes opened more widely on the universe; a fleshy nose +clothed the two clefts of their nostrils; their beaks were changed +into mouths, and from their mouths went forth speech; their +necks grew short and thick; their wings became arms and their +claws legs; a restless soul dwelt within the breast of each of +them. However, there remained with them some traces of +their first nature. They were inclined to look sideways; they +balanced themselves on their short thighs; their bodies were +covered with fine down.”</p> + +<p>There is good terrestrial history as well as the dreams and +guesses of the mind hidden in travel tales, and in them are embalmed +some of the oldest memories of mankind. Paleolithic +man found various subraces of men in Europe when he came<span class="pagenum" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</span> +there, savage prowlers from whose skeletal remains modern +science has restored the outlines of squat, ape-necked, beetle-browed +human beings, crudely formed as a heathen idol. +Against these he waged the relentless war of one species against +another—a war of extermination. The memory of their odious +appearance would survive longest in the stories told to entertain +or frighten children. As Sir Harry Johnston has suggested, “the +dim racial remembrance of such gorilla-like monsters, with +cunning brains, shambling gait, hairy bodies, strong teeth, and +possibly cannibalistic tendencies, may be the germ of the ogre +in folklore.”</p> + +<p>It is certain that folklore shows the traces of other and less +frightful races of men who in turn were driven off the European +scene. The giants of nursery tales are identified by Tylor with +Stone Age heathen, shy of the conquering tribes of men, loathing +their agriculture and the sound of their church bells. When +the Scandinavian sagas speak of dwarfs, furtive and cunning, +garbed in reindeer kirtle and colored cap, hiding in caves, and +armed with bone-tipped arrows, they are picturing the persecuted +and once widely spread Lapp race.</p> + +<p>It may be that a vague recollection of now extinct animals has +survived in legend. There is an Iroquois story recorded by +Father Charlevoix of a great elk which stood so high that eight +feet of snow did not impede his movements, and with “a sort +of arm which comes out of his shoulder and which he uses as we +do ours.” Kaska tribesmen speak of a large, hairy, tusked +animal which roamed their land long ago. The Indians of +North America must at some time have seen living members +of the elephant family. It has been suggested that the tortoises +of Hindu myth which bear the world on their backs are a +memory of the huge Himalayan tortoise.</p> + +<p>There are legends that are true myths of observation, exercises +not of memory, but of primitive logic. They disclose man +pondering the ruinous records of the past and satisfying the +necessity for a theory that shall explain them. The diminutive +burial cysts and dolmens made by departed races and scattered +over the world were thought to be the graves of dwarfs, or their +houses, or their treasure places. Fossil bones have produced +a veritable cycle of these philosophic myths. The frozen mammoths<span class="pagenum" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</span> +and fossil bones of Siberia have been known to man from +earliest times and have produced a stock of legends as well as +an immemorial trade in ivory. Some of these, reciting the +battles of prehistoric animals with one another and with men, +have almost the dignity of epics.</p> + +<p>The mistaken logic that produced the creatures of legend +has had at various points a sort of whimsical confirmation. +Save for his fiery breath, the dragon of fable mirrors the leathern-winged, +serpent-tailed, crocodile-bellied saurians that +haunted the marshes of the ancient world and passed from the +scene ages before man is supposed to have come upon it. There +are living things as weird of aspect as any created by the unbridled +imagination of man, but most of them are small. Such +are the vampire bat, the dragon fly, and the so-called fiend fly, +the black face and curved horns of which gave it in the Middle +Ages a diabolic name. Seas and fresh-water streams and +marshes all contain creatures which so much resemble, and so +much differ from, the familiar land animals as to seem the +product of a conscious venture into the grotesque. With a fish +net and microscope one might bring to view an array of animals +that in everything save size would rival the exhibits of +fable. The wildest dream of man has not pictured anything so +beautiful and strange as the life-drama of the little creature that +is first a larva, then a chrysalis, and then the butterfly of a +single summer.</p> + +<p>There are words in which the germinal idea has been so enveloped +in wrappers of metaphor and inference, so incased in +concentric shells of rationalization, so burdened with borrowed +significances, so freighted by sentiment and reflection, and so +enriched by art and historical accretion that they may be called +microcosms of the world of fable; the proper noun, Babylon, is +one of these. In large measure the peoples of prodigy and in +some measure the lands of legend owe their being to a search +for causes confined within the domain of etymology. They may +be called a literary phenomenon, a product of words and the +ways of words, and a by-product of libraries. Words breed +myths. Given a Rome, people will invent a Romulus. Given +the ancient Britons and Celts, people will invent a Britannus +and a Celtus, their eponymous chiefs. The theory of totemism—supposed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</span> +descent from an animal ancestor—arose, as Spencer +thinks, from the efforts of savages to explain the animal names +which they bore.</p> + +<p>When the meaning of words becomes forgotten or their form +corrupted, a myth follows. Mediæval Spain, for example, believed +that Jews were born with tails, confusing the word rabbi +with rubo (a tail). Château Vert in England has become Shotover, +and peasants have it that Little John shot over a high hill +near by. Maid Marian of the Robin Hood ballad cycle is the +Mad Morion of the Morris dance, a boy who whirled through +its measures wearing a morion or helmet.</p> + +<p>How names can become corrupted the public-house signs of +England will attest. The Bag O’Nails should be the Bacchanals; +the Bully Ruffian should be the ship Bellerophon; the Cat and +Wheel should be St. Catherine’s wheel; the Goat and Compasses +should be God Encompasses Us; the Iron Devil should be Hirondelle +(the swallow), and the Queer Door should be the Cœur +Doré (the golden heart). The effigies of bags of nails, cats, +goats, and doors under these uncouth names are pictorial fables +based upon bad etymology.</p> + +<p>In like fashion Pliny confused the name of the Canaries with +the Latin <i>canis</i> (dog) and says these islanders are called thus +because, like dogs, they devour the entrails of wild beasts. Similar +confusions of words have brought legendary islands upon +the maps. Avalon, the Celtic paradise in the west, whither +Arthur was ferried unto peace, is Apple Island of the classics, +the place of the golden, dragon-guarded apples of the Hesperides. +Antilia, mystic mediæval island of the remote Atlantic, +is perhaps Ante-ilya, or island off the Portuguese coast. +Milton’s “cold Estotiland” and Estland, islands which held their +place for centuries on the maps of the northern seas, are probably +misreadings for Scotland and Iceland, transferred from +faded sketch-maps to a Venetian chart of the sixteenth century.</p> + +<p>“Not Angles, but angels,” said a punning ecclesiastic when +he saw fair-haired Saxon captives in the slave markets of the +Mediterranean. So the Greeks and Romans gave to savage +tribes the names that in their own tongues sounded most like +what these tribes called themselves. A myth might result—a +record of some deformity, or some inhuman custom. A larger<span class="pagenum" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</span> +number of myths arose from men’s giving a literal meaning to +figurative terms in their own language. To speak in riddles +was more than a social game with the ancients, is more than a +social game now with various peoples. There were certain +things which must not be named, but only referred to indirectly. +There were times when riddles must be propounded and +times when they must not; and riddle-time, says Frazer, was +usually in the presence of a dead body or at a sacrifice.</p> + +<p>What might follow, a glance at a few Finnish riddles will +show. One of them runs, “Beyond the great water a large old +man shouts,” and another, “A cry from the forest and light +from the hill.” In each case thunder is the answer. The sky +is described as a blue field strewn with silver. “A child looks +through the hedge” means the sunrise. “A red cock springs +from house to house” means fire. “A small white man was +sowing, he became very mischievous,” means snow. As Müller +remarks, here are elements which in the mind of a poet or a +grandmother would soon create a number of delightful myths.</p> + +<p>In its contacts with enigmatic language the end of literalism +is fable. Speak of fleet horses as children of the wind, and you +have the story of Iberian mares impregnated by the west wind. +Speak of swift runners as shadow-footed, and there appears on +the canvas of Ind the silhouettes of natives asleep under the +shade of their gigantic feet. “We are a people without a head,” +said the kingless Turkomans, and the Headless People shouldered +their way into the map of fable. “Their shoulders are +where our heads are,” Indians of Guiana told Raleigh, describing +a tall neighbor race, and artists delineated them with eyes, +noses, and mouths where their breasts ought to be. Sometimes +savage tribes stretch their ears by attaching weights to them; +hence, perhaps, the tale of folk who used one ear as mattress, +the other as coverlet. As to the people whose feet were turned +backward, may these not be, Tylor asks, the Antipodes on the +other side of the globe, whose feet, surely enough, are planted +“the opposite way” every time they set them down?</p> + +<p>The method explains much, although care must be taken that +it be not made to explain too much. The germ of fable is found +in such figurative epithets as bull-browed, long-headed, horse-faced, +ox-eyed, lion-hearted, bird-witted. But for these phrases<span class="pagenum" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</span> +to fructify in marvel, it would need that in a time more naïve +and among a people who knew neither the ends of the world +nor the ways of speech, men of one race should use them in +telling another the manners and customs of a third. For cultivated +minds these conditions cannot be reproduced except in +the magic and make-believe of poetry. For the unlettered, alike +in lands of culture and of barbarism, they still exist.</p> + +<p>The power of wish and the power of words are chief gods in +the world of fable.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c24">Chapter XXIV. The Travel Tales of Mankind</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">When</span> the travel stories of mankind were first set down in +writing the list was already nearly complete. Little was added +afterward until the modern age began the systematic collection +of a mass of folklore which, with all its significance, had scant +literary backgrounds and less than the old geographical quality. +This is a strange thing. From generation to generation men +increased their stores of knowledge, but from century to century +they neither greatly increased nor greatly reduced their +stock of fables. There were periods when men forgot the wisdom +of the ancient world, but they remembered and repeated +its pleasant marvels.</p> + +<p>These have had a long journey down the ages. The Greek +had them from the Persian, Indian, and Egyptian; the Roman +had them from the Greek; the Arab merchant and Christian +pilgrim had them from the Roman; the Celtic monk and the +viking had them alike from Roman, Arab, and Christian; and +the Spanish explorer had them from every mediæval source. +In the Spanish Americas of the sixteenth century the Age of +Fable blazed forth again and then grew dark.</p> + +<p>The things added in this journey to the original stock of +travel tales were mainly local legends and variations on older +themes. The grasshoppers in one province chirped or were +silent in obedience to provincial ordinance, the fountains of +another had curative properties, there was an enchanted forest +in a third. Celtic glamour passed a wand over familiar material +and it yielded the veiled or sunken islands of the western +ocean. The quest of El Dorado came out of a Spanish +dream. Nearly all other travel tales are found in the earliest +literature. It must be that men told them to one another ages +before writing was known.</p> + +<p>Various of the older books record them. They are interwoven +with myths of the supernatural in epic poetry. They are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</span> +included in accounts of countries and peoples in histories, encyclopædias, +and guide-books. They decorate the narratives of +ancient and mediæval travelers. They are compiled in volumes +of mirabilia. Instances of these several records are the Odyssey +of Homer, the <i>History</i> of Herodotus, the <i>Travels</i> of Marco Polo, +and the <i>Collecteanea</i> of Solinus.</p> + +<p>The special type of letters which travel tales have developed is +the collections of mirabilia. Most, perhaps all, of these have +been library pilferings and borrowings. Photios culled from +the <i>Indika</i> of Ctesias everything that was difficult to believe, and +the rest of this survey of ancient India is lost. Solinus won the +name of Pliny’s Ape by extracting the curious things from the +writings of the Roman encyclopædist and combining them in a +work which was standard for a thousand years.</p> + +<p>The very skepticism of other writers evidences the industry +of the historians of marvel. In his <i>Attic Nights</i>, Gellius, a +Roman of the second century <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, tells of a bundle of musty +books which he bought for a few coppers in Brundusium. “They +were all in Greek,” he says, “and full of wonders and fables, +containing relations of things unheard of and incredible, but +written by authors of no small authority—Aristeas of Proconnesos +and Isogonos of Nicæa, and Ctesias and Onesikritos and +Polystephanos and Hegesias.” Swiftly he lists their races of +dog-headed, one-legged, headless, and feathered mortals. “As +we perused them,” says the practical but too-scornful Roman, +“we felt how wearisome a task it is to read worthless books +which conduce neither to adorn nor to improve life.”</p> + +<p>When Huc was ascending a Chinese river in the middle of +the last century his native servant used to go ashore at every +stopping place and bring aboard a stock of pamphlets to read. +These products of the ready pens of the literary class included +fantastic stories of various kinds, some of them very coarsely +written. Says Huc: “The Greeks fixed the abode of their monsters +and ephemeral creatures in the east, and the Chinese have +returned the compliment by placing theirs in the west, beyond +the great seas. There dwell their dog-men, their ears long +enough to trail on the ground as they walk; there is the Kingdom +of Women, and of the people with a hole right through them +at the breast.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</span></p> + +<p>Best of all skeptical discussions of prodigy is the <i>Enquiries +into Vulgar and Common Errors</i> (1646), which bears the high +name of Sir Thomas Browne. Its author challenges the entire +array of travel tales, closes his eyes to the truth hidden in many +of them, recites the means by which impostors fabricate imaginary +animals, denounces “saltimbancoes, quacksalvers, charlatans, +astrologers, fortune tellers, jugglers, geomancers and the +like incantatory impostors,” and sounds a warning against +Herodotus, Ctesias, Maundeville, Pliny, Ælian, Solinus, +Athenæus, Philes, Tzetzes, and “even holy writers such as Basil +and Ambrose and Isidore, Bishop of Seville, and Albertus, +Bishop of Ratisbone.” Preachers and moralists, he says, have +made occasion for error by using for illustration the fables of +the phœnix, salamander, pelican and basilisk. The root of the +matter, he concludes, is the “deceptible condition” of men, of +which Satan took advantage in the beginning.</p> + +<p>In whatever books one finds these pictures of strange lands +and races they have the effect of cameos, in that they are miniatures, +and the outlines are not subject to change. The description +is always brief, and next to nothing is added to it from +age to age. The griffin has no new habits, the dog-faced men +lived under the old law, the pygmies of the Middle Ages have +not yet won the battles with the cranes which they were waging +in the time of Homer. If a traveler sees these strange creatures +he has nothing fresh to say of them. The main thing that happens +is that they shift their places on the map, retiring always +before the advance of knowledge. Æthicus of Istria contributes +almost the only really novel touch in a thousand years. He saw, +so he says, the Amazons in the region north of the Caspian suckling +the centaurs and minotaurs.</p> + +<p>That these fables came down through the centuries unchanged +is a tribute to the hold of tradition, to men’s reverence for the +written word. It is also a revelation of the way natural histories +and encyclopædias were compiled until about the time +of Buffon and Cuvier. When a thing got itself said, it had a +good chance of surviving, provided it was interesting. Other +men copied it out of a book without demanding proofs, authority +taking the place of research. The ancient geographers cited +the very poets as authorities.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</span></p> + +<p>Because they passed through endless compilations the fables +remained brief, or became so. Despite its vigor and penetrating +quality, even the <i>Geography</i> of Strabo rests for its main facts +on a multitude of travel books whose statements it abridged. +What the Greek writers could not wholly avoid was too much +for the Roman encyclopædists. They were note-takers, compilers, +abridgers, and they tried to make all learning their +province. The encyclopædias of Varro, Verrius, Flaccus, Pliny, +Suetonius, Pompeius Festus, and Nonius Marcellus were the +product not of a staff of experts, but in each case of a single +mind. The editors epitomized everything. They made extracts +from books, extracts from extracts, abridgments of abridgments. +The original works they consulted were lost, and only fragments +of the mental inheritance of the Roman world were transmitted +from age to age. Under the modern system of specialized inquiry +the frontiers of knowledge press ever outward. Under +the old encyclopædists they drew inward and the body of known +facts shrank continually. This tendency culminated in Isidore, +Bishop of Seville in the seventh century, last of the Roman, +first of the Christian, encyclopædists. He devotes two sentences +to the small island of Thanet, now a part of Kent. He gives +three sentences to Great Britain; “jet is very common there, and +pearls,” he says.</p> + +<p>From works prepared under such conditions one must be content +with a treatise as brief as this in Isidore’s <i>Etymologies</i>: +“The Cynocephali are so called because they have dogs’ heads +and their very barking betrays them as beasts rather than men. +They are born in India.”</p> + +<p>The ideal lands, the prodigious races, and the fabulous animals +were first made known to the world by the Greeks. Few +of the classic travel tales, however, originated with them. Most +of them trace back to Egypt and India; if their sources are still +more remote, the track has been lost. The mythical peoples and +animals dwelt in the deserts of Africa and the deserts and mountains +of Asia. India, even more than Egypt, was their home. +The mighty mountains that bordered it, the multitude of peoples +that inhabited it, the strong touch of the grotesque in their art +and ritual, and their curious sense of kinship with the elephant, +the tiger, the snake, and the jackal made theirs the native soil<span class="pagenum" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</span> +of marvel. Many of the singular creatures that peopled the +hinterlands of Africa seem to be emigrants from India and +beyond.</p> + +<p>The earliest travel tales in Greek literature are found in +Homer’s Odyssey commingled with accounts of places and peoples +that are not of the earth. These stories of the tenth century +before Christ look westward from Greece. In the poems of +Pindar the strange outlines of eastern marvel appear on the +Mediterranean scene and a new aspect of reality animates them. +With the history of Herodotus, written in the fifth century +before Christ, the invasion is well-nigh complete. Imbedded in +the greatest of all histories, passages about the griffin, the +phœnix and kindred creatures are scattered through volumes that +contain the high story of the Persian attempt upon Greece, and +the best accounts which the Mediterranean world had of the +back lands of the earth. Herodotus had heard of so many wonderful +things which were true that he made it a rule to report +what he heard even where he doubted its truth; and to this rule +the world owes much. The Halicarnassian doubted the existence +of a sea north of Europe, or of the Tin Islands, but he gave them +a place in his pages. He could not believe that the Phœnicians +had circumnavigated Africa, but his record of their incredible +assertion that as they sailed they “had the sun on their right” +is evidence that the thing was done.</p> + +<p>Herodotus was attacked as untruthful by Ctesias and the +Pseudo-Plutarch, and his monument at Thurium in Italy recites +that he removed thither to escape ridicule; but in the main this +was the ridicule of men who accepted his pleasant stories and +doubted his history, and who were offended because with too +candid a pen he sketched faction and faint-heartedness in the +Greek states when Xerxes led his host across the Hellespont.</p> + +<p>After Herodotus the chief sponsor for antique marvel is +Ctesias the Cnidian, whose work falls in the following generation. +If the one history was the product of travel, the other was +the product of prolonged residence abroad, Ctesias having been +stationed as physician for seventeen years at the Persian court. +He gave the Greeks their first special treatise on India, introduced +the Deformed Folk to the west, and pictured the peninsula +as a preserve of curious peoples and animals. So he made<span class="pagenum" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</span> +a notable book of his <i>Indika</i>, but among the learned it had small +credit. “A writer not to be depended on,” Aristotle calls the +author, and where Herodotus was accused of credulity, Ctesias +was assailed for mendacity. Modern criticism, however, has +identified several of his monstrous races with tribes still inhabiting +Hindostan and partly excused other fables on the +ground that he never saw India and put in his book only what +the Persians told him of their neighbors to the east. When +one people tells another the ways of a third, the theme is +marvel.</p> + +<p>What was denied to Ctesias was vouchsafed to Alexander in +the next generation. With his own eyes he saw India. The +European race before which the east unveiled was the most +gifted, curious, and imaginative of all peoples, and the east +beheld it personified in the captivating figure of Alexander. +The expedition brought legends back with it, and left other +legends behind. Indian and Afghan and Turkoman and Arab +never forgot the great Macedonian, while the whole literature of +the west was colored by this eastern contact.</p> + +<p>A few other Greek names are linked with the travel tale. +Scylax of Caryanda taxed credulity with his fabric of wonder. +Aristotle examined reports of fabulous creatures, and fables as +to actual species, and rejected most, but not all, of them. The +study of anthropology, developed at Alexandria, found its harvest +in the geography of Strabo and in the survey of the +Erythræan Sea by Agatharcides. Both works contain curious +accounts of curious tribes of men.</p> + +<p>Pausanias the Lydian, who lived in the second century of the +Christian era, is better remembered than men with better title +to remembrance, because his work happened to survive. His +<i>Description of Greece</i> has been compared to an old shoe flung +high on the beach of time. An old man wrote it, interested in +old things. Pausanias has much to say of the wonders of sacred +grottos, trees, and springs. His method of taking a road and +describing everything along it was copied by pilgrim writers, +who clogged the paths of Palestine with their marvels. Modern +criticism has discovered that he repeats as interviews with +natives statements he had read in local handbooks, and that, +betrayed thereby, he tells of seeing cities as flourishing places<span class="pagenum" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</span> +which had been in ruins for centuries. Yet Pausanias was a real +traveler, although at times a luckless compiler.</p> + +<p>Lucian the Samosatan was his contemporary, but his contribution +to marvel is a satire on the credulity of all travelers, among +whom he arraigns Homer, Herodotus, and Ctesias. His <i>True +History</i> relates an imaginary voyage to the moon, and thence to +the Fortunate Isles, where Ulysses entrusts him with a letter to +Calypso. In the belly of a whale nearly two hundred miles +long, which had swallowed his ship, he finds lakes, woods, and +strange races of living men. It was the singular fortune of this +travesty to provide material for epics which the Celts accepted +as history and for adventures which were foisted on the narrative +of Baron Munchausen.</p> + +<p>The Latin mind was inferior to the Greek chiefly in that it +was deficient in curiosity. The Romans were content to rule +the world rather than to understand it. It was enough that +amber and silk and incense and spice should come to them from +the four corners of the earth without their following the trade +routes back to find what manner of people sent these things. +Yet legend was active among the mariners and camel-drivers +and porters of the races that served the Roman on the fringes of +his empire. The fables of these porter-nations were passed on +to the Arab and are preserved in the <i>Thousand and One Nights</i>.</p> + +<p>Rome, however, performed a service to the traditional world +by producing the elder Pliny and his amazing <i>Natural History</i>. +Pliny has not the charm, narrative gifts, or historical genius of +Herodotus, but he comes half a millennium afterward and has +more to report. He lacks the comprehensive and penetrating +intelligence of Aristotle, but he knows more—of things that are +so, and of things that are not so. His great work is perhaps the +most impressive monument to industry raised by a single mind. +The entire body of learning of the ancient world passed through +his mind and came out again in the volumes which he calls a +natural history but which are in fact an encyclopædia. These +thirty-seven books record twenty thousand matters of importance +collected from about two thousand volumes, only a few of which +have survived. As his nephew, the younger Pliny, recites, it +was his maxim that “there is no book so bad but some good may +be got out of it.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</span></p> + +<p>To get it Pliny made notes, even in the bath. When he traveled, +his secretary was by his side with a book and tablets, and +if it was winter the scribe took dictation with his gloves on. In +Rome Pliny never moved about except in a litter, reading while +he was being carried through the streets. Once he rebuked his +nephew for walking and “losing all those hours.”</p> + +<p>While tracing the courses of the stars, the description of countries, +plants and animals, the anatomy of man, the properties +of drugs, the nature of gems, the uses of metals, the science of +farming and the fine arts, Pliny contrives also to sketch the +geography of marvel. “It is really wonderful,” he declares, +“to what a length the credulity of the Greeks will go.” Yet he +draws most of his material from them, and whatever his own +attitude toward the things he recites, the result of the recital was +to give credulity its own text-book for a thousand years. Cynical +as was his point of view, Pliny was yet a lover of marvel and +searched it out and set it forth in his pages whether he believed +it or not. It was enough that it was interesting.</p> + +<p>His was the journalistic angle. The <i>Natural History</i> is in +effect a vast newspaper report of the world of about <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> 77. +The columns of curious miscellany which newspapers print +sometimes under such headings as “Oddities in the Day’s News” +are legacies of his spirit. The monument to his immense industry +and reportorial instinct is a work which fabulists of all succeeding +ages used as a quarry for their own building materials. +Had his been the questing mind of the Greek, instead of the +drag-net intelligence of the journalist of an incurious but marvel-loving +world, the view of the central countries of culture +and of the horizon lands presented in the <i>Natural History</i> would +have less the aspect of a main circus tent surrounded by side +shows.</p> + +<p>Solinus, surnamed Polyhistor or the Varied Narrator, distilled +the marvels from Pliny, making some seven hundred +extracts, adding to them from other sources, and producing a +work which supplanted the older writer in the affections of the +multitude throughout the Middle Ages. His <i>Collecteanea</i> appeared +in the third or fourth century of the Christian Era, and +although he seems to have been a pagan grammarian, he had +mainly Christian readers. St. Augustine quotes him four times<span class="pagenum" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</span> +in his <i>City of God</i>, and Isidore uses no less than two hundred +extracts in his <i>Etymologies</i>. The pagan’s work was both a symptom +and a cause of the intellectual decline in the Middle Ages. +Other men did as he did, or accepted the results of his labors +as sparing them its pains. What he did, and what Europe did +after the breakdown of the old order of things, was to forget +ancient wisdom and hold fast to ancient wonder. Solinus was +spiritual father of the Christian fabulists, mentor of the Christian +pilgrims.</p> + +<p>What Pliny wrote, perhaps with his tongue in his cheek, +Solinus copies with mouth agape. The world is become a playhouse, +a curio hall, a province of faerie. One learns that, like +man, the quail suffers from the falling sickness and that the +cranes of Thrace travel southward in ballast, stuffing their craws +with sand and pebbles. In the Mediterranean islands there is +a “sardonic” plant, on eating which one grins horribly and dies +of lockjaw. In Germany are the Hercynian birds whose feathers +give light in the dark. Here also is a mule-like pastoral beast +with so long an upper lip that he “cannot feed except walking +backward.” In Africa are jovial apes which rejoice in the new +of the moon and lament in its wane, and sphinxes and satyrs +“easily taught to forget their wildness, very sweet faced, and +full of toying continually.” There are no snakes in Ireland—and +no sense of right and wrong.</p> + +<p>The <i>Physiologus</i>, an Alexandrian compilation, companions +the <i>Collecteanea</i>, but introduces a moralizing note and thereby +ushers a rabble of real and fabulous animals into the symbolism +of ecclesiastical architecture. Isidore of Seville is a desiccated +Solinus, dried out by theology and the specialized pursuits +of the grammarian. He wrote at the opening of the +seventh century. His <i>Etymologies</i> has already been cited as +that irreducible minimum of knowledge to which the epitomizing +habit of Roman encyclopædists tended always. It shows also +the Roman dependence on authority as a substitute for research, +and the Roman worship of words. Easy it was for early Christian +writers to take up the tradition of the encyclopædists, for +it needed only that the authority of the pagan be replaced by +that of a purer faith. The pagan marvels were accepted almost +in a body and many of them are briefly recited by Isidore.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</span></p> + +<p>How words breed legend is disclosed in the very title of the +<i>Etymologies</i>. Carrying a little further the tradition of the +Romans, with whom philology was almost as old as poetry and +more important than natural science, Isidore seemed to think +that when he had given the derivation of a term he had accomplished +a complete description of the thing that bore its name. +Words themselves were things transcendental. Thus he defines +Barbarism as “the uttering of a word with an error in a letter +or in a quantity.” <i>Nox</i>, the Latin word for night, “is derived +from <i>nocere</i> (to injure) because it injures the eyes.” “<i>Homo</i> +is so named because he is made of <i>humus</i> (earth), as it is told +in <i>Genesis</i>.” “<i>Corpus</i> (the body) is so called because being +corrupted it perishes.”</p> + +<p>Isidore writes the texts for the chapter in the history of marvel +that deals with Christian fabulism, pilgriming, and cosmography. +It is Christian only in the sense that Christians of the +earlier centuries tell the tales, make the journeys, and construct +the world theories. Its subject matter is Jewish and pagan, with +the two elements sometimes in an artless, sometimes in a forced, +combination; it presents one side of that contact and conflict +between Aryan and Semitic cultures which is the history of the +last nineteen centuries. For the first part of the period the result +of the conflict in the field of geography, travel, and tradition +was what might be expected where simple-witted peoples, lately +emerged from barbarism and not yet nationally minded, meet +a race of ancient culture and intense national spirit. Jewish +conceptions prevailed. It was thought that children, if taught +no other tongue, would naturally speak Hebrew. Europe accepted +as a literal recital of fact the Sumerian legend preserved +in Hebrew Scriptures that the human race began with +Adam—“the mean, toolless and frivolous Adam,” as Andrew +Lang calls him—and his consort in the Garden of Eden; and +from Hebrew chronology it figured that the earth must be about +four thousand years old. It made over its geography to conform +to Old Testament texts, and, discarding the world-knowledge +of the classic civilizations, it made over its maps to show +Jerusalem in the center of a flat earth.</p> + +<p>When pilgrims to Palestine had visited the scenes of the birth +and passion of Christ they proceeded to explore the Jewish background<span class="pagenum" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</span> +for memorials of Old Testament history, with side trips +into the realm of pagan marvel. All of them looked for the +pillar of salt by the Dead Sea in which Lot’s wife was entombed; +for centuries this column comes and goes in their narratives. +Silvia of Aquitaine, whose journey falls in the fourth century, +says there was no pillar there—the sea had engulfed it—but +others saw it later. Theodosius says it waxed and waned with +the phases of the moon. Antoninus denies the report that pasturing +sheep had diminished its size by licking it. A fragment +of this marvel is in the Library of Congress at Washington, +together with the report of an American traveler who measured +the pillar and found it sixty feet high and forty feet around, +larger than he believed Lot’s wife could have been.</p> + +<p>Other of the earlier pilgrims are said to have gone into +Arabia to see the dunghill where Job contended with his comforters. +The pyramids, some thought, were the barns of Joseph. +The Apples of Adam still showed the marks of his teeth. The +Jordan halted its waters at the time of the Epiphany. Devils +were seen on Mount Gilboa. The torments of hell lay under the +Sea of Sodom and Abbott Daniel had a whiff of them from its +surface. In Samaria, Paula, friend of Saint Jerome, saw +“devils writhing and yelling in different kinds of torture, and +men before the tombs of the saints, howling like wolves, barking +like dogs, roaring like lions, hissing like serpents, bellowing +like bulls.” One pilgrim writer copied another, few took any +note of the natural features of Palestine, most of them were of +primitive culture, and the women had a wider outlook than the +men.</p> + +<p>The Jew, Rabbi Moses Petachia, made a pilgrimage, reporting +among other things that the wind which blew from the shallow +parts of the Sea of Azov, the Stagnant Sea of old geography, +was fatal to passers-by; he saw on the Euphrates a flying camel +which could go a mile in a second. Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela +undertook a remarkable journey in the twelfth century to learn +the condition of the Jewish communities of the east. He brought +back valuable information, but said he could not approach the +vast ruins of Babylon because of the scorpions and serpents that +haunted them, located mythical Jewish states in the deserts of +Arabia, and repeated numerous fables on hearsay. If he ever<span class="pagenum" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</span> +took this journey, says the elder Disraeli, it must have been with +his nightcap on.</p> + +<p>How the new peoples of the west lost the sense of historical +perspective under the Jewish impact is shown in the long speculation +over the whereabouts of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. +Classic learning was dismissed as “windy babble.” The fate of +the peoples of the great monarchies of antiquity aroused no +curiosity. But everywhere were sought the footsteps of the vanished +Israelites. They were imprisoned in the Caucasus, they +had become Afghan mountaineers, they were privileged subjects +of Prester John, they were settled in the Canaries, they had +reached China, they had colonized Peru, they were the progenitors +of the British and American peoples, they were the ancestors +of the North American Indian, and the first Mormons.</p> + +<p>While Europe was curious about the shrines, landmarks, and +legends of Asia, and held it to be the continent of wonder, Asia +did not return the interest. It had few travel tales to tell of the +peoples of the west, few reports of any kind. The Chinese saw +little of note in the Roman Empire, “Great China,” save that +it had good jugglers and asbestos cloth and that the eastern gate +of Constantinople was covered with shining gold leaf and was +two hundred feet high. India ignored the sea, and was self-contained +in its life and legends; the fabulous and felicitous +peoples of the Puranas dwell in trans-Himalayan valleys. Arab +sailors were carriers of Indian fables and may have taught them +to the Chinese; a large part of Chinese marvel has a quality +suggesting importation. Yet the superior historical sense of +the Chinese, preserving almost intact marvel tales that were +brought to them, made the rest of the world their debtor. Their +encyclopædias and classics are quite in the style of Pliny, as, +for example, the <i>Shan Hai King</i>, or <i>Wonders by Land and Sea</i>, +to which the dates of <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 2700, 2205, and 222 have been severally +ascribed, and which is also alleged to be a Taoist forgery +of the fourth century <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> Monster peoples and animals are in +this work, and one of its early prefaces relates the journey of a +king to the Halls of the Giants in the east, to the mansions of +the Fairy Queen in the west, across a bridge of tortoises in the +south and over streets made of feathers in the north. It is also +recited that by imperial decree nine urns were set up in various<span class="pagenum" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</span> +parts of China on which, to the fear of the people, the common +and the strange animals of each region were pictured.</p> + +<p>Religious fervor at length set the feet of Chinese upon paths +along which wonder grew. Buddhist priests and scholars went +east to teach and west to learn. If the annals of the Middle +Kingdom are to be credited, a fair interpretation of the record +is that the Chinese reached the coast of North America in +<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> 499 and again in 502 and 556. They found countries +which they described as the Land of Marked Bodies and the +Great Han country. The natives of the former had horses and +draft deer with great horns (reindeer) and esteemed copper +more than gold. A thousand furlongs east was the Kingdom of +Women—erect, white-skinned, hairy, timorous, subsisting on a +salt plant like wormwood. The residents of the Land of Marked +Bodies, supposed to be the Aleutian Islands, were tattooed, joyous, +rich in gold and silver. Eastward was Great Han, possibly +British Columbia, the wild beasts of which devoured guilty +criminals, but spared persons falsely accused. There was also +a country of dog-headed men.</p> + +<p>These lands have been identified with regions of northeastern +Asia, and because of their climate and products with American +regions as far south as California and Mexico.</p> + +<p>The westward journeys of Buddhist scholars are historical +and important. They went to India at various periods from the +beginning of the fifth to the latter part of the seventh century of +our era to study the Law of Buddha, to visit the sites associated +with Sakya Muni and to collect sacred books and relics. One +Chinese work has a record of fifty-six of these worthies. The +Buddhist pilgrims were men of higher intelligence and still +greater credulity than those who at about the same time were +journeying out of Europe to the shrines of Palestine. Their +largest figure, and one of the world’s greatest travelers, is +Hiouen Thsang, who left China in <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> 629 and returned seventeen +years later.</p> + +<p>In the desert of Gobi, Hiouen saw spectral armies charging +down upon him and at night the flare of spectral torches, but at +a word of scripture the glamour faded. In the T’sung-ling +mountains Fa-hien found poison dragons that spat the storm and +avalanche; here, says Hiouen, one should not wear red garments<span class="pagenum" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</span> +nor carry loud-sounding calabashes. The pass of Varasena was +so high that birds could not fly over it, but crossed the summit +afoot. Report had it that in the deserts of Turkestan a sandstorm +covered in a single day as many cities as there were days +in the year.</p> + +<p>The India that Hiouen traversed was a land of ruins and +marvels. He tells of demon women and miracle gold and +wonder-working Buddha teeth; of a shepherd that became a +dragon; of a roe that brought forth a beautiful girl with deer +feet; of a risha that could fly until a princess touched him, and +thereafter he merely walked; of a holy man whose sanctity +made light in a dark wood. There are elephants in his pages +that tend shrines with flowers and perfumes, and wild asses that +protect an altar, and desert ants as large as hedgehogs. There +are dragon domains and serpent palaces underground, and +aboveground a Buddhist tower made of cows’ dung. There is +a City of Hump-backed Women and on a distant island the +Kingdom of Western Women who traffic in gems with Byzantium +and accept lovers from there.</p> + +<p>Most of these things of Chinese report the west knows also +from Herodotus and Pliny and Polo. Out of India, marvel.</p> + +<p>The Nestorian chapter in the joint history of religion and +wonder bears a twelfth-century date, but deals with the inheritance +of classic fable. Although the mediæval legend of a +powerful Christian monarch named Prester John, who reigned +amid pagan enemies somewhere in the heart of Asia, was based +on rumors of the eastward spread of the Nestorian faith, the +Christian element in it is weighted with all the pagan wonders +of an earlier time. The realm of Presbyter John is the range +of strange animals and stranger men. Thus the apocryphal +letter bearing his signature which reached the west declares: +“Our land is the home of elephants, dromedaries, camels, crocodiles, +meta-collinarum, cametennus, tensevetes, wild asses, white +and red lions, white bears, white merles, crickets, griffins, tigers, +lamias, hyenas, wild horses, wild oxen, and wild men, men with +horns, one-eyed men, men with eyes before and behind, centaurs, +fauns, satyrs, pygmies, forty-ell high giants, cyclopes, and +similar women; it is the home, too, of the phœnix, and of nearly +all living animals.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</span></p> + +<p>Here, continues the royal letter writer, are the accursed Gog +and Magog, and the Lost Israelites, and the worm Salamander, +and Amazons and Brahmans, and paradise and pearls and +pepper. And when John goes to war a million and a half soldiers +follow him. The epistle is pagan marvel’s broadest +gesture over lands unknown.</p> + +<p>With differences of Oriental temperament and cast of +thought, Arab geography and travel parallel every phase of the +west except the Age of Ignorance. The Arabs escaped a Lactantius +and a Cosmas, but they had their Plinies and Ptolemies, +their own sea epic, and in Ibn Batuta a traveler second only +to Marco Polo. Until the Middle Ages were ending the centers +of world culture were at Bagdad and Cordoba. If Christendom +accepted the ancient fables and rejected the ancient learning, +Islam embraced both.</p> + +<p>The great Arab geographers blended in their works the +methods of Ptolemy and Pliny, together with a story-telling +strain from the coffee-houses of the east. The very titles of +their works suggest this—Aljahedh’s <i>Book of the Cities and +Marvels of Countries</i>, Massoudy’s <i>Meadows of Gold and Mines +of Precious Stones</i>, Al Istakhri’s <i>Book of Climates</i>, Ibn Haukal’s +<i>Book of Roads and Kingdoms</i>, Ibn Khordadbeh’s <i>Principal +Trade Routes</i>, Abulfeda’s <i>Encyclopædia</i>, and Idrisi’s <i>The Delight +of Those Who Seek to Wander Through the Regions of the +World</i>. These are treatises such as would be expected from +a race which had found its destinies in trade routes, which had +pitched its tents in the seats of the ancient culture, and which +took its ease in coffee-houses. They show Ptolemy’s sense of +distances and measurements, Pliny’s note-taking habits and +appetite for marvel, the bazar instinct for entertaining stories, +and the Arab’s poetic fancy. Massoudy’s is the typical product +of his race. It is a vast and glittering collection of history, +science, travel, and legend, thrown together by an imagination +to which the varied and shifting shows of life and nature were +perpetual delight. What mainly it and its companion works +lack is the Greek sense of form and capacity for precise +thinking.</p> + +<p>Arab geography and marvel are best to be studied in the +seven voyages of Sindbad the Sailor. These are true travels,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</span> +tricked out with legendary travel tales, taken by a number of +men, notably the Two Mussulman Travelers of the ninth century, +and all ascribed to one man in order to give them the epic +quality. Sindbad is the Arab Ulysses and this the Arab +Odyssey. The theater of the eastern epic is the Indian Sea, +rather than the Mediterranean, it is well-nigh free from myths +of the supernatural, and its geographical notes, although disguised, +are definite. One can trace, and Beazley has done so, +the itineraries of the much-buffeted merchant-wanderer, and +identify the material of many of his adventures.</p> + +<p>Wak-wak, the destination of the first voyage, is perhaps +Japan; the island of mysterious nightly music is an echo of +Solinus; the adventure of the whale’s back is repeated by St. +Brendan’s companions, and the owl-headed fish are borrowed +from Khordadbeh. The accounts of the roc of Zanzibar and +the Indian valley of diamonds in the second voyage are to be +found also in the <i>Travels</i> of Marco Polo. The third voyage is +lifted from Homer; the hairy, ugly little dwarfs are the pygmies +of the Iliad, and the one-eyed giant who ate Sindbad’s companions +is a negro Polyphemus out of the Odyssey. The fourth +voyage, with its incidents of cannibal ghouls and their reason-destroying +herbs, the burial of Sindbad alive with his deceased +native wife, and his encounter with pepper-gatherers, is a distorted +narrative of Indian races, customs, and products. The +Old Man of the Sea, or Sheikh of the Seaboard, in the fifth voyage +is the orang-utan of Sumatra. The sixth voyage is mainly +a description of Ceylon. In the seventh voyage the account of +elephants that transported Sindbad to their cemetery, where +without killing them he could have all the ivory he required, is +about as Pliny would have written it.</p> + +<p>Into this east of glowing sorceries came two men of the west +in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the one to traverse +Asia from end to end, and see more of wonder than any man +had seen before, the other to roam still farther, for his journeys +were in his imagination and had only its limits. The <i>Book of +Diversities</i> of Marco Polo is the greatest of all narratives of +wanderings. The <i>Marvellous Adventures of Sir John Maundeville</i> +is the wildest of all romances that purport to be fact. The +two works may be considered together if for no other reason<span class="pagenum" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</span> +than the ironic comment they afford on popular judgments +before time redresses them. The facts of Polo were long +treated as fables. The fables of Maundeville were accepted as +facts. Sir John’s book was translated into every European +tongue and passed through hundreds of editions. Because of +his reports on the wealth of Kublai Khan, Marco was nicknamed +Il Milioni; he was asked on his deathbed if he would not recant +some of the things he had said, and after his death there figured +in Venetian masques a comic character who told unbelievable +tales to guffawing street crowds and was called Marco Milioni.</p> + +<p>The Venetian spent twenty-four years in Asia, most of the +time in the service of the philosopher-monarch, Kublai Khan, +and returned to his native city in 1295. There are fables in +his book, hearsay statements usually reported as such; but their +effect of illusion is slight compared with the staggering and +splendid realities which the narrative unfolded before eyes unprepared +for them. Marco drew aside the curtain of Asia. It +was as if the spectators in some provincial theater, used only to +the antics of vagrant mountebanks and the crudities of folk-drama, +saw for the first time one of those extravaganzas of +music, movement, and color, built around a tale of the Orient, +which tax even the dramatic resources of world capitals to produce. +Sitting in their own darkness, the simpler peoples of the +west saw on a stage hung with costly draperies and dim with +clouds of incense, a stage of vast spaces and long perspectives, +the civilizations of the venerable east—India, dreaming in the +sun with its jeweled rajahs and naked fakirs; China, with its +teeming populations, its immense inland fleets, its wisdom and +its riches; Burma, serene amid the clang of its temple bells; the +golden roofs of Japan rising out of cherry blossoms; Tibet, +wrapped in a vision; the Indian Archipelago, with its spices, +pearls, and cannibals. Other figures less clearly defined appeared +in the background—nomads of the steppes, fur-hunting +Samoyeds of the tundras, mountain tribes that pressed their +women upon stranger guests; glimpses even of farthest Africa, +of a Christian Ethiopia, of the Zanzibar of negroes, ivory, and +ambergris, and of Madagascar, past which the sea bore relentlessly +southward.</p> + +<p>Of many of these things Europe heard for the first time from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</span> +Marco, of all of them his was the first illuminating report, and +most of them his own eyes had seen. Here Truth is the stuff of +Illusion. Though Marco speaks of dog-faced Andamanese, and +islands of Amazons, and Lop with its evil spirits, and the storm-raising +witches of Socotra, and the roc, it is not on these, but +on his verities, that wonder waits. The center of the wonder is +Kublai Khan, who built the pleasure-dome in Xanadu. Greatly +is he beholden to the traveler, who came to him one morning +out of the unknown. But for Marco, as Masefield finely says, +this lord of lords, ruler of so many cities, so many gardens, so +many fish pools, would be only a name, an image covered by the +sands. Remembrance is with those who see, and write.</p> + +<p>Though he did not see, Maundeville wrote. The author of the +volume that bears this name may have seen Syria, but he claims +to have been everywhere. He served the Sultan of Egypt against +the Bedouins and declined his daughter’s hand in marriage. He +drank of the Well of Youth. He served the emperor of China +in his war against Mancy. He took astronomical observations +in the Indian Ocean. He traversed Russia, Livonia, Asia Minor, +Amazonia, Persia, India, Tartary, China, Arabia, Libya, Ethiopia. +One great thing his humility forbade him to essay, and +that was the Terrestrial Paradise. “I was not worthy,” he says.</p> + +<p>The fabricator of the Maundeville narrative seems to have +been Jean de Bourgogne, a physician of Liège, who died there +in 1373, long enough after his book appeared for it already to +have won reputation; on his deathbed he was proud to avow his +authorship, though not his imposture. It is to be inferred that +he appropriated his pen name of Maundeville, knight of St. +Albans in England, from the title of a romantic satire by Jean +du Pin published a few years before, in which the writer is conducted +in a dream through a world of allegory by a knight +named Mandevie whose home was on a white mountain—Mons +Albus or St. Albans, as has been suggested. Where the adventures +of Maundeville came from is not in doubt. Friar Odoric, a +great but credulous traveler, had spent fourteen years in Asia, +largely in India and Cathay, and had written out his story on +his return to Italy in 1330. Maundeville, whose book is perhaps +of twenty years later, looted his predecessor so thoroughly that +the friar was deemed the copyist of the knight; Samuel Purchas<span class="pagenum" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</span> +thought that “some later fabler,” like Odoric, had stuffed the +knight’s tale. Maundeville raided also the fables of Solinus, the +forged letter of Prester John, the travels of King Hayton of +Armenia, and the varied lore and legend of all lands and times +collected in the preceding century by the great encyclopædist +of the Middle Ages, Vincent of Beauvais. Apparently he never +heard of Polo.</p> + +<p>The bogus knight won a wide and fascinated audience by +throwing his marvels into a tale of which he is the hero. His +own adventures, his travels from land to land, his comments on +countries and peoples, give his book unity, movement, and the +narrative interest which is lacking in the works of Ctesias, Pliny, +Solinus, and their school. Ctesias writes of India, but never +professes to have been there, and Pliny and Solinus sit afar and +look over the world. Maundeville comes out of the library and +crosses the earth, staff in hand, in an earlier, and unhallowed, +<i>Pilgrim’s Progress</i>. His is the method, and his almost was the +vogue, of the Odyssey and of the Sindbad saga. The classic +brevity and sterility in recounting mirabilia, he escapes in some +measure, robbing several fables to enrich one. It happened that +an early rendering of his work into English was done when the +island tongue was in a fluid state, and done with such sense of +idiom that he has been called, although falsely, the father of +English prose.</p> + +<p>Maundeville is most interesting when he is most audacious, +or when he stumbles most. At Joppa he transposes the figures +of a classic myth, and reports seeing a rib forty feet long of +“Andromeda a great giant,” chained there before Noah’s flood. +The chameleon (chamois?) is “a little Beast, as a Goat.” In +Pathen the giant tortoise of Odoric becomes “a kind of Snails +that be so great that many Persons may lodge them in their +Shells.” The rats in the Isle of Charia are “as great as Hounds +here.” There are wool-bearing hens in Mancy. The manna in +the Land of Job “cleanseth the Blood and putteth out Melancholy.” +Chaldea is a country of fair men and evil women. In +the Pepper Country “the Women shave their Beards and the +Men not.”</p> + +<p>The author scatters his mythical islands even over the mainland +of Asia. Yet his sense of the shape and rotundity of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</span> +earth was far in advance of his time. In the midst of romancings, +one finds this, the clearest word of his century, and in the +field of exploration the most constructive: “I say to you certainly +that Men may environ all the Earth of all the World, as +well underneath as above, and return again to their Country, if +that they had Company and Shipping and Conduct; and always +they should find Men, Lands and Isles, as well as in this Country.” +For this declaration, for the vision of the Valley of the +Shadow of Death which Bunyan took from him and he from +Odoric, for the delight that his fictitious narrative still conveys, +and for the English prose which is its vehicle, one may half forgive +the physician of Liege his pose of a gouty English knight, +dictating the true story of adventurous years to ease hours of +broken rest, and ending it with a benediction, followed, anthem-wise, +by a chorus of amens.</p> + +<p>The remainder of the story of marvel, so far as it is a literary +phenomenon, is a sea tale told by men of the west, for Prince +Henry the Navigator was born a few years after Jean de Bourgogne +died, and with his manhood there opens the era of maritime +discovery. Meanwhile the northwest of Europe had entered +the record with Norse and Irish chapters. Though maps of the +early Middle Ages placed the griffins and the cynocephali in the +north of Europe, the north knew them not. Giants and trolls it +knew, and the Iceland sagas tell of vampires that hid in heaps +of stockfish, and monster men, dragons, and bulls that guarded +a haunted shore. The inevitable compilations came later. The +history of Norway written by Pontoppidan in the eighteenth century +is a brief for Scandinavian waters as the habitat of +prodigious things.</p> + +<p>The Celts neither robbed nor traded on the sea, and the very +ports of Ireland were opened by Northmen; yet one of the three +great epics of the deep, the <i>Voyage of St. Brendan</i>, is Irish, and +monks are its heroes. The five Irish <i>Imrama</i> or sea tales, of +which this is the chief, weave a spell beyond any other woven +upon the deep, because they look westward toward hidden continents +that presently were to loom through the mists, and track +with spectral craft the very seas that foamed erelong around the +prows of Spain. Working with bits of old beliefs, as a craftsman +with bits of broken glass, the Celt fashioned an oriel window<span class="pagenum" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</span> +through which he glimpsed the lands of dream. It was +magic like that of Gwyn ab Nudd, King of Faerie, who spread +before St. Collen the semblance of a feast in a great court. “I +will not eat the leaves of trees,” said the saint, and flung holy +water about him, and “there was neither castle, nor troops, nor +maidens, nor music, nor the appearance of any thing whatever, +but the green hillocks.”</p> + +<p>Fables of old time which had smoldered through the later +Middle Ages, and which were rekindled by fresh contacts with +classic marvel in the revival of letters, blazed into fierce life in +the age of discovery. When new continents swam into ken, and +hidden empires showed themselves for a moment on distant +mountain sides, only to crash down at the onset of a handful of +adventurous men, nothing seemed incredible. A world which +had denied its own shape awoke to the fact of antipodal lands +and peoples and was prepared to believe anything. The extravagant +things it credited—and herein is palliation for its +credulity—were yet small beside the wonders with which reality +smote it in the face. The prodigious races of antiquity that had +retreated before the traveler seemed at last to have been run to +cover in those parts of the New World whither Spanish explorers +penetrated. South America presented itself as a fulfillment of +classic wonder and a proof of the unity of the human story.</p> + +<p>Mythical America was in part a projection of the dreaming +mind of Spain upon the sensitive consciousness of savages. +There are stories that have a way of taking root as soon as they +are transplanted, and by the incorporation of native elements of +accommodating themselves so completely to new surroundings +as to deceive the very men who had loosed them. Hence the +mingling of Old and New World elements in the tales of giants, +pygmies, Amazons, satyrs, and acephalites. The conquistadors +put leading questions, and had the answers they wanted. If +they were deceived, yet there was more of the scientific spirit in +the men who set out in search of Paradise or El Dorado, than +in all the generations of encyclopædists who copied down +incredible things and never went forth to find them.</p> + +<p>One may trace the outlines of Mythical America in the journals +of Columbus; in the writings of Peter Martyr and Garcilaso +de la Vega; in the monographs of conquistadors like Coronado;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</span> +in the <i>History of the Indies</i> by Oviedo, which Las Casas unjustly +declares is “as full of lies almost as pages,” and in Hakluyt’s +<i>Principal Voyages</i>, justly called the English prose epic. +For the most fabulous and fascinating picture one turns to +Raleigh’s account of his expedition to Guiana in 1595. It is +at once a collection of mirabilia, a story of adventure, a courtly +address to the “Lady of Ladies” (Queen Elizabeth), a commercial +prospectus, and the brief of a man on the defensive. In its +pages the southern coasts of the Caribbean are as rich in marvel +as the southern coasts of the Mediterranean in the pages of +Pliny.</p> + +<p>Earlier travelers had found it well to secure specimens of +ores, plants, and savages as vouchers for their credit among +skeptical stay-at-homes, and the Spaniards took the precaution +of carrying notaries in their ships to attest their statements. In +the eighteenth century a more effective check was developed for +travel tales. The science of criticism superseded the habit of +compilation. The reports of travelers were examined, sifted, +and compared by closet philosophers. French savants like +Buache, Delisle, and Fleurieu challenged the realms of prodigy +and had no answer from them. Humboldt’s great journey into +Spanish America at the end of the century is the recessional. +Through the lands of legend he wends his way, a patient, sometimes +a pensive, observer, and puts Atlantis, El Dorado, the +Amazons and the wild men of the woods to the question. His +report is the most tolerant, suggestive, and illuminating document +in the literature of marvel. Soon afterward began the +scientific study of European folklore with the brothers Grimm +as pioneers.</p> + +<p>The remarkable things which the North American Indian had +to tell, most of them, were not assayed until after Humboldt’s +time. Save where the Spaniard had been, they have the undiluted +aboriginal quality; yet a bookish note, which has been +imputed to Viking influence before Columbus, is in eastern +Algonquin and Eskimo sea lore and giant lore. These tales of +the northern continent did not launch expeditions, nor enter the +great narratives of travel, and they have yet to win their indicated +place in literature. There is wonder in them, and poetry, +and the deep reflection of untutored minds; though crude the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</span> +backgrounds and the figures that animate them, they parallel +almost the entire array of legendary lands and peoples which +the classic world assembled. Skillful old story-tellers—“delight-makers” +they were called—told them at night about a dim +fire in the ceremonial roundhouses. Winter was the time, for +then, says Schoolcraft, the strange beings that might be underground +or in the lakes and streams could not hear through the +frozen surfaces the merry tales that the Indian dared tell about +them, and the laughter of the roundhouse.</p> + +<p>Rude are these records of a people whose trickster-hero might +be the obscene and ofttimes ridiculous coyote instead of Ulysses; +who spoke of caribou back-fat and not of the lotus, and who had +“the sacred groaning stick” rather than the lyre of Hermes. +Their myth-figures, no demigods of marble perfection, are the +coyote, the buzzard, the hare, the loon, the lizard—in reality the +Indian in his nakedness; and their evil beings are flint people +and awesome rolling skulls. Yet they could see in the stars the +light of lodge fires, speak of the rainbow as the road of the dead, +picture the whirlwind as the dance of a ghost, find a relation +between a gust and the flutter of a moth’s wings, trace the drift +of spirits down the wind, and catch on the throat of the humming +bird a gleam of the fire it stole in a Promethean adventure. +No weary Titan upholds the Indian sky, but in Tlingit story an +old woman stands under the earth with a mighty post and +supports it.</p> + +<p>Shape-shifting is at the basis of North American myth, and +the substantial identity of men and animals is proclaimed by it. +“Baalam’s ass,” says Leland, “spoke once for every Christian; +every animal spoke once for the Indian.”</p> + +<p>If one marvels how the fabric of fable held together so long +alike in classic and savage lands, one has only to make some +change in a familiar bedtime story told to children. Their protest +is instant; they want the tale as they have heard it. So +do men.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c25">Chapter XXV. The Gains of Fable</h2> +</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap large">It</span> has been well for men that they have been citizens of two +worlds—the traditional world and the world of reality. Whatever +harm they have suffered in either has come from but two +things. These things are fear and selfishness, wherein are all +the frustrations and all the cruelties. The rest has been good.</p> + +<p>The myths of fear kept men from sailing west and south. +Until a few centuries ago the imaginary terrors of the Atlantic +and of the tropics hid from them the knowledge that men like +unto themselves lived in all parts of the earth, and that the winds +would waft them to these along smooth pathways of the sea. +The myths of selfishness—the tales that maritime nations told +of evil things in waters and upon coasts which they would close +to the enterprise of others—wrought the same mischiefs that +greed and falsehood work anywhere. They retarded the advance +of learning, restrained the intercourse of nations, and +recoiled at last on the heads of those who invented them.</p> + +<p>The gains of fable are writ large in the history of modern +exploration. Error was the guiding star of discovery. A vain +fancy was the most precious cargo of the caravels, as it was the +keenest weapon of the conquistadors. The coasting voyages +around Africa into the eastern world would have been longer +deferred if men had known that the Dark Continent reached so +far to the south. The discovery of America was due to three +stupendous mistakes—the belief that Asia stretched thousands +of miles farther eastward than it does; the belief that Japan was +a thousand miles farther from Asia than it is; the belief that the +circumference of the earth was three thousand miles less than +its true dimension. The total of these mistakes was so great +that the whole of the New World lay concealed within it. Had +Columbus known that he must sail due west for nearly twelve +thousand miles to reach Cathay, he would have foregone his +enterprise.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</span></p> + +<p>Because the Spaniards made marvels the text for launching +expeditions instead of telling or compiling stories, their delusions +as to the Americas of the sixteenth century constitute the +strangest chapter of travel tale. But “he that would bring home +the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with +him”; the illusory expeditions of Spain had results that were +denied to the more pedestrian adventuring of other nations. +One of these led Cabeza de Vaca across the territory of the +United States from Atlantic to Pacific, as early as 1539. It was +not until 1805, in the Lewis and Clark expedition, that the cooler +advance of the Anglo-Saxon matched this feat. In their search +for illusive golden cities the countrymen of the Cid explored +the mountains and savannas of South America, the American +Southwest, and even the South Seas, and did it all so far ahead +of the English and American penetration of the northern continent +that the story of their adventures was an old tale before the +Saxon had entered the Great Plains, or climbed the Great Divide, +or dropped down to the Pacific.</p> + +<p>Such is the service of dreams. They fire the mind and make +the feet of young men restless. The province of wonder has +been to rescue men from their heaviness. They settle down in +one place, and their children and chattels tie them there, but the +nomad in them droops within unchanging horizons and sickens +down in dullness. No report of other lands like their own and +other peoples like themselves will arouse them. They want to +hear of marvels, and every tale of them is a pleasant tale even +if it is of one-eyed cannibal giants, or malignant dwarfs, or +headless men, or the storm-winged roc, or the Swallower of the +West. At least it opens new vistas, and peoples them with +creatures such as cannot be seen at home. So it was that William +of Wykeham instructed the scholars of New College, +Oxford, to occupy the long winter evenings in the Middle Ages +with “singing, or reciting poetry, or with the chronicles of the +different kingdoms, or with the wonders of the world.”</p> + +<p>The spirit that leads men to seek distant markets, or dig for +gold in mines, or search for raw materials on the other side of +the earth, is modern, and still only a few have it. Through most +of the story of man it has seemed a better thing to hunt for +hidden treasure, to seek for the Golden Fleece or a golden city,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</span> +to set out for the Terrestrial Paradise, to win to the back of the +north wind. Even now, report that a prehistoric monster haunts +a lake in Patagonia, or that an expedition will hunt pirate gold +on an island of the Pacific, stirs pulses that would not respond +to the news that a great coal field had been uncovered in Alaska +or China.</p> + +<p>Imagination and curiosity, whence have come most of the +travel tales, have builded where building was needed to fill in +empty places whereon men refused to rear the structures of +reality, or to replace what they tore down. In their passages +from age to age and in their long migrations, men have been +constantly forgetting things, carrying over long stretches of the +sea such memorials of the heliolithic culture as a particular +process of mummification, but not the arts and sciences that had +gone with it. They have discovered lands only to lose track of +them. Authentic notes of distant countries and customs they +would not credit; there has been ignorant incredulity as well as +ignorant credulity. The true things in geography to which men +have shut their eyes are no more than countervailed by the vain +things they thought they saw. The tales of afternoon lands and +the singular peoples of the mountains and deserts widen, if only +with the shifting contours of legend, horizons which had been +narrowed by forgetfulness and a perverse refusal to believe.</p> + +<p>Nor have even these tales been enough to satisfy with their +close likeness to realities. Men have played with the thought +of other countries above the clouds or in far-off seas, imagining +things which none was expected to believe, and yet which copyists +repeated and literal-minded men accepted sometimes as +having basis of fact. Such are Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, +Campanella’s City of the Sun. Aristophanes pictured a Cloud-Cuckoo +Town, which the birds built between earth and heaven to +bring the gods to terms, and filled it with the trillings and pipings +of feathered creatures. The satirist who wrote of Lilliput, +Brobdingnag and Laputa had read Lucian’s <i>True History</i>. In +Ariosto’s Limbo of the Moon were stored such treasures as time +misspent in play, vain efforts, good intentions, unpaid vows, the +promises of princes, and deathbed alms.</p> + +<p>Three of these imaginary countries were sketched with such +fidelity to detail, poetic or grotesque, that they lived in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</span> +thought of men with almost a sense of the actual. Scobellum +was a fruitful land, the people of which went beyond the cannibals +in cruelty, the Egyptians in luxury, the Persians in pride, +the Cretans in falsehood, the Germans in drunken license. +Whereupon the gods turned the drunkards into swine, the +lecherers into goats, the gamblers into asses, the idle women +into milch cows, and the misers into moles. The Land of +Cockaigne was a country of luxury and high feeding where the +houses were built of barley sugar and the streets were paved +with pastry and goods were free in the shops. Fiddler’s Green +is a place where always the fiddlers are fiddling and the pipers +piping, and the dancers dancing; it lies on the other side of hell.</p> + +<p>Travel tales that purport to be true have a way of rebuking +unbelief with their half triumphs. Noting only the impossible +items in a tradition, learned skepticism has opened itself to discomfiture +by rejecting the whole. The two outstanding figures +of fable, the pygmy and the Amazon, point the moral. In the +more grotesque forms may be found notes on forgotten history +and on palæontology. Those tales for which no basis of fact +can be discerned are yet projections of the minds of primitive +men on the clouds, seen after the men themselves have dropped +below the horizon, like the red in the sky after sunset. At least +their colors illumine the manuscript of antiquity and the rude +scroll of savagery.</p> + +<p>Though fantastic fables were bred thereof, it has been loss +and not gain that the old sense of kinship with the fowls of the +air and the beasts of the field is no more. There were compassions +and tolerances in this imagined relation, with just a hint +of deep insight. Before the brotherhood of man became so +much as a phrase, the brotherhood of all created things was a +fact. Killing for the mere stupid sake of killing had no place +in a world in which men believed that the first men were ants; +in which they made the hare, the coyote, and the raven heroic +figures of their epics; in which they celebrated the piety of the +oryx, the elephant, and the llama; in which they acclaimed the +strength of the lion, the keen sight of the eagle, and the sagacity +of the fox, and in which they spared the bear, the deer, and the +parrot because it seemed to them that these were ancestral folk. +Were these savages farther from the truth than men of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</span> +present day whose interest is not in the lives but in the deaths +of beasts, and who rob the woods and fields of half their beauty +and significance by their senseless pursuit of the pathetic, defenseless, +and yet kindred beings that harbor there? “My sister +the swallow” is the chant of St. Francis. In a better time when +wild life will be cherished and not hunted, it will be remembered +that the dawn-peoples had a vision which was not all +vanity.</p> + +<p>The world of reality wears a rich garb that was woven for it +by the world of tradition ages ago. Shifting lands of legend +have become solid ground. There was no island of Brasil, but +the country of Brazil bears its name. There was perhaps no +Antilia, domain of the Seven Bishops, but the Antilles stretch +their veritable ramparts across the Caribbean. The Amazons +are commemorated by the earth’s greatest river. There are +beasts and birds which perpetuate the names of the dragon, the +harpy, the sea horse, the unicorn, the satyr. The pity of the +pelican lives in Christian symbolism. The wisdom of the brute +runs through Æsopian fables and mediæval bestiaries. The +creatures of classic prodigy—the griffins, the phœnix, the dragon—animate +the blazons of heraldry. The ideal lands and marvelous +peoples of ancient story lend a strange beauty to the +romances of chivalry. Half of the appeal of cathedrals is in +the monstrous figures—bestial, grotesque, devilish—which proclaim +from their roofs and buttresses and sculptured walls a +paradox which is no paradox at all, that the sanctuaries of the +spirit are set among the perilous ways of the world. The old +credulities are enshrined in the language of every people, in +the imagery of the arts, and in the bedtime tales that follow the +settings of the sun from station to station around the earth.</p> + +<p>These things have spoken neither the last nor the greatest +word they are to utter. The fruitful use of the collections of +savage myth and peasant lore is yet to come, when classic legend +will take its place as but a chapter in the volume of fantasy. +What will be revealed therein is the mind of man in the presence +of the spectacle of beauty and terror which is the world. Here +the themes of poetry, painting, and the plastic arts await a new +treatment. Not so much the councils of the gods, the myths of +creation and of natural forces, as the simpler travel tales that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</span> +are close to the soil will be drawn upon. Olympus towers afar +with its divinities. Nearer to the earth, for example, is the +mountain of San Francisco in Arizona, which the Navahos say +was “bound with a sunbeam, decked with haliotis shell, clouds, +he-rain, yellow maize, and animals, nested with eggs of the +yellow warbler, spread with yellow cloud and made the home +of White-Corn Boy and Yellow-Corn Girl.” However high their +spirit soars, men’s feet are on the ground. If it is the limitation +of their nature it is the liberation of their art that their +interest is more in quests of the Terrestrial Paradise than in +myths of things unearthly.</p> + +<p>It was the first belief of man that with a thought he could +change the outer world. What was it, indeed, but the projection +of his own soul—the demons that were his evil thoughts, +“the savage and voluptuous beasts that were the emblems of +his folly,” the ideal lands that were the dawn and afterglow +of his own days? The beginning of art was magic, alike in +the chants of rainmakers, the cave paintings of the Dordogne, +and the sculptures of Egypt; and magic is its end. Still may +the artist soul of man fashion its own realities.</p> + +<p>While he builds the pleasant marvels of his yesterdays into +habitations of fancy, he will rear other structures of the like +insubstantial stuff and deem them the abiding places of reality. +The shows of nature are a pageant through which man moves in +a dream of his own making. The piling and passing of the +clouds, the fog’s oblivion, the sunset, the night and the stars, +work their spells about him, masking, concealing, revealing. +With the harmless revel of fireflies in the dew and dusk, fairy +locks unbolt for him. He cannot look upon life save as a drama +or an allegory, with the earth as the stage and the sky for its +hangings. By the law of his being he must be maker of myths.</p> + +<p>Only a divine animal could question what was behind the +hills, win the vision of unconjectured oceans, hear the note of +eternity in the sound of running water, and, flashing into a brief +ecstasy, sink back again with the cry of Eheu Fugaces. The +brute-gods of his myths, are they not man himself with his +animal routine and his divine moments? When he crosses the +barrier of dreams, when he sits at the gates of memory, when +contemplation holds him motionless “like a flame in a windless<span class="pagenum" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</span> +spot,” in his Dionysian intoxications, in the very dances wherein +he merges the god and the brute, he creates worlds that ensphere +his every mood. The Iranian who calls the abode of the blest +the House of Song, and the Mongol whose official scrolls speak +of the continents as the Golden Surface have made a new heaven +and a new earth.</p> + +<p>It is not given man to envisage reality. His is the greater +gift to brood over Chaos and shape it as he will.</p> +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="c26">Bibliography</h2> +</div> + + +<p>In preparing this book the works most frequently consulted +have been Pliny’s <i>Natural History</i>, Browne’s <i>Enquiries into +Vulgar and Common Errors</i>, Beazley’s <i>Dawn of Modern Geography</i>, +Frazer’s <i>Golden Bough</i>, Tylor’s <i>Primitive Culture</i>, +Hakluyt’s <i>Principal Voyages of the English Nation</i>, and Pinkerton’s +<i>Collection of Voyages and Travels</i>. Both the Hakluyt and +Pinkerton collections are libraries in themselves, each with some +hundreds of titles, and the travel narratives they contain will not +be separately listed here.</p> + +<p>Following are the main sources drawn upon for the materials +of this study:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p><span class="smcap">Abercromby, John.</span> <i>The Pre- and Proto-historic Finns.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Aelian.</span> <i>De Natura Animalium.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Adams, Cyrus C.</span> “The Sargasso Sea,” in <i>Harper’s Monthly</i> for 1907.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Albertus Magnus.</span> <i>Egyptian Secrets.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Aldrovandi.</span> <i>Opera Omnia.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Allen, Paul.</span> <i>History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Alexander, Hartley Burr.</span> <i>North American Mythology</i>; <i>Latin-American Mythology</i>.</p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Arabian Nights.</span>” Burton Edition.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Anutschin.</span> Interpretation of old Russian manuscript on “<i>The +Unknown Peoples of the East</i>,” translated by Dr. H. Mirchow in +proceedings of the Anthropological Society of Vienna, 1910.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Babcock, William H.</span> <i>Legendary Islands of the Atlantic</i>; “Atlantis +and Antillia,” in <i>Geographic Review</i> for 1917.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Balch, Edwin Swift.</span> “Atlantis, or Minoan Crete,” in <i>Geographic +Review</i> for 1917.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Bandelier, A. F.</span> <i>The Gilded Man.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Bates, Henry Walter.</span> <i>The Naturalist on the River Amazons.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Beazley, C. Raymond.</span> <i>The Dawn of Modern Geography.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Beddard, Frank Evars.</span> <i>A Book of Whales.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Bingham, Hiram.</span> <i>Across South America.</i></p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Blackwood’s Magazine</span>” for 1904. “Heraldry.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Botchkareva, Maria.</span> <i>Yashka; My Life as Peasant, Officer and Exile.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Bradley, Henry.</span> <i>Ptolemy’s Geography of the British Isles.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Brehaut, Ernest.</span> <i>An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages; Isidore of +Seville.</i></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Brewer, E. Cobham.</span> <i>Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Brooks, Noah.</span> <i>First Across the Continent.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Browne, Sir Thomas.</span> <i>Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Buddhist</span> <i>Records of the Western World</i>. Truebner’s Oriental Series.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Buffon, George Louis L.</span> <i>Natural History.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Bulfinch, Thomas.</span> <i>Legends of Charlemagne</i>; <i>The Age of Fable</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Bunbury, E. H.</span> <i>History of Ancient Geography.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Burton, Sir Richard F.</span> <i>A Mission to Gélélé, King of Dahome.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Burckhardt, John Lewis.</span> <i>Travels in Arabia.</i></p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Carlyle, Thomas.</span> <i>The French Revolution.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Carnoy, Albert J.</span> <i>Iranian Mythology.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Caxton, William.</span> <i>History of Reynard the Fox.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Chamberlain, Alexander F.</span> “Recent Literature on the South American +Amazons,” in <i>Journal of American Folk-Lore</i>, 1911.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Chambers, W. & R.</span> <i>The Book of Days.</i></p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Chambers Journal</span>,” for 1844. “The Dwarf Nation Idea.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Charnay, Désiré.</span> <i>The Ancient Cities of the New World.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Churchward, Albert.</span> <i>The Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Cook, Captain James.</span> <i>Voyages of Discovery.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Coronado.</span> <i>His Journey as Told by Himself and His Followers</i>, +translated by George Parker Winship.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Cox, Sir George W.</span> <i>An Introduction to the Science of Comparative +Mythology and Folklore.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Ctesias</span>, <i>Indika</i>. Translation by John W. McCrindle.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Cuvier, Georges.</span> <i>Animal Kingdom.</i></p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Dalton, Leonard D.</span> <i>Venezuela.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Diodorus Siculus.</span> <i>The Historical Library.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Disraeli, Isaac.</span> <i>Curiosities of Literature.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Dixon, Roland B.</span> <i>Oceanic Mythology.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Donnelly, Ignatius.</span> <i>Atlantis: The Antediluvian World.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Doughty, Charles M.</span> <i>Travels in Arabia Deserta.</i></p> + + +<p class="p2">“<span class="smcap">Encyclopædia Britannica.</span>” <i>Ninth and eleventh editions.</i></p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.</span>”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Evans, E. P.</span> <i>Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture</i>; <i>The +Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals.</i></p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Fisher, Ruth B.</span> <i>On the Borders of Pigmy Land.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Fiske, John.</span> <i>Myths and Myth Makers.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Fouqué, De La Motte.</span> <i>Undine.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Fox, William Sherwood.</span> <i>Greek and Roman Mythology.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">France, Anatole.</span> <i>Penguin Island.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Frazer, J. G.</span> <i>The Golden Bough; Folk-Lore in the Old Testament.</i></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Freud, Sigmund.</span> <i>Totem and Taboo.</i></p> + + +<p class="p2">“<span class="smcap">Geographical Review</span>” for 1917. “Proposed Expedition to New +Guinea.”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gerini, Col. G. E.</span> <i>Researches on Ptolemy’s Geography of Eastern +Asia.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gesner, Konrad.</span> <i>History of Animals.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gould, Charles.</span> <i>Mythical Monsters.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gould, S. Baring.</span> <i>Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gray, Louis Herbert.</span> <i>North American Mythology.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gribble, Francis.</span> <i>The Early Mountaineers.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Groome, Francis H.</span> <i>Gipsy Folk-Tales.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Grote, George.</span> <i>History of Greece.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Guerber, H. A.</span> <i>Myths and Legends of the Middle Ages.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Guillim, John.</span> <i>A Display of Heraldry.</i></p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Hakluyt, Richard.</span> <i>Principal Voyages of the English Nation.</i></p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Harper’s Book of Facts.</span>”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Harrison, J. E.</span> “Satyrs” and “Silenoi,” in <i>Encyclopedia of Religion +and Ethics</i>, vol. xi.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Hedin, Sven.</span> <i>Through Asia</i>; <i>Central Asia</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Herodotus.</span> <i>History.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Homer.</span> <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>, Pope’s Translation.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Hugo, Victor.</span> <i>Notre Dame de Paris.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Humboldt, Alexander Von.</span> <i>Personal Narrative of Travels to the +Equinoctial Regions of America</i>; <i>Views of Nature</i>; <i>Researches +Concerning the Institutions and Monuments of the Ancient Inhabitants +of America</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Hyamson, Albert H.</span> “Sambatyon,” in <i>Encyclopedia of Religion and +Ethics</i>, vol. xi.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Ibanez, V. Blasco.</span> <i>Mexico in Revolution.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Irving, Washington.</span> <i>Tour of the Prairies</i>; <i>Life and Voyages of +Christopher Columbus</i>; <i>Voyages and Discoveries of Companions +of Columbus</i>.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Jacobs, Joseph.</span> <i>The Story of Geographical Discovery.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Johnston, Sir Harry H.</span> <i>British Central Africa.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Josephus</span>. <i>Antiquities of the Jews</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Johnson, William Henry.</span> <i>The World’s Discoverers.</i></p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Journal of American Folk-Lore</span>,” 1901 to date.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Joyce, Thomas A.</span> <i>Mexican Archæology.</i></p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Keane, John.</span> <i>The Evolution of Geography.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Keane, A. H.</span> <i>The Gold of Ophir</i>; <i>Man, Past and Present</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Keith, A. Berriedale.</span> <i>Indian Mythology.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Kingsley, Charles.</span> <i>The Hermits.</i></p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</span></p> +<p><span class="smcap">Knapp, Philip Coombs.</span> “Crete and Atlantis,” in <i>Geographic Review</i> +for 1919.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Landrin, M. Armand.</span> <i>Les Monstres Marins.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Lang, Andrew.</span> <i>Custom and Myth</i>; <i>Modern Mythology.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Lankester, E. Ray.</span> <i>Secrets of Earth and Sea.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Laufer, Berthold.</span> “The Story of the Pinna and the Syrian Lamb,” +<i>Journal of American Folk-Lore</i>, 1915.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Leland, Charles G.</span> <i>The Algonquin Legends of New England.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Livingstone, David.</span> <i>Missionary Travels and Researches in South +Africa.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Lower, Mark Antony.</span> <i>The Curiosities of Heraldry.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Lucian.</span> <i>The True History.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Luquet, G. H.</span> “Human Figures in Paleolithic Art,” <i>L’Anthropologie</i>, +1910.</p> + + +<p class="p2">“<span class="smcap">Mabinogion.</span>” Translation by Lady Charlotte Guest.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Machal, Jan.</span> <i>Slavic Mythology.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Mahaffy, Arthur.</span> “The Solomon Islands,” in <i>Empire Review</i> for +1902.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Major, Richard Henry.</span> <i>Discoveries of Prince Henry the Navigator +and their Results.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">McCrindle, John W.</span> <i>The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great, +as described by Arrian, Rufius, Diodorus and Plutarch.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">McCulloch, John A.</span> “Celtic Mythology”; “Abodes of the Blest,” in +<i>Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics</i>, vol. i: “Monsters,” in vol. +viii.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">MacIver, D. Randall.</span> <i>The Ancient Races of the Thebaid.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">MacRitchie, David.</span> “Dwarfs and Pygmies,” in <i>Encyclopedia of +Religion and Ethics</i>, vol. 1.; “Giants,” in vol. vi.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Marie de France.</span> <i>Lays.</i> Translation by Eugene Mason.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Maundeville, Sir John.</span> <i>Marvelous Adventures</i>, edited by Arthur +Layard.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Mendana, Alvaro De.</span> <i>The Discovery of the Solomon Islands</i>, +Hakluyt Publications.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Merriam, C. Hart.</span> <i>The Dawn of the World.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Millington, Ellen J.</span> <i>Heraldry in History, Poetry, and Romance.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Millington, W. H.</span> (and <span class="smcap">Berton L. Maxfield</span>). “Philippine Superstitions,” +in <i>Journal of American Folk-Lore</i>, 1906.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Mortimer, W. Golden.</span> <i>History of Coca.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Müller, F. Max.</span> <i>Contributions to the Science of Mythology</i>; <i>Comparative +Mythology.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Müller, W. Max.</span> <i>Egyptian Mythology.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Murger, Henri.</span> <i>Scènes de la Vie de Bohème.</i></p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Pigafetta, Antonio.</span> <i>Magellan’s Voyage Around the World</i>, edited +by James Alexander Robertson.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</span></p> +<p><span class="smcap">Pinkerton, John.</span> <i>Collection of Voyages and Travels.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Pliny.</span> <i>Natural History.</i> Bohm’s Classical Library.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Plutarch.</span> <i>Parallel Lives.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Polo, Marco.</span> <i>Travels.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Pontoppidan, Rt. Rev. Erik.</span> <i>The Natural History of Norway.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Powell, Talcott.</span> “Lumberjack Legends,” <i>New York Herald-Tribune</i>, +1924.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Prescott, William H.</span> <i>Conquest of Mexico</i>; <i>History of the Conquest +of Peru</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Purchas, Samuel.</span> <i>Purchas, his Pilgrims.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Phyfe, William Henry P.</span> <i>Five Thousand Facts and Fancies.</i></p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Quatrefages, A. D.</span> <i>The Pygmies.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Quinn, Daniel.</span> “In Arkadia,” in <i>Catholic University Bulletin</i> for +1900.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Reclus, Elisée.</span> <i>The Earth and Its Inhabitants.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Reddall, Henry Frederic.</span> <i>Fact, Fancy, and Fable.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Redway, Jacques W.</span> <i>The New Basis of Geography.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Reich, Emil.</span> <i>Woman Through the Ages.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Reid, Mayne.</span> <i>Odd People.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Rothery, Guy Cadogan.</span> <i>The Amazons in Antiquity and Modern +Times</i>; <i>A B C of Heraldry</i>.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">St. John.</span> <i>The Lives of Celebrated Travellers.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Sawyer, Frederic H.</span> <i>The Inhabitants of the Philippines.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Sayce, Archibald Henry.</span> <i>The Hittites.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Schoolcraft, Henry R.</span> <i>The Indian Tribes.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Schmitz, Leonhard.</span> <i>A Manual of Ancient Geography.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Schuchert, Charles.</span> “Atlantis the Lost Continent,” in <i>Geographical +Review</i> for 1917.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Schuller, Rudolph.</span> “Atlantis the Lost Continent,” in <i>Geographical +Review</i> for 1917.</p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Scottish Geographical Magazine</span>” for 1902. <i>The Discovery of the +Solomon Islands.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Sidney, Sir Philip.</span> <i>Arcadia.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Smith, Grafton Elliot.</span> <i>The Migrations of Early Culture</i>; <i>The +Evolution of the Dragon</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Smith, J. Russell.</span> <i>The World’s Food Resources.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Smith, William.</span> <i>Dictionary of Ancient Geography.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Solinus.</span> <i>Collecteanea.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Spence, Lewis.</span> <i>An Introduction to Mythology</i>; “Atlantis and the +Maya Civilization,” in <i>Occult Review</i> for 1921; “Traces of Atlantis +in American Myth,” in <i>Occult Review</i> for 1920.</p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Standard Illustrated Book of Facts.</span>”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Stanford’s</span> <i>Compendium of Geography and Travel.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Stanley, Henry M.</span> <i>Through the Dark Continent.</i></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Strabo.</span> <i>Geography</i>, in Bohm’s Classical Library.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Sullivan, Louis R.</span> “The Pygmy Races of Man,” in <i>Journal of the +American Museum of Natural History</i> for 1919.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Sweet, William Warren.</span> <i>A History of Latin America.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Swift, Jonathan.</span> <i>Gulliver’s Travels.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Synge, M. B.</span> <i>A Book of Discovery.</i></p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Teit, J. A.</span> “Water Beings in Shetlandic Folk-Lore,” in <i>Journal of +American Folk-Lore</i>, 1918.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Termier, Pierre.</span> “Atlantis,” in <i>Annual Report of the Smithsonian +Institute</i> for 1915.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Thomas, Cyrus.</span> “Quivera—A Suggestion,” in <i>Magazine of American +History</i> for 1883.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Thomas, Northcote W.</span> “Animals,” in <i>Encyclopedia of Religion +and Ethics</i>, vol. i.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Tozer, H. F.</span> <i>History of Ancient Geography.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Tylor, Sir Edward Burnet.</span> <i>Researches into the Early History of +Mankind and the Development of Civilization</i>; <i>Primitive Culture</i>.</p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Van Loon, Hendrick Willem.</span> <i>The Golden Book of the Dutch +Navigators.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Very, Baron De Santa-Anna.</span> <i>The Land of the Amazons.</i></p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Wallis, W. D.</span> “Prodigies and Portents,” in <i>Encyclopedia of Religion +and Ethics</i>, vol. x.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Walsh, William S.</span> <i>Curiosities of Popular Customs</i>; <i>Handy Book of +Curious Information</i>.</p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">Warner’s Library of the World’s Best Literature.</span>”</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Weigall, Arthur E. P.</span> “A Nubian Highway,” in <i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i> +for 1907.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Wells, H. G.</span> <i>The Outline of History.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Westropp, Thomas J.</span> “Brasil and the Legendary Atlantic Islands,” +in <i>Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy</i> for 1912.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Wheeler, William A.</span> <i>Familiar Allusions.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Wiener, Leo.</span> <i>Africa and the Discovery of America.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Williams, Archibald.</span> <i>The Romance of Early Exploration.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Williams, Henry S.</span> <i>The Historians’ History of the World.</i></p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Xenophon.</span> <i>Anabasis.</i></p> + + +<p class="p2"><span class="smcap">Zahm, J. A.</span> <i>Along the Andes and Down the Amazon</i>; <i>The Quest of +Eldorado</i>; <i>Up the Orinoco and Down the Magdalena</i>; <i>Through +South America’s Southland</i>.</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak">Index</h2> +</div> + +<ul class="index"> +<li class="ifrst">A</li> + +<li class="indx">Aaf Mountains, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Abarimon, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Abbadie, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Abchaz, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Abdallah of the Land, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Abdallah of the Sea, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aberdeen Almanac, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Abodes of the Blest, <a href="#Page_257">257-261</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336-337</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Abomey, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Absalom, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Abu baraquish</i>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Abul Abbas, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Abulfeda, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Abyssinia, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, + <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Academy of Armory</i>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Acephalites, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Acheron River, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Achilles, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Acoloro, island of, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Acoma, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Acorn-eaters,” <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Acridophagi, <a href="#Page_198">198-199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Acroconopes, the, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Actæon, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Actium, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Adam assayed, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Adam of Bremen, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Adam’s footprint, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Adam’s Peak, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Addison, Launcelot, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aden, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Gulf of, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Adriatic Sea, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ægean Sea, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ægipans, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ælian, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, + <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Æneas, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Æneid</i>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Æschylus, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Æsculapius, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Æsop’s fables, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ætas, the, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Æthicus of Istria, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Æthiopica</i> of Marcellus, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Æthiopis</i>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Afer, Dionysius, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Afghans, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Africa, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, + <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, + <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, + <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Africa’s warrior women, <a href="#Page_178">178-184</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Age of Fable, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Agate, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Agatharcides, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Age of Ignorance, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Agira, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Agostina, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Agriophagi, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aguirre, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ahacus, <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aigamuxa, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aigiarm, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aikeambenanos, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ajasson, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Akbar, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Akkas, the, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Alabama, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aladdin, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Alani, the, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Alarcon, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Albany, land of, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Albatross, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Albertus Magnus, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Albinos, <a href="#Page_193">193-194</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Alciphron, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aldrovandi, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aleutian Islands, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Alexander, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, + <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Alexandria, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Algonquins, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Al Istakhri, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aljahedh, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Allerion, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Alligator god, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Alps, the, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Altai Mountains, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Alton, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Alvarado, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Alvares, Father, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Amazons, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151-189</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, + <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Amazon march, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Amazon stone, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Amazons, River of the, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Amazuni</i>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Amber, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ambergris, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ambrose, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li class="indx">America, dragon in, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Lucian’s reference to, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Plato’s reference to, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">claim that St. Brendan discovered it, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Chinese Buddhists reached it, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Norse discovery of, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">discovery of by Columbus, <a href="#Page_272">272-3</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a></li> + +<li class="indx">American Bureau of Ethnology, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li class="indx">American Indian myths, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117-120</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368-370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">American Museum of Natural History, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> + +<li class="indx">American southwest, Ararats in, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Amerigo Vespucci, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Amethyst, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Amiens, cathedral at, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ammon, Abbot, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Amoy, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Amycteres, the, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Anahuac, plateau of, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Anamba Islands, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>A’nasa</i>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ancient Mariner, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Andaman Islanders, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Andari, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Andes Mountains, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, + <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Andromeda, a great giant,” <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Angola, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Anguilla, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Animal kingdom, <a href="#Page_27">27-48</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Animals, Avenue of, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Animals, criminal trials of, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Animals, their names borne by men, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">taking human form, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">politics of, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Annam, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Annwfir, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ant, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">gold-guarding, <a href="#Page_62">62-64</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Antennarius marmoratus</i>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Anthropology, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Anthropophagi, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, + <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Antichrist, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Antigon, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Antilia, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Antilles, the, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Antiope, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Antipodes, <a href="#Page_9">9-10</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Antoninus, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Antony, Mark, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Anubis, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Anuradhapura, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Anutschin, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ape, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aphrodisiacs, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Apollo, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Apple Island, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Apples of Adam, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Apurimac, valley of the, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arab geography, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362-363</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arabia, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, + <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, + <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Arabian Nights</i>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, + <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arabian Sea, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Araby the Happy, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arachne, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arapahoes, the, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arawaks, the, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arcadia, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246-248</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arctic night, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arctinus, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ardnainiq, the, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aretias, island of, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Argensola, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Argonauts, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Argos, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ariana, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arimaspians, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arinadillo, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ariosto, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aristeas of Proconesus, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aristophanes, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aristotle, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, + <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arjuna, Rajah, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ark, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arkansas River, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Armada, the, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Armenia, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, + <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aromatic Cape, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arngrim, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arrian, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Artemidorus, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Artemis Stymphalia, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Arthur, King, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Art’s beginning in magic, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aryan culture, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Asafœtida, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Asesa, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Asia, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, + <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, + <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Asia Minor, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, + <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ass, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Feast of the, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Baalam’s, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ass-bittern, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Assuan, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Assyria, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Astarte, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Astolpho, home of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Astomi, the, <a href="#Page_107">107-108</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Astrakhan, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Astronomy, Maya, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Asuang, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Asuncion, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aswamedha quest, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Atahnallpa, Inca, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Atbara River, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Athenæus, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Athens, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Athos, Mount, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Atlantes, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Atlantic Ocean, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, + <a href="#Page_262">262-273</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Atlantis, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, + <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281-297</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Atlantis: The Antediluvian World</i>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Atlas Mountains, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Atrato River, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Attica, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Attic Nights</i>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Augustus, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aurochs, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aurungzebe, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Austin the monk,” <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Australia, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Autolycus, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Avalon, isle of, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Avernus, lake of, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ayamanes, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Azerbaijan, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Azores, the, <a href="#Page_12">12-13</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, + <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Azov, Sea of, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Aztecs, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">B</li> + +<li class="indx">Baalam, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Baalim, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Baboons, fear of, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Babylon, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Babylonia, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bacchus, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bactrians, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Badger’s legs, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bagdad, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bagrada River, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bahama Islands, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bailey, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Baker, Sir Samuel, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ba-Kwamba tribe, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Balasses, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Balboa, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331-332</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Balm of Gilead, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Baltic Sea, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Bamboo Books</i>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bancroft, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Banda, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bandelier, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bangkok, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Banshee, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bantam, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bantu, the, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Barbarism defined, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Barbarossa, Frederick, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Barcelona, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Barentz, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Barns of Joseph, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Basil, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Basilisk, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bassorah, Hassan el, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bastards of the Kalahari Desert, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bat, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, + <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bates, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Battalion of Death, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174-177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Batu, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Batwas, the, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Baurded, Treasurer, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bears, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">as men bewitched, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Beasts, fabulous, <a href="#Page_49">49-67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Beasts of Revelation, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Beazley, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Becket, Thomas à, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bede, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bedouins, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bedtime stories, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bee, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Beelzebub, the fly god, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Beetle, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Beeton, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Behrs, the, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Belalcazar, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bellerophon, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Belloc, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Belzoni, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Benjamin of Tudela, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bennu, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Benzom, gum, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Berber rock-towns, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bermuda Islands, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bernier, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bertinoro, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Beryl, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bes, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bestiaries, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bezoar, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bible, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, + <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bibliography, <a href="#c26">378-383</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bielovodye, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Big-footed men, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Billdad, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bimini, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bird of paradise, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Birds, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Birthstone, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bishop-fish, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Black River, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Black Sea, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Black Side of Cathedral, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Black Virgin,” <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bladder as sky, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Blameless” peoples, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Brazil, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, + <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Blefkens, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Blemmyes, the, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Blessed Islands, <a href="#Page_258">258-261</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bloodstone, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Blue-land, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Boadicea, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Boccias Islands, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bogaz Keni, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bogota, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bohemia, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248-250</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bokhara, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bolivia, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bongo tribe, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Book of the Cities and Marvels of Countries</i>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Book of Climates</i>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Book of Diversities</i>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Book of Roads and Kingdoms</i>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Books, virtue in all, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Borneo, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bororo Indians, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bosman, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bossewell, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Boston Linnæan Society, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Botanic Garden</i>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Botchkareva, Maria, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174-177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bothnia, Gulf of, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bo-tree, Sacred, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bottle-imps, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bouchey, Margaret, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bougainville, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Boundary between Old and New World, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bounteous Isle, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bourbourg, Abbé Brasseur de, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bourgogne, Jean de, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Boys, maiming of, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bradamante, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bragman, isle of, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Brahma, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bran, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Breadfruit, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Breezes, generative, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Brest, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Brhaspati, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bridge of tortoises, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bridinno, dwarf land of, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Britannus, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> + +<li class="indx">British Columbia, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> + +<li class="indx">British Isles, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, + <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Brittany, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Brobdingnag, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bronze Age, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Browne, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, + <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bruce, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Brundusium, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Brushwood Town, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Brusilov, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Brynhild, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Buache, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bucephali, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Buchanan, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Buddha, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Buddhism, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Buenos Aires, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Buffalo, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, + <a href="#Page_325">325</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Caffrarian, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Buffon, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, + <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bull, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bulotu, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bunyan, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bunyan, Paul, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bunyip, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Buried cities, <a href="#Page_213">213-215</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Burma, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Burrowing creatures, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Burton, Lady, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Burton, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, + <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Busbequins, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bushmen, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, + <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Bustard, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Butterfly, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Buzzard, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Byssus silk, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Byzantium, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">C</li> + +<li class="indx">Cabeza, de Vaca, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cabul, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cadiz, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cæsaristas, the, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cæsars of South America, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Calabash, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Caldilhe, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Caliban, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> + +<li class="indx">California Indians, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li> + +<li class="indx">California, island of, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">California, State of, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Callao, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Calypso, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cambodia, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cambyses, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Camel, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, + <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">flying, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cametennus, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Campanella, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Camulatz, the bird, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Canada, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Canary Islands, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, + <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Canelas, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cape Bojador, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cape Cod, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cape of Good Hope, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cape Guardafui, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cape Hatteras, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cape Santa Elena, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cape of Spices, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cape Verde Islands, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cappadocia, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Capricorn, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Caqueta River, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Carbuncle, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Carchemish, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cardan, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cardinal Points, <a href="#Page_203">203-205</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Caribbean Sea, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, + <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Carib, island of, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Caribs, the, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Caribou, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Carlyle, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Caroline Islands, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Caroni River, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Carp, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Carpini, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cartagena, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Carteret, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Carthage, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cartooning humanity, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Caspian Sea, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cassia, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cassiquiare River, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cassiterides, the, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Castaneda, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Castelnau, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Castor, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cat, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cataclysm in New World myth, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Catalan map, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cat-fish, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cathay, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, + <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cathedrals, animal symbolism in, <a href="#Page_46">46-48</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Catoblepas, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Caucasus Mountains, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, + <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cave drawings, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Celtic glamour, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Celts, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Central America, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291-294</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Celebes, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cellar strain in human nature, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cellini, Benvenuto, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Centaur, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Central point of earth, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cephalopod, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cercopes, the, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cerne, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ceylon, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chalcedony, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chaldea, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chambers’ <i>Journal</i>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chameleon, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chamlakhu, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chains of Indo-China, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chao Fu-Kua, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chaos, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chardin, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Charia, Isle of, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Charlemagne cycle, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Charles III of Spain, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Charles V of Spain, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Charlevoix, Father, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Charon’s ferry, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chassenée as rat advocate, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chatan, pygmy city of, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chelonophagi, the, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chenoos, the, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cherokees, the, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chestnuts, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chiau Yau, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chibcha Indians, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chichen Itza, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Childbirth, a means of promoting, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chilean mythology, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chimæra, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">China, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, + <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, + <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, + <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">China seas, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chinese discovery of North America, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Chinese Encyclopedia</i>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chinese wall, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chiquitos, the, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chiriqui Indians, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Choquequirau, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Choromandæ, the, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chrism, devil’s, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Christ symbolized by unicorn, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">called the phœnix, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Christian fabulists, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Christian pilgrims, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357-358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Christian symbolism, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Chronicle of the Cid</i>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chrysolite, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Chrysoprase, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Churchward, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cibola, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318-323</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ciconian coast, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cilician pirates, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cimarron republics, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cimbri, the, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cinnabar, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cinnamon, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Land of, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> + +<li class="indx">City of Brass, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> + +<li class="indx">City of God, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li> + +<li class="indx">City of Hump-backed Women, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">City of Mexico, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> + +<li class="indx">City of the Sun, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Classic myth, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Claudius, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Closet philosophers, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Clothing, origin of, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cloud-centaurs, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cloud-Cuckoo Town, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Clouds of Magellan, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cloves, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Coast Range, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Coata, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cobra, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cochin-China, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cock, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cockaigne, Land of, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cockatrice, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77-78</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cock’s egg, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cocytus River, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cod, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Colic, a cure for, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Coligny, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Collecteanea</i>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Colombia, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, + <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Colorado River, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Columbus, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, + <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, + <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Comedy, Greek, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Commercial subtlety, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Communal houses, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Comorin, Cape, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Compass, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Composite creatures, doctrine of, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Concepcion, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Condor, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Conflict between Horus and Set,” <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Confucius on jade, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Congo, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Conquistadors, <a href="#Page_299">299-333</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Constantinople, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Constellations, animal forms of, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Conway, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cook, Capt., <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cool Lake, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Coos Bay giants, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Copper, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Age, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Mountains, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Coptic Christians, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cordilleras, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cordoba, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Corentyne River, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cornelius Nepos, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Corn spirit, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cornwall, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Coromandel Coast, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Coronado, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321-326</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Corsali, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cortez, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Corvo, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cosmas, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cossack colonel a woman, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Costa Rica, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cotton-plant, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cotzbalam, the bird, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cougnantainsecouima, the, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Council of Virgins, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Country of the Dwarfs</i>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Country of Widows, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Country of Women, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Court of the Universe, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cow, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cowry shell, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Coyote, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Crab, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cradle of Gold, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cramps, a cure for, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Crane, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">war with pygmies, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Crantor, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Crayfish, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Creative caricature, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Credulity of Greeks, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Crete, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cricket, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Crimean war, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Criminal courts of birds, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Critias</i>, the, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Crocker Land, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Crocodile, <a href="#Page_36">36-37</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cromagnons, the, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Crow Indians, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Crusaders, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ctesias, characterized, <a href="#Page_352">352-353</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">cited, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, + <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, + <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, + <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cuatas, the, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cuba, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cuchiviro, Rio, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cuckoo, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cundinamarca, plateau of, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cupidity, a cure for, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Curupira, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cush, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cushing, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Customs” of Dahomey, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cuttlefish, men mistaken for, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cuvier, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, + <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cuzco, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cybele, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cyclopes, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cyme, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cynocephali, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cyrenaica, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cyrene, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cyrne, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Cyrus the Great, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Czecho-Slovakia, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">D</li> + +<li class="indx">Da Gama, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dahomey, <a href="#Page_179">179-183</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dahut, Princess, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dalay River, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Damastes, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dampier, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dance macabre, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dancing negresses, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dandini, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Daniel, Abbott, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">D’Annunzio, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Danube River, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dardæ, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Darkness, legends as to, <a href="#Page_220">220-221</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Darwin, Charles, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Darwin, Erasmus, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> + +<li class="indx">David, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Davy, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De Acunha, Father, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dead Sea, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Deadly upas tree, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De Arguello, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Death-watch, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De Berreo, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Deccan, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De Chaves, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dee, River, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Deer, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Deformed Folk, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De Gamboa, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De la Mare, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De Leon, Diego Flores, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De Leon, Ponce, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Delicious Isle, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Delight-makers, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Delight of Those Who Seek to Wander Through the Regions of the World</i>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Delisle, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Delos, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Delphi, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Deluded Folk, eight, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Deluge, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Delusive water, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De Maillet, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Demons, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De Ortribia, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De Proveda, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Derbent, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Derceto, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Descouret, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Description of Greece</i>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Desert, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209-215</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De Silva, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Destruction of Mankind,” <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Deucalion, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De Urreta, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De Ursua, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Devil, cult of in Florida, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Devil-fish, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Devil-mask of the Jurupary, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li> + +<li class="indx">De Weltheim, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Diable Borteux, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Diamond, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Diana of the Ephesians, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Diana in Autun, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dicuil, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Digby, Sir Kenelm, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dinosaur, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Diodorus Siculus, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, + <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, + <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dionysus, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Disappearing Islands, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256-257</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Disraeli, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ditter, island of, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dobayba, temple of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dodona, oak of, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dog, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, + <a href="#Page_340">340</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">husbands, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dogfish, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dog-headed people, <a href="#Page_105">105-107</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dog-ribs, the, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dog Star, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dolmen, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dolphin, <a href="#Page_90">90-91</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dondun, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Donnelly, Ignatius, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Don steppes, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> + +<li class="indx">D’Orbigny, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dordogne cave paintings, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dos Santos, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Doughty, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Doul-Karnain, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dove, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dowarnenez, Bay of, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dragon, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, + <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79-88</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, + <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dragonfly, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dragon-tyger, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dragon-wolf, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Drake, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dravidians, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Drawings, Primitive, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dread of thick foliage, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dream Quests of Spain, <a href="#Page_312">312-333</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dreams, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dromedary, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Druids, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Drums, magic, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Drunkards, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dryads, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Du Chaillu, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Duck, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Duff Islands, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Duirs, the, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dumb-barter, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dunashki, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Du Pin, Jean, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dutch East India Company, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dwarf-gods of Egypt and Phœnicia, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dwarfs, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Dyaks, the, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">E</li> + +<li class="indx">Eagle, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Eagle-stone, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Earth, size and shape of, <a href="#Page_5">5-13</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Earth-holders, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">East, <a href="#Page_204">204-205</a></li> + +<li class="indx">East African islands, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Easter Island, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Eastern Roman Empire, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li> + +<li class="indx">East Indies, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ecbatana, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ecclesiastical suits against vermin, <a href="#Page_31">31-32</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Echo, the, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Eclipses, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ecuador, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Edam, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Eden, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Eden, Richard, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Edom, land of, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Eel, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">“eel-mother,” <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Eel-like men, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Egede, Hans, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Egypt, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, + <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, + <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Emmet valley, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Elbe River, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Elders, Animal, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> + +<li class="indx">El Dorado, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298-310</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Elephant, <a href="#Page_32">32-34</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, + <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">tower, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Elephantine, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Elephantophagi, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Eleusinian mystery, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> + +<li class="indx">El Gran Moxo, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> + +<li class="indx">El Gran Paititi, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Elixir of life, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Elizabethan age, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Elizabeth, Queen, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Elm’s refreshing shadow, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> + +<li class="indx">El Turco, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Elysium, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257-261</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Emerald, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Emerson, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Empedocles, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Enchanted City of the Cæsars, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316-318</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Enchanted Islands, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Enchantments, a defense against, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Enciso, Bachelor, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Encyclopædia Britannica, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Encyclopædists, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Engano, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">English Channel a ferry of souls, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Englishmen, tailed, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Enmities of birds, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Enotocoitae, the, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Enquiries of Browne</i>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ephesus, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Epilepsy, treatment of, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Epiphany, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Equatorial Current, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Equestrian statues, Carthaginian, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Eratosthenes, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ericson, Thorwald, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Eriphia, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Error the guiding star of discovery, <a href="#Page_371">371</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Erythræ, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Erythræan Sea, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Esdras</i>, books of, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Eskimos, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, + <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Essay-writing, a dragon diet for, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Estevanico, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Esther</i>, book of, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Estland, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Estotiland, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Etearchus, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ethnography, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ethiopia, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, + <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Etymology as source of myths, <a href="#Page_344">344-347</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Eudoxus, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Euphrates River, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Euripides, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Europe, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Evangelists as beast-headed men, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Evans, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Eve, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Evolution of divine beast-men, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Evolution of the Dragon, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ewaipanoma, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Expedition Island, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Ezekiel</i>, book of, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ezion-geber, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">F</li> + +<li class="indx">Fabric of Illusion, <a href="#Page_334">334-347</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fabulous winged creatures, <a href="#Page_68">68-78</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fa-hien, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fairies, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">queen of, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Falcon-fish, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Falcon-man, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Falconry, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Familiars, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fang-chang, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Farissol, Abraham, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Faroes, the, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fatephur Sikri, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Father John, bird called, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Faun, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fayal, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fear, myths of, <a href="#Page_371">371</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Feast of Reason, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Feast of the Valiant Women, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Feathered men, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Febrifuge, a, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Federmann, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Felfel Mountain, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Fen-shu</i>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Female Crusade, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Female incense, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fertility emblems, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Festus Avienus, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fezzan, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fiddlers’ Green, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fiend fly, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fijis, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Filipinos, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Finland, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Finn-folk, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Finnish magic songs, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">riddles, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li> + +<li class="indx">First People, Indian, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fish, a polygamous, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fish-eating races, <a href="#Page_196">196-198</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Flaccus, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Flame of Life</i>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Flavianus, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fleurieu, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Flint people, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Florida, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Flying Dutchman, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Foersch, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Folk of Tradition, <a href="#Page_190">190-200</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Fonte perenni</i>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Forest, beliefs as to, <a href="#Page_215">215-217</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Formosa, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fortunate Isles, <a href="#Page_257">257-261</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fossils as source of myths, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fountain of the Sun, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fountain of Youth, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314-315</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fouqué, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fox, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fragrant Mountains, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> + +<li class="indx">France, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> + +<li class="indx">France, Anatole, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Frankincense, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Franks, the, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Frazer, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li> + +<li class="indx">French Amazons, <a href="#Page_172">172-174</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Friar-fish, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Friars, begging, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Friedemann, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Friendly Islanders, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Friendships of birds, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Friesland, West, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Frobisher, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Frog, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Fu-lin, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Fung-wang</i>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Furies, the, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">G</li> + +<li class="indx">Gadarenes, country of the, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gaditanian Sea, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gains of Fable, <a href="#Page_371">371-377</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Galen, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Galvano, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gambia River, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gamblers, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gamphasantes, the, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ganges River, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Garcias ab Horto, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Garcilaso de la Vega, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gargoyles, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Garnet, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Garuda, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gaul, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Geese, wild, <a href="#Page_41">41-42</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gélélé, King, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gellius, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Genesis</i>, book of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, + <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Genghis Khan, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Geographers, ancient, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Geography of Scents, <a href="#Page_230">230-231</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gerini, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Germain, Louis, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> + +<li class="indx">German Hydrographic Office, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Germany, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, + <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gesner, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gessi, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Getæ, the, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ghauts, the, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ghosts, merriment of, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ghouls, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">isle of, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Giants, <a href="#Page_190">190-193</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, + <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">stone, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gibbon, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gibraltar, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Straits of, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gihon, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gila Canyon, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gilbert, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gilboa, Mount, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gilded Man, the, <a href="#Page_298">298-310</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gindanes, land of the, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ginger, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ginseng, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Giraldus Cambrensis, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Glistening Heath, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Glooskap, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Glow-worms, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gnomes, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gnu, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Goat, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gobi, Desert of, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Goddess of Liberty, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> + +<li class="indx">God-man, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> + +<li class="indx">God’s land of the Celts, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gog and Magog, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235-238</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gold, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">origin of use as money, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Spanish quest of, <a href="#Page_298">298-333</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gold Coast, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Golden Age, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Golden Apalache, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Golden Bough</i>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Golden Chain, adventure of, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Golden Chersonese, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Golden Fleece, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Golden Surface, the, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Goliath, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Good intentions, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Goodwin Sands, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Goose, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gonges, Olympede, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gorgons, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gorilla, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Goths, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gould, Baring, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gould, Charles, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gradlon, King, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Grand Lama of Tibet, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Grapes, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Grasshoppers, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Grasshopper-eaters, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Grasshopper warriors,” <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gravelly Sea, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Great China,” <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Great Han Country, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Great Mother, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Great Saracen Land, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Great Syrtis, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Great toe, peculiar formation of, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Great Year, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Greece, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, + <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Greenland, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Green Sea of Gloom, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Grenada, island of, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gribble, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Griffin, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55-56</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, + <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, + <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Grimm Brothers, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Guacaris, the, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Guadeloupe, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Guatemala, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Guatavita, Lake, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Guaviare River, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Guiana, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, + <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Guillim, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gulf of California, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gulf of Mexico, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gulf of Oraba, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gulf of Paria, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gulf Stream, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gulfweed, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gumberoo, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gum camphor, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gum-tree country, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gunhild, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gwenland, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gwyn ab Nudd, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gymnetæ, the, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Gypsies, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">H</li> + +<li class="indx">Hacus, <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hadam, Eldad, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hahua-chumpi, island of, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Haida, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Hairy ones,” <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Haiti, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hakluyt, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, + <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Halcyon, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Half-men, <a href="#Page_111">111-112</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Halls of the Giants, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hamam Meskouteen, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Haman, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hand of Satan, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hanno, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hannum, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hanuman, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hanyson, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Happy hunting grounds, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Harald Hardrada, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hardouin, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hare, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Harem of a queen, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Harpies, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75-77</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hart, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hathor, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hatusapur, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Havaika, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hav-fruen, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Havilah, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, + <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hav-manden, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hawk, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hawkins, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hawks, Henry, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hayton, King, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Headless People, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hebrew the natural speech, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hecatæus, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hedgehog, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hedin, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hedjaz, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hegesias, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Heifer, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Heimskringla</i>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Heine, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Helicon, Island of, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Heliogabalus, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Heliolithic culture, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Heliopolis, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hellebore, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hellespont, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hell-way, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Helyon, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hen, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Henry VII, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Henry the Navigator, Prince, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Heraldry, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66-67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Herbenstein, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hercules, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, + <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hercynian birds, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Herkhuf, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hermes, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hermits, beasts of, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Herodotus, characterized, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">cited, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, + <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, + <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, + <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, + <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, + <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Heroes of beast epics, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Heron, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Herrera, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hesiod, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hesperides, the, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hibernating Samoyeds, <a href="#Page_116">116-117</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hiddekel, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hierro, island of, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Hill and Sea Classic</i>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hill of Little Devils, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Himalayas, the, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Himantopodes, the, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Himilco, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Himyarites, the, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hionen Thsang, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hippocampus, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hippo Diarrhytus, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hippogrif, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hippogypi, the, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hippolyte, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hippopotamus, <a href="#Page_34">34-35</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hiram of Tyre, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>History of the Indies</i>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hittites, <a href="#Page_185">185-187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ho-lao-lo-kia, vanished city of, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Holland, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Holme, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Holstein coast, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Holy Roman Empire, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Homer, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, + <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, + <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Homocane, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Homunculus, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hopi towns, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Horizon Lands, <a href="#Page_201">201-222</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Horned hogs, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Horned men, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Horneman, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Horse, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, + <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hörselberg, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Horus, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hospitality, proverb on, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hottentots, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">“click” of, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> + +<li class="indx">House of Song, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Houses of the Sun, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Huallaga River, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Huanacos, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Huc, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hudson Bay Company, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hugag, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hugo, Victor, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Huguenots, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Humboldt, characterized, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">cited, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, + <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Humming bird, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hungarian Plain, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Huns, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hurakan, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hyderabad, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hydra, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hyena, <a href="#Page_35">35-36</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hyparkhos River, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Hyperboreans, <a href="#Page_201">201-203</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">I</li> + +<li class="indx">Ibanez, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Iberia, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ibis, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ibn Batuta, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, + <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ibn Haukal, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ibn Khaldun, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ibn Khordadbeh, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Iceland, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ichthyophagi, <a href="#Page_196">196-198</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ideal lands, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257-261</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336-337</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ideal states, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Idrisi, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ignatius, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Iguanodon, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Iliad, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Illampu, peak of, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Imaus, Mount, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Immaculate Conception, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Imrama</i>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Im Thurn, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Incas, fugitive, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Incense Country, the, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229-235</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Route, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">battles, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Incontinency, how discovered, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">India, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, + <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, + <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, + <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, + <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, + <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Indian Archipelago, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Indian Ocean, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, + <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Indika</i>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Indo-China, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Indonesia, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Indus River, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Inis Fitæ, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Inishbofin, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Insanity, a cure for, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Institute of Oceanography, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Insula de ben faminill</i>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Insula mulierum</i>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Insula virorum</i>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Insurrection of Women, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Intoxication, a preventive of, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Io, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Iran, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ireland, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Irijo River, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Irish sea epics, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252-253</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Iron city, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Iroquois, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Irving, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Is, sunken city of, <a href="#Page_255">255-256</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Isaiah</i>, book of, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Isidore, characterized, <a href="#Page_356">356-357</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">cited, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Iskander’s wall, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Isla de beimeni parte</i>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Isla de Mugeres</i>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Islam, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Island of Death, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Island of Females, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Island of Life, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Island of Males, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Island of the Seven Cities, or of the Seven Bishops, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, + <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Islands, number of, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Islands of Enchantment, <a href="#Page_251">251-261</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Islands of the Sun, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Islas Encantadas, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Isle of the Blessed, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Isle of the Double Towers, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Isle of Finn, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Isle of Fire, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Isle of Flowers, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Isle of Gems, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Isle of Laughter, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Isle of a Saint, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Isle of Sheep, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Isle of Shouting, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Isle of witches, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Isogonus, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Israel, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Issedones, the, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Istakhri, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ister, the, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Istria, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Italy, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Itys, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ivan the Terrible, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ivory, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ivory, apes and peacocks, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ivory Coast, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">J</li> + +<li class="indx">Jacinth, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jackal, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jade, <a href="#Page_23">23-24</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Gate, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jaguar god, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jaitwas, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Janaidar, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Japan, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, + <a href="#Page_371">371</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jasconius, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jason, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jasper, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Java, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, + <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jehovah, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jenkinson, Anthony, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jerba, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jerusalem, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, + <a href="#Page_357">357</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">center of the earth, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jesuits, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jet, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jews, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">legendary kingdoms of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">with tails, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">black pygmy, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jew’s-harps, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jinga, Queen, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Joan of Arc, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">and bottle imp, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Job, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">his dunghill, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Job</i>, book of, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li> + +<li class="indx">John of Herse, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Johnson, Doctor, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Johnston, Sir Harry, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Joliet, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Joppa, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jordan, River, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jordanus, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Josephus, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Judas on his rock, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Judy, the, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jujube, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Julian, Emperor, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Julius Cæsar, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Juno, temple of, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Jupiter Ammon, oasis of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Juruena River, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Just” peoples, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Justin, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">K</li> + +<li class="indx">Kabyles, the, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kadesh, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kaidu, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kali, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kalm, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kanakas, the, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kangaroo, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kansas, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Karabel, Pass of, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kara-Khitai, the, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Karaya myth, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Karelian, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kasil, island of, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kaska tribesmen, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Kataphugia</i>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kathkuri, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kazwini, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Keane, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kent, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kerensky, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kerner, Justinus, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kibu, island of, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Ki-lin</i>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kilsapheen, Lost, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kine of Cibola, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> + +<li class="indx">King of Faerie, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kingdom of Dogs, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kingdom of Women, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kingsley, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kinship with animals, <a href="#Page_374">374-375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kirata, the, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kirghiz, the, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Klebermeer, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kobolds, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kohistan, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Koliwan, Lake, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kollman, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Komana, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Koran, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kordofan, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Korean tradition of inhabited lands, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kors Trold, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Korwars, the, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kraken, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92-93</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Krokottas, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Krümmel, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kublai Khan, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kukulcan, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kurdistan, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kwan-lun hill, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Kyffhäuser Berg, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">L</li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Lachryma Crocodili</i>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li> + +<li class="indx">La Condamine, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lactantius, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ladanum, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ladrones, the, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lafitan, Père, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li> + +<li class="indx">La Gran Quivera, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Laguna, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lahore, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">La Maillard, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lamary, land of, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lamb of Revelation, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lamberti, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lambri, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lamias, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lamprey, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lampridius, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lamya, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Land of Darkness, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Land of Fair Women, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Land of Ghosts, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Land of Job, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lands of Legend, <a href="#Page_223">223-250</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Land of Marked Bodies, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Land of the Living, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Land of Promise, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Land of Truth, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lane, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lang, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lanuvium, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Laos, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lapis lazuli, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lapland, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, + <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Laputa, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Large-eared men, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Las Casas, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Las Jurdes, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lassen, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Last of the Incas, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Latin mind, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Laufer, Berthold, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Laurel-tree and lightning, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> + +<li class="indx">La Vieja Islands, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lecherers, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Leems, Knud, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Legion’s winter camp, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Leigh, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Leland, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Le Maire, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lemuria, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lenin, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Leopard, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Le Plongeon, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Leptus, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lesiy, the, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Les Merveilleuses</i>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lestai, the, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lethe, fountain of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Leuke, isle of, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Leviathan, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Levine, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lewis and Clark expedition, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lhasa, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Library of Congress, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Libussa, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Libya, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, + <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Liège, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lilliput, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Limbo of the Moon, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Limpopo River, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Linnæus, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lion, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, + <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, + <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lipo district, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lisbon earthquake, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lisbon Wanderers, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Little Black Men, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Livonians, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lizard, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lizard-Man, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Llama, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lliuga, Princess, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lobo, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Locris, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Locusts, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lodestone, Mountain of, <a href="#Page_16">16-17</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lofoden, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Logic, Indian, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lok, John, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>London Graphic</i>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Long, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Loon, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lop, desert of, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lopez, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lord of the Hollow Tree, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lord of the Two Horns, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lords of the Field, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lotophagi, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lot’s wife, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lotus-land, <a href="#Page_227">227-229</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Louhiatar, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Louisiana, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lucan, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lucayos, the, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lucca, Gaudentio di, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lucerne, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lucian characterized, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">cited, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lucknow, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lucky-stone in toad’s head, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ludolf, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lumberjack legends, <a href="#Page_65">65-66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lusignan, house of, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lusitania, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lust, ritual, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Luxembourg family, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lydia, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lynn, vessels from, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lyonesse, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Lyon-poisson, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">M</li> + +<li class="indx">Macassar poison, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Macatoa, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> + +<li class="indx">McCrindle, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mace, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Macrobians, the, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li> + +<li class="indx">MacGregor, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Madagascar, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, + <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Madanino, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Madeira Islands, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mældune, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Maelstrom, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Magellan, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Magh Mell, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Magic dances as sources of the races of fable, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Magic Food, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Mahabharata</i>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Maid Marian, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Maidu Indians, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Maimonides, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Majorca, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Malabar, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Malacca, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Malatu, Sea of, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Malays, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Malay Peninsula, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, + <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Maldive Islands, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Male incense, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Male infants, killing of, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Malory, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mambuti, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mammoths, frozen, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mamore River, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Manannan, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Manatee, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Manco Capac, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mancy, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mandrake myth, <a href="#Page_21">21-23</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mangi, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mangou, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Manhattan Island, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Manikins, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Manioc, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Manlius, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Manoa, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Man of the Mountain, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Manticora, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Maps, mediæval, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mara River, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Maranon River, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Marata, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Marcasite, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Marcellus, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Marco Milioni, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Marcos, Friar, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mare, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mareb, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mar Eldorado, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Marignolli, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Marining animals, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Market of the Sea, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Markets, Night, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Marquesans, the, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Marquette, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Marseilles, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Martikhora, <a href="#Page_57">57-58</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Martinez, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Martlet, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Martyr, Peter, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Marvellous Adventures of Sir John Maundeville</i>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mascardi, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Masefield, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mashona region, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Massagetæ, the, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Massoudy, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Masu, Mountains of, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Matabele region, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mather, Increase, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Matriarchate, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Matrimonio, island of, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ma Tuan-Len, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Maundeville, characterized, <a href="#Page_365">365-367</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">cited, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, + <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, + <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, + <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, + <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, + <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mauretania, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mayas, the, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> + +<li class="indx">May Day, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mead, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Meadows of Gold and Mines of Precious Stones</i>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mecca, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mediæval Trade, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Medicine bag, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Medicine men, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Medina, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mediterranean Sea, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, + <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, + <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Megasthenes, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mergui archipelago, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Megon, plain of, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Meir, Rabbi, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mekong River, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mekran, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Melanesia, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Melons, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Melusina, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Memphis, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mendana, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Menendez, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Mercurius Politicus</i>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Merfolk, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98-102</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mericourt, Theroigne de, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Merles, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mermaids, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Merodach, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Merolla, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Meropis, island of, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Merveilles de L’Inde</i>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mesa Encantada, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mesha, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mesopotamia, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Meta-collinarum, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Metamorphoses</i>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Metamorphosis, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Meta River, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mewan Indians, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mexico, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">calendar of, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mezzoramia, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Miami River, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Miaotze, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Micmacs, the, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Middle Comedy, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Midgard serpent, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Midian country, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Midsummer Eve, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Miletus, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Miltiades, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Milton, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Minæans, the, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mincoupies, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mindanao Island, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mingrelia, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ming tombs, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mink, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Minocane, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Minotaur, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mirabeau, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mirabilia, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mirage, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Misers, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mississippi River, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Missouri, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mistletoe, <a href="#Page_19">19-20</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mnemosyne, fountain of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mock king, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mole, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Molucca Islands, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242-245</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Moly, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Monaco, Prince of, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mongolia, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, + <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Monoceros, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Monocoli, the, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Monomatti, the, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Monomotapa, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Montaigne, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Montana, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Montanes, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Montegre, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Montserrat, island of, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Montygre, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Moon goddess, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Moon, voyage to, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Moorish warrior queen, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mordecai, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">More, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Morea, the, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Morgan le Fay, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mormons, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Morocco, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Morris, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Moscha, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Moses and an Ethiopian princess, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Moslems, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mount of Eden, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mount Ida, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mount Sion, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mountains, beliefs relating to, <a href="#Page_205">205-209</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">lights on, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mountains of the Moon, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mouse-Apollo, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Moving Isle, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Müller, Max, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Müller, von, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mummification, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Munchausen, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Munster, a lake in, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Munza, King, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Murder, ritual, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Murger, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Muscovites, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Musk, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Mustaghata, Mount, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Myrina, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Myrrh, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Mythical Monsters</i>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Myths of observation, <a href="#Page_343">343-344</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Muysca Indians, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">N</li> + +<li class="indx">Nabatheans, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nagas, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nahuatl ark legend, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nahuelhuapi, Lake, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nairs, the, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nanling Mountains, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Narwhal, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nasamonian youths, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Natural histories, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Natural History of Norway</i>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Natural History, Pliny’s</i>, <a href="#Page_354">354-355</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nature a pageant for man, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nausicaa, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Navahos, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, + <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Navel of the World, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nearchus, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nebraska, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Necho, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Necromancers, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Negrillos, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Negritos, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Negritos del Monte, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Negro Indians, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Negroland, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Negro, Rio, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nekhbet, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nephrite, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nereids, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nergal, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nero, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nesnas, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nestorians, <a href="#Page_239">239-240</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nestorius, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> + +<li class="indx">New Calabar, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li> + +<li class="indx">New Granada, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> + +<li class="indx">New Guinea, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, + <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li> + +<li class="indx">New Hebrides Islands, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> + +<li class="indx">New Mexico, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> + +<li class="indx">New Towns, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> + +<li class="indx">New York, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Niam-Niams, the, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nicander, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nicobar Islands, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Niebuhr, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Niger, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nightingale, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nile River, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, + <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nina-chumpi, island of, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ninth wave, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nixie, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Njogel, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Noah, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nomad spirit, the, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nonius Marcellus, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nordland, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> + +<li class="indx">North, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> + +<li class="indx">North Atlantic continent, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> + +<li class="indx">North Atlantic, floating storehouse of, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> + +<li class="indx">North Brother Island, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> + +<li class="indx">North Carolina, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Northmen, <a href="#Page_267">267-268</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li> + +<li class="indx">North Pole, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> + +<li class="indx">North Sea, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> + +<li class="indx">North wind, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Northern Lights, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Norva Sound, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Norway, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nosala, island of, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Noseless nations, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Notaries on shipboard, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nova Zembla, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Novgorod manuscript, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nubian Highway, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nulo Mountain, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Numantranus, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Number of peoples, provinces, rivers, and towns, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Numidia, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nutmegs, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Nysæan shore, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">O</li> + +<li class="indx">Obongos, the, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> + +<li class="indx">O Brasile, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">O’Brien, Frederick, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Oceania, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ocean Stream, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Odoric, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>, + <a href="#Page_366">366</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Odyssey, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, + <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ogier the Dane, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ogre, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ojibwas, the, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Olaus Magnus, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Old Man of the Sea, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Old Man of the Woods, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Old men’s tales, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Old Woman Islands, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Oleacinidæ, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Olisipo, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Olive, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Olympus, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Omaguas, the, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Onesicritus, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Onoscileas, the, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ophiophagi, the, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ophir, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223-227</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Opinicus, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Oraisan, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Oranges, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Orang-utan, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Orc, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Orellana, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Orgy of death, Amazon, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Orichalcum, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Orinoco, River, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, + <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Orkney Islands, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Orlando, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ormuz, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Orontes River, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Orsæan Indians, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ory, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Osiris, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Osorno, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ostrich, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Othman, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Otter-men, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Otto of Freisingen, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ottokar, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ottoman empire, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Otway, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ovid, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Oviedo, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Owl, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ox, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">burrowing, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Oxus River, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Oysters, government of, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">P</li> + +<li class="indx">Pacific Ocean, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">lost continent in, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">island traditions of, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Padua, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pajarito plateau, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Palenque, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Paleolithic artists, <a href="#Page_340">340</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Palestine, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Palomides, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Palos, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Palus Mœotis, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pamirs, the, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pamphagi, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pan, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Panama, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Panama-Pacific Exposition, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Panathenæa, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pandavas, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pandore, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Panther, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Paracelsus, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Parade, negro Amazon, <a href="#Page_182">182-183</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Paradise and pearls and pepper, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Paraguay, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Paraguay River, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Paranunta, Rani, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pard, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Parik, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Paris, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Paris, Island of, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Parroquet, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Parrot, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Partridge, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pasto, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pastoral song, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Patagonia, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pathen, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Paula, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pausanias, characterized, <a href="#Page_353">353-354</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">cited, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Peacock, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Peanuts, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pear, earth shaped like, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pearl, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Peary, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pedrarias, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pegasus, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pegu, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pelican, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pellinore, <a href="#Page_64">64-65</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Peloponnesus, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Peltry, Siberian, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Penguin Island</i>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Penang, island of, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Peoples of Prodigy, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103-120</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pepper, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Pepper Country, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Pepper “forests,” <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">pepper wars, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pepy II, Letter of, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Perforated people, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Periplus of Erythræan Sea, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Perotti, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Persia, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, + <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Persian Gulf, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Persica</i>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Peru, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, + <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Petachia, Rabbi Moses, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Peter Martyr, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Petra, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Petrified cities, <a href="#Page_211">211-213</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Petrifying river, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Petrograd snipers, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Phædrus, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Phæacia, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pharaoh’s Red Sea hosts, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pheasant, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Philes, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Philippines, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Philology, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Philomela, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Phineus, King, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Phlegethon, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Phœnicians, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Phœnix, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68-70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, + <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Phong, the, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Photios, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Phrygian cap, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Physiologus</i>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Piasa petroglyph, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Piedras hijades, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pigafetta, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pigeon, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pig of the ocean, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Pih T’an</i>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pike, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pilate, Swiss legend of, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pilatus, Mount, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pillar of salt, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pillars of Hercules, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pima deluge myth, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pindar, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pinkerton, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pinna, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pippilika, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pison, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pizzani, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pizarro, the brothers, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Plague, a remedy for, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Plato, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, + <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Platypus, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pliny, characterized, <a href="#Page_354">354-355</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">cited, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, + <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, + <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, + <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, + <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, + <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, + <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, + <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, + <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pliny’s Ape, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pliny the Younger, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Plutarch, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Poetry, magic of, <a href="#Page_347">347</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pohjola, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Poland, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Polish women fighters, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Polo, Marco, characterized, <a href="#Page_363">363-365</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">cited, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, + <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, + <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, + <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Polybius, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Polyhistor, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Polyphem ein Gorilla</i>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Polyphemus, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Polystephanos, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pompeii, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pompeius Festus, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pompey, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pomponius, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pontoppidan, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, + <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pontus, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Popayan, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pope, Alexander, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pope Alexander III, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Popinjays, in the deserts, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Popol Nuh, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Popos, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Porcupines, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pork, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Porter-nations, fables of, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Port of Missing Ships, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Porto Rico, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Portugal, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, + <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Portus Nobilis, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Poseidon, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Potato, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pottery, animal outlines of, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Prabhâsakhanda</i>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Prague, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Prasias, Lake, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Precious stones in Christian symbolism, <a href="#Page_24">24-25</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Prejevalski, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Prescott, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Prester John, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238-240</a>, + <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Priestesses, armed, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Priest-king, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Primum mobile</i>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Principal Trade Routes</i>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Principal Voyages</i>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Prison for lost souls, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Proclus, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Procopius, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Progne, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Prometheus Bound</i>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Promises of princes, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Prophecy: how the gift is conferred, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Prospero’s isle, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Psalm-singing birds, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pseudo-Plutarch, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Psylli, the, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Psyllotoxotæ, the, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pterodactyl, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ptolemy, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, + <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Public-house signs, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pueblo Indians, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Puerto de Arica, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pu-lu tribe, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Punt, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Puranas</i>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Purchas, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Purgative, a, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pygmies, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132-150</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, + <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pygmy Highway, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pyramids, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pyrenees Mountains, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Pytheas of Massilia, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">Q</li> + +<li class="indx">Quail, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Quatrefages, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Queen Bee, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Queen of Sheba, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Quesada, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Quesada, Ximenes, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Questing beast, <a href="#Page_64">64-65</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Quetelet, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Quetzalcoatl, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Quichna Indians, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Quimper, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Quiros, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Quito, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Quivera, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323-326</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Quoyas Morrov, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">R</li> + +<li class="indx">Rabbit, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Race-course, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rainbow, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rain trees, <a href="#Page_20">20-21</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rajputana, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rakshasis, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Raleigh, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, + <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305-310</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, + <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ram, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ram-eagle, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rami, the, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ramni, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ramus, Jonas, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ras Sem, petrified village of, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rat, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">worship of, <a href="#Page_30">30-31</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">monster, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rath, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Raven, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Raw materials, search for, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rawlinson, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Realm of Big Women, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Red River, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Red Sea, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Regio feminarum</i>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Region of Darkness, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Reig Rawan, Desert of, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Reindeer, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Remora, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Repose, regions of, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Republic</i>, Plato’s, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Retreat of the Ten Thousand, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Retzius, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Revelation</i>, book of, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Horsemen of, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Regnard, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Reynard the fox, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rhegium, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rhine maidens, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rhinoceros, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">of the air, <a href="#Page_74">74-75</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">horn for detecting poison, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rhizophagi, the, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rhodesia, ancient, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rhodope Mountains, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rhone River, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ribbon fish, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ribeiro, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ricold of Monte Croce, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Riddles, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rights of Women, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Riphæan Rocks, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ritual mimes, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ritual murder, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li> + +<li class="indx">River of China, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> + +<li class="indx">River that flows by the Throne of God, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Robin Hood cycle, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Roc, <a href="#Page_72">72-74</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rock crystal, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rock Tibboos, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rocky Mountains, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rodriguez, Barboza, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rodzianko, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Roebuck, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Roger, King of Sicily, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rogero, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rohan, family, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Roman pharmacopeia, animal items in, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rome, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, + <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Romulus, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Root-eaters, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Roraima, Mount, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rothery, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rotundity of the earth, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366-367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Roulin, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Roundhouses, ceremonial, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Royal Irish Society, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ruad, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Rubruquis, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ruby, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ruskin, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Russia, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">fighting women of, <a href="#Page_174">174-177</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">strange peoples of, <a href="#Page_115">115-117</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">S</li> + +<li class="indx">Saba, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sabæans, the, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sacramento, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Valley, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Sacred groaning stick,” <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sacred Promontory, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Saffron as magic diet, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sagittary, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sago tree, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Augustine, <a href="#Page_355">355</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Bernard, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Brendan, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">island of, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Clement, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Collen, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Colodoc, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Costinian, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Francis, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Gerasimus, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Guthlac, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Helenus, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Jerome, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. John, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. John’s Eve, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Leonor, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Maria Rotunda, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Mark, treasure of, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Sulpicius, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> + +<li class="indx">St. Vitus dance, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sais, temple at, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Saint, statue of a, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Salamanca, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Council of, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Salamander, <a href="#Page_38">38-39</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Salmon, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Salt fish diet, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Salvaje, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Samar, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Samarcand, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Samaria, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sambation, the river, <a href="#Page_17">17-18</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Samoan Islands, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Samoyeds, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, + <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sanazzaro, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sandalwood, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sandrokotos, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> + +<li class="indx">San Joao River, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> + +<li class="indx">San Francisco, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> + +<li class="indx">San Francisco, mountain of, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> + +<li class="indx">San Joaquin Valley, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Santa Cruz, island of, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Santa Marta, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Santa Thome del Agostina, <a href="#Page_311">311</a></li> + +<li class="indx">San Thome River, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Santom aborigines, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Santos, Juan, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sapphar Metropolis, the, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sapphire, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Saragossa, feminine defense of, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sardinia, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">pygmy survivals in, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sardonic plant, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sargasso Sea, <a href="#Page_274">274-280</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sarmatians, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sassafras, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Satan, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Satyr-fish, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Satyrs, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121-131</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>, + <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">Satyr Islands, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Saures, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Savaii, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sayce, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sayf Al-Muluk, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scaliger, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scalping, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scandinavia, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scapegoat, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scarab, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scarecrows as tribal ancestors, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Scenes de la Vie de Bohème</i>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Schenchzer, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Schomburgk, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Schoolcraft, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Schorodomachi, the, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Schweinfurth, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sciapodes, the, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scilly Islands, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scipio, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scobellum, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scorpion men, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scotland, tide myth of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scrofula, animal remedies for, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scylax, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scyritæ, the, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scythia, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, + <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Scythian lamb, <a href="#Page_58">58-62</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sea a symbol of eternity, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sea creatures, <a href="#Page_89">89-102</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">named after land animals, as sea-dragons, hares, horses, kites, lions, mice, oxen, spiders, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sea serpent, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93-95</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sea of Clarified Butter, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sea of Curds or Whey, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sea of Glass, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sea of Milk, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sea of Salt Water, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sea of Sugar Cane Juice, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sea of Wine, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Seal, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Seal-men, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sebo, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sedentary Indians, <a href="#Page_320">320</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Selfishness, myths of, <a href="#Page_371">371</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Semangs, the, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Semiramis, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Semites, commercial fictions of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">culture of, <a href="#Page_357">357</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Seneca, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Senegal, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Senegal River, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sephar, Mount, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sepulchers of Zenu, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329-330</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Seres, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Serrano, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sertorius, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Set, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Seven Cities of Cibola, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318-323</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Seven Seas, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Shadow-footed,” <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Shagamaw, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Shan Hai King</i>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Shantung, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Shape-shifting, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Shark, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97-98</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Shaw, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sheep, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sheikh of the Seaboard, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Shetland Islands, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Shikh, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Shoshones, the, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Shrewmouse, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Shu-king</i>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Siam, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Siberia, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">women fighters of, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sicily, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sid, the, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sidney, Sir Philip, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sierras, the, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sigismund, King, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man</i>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Silent Isle, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Silver, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Silvia of Aquitaine, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Simeon, Rabbi, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Simhala, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Simon, Padre, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sinai, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sind, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sindbad, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, + <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Singular speech, <a href="#Page_104">104-105</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sinmenkpen, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Siptakhora tree, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sirens, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Siva, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Skeletons, animated, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Skin-shifting, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Skogfrau, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Skulls as drinking cups, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">talking, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">rolling, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Slave Coast, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Slavs, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sliabh Daidche, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sluggish Sea, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Smith, Grafton Elliot, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Smithsonian Institution, report of, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Smyrna, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Snails, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Snake, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37-38</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, + <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Snake-eaters, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Snakes in Ireland, no, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Snoligoster, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Snowy Mountains, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Society Islands, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Socotra, island of, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Socrates, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Soe-Drawl, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Soe-Ormen, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sofala, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Solar mythology, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Solinus, characterized, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">cited, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, + <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Solomon, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, + <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Solomon Islands, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327-329</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Solon, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Somaliland, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sombreron, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sorcerers that took hyena form, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> + +<li class="indx">South, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> + +<li class="indx">South America, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li> + +<li class="indx">South Atlantic continent, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> + +<li class="indx">South Arabs, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> + +<li class="indx">South Brother Island, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> + +<li class="indx">South Dakota, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> + +<li class="indx">South Seas, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Southern hemisphere noblest, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Souza, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Soviets, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Spain, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, + <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, + <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">treasure ships of, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sparta, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Speculum Regale</i>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Spence, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Spencer, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Spenser, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sphinx, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_356">356</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Spice Islands, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242-245</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Spices, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Spider, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Spitzbergen, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Splinter cat, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Springs, magical, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Spurred men, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Squid, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Squonk, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Stag, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Stagnant Sea, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Staked plains, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Stanley, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Star of the Archers, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Statues as source of myths, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Stone Age heathen, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Stone giants, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Stone of the eyes,” <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Storax, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Stork, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Story of the Winged Disk,” <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Strabo, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, + <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, + <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Straits of Florida, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Straits of Magellan, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Street of feathers, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Streets of women, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Struthocameli, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Struthophagi, the, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Struthopodes, the, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Struys, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Stygian Pool, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Stymphalian birds, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Subraces, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Suffolk, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sukhavati, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sumatra, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, + <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sun-haters, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sun, track of the, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sunamukha, the, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sun-Carrier, <a href="#Page_6">6-7</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sunda Islands, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Sung Geography</i>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sunken Lands, <a href="#Page_254">254-257</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sunset, hissing sound at, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Superior, Lake, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Suwanee River, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Svetadvipa, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Swallow, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40-41</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Swallower of the West, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Swan song, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sweden, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">the Great, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Swine, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, + <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Symmetry, sense of cosmic, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Symons, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Sympathetic magic, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Syria, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Syrian lamb, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Syrtic district, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">T</li> + +<li class="indx">Tabernacle form of earth, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Table of the Sun, <a href="#Page_14">14-15</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tachnin River, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tachylyte, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tae-Ping women fighters, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tagus River, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tahetan tide myth, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tahiti, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tailed men, <a href="#Page_121">121-131</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Takla-makan, dead city of, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Talmud, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tamerlane, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tanganyika country, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tangi, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tannhäuser, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Taos, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tapio, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tapirs, king of the, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Taprobane, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Taranto, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tarantula, <a href="#Page_39">39-40</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tarascon, shield of, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tarask, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tartars, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, + <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tariessus, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tatius, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tauron, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Taurus Mountains, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tawny Moors, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tchad, Lake, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tchudi, the, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tecumbalam, the bird, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tembandumba, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tempe, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Tempest, The</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tempests, how to avert, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Temple harlots, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Temple of Dobayba, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331-332</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Temple of the Sun, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ten Lost Tribes, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tennyson, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tenochtitlan, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tensevetes, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Terhetar, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Termeh, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Termier, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, + <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ternate, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Terra Australis Incognita, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Terrestrial Paradise, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, + <a href="#Page_365">365</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Terrible Ocean, <a href="#Page_262">262-273</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tetramorph, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Texera, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Teyma, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thalestris, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thanet, island of, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tharshish, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thebaid, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Theocritus, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Theodor, Bishop, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Theodosius, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Theophrastus, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Theopompus, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thermiscyra, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thermodon River, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Theseus, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thevet, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thirty Years’ War, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thomas, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thoreau, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thorne, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thought, fancied omnipotence of, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thrace, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thule, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thunberg, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thunder bird, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thunderbolts, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thuringia, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Thurium, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tiber River, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tiberius, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tibet, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, + <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tides, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tidor, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tierra del Fuego, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tierra-firma, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tig-balang, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tiger, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tigris River, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Timæus</i>, the, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tin, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tin Islands, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Titan, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tithonus, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Titicaca, Lake, <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tityrus, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tlingit myths, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Toad, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tobacco, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Toltecs, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tomyris, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tonga, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Topago, province of, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Topaz, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Topographical legends, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Topsell, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Topsy-turvy, law of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Torca, island of, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Torres Straits, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tortoise, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Toscanelli, map of, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Totemism, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Totoneac, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Toucan, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tower of London, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Traconda, island of, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tragedy, Greek, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Trapalanda, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Travel Tales of Mankind, <a href="#Page_348">348-370</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Travels in Barbary</i>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Travelers, Lot of, <a href="#Page_335">335-336</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Travelers’ Trunk, earth like a, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Trebizond, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tree of the Sun, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Trees, <a href="#Page_19">19-21</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Trickster-hero, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Trinidad, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Trinity, the earliest, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tritons, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Troglodytes, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, + <a href="#Page_194">194-195</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Troll, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tronador, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tropic of Cancer, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Trotzky, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Troubadours, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Troy, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>True History</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tsheremis, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> + +<li class="indx">T’sung-ling Mountains, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tuanaki, island of, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tuatha Dé Danann, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tumbleweed, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tupac-Amaru, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tupac Yupanqui, Inca, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tupi-Guarani myth, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tupimare, the hill, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Turanians, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Turkestan, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Turkey, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Turkomans, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Turja Fells, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Turquoise, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Turtle, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Turtle-eaters, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tuscany, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Twelfth Day, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Two Mussulman Travelers, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Two Sisters, isles of, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tylor, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Tzetzes, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">U</li> + +<li class="indx">Udyana, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ulloa, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ulysses, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, + <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Underground, beliefs as to, <a href="#Page_217">217-220</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Undine</i>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ung-Khan, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Unicorn, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50-55</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">horn of, antidote for poison, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Unicorn bird, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Uniped, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> + +<li class="indx">United States, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Universe an egg, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Unpaid vows, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ural Mountains, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Urcos, lake of, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Urdu-begani, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Utopia, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Uttarakarns, the, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">V</li> + +<li class="indx">Vaikuntha, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vain efforts, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Valasca, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Valencia, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> + +<li class="indx">“Valentines,” Amazon, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vale Perilous, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Valley of Apes, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Valley of Diamonds, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Valley of the Shadow of Death, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Valum Chvim, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vampires, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vancouver Island, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Van Diemen’s Land, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Van Noort, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Varasena, Pass of, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Varenius, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Varro, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Varthema, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vartomannus, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vashti, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vassals of the beasts, men as, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vaz, Lopez, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Veddahs, the, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vegetable lamb, <a href="#Page_58">58-62</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Venetus, Paulus, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Venezuela, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Venice, lion of, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Venus, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Venus, Mandragorolis, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vergil, Polydore, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vermin, a diet against, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Verrius, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Versailles, march on, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vicarious sacrifice, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Views of Nature</i>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Viking names, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Villon, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vilna unit of girl soldiers, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vincent of Beauvais, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vine, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vineta, legendary city of, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vine-women, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Virgil, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Virgin gift-bearers, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Virgin Mary, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Virtues and vices pictured, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vishnu, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vitruvius, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vokearos, the, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Volcano Island, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Volga River, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Von Hutten, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Votiaks, the, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Voyage of Maldune, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Voyage of St. Brendan</i>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Vulture, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">W</li> + +<li class="indx">Wagon homes, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wak-wak, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wales, legend of, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wallerius, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Walnut tree, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Walton, Isaac, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wandering arts, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wapaloosie, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wars over women, Indian, <a href="#Page_162">162-163</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wartburg, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Water gods of northern Europe, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Water horse, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Water sheep, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Weddell, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Weigall, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Welsers, the, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> + +<li class="indx">West, <a href="#Page_204">204-205</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">as home of marvel, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li class="indx">West African Rain Forest, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> + +<li class="indx">West Indies, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Westropp, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> + +<li class="indx">West wind, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Whale, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>;</li> +<li class="isub1">bones of for dwellings, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wheel-shaped maps, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Whirlwind the dance of a ghost, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li class="indx">White-Corn Boy, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> + +<li class="indx">White House, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> + +<li class="indx">White Indians, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li> + +<li class="indx">White Nile, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Whitman, Walt, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Whore of Babylon, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Whydah, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wichita Indians, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wiener, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wild Women, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> + +<li class="indx">William of Wykeham, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wind-egg, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Winged serpents, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Winter’s Tale</i>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wish, power of, <a href="#Page_347">347</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Witchcraft, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240-242</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, + <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Witch Realm of Lapland, <a href="#Page_240">240-242</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wolf, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wolf, Dr., <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Woman of the Thicket, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Women for guests, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Women in Mexican revolutions, <a href="#Page_169">169-170</a></li> + +<li class="indx">World, a living being, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Woodpecker, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Words, power of, <a href="#Page_347">347</a></li> + +<li class="indx">World summit, theory of, <a href="#Page_12">12-13</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Woruisamocos, the, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wu-lung-li-tan, village of, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Wyvern, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">X</li> + +<li class="indx">Xanadu, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Xarayes, Laguna de los, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Xecotcovach, the bird, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Xenophon, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Xerxes, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">Y</li> + +<li class="indx">Yacu-mama, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yakuts, the, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yams, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yangste Kiang, the, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yao, the, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Yashka</i>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yazd, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yazel, Abraham, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yedua, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yellow-Corn Girl, <a href="#Page_376">376</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yellow Sea, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yemen, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li> + +<li class="indx"><i>Yen-men</i>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yima, garden of, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yoruba, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Ysopete, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yucatan, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yule, Colonel, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Yunnan, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + + +<li class="ifrst">Z</li> + +<li class="indx">Zahm, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Zambesi River, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Zanzibar, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Zell, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Zenobia, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Zephyria, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Zipangu, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Zulus, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Zuñi, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li class="indx">Zuyder Zee, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="c p1">THE END</p> + + +<hr class="full x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="bbox"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="c sp large"><i>Distinguished Books</i></p> +</div> + + +<p> +BARE SOULS <span class="smcap">By Gamaliel Bradford</span><br> +</p> + +<p>This volume goes beyond the geographical limits of Mr. Bradford’s +successful “Damaged Souls,” and includes a group of the world’s most +mysteriously fascinating personalities. Under Mr. Bradford’s magic +touch they spring to life as self-revealing human beings. His subjects +include John Keats, Thomas Gray, Flaubert, Voltaire, Edward +Fitzgerald, Charles Lamb and Horace Walpole.</p> + + +<p> +LEVIATHAN <span class="smcap">By William Bolitho</span><br> +</p> + +<p>“If you are a discriminating reader you will have marked William +Bolitho as a man whose stuff you will follow anywhere, for he stands +out from the hordes of excellent and gentle essayists as boldly as does a +woodcut when placed next a half-tone engraving.”—<i>Laurence Stallings</i> +in the New York <i>World</i>.</p> + + +<p> +THE LIFE OF THE BAT <span class="smcap">By Charles Derennes</span><br> +</p> + +<p>An exciting personal narrative is told in this book—the life story of +the bat, much of it threaded on the life experiences of a captive bat +called Noctu. He very soon develops a strong personality, and through +his story we learn the life history of bats generally,—their apparent +pastimes,—as in their aerial ballets—their mating, their search for +food and the whole fascinating range of their daily and nightly activities.</p> + + +<p> +AT A VENTURE <span class="smcap">By Charles A. Bennett</span><br> +<i>Illustrated by Clarence Day, Jr.</i> +</p> + +<p>“How delightful to run across a new writer of such subtle penetration +combined with a light and lazy humor. Mr. Bennett has a fine +sense of satire, of character, of life, and is a master of the luminous +phrase. He discusses live subjects, and his papers cover all sorts of +topics from advertising to zebra-raising, written with ease, elegance +and grace. The pictures are priceless, all movement, irony and +grin.”—<i>W. E. Woodward</i> in the <i>Nation</i>.</p> + + +<p class="c sp">HARPER & BROTHERS</p></div> + + +<div class="bbox1"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="c sp large"><i>A Miscellany</i></p> +</div> + + +<p> +THE BIBLE AND COMMON SENSE <span class="smcap">By Basil King</span><br> +</p> + +<p>Here is a book in which honest people of every communion, groping +their way through the storms of controversy, will find fresh light to +guide them. Mr. King tells eloquently what the Bible means to him +as an individual, and frankly and fearlessly discusses such topics as +the Virgin Birth, the divinity of Christ, and the effect of scientific +criticism on the Bible. His tone is always constructive, always reverent, +always inspiring.</p> + + +<p> +THE MYSTERY OF RELIGION <span class="smcap">By Everett Dean Martin</span><br> +</p> + +<p>What is religion? Has it any real bearing on morality and the unescapable +facts of human relationship? The author of “The Behavior +of Crowds” here scientifically analyzes, in the light of social psychology, +the ceremonials and taboos of religion, and the fundamental meaning +and cause of group religion as a universal human need.</p> + + +<p> +THE SEVEN LIVELY ARTS <span class="smcap">By Gilbert Seldes</span><br> +</p> + +<p>A spirited and entertaining discussion of the “low-brow” arts and +artists of comic stage and screen, of song and dance and newspaper +humor, by a “high-brow” young critic who sees in them the flourishing +germ of a native American expression.</p> + + +<p> +A MAGICIAN AMONG THE SPIRITS <span class="smcap">By Houdini</span><br> +</p> + +<p>A master magician here reveals the results of years of careful study +of noted mediums and of spiritualistic phenomena of all kinds. This +account of his adventures during his investigations, and the striking +conclusions to which he has been forced form an important—and entertaining—chapter +in the crusade for truth.</p> + + +<p> +THE AMERICAN MIND IN ACTION<br> +<span class="smcap">By Harvey O’Higgins</span> and <span class="smcap">Dr. E. H. Reede</span> +</p> + +<p>A keen analysis of the typical American attitude, as exemplified in +the lives and personalities of a dozen outstanding Americans. “The +work is absorbingly interesting, holding the reader as with a magic +spell from beginning to end. The American reader feels as he follows +the analysis of the American mind that he is gradually penetrating to +the mystic depths of his own soul.”—<i>Boston Transcript.</i></p> + + +<p class="c sp">HARPER & BROTHERS +</p></div> + +<div class="transnote"> + +<p class="c">Transcriber’s Notes:</p> + +<p>Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.</p> + +<p>Perceived typographical errors have been changed.</p> + +</div> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75759 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/75759-h/images/cover.jpg b/75759-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e0674da --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig1.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig1.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..715d48c --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig1.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig10.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig10.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..be6d56d --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig10.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig11.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig11.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1ceddd3 --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig11.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig12.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig12.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f3cd825 --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig12.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig13.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig13.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2cee9bb --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig13.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig14.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig14.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9927b59 --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig14.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig15.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig15.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7aa408d --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig15.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig16.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig16.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d1aa8bb --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig16.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig17.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig17.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b806498 --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig17.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig18.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig18.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..910dc0d --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig18.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig19.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig19.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3370263 --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig19.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig2.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig2.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0de0e08 --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig2.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig20.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig20.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..50e5eaa --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig20.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig21.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig21.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..10e87c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig21.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig3.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig3.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2504727 --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig3.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig4.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig4.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..879763c --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig4.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig5.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig5.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ecd6aeb --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig5.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig6.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig6.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e9318e7 --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig6.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig7.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig7.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e7b0bba --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig7.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig8.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig8.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1bc25dc --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig8.jpg diff --git a/75759-h/images/fig9.jpg b/75759-h/images/fig9.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9eef5ef --- /dev/null +++ b/75759-h/images/fig9.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b5dba15 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this book outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9b5c196 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +book #75759 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75759) |
