pain that affected me. But I constrained myself to have patience, and looking again at the earth, I beheld the villages or towns, and the people gazing at the bird. Then it approached the earth, and set me down upon a heap of straw in a threshing-floor belonging to one of the villagers.'"

Benjamin of Tudela again, a Jewish rabbi and eastern traveller of the 12th century, has a similar tale. "Some- ! times," he writes, "this sea (near Ceylon) is so stormy, that no mariner can conduct his vessel, and when a storm throws a ship into this sea, it is impossible to govern it. The crew and passengers consume their provisions and then die miserably. Many vessels have been lost in this way; but people have learned how to save themselves from this fate by the following contrivance. They take bullocks' hides along with them, and whenever the storm arises and throws them into the sea of Niphka, they sew themselves up in the hides, taking care to have a knife in their hands, and being thus secured against sea-water, they throw themselves into the ocean. Here they are soon perceived by a large eagle called a griffin, which takes them for cattle, darts down, and seizes them in its grip, and carrying them off, deposits the burden on a hill, or in a dale, there to consume its prey. The man, however, now makes use of his knife to kill the bird, creeps forth from the hide, and tries to reach an inhabited country. Many persons have been

saved by this stratagem." "The same story," 66 says Colonel Yule, occurs in a Latin poem at least as old as the beginning of the thirteenth century, which relates the romantic adventures of Duke Ernest of Bavaria, The duke and his companions, while navigating some unknown parts of the Euxine, fall within the fatal attraction of a magnet mountain. The ship goes to pieces, the

crew die of starvation, and their bodies are carried away by huge gryphons. One of the party suggests to the duke that they should wrap themselves up in skins, and allow the birds to carry them alive to their nests, where they could draw their weapons, and deliver themselves from being devoured; which scheme is duly carried out."

Sir John Maundeville also mentions these eagles of Tudela's, and declares them to possess even greater strength than that assigned them. "In that country" (the isles beyond China), he writes, are many griffins, more abundant than in any other country. Some men say that they have the body upward of an eagle, and beneath of a lion, and that is true (!). But one griffin has a greater body and is stronger than eight lions, and greater and stronger than a hundred eagles. For one griffin there will carry a great horse, or two oxen yoked together, as they go at the plough" (Maund. ch. 26).

Sindbad having been left by the roc, examines the spot in which he finds himself. It is a deep valley, surrounded on all sides by mountains so high and so steep, that there was no possibility of climbing them. In walking about the valley, he perceives that it is strewn with diamonds, some of which are of an astonishing size. But there are also other objects, by no means so pleasant to contemplate. The whole neighbourhood swarms with serpents of an enormous size, so long and large, that the smallest of them could have swallowed an elephant with ease. Presently he is startled by a piece of raw meat, which had evidently been flung from above. He remembers to have heard of the famous "Valley of Diamonds," into which merchants were in the habit of throwing whole carcases of newly-skinned sheep, to which the diamonds adhered; and the lumps of meat, being carried up by the

eagles, to feed their young with, the diamonds were brought up with them. He resolves to escape from the ravine by the same agency, which had brought him into it. He fills his pockets with the largest diamonds he can find, and then ties himself to a huge piece of meat. This is duly conveyed by one of the eagles to its nest, and Sindbad is delivered from his perilous situation.

I suppose, again, the whole of this narrative is viewed by most readers as pure and simple fiction. But that it certainly is not. The great difficulty of it is-what has already been noted the question whether there ever existed in very remote times, a bird of sufficient strength to carry off a man in the way described. As regards the rest of the story, there is plenty of evidence to show that it is no fiction at all.

Epiphanius, a Greek father of the fourth century, in his essay on the twelve stones in the breastplate of the high priest, writes, "The jacinth is nearly of the colour of fire. It is found in the interior of Scythia. There in the profoundest part of the Great Desert, there is a valley, which on every side is surrounded by stony mountains resembling walls. It is inaccessible to men, and of great depth, so that any one looking down upon it from the high mountain top cannot see the bottom of the valley; but, by reason of the depth of the locality, the darkness is so great, that it seems to be a kind of chaos. Men are sometimes sent thither by the king's order, who have been condemned on account of their crimes to repair thither. They kill lambs, skin them, and throw the carcasses into the valley. The precious stones stick to the masses of flesh. But the eagles, which dwell on the mountain tops, attracted by the scent of the raw meats, fly down and carry off the carcases, to which the stones adhere. They devour the flesh, but the stones

remain on the mountain tops. Then those who have been sentenced to visit the spot, marking the places, where the eagles have fed on the meat, run up and carry off the stones."

El Kazweenee writes: "To the place in which the diamonds are found, no one can get access. It is a valley in the land of India, the bottom of which the sight reacheth not; and in it are enormous serpents, which no one seeth but he dieth. They have a summer abode for six months, and a winter abode, where they hide themselves for a like period. El Iskender (Alexander the Great, it is generally believed) commanded to take some mirrors, and to throw them into the valley, in order that the serpents might see in them their own forms, and die of the sight (a most original use to which to put a looking-glass, it must be admitted!). It is said that he watched for the time of their absenting themselves, the winter, that is-and threw down pieces of meat, and the diamonds stuck to them. Then the birds came from the sky, and took pieces of that meat, and brought them up out of the valley. Whereupon El Iskender ordered his companions to follow the birds, and pick up what they easily could, of the meat."

Marco Polo tells very nearly the same story, only he mentions the snakes, which Epiphanius omits. "In the mountains of the kingdoms of Mutfili," he says, "the diamonds are found. During the rainy season, the water descends in violent torrents among the rocks and caverns, and when these have subsided, the people go to search for diamonds in the beds of the river, where they find many. Messer Marco was told that in the summer, when the heat is excessive and there is no rain, they ascend the mountains with great fatigue, as well as with considerable danger from the number of snakes, with which they are infested. Near the summit, it is said, there are deep

chasms, surrounded by precipices, among which the diamonds are found, and here many eagles and white storks, attracted by the snakes, on which they feed, are accustomed to make their nests. The persons who are in quest of the diamonds, take their stand near the mouths of the caverns, and from thence cast down several pieces of flesh, which the eagles and storks pursue into the valleys, and carry off with them to the tops of the rocks. Thither the men immediately ascend, drive the birds away, and recovering the pieces of meat, frequently find diamonds sticking to them.”

The three authors here quoted, could hardly have seen each other's writings,-living as they did in lands so remote, and having so little intercourse with one another. Polo might

possibly have studied Epiphanius, but considering how little Greek was known in Europe in his day, and the early age at which he left his home, nothing is less likely than that he should have read the Bishop's narrative. And he may also have perused the writings of El Kazweenee. But seeing that these had only just been composed when he visited the East, and that he did not make any stay in Arabia, that supposition is almost equally improbable. The precise locality at which the Valley of Diamonds is fixed by the three authors is, no doubt, different. But the names Scythia, India, and the like, are so extremely vague in early writers, that this point cannot be regarded as of much importance. Enough, I think, has been produced to prove that although Sindbad's second voyage contains a large amount of exaggeration, it is by no means to be regarded as a fictitious narrative. There is a solid substratum of truth on which the extravagancies are, as it were, embroidered.