CHAPTER III.

SINDBAD-THIRD AND FOURTH VOYAGES.

THE third voyage of Sindbad is the one which attracts the interest of the reader, more than any of the others. He tells his guests how the ship in which he was a passenger, was overtaken by a storm, and driven on an island inhabited by certain savages, about two feet high, and covered with red hair. These swim to the ship and drag it ashore. They speak, apparently, to the sailors, but the latter are unable to understand them. The little men, however, oblige them to disembark, and convey them to another island.

The existence of pygmy races, such as are here described, as well as of hairy men, will be considered in subsequent chapters. But it may be remarked in this place, that these islanders have been supposed, and with much probability, to have been a species of apes, which are known to abound in those seas. Ibn el Wardee* writes thus, " Among the islands of the sea of China is the 'Island of Apes.' It is large, and in it are marshy forests and numerous apes. to whom they submit themselves. shoulders, and he governeth the oppresseth another. Those, however, who come to them in ships, they torture with biting and scratching and stoning."

These apes have a king, They carry him on their island, so that none

* Ibn el Wardee, geographer and poet. He died at Aleppo, A.D. 1350.

It is certain that apes have often been mistaken by voyagers for wild men, and their chattering for some unintelligible language, a mistake Sindbad's companions appear to have made on the present occasion. El Kazweenee mentions "little hairy men found on the island of Sumatra, who have a language which resembles the chirping of birds;" and Marsden was similarly told of hairy little men, called "Orang Gugu," in the interior of the above-mentioned island, who differed little, except in the possession of speech, from ourang-outangs. These could have been nothing but apes.

To proceed with Sindbad's voyage. He and his comrades journey for some distance into the interior of the country, whither the hairy men had driven them; when they come upon a large and high building, with doors of ebony, which they open. Inside they see a large apartment containing a heap of human bones, together with a number of roasting spits. This ominous conjunction not unnaturally terrifies them; and their terror is presently increased by the appearance of a frightful giant, as black as a coal, and of hideous aspect. He has in the middle of his forehead a single eye, as red and fiery as a burning coal; front teeth projecting like those of a wild boar, and long, curled nails, resembling the talons of a huge bird.

This giant proceeds to examine the party, and singling out the captain, who is the fattest of them, runs him through with a spit, roasts and eats him. On the following morning the giant goes out, securing the door behind him, and Sindbad and his companions await his return in the evening, when he makes a meal on another of the party, in the same manner as before.

Sindbad and his fellow-voyagers are now driven by desperation to devise some mode of delivering themselves from their

terrible enemy. They heat their spears red-hot, and plunge them into his eye, instantly depriving him of sight. He gropes about until he finds the door, and makes his way out. They follow and would have escaped from the island, but the giant returns accompanied by several others, who fling stones after the departing voyagers, sinking all the rafts except the one in which Sindbad himself is conveyed.

Now this story, one of the most familiar of any to English boys and girls, is to be found in the legends of a great many nations, which in respect of language, race, and modes of thought differ widely from one another. Every version has something peculiar to itself; and their coincidence-considering that, beyond all possibility of question, there never has existed upon the face of the earth any race with any reasonable degree of similarity to the monsters described-is surely most remarkable.

There is, first of all, the Greek reading of the story, which is to be found in the ninth book of Homer's Odyssey. There Ulysses and his companions come to an island, presumed to be Sicily. They land, and presently come upon a vast cave surrounded on all sides by a laurel grove. There a huge building has been erected of hewn stone, pines, and oak trees. Presently the Cyclop comes home. Perceiving the Greek voyagers, he kills two of them, and makes his meal off them. This process he repeats day after day, taking care to shut them carefully up in the house during his absence; until Ulysses and his followers blind him, nearly after the same fashion as Sindbad is related to have followed; only that Ulysses employs a wooden pole, sharpened at one end, instead of a spear. The giant goes to ask the help of his companions, and the Greeks escape from the island in the same manner as Sindbad and his fellow

voyagers with the difference that the giants fail to reach them with the stones they fling. There are two additional features in the Greek story-one, that the captives escape the giant's notice, as he stands at the door, by creeping out under the stomachs of the sheep, and the other that Ulysses describes himself as having the name of "Nobody," by which stratagem he induces the other giants to depart in peace, when they come up to the assistance of their comrade.

In the "Historia Septem Sapientum," a Latin collection of the twelfth century, there is a story to this effect: "The leader of a band of robbers goes with his comrades to steal the treasures of a giant. They find the giant absent from home; but he soon returns with nine others, and catches the robbers at their work. They divide the captives among them, and the captain and nine of his comrades, fall to the share of the giant who owns the house. He boils and eats the nine men, reserving the captain for the last, because of his leanness. The giant is suffering from weak eyes, and the captain, having obtained permission to attempt his cure, seethes together sulphur, pitch, salt, and arsenic, and pours the mixture when melted, into his patient's eyes. Furious with pain, the giant lays about him with his club, hoping to kill the robber-captain, who is forced to creep up a ladder and hang all day and night from the hen-perch. When he can hold on no longer, he hides among the sheep, and manages to slip between the legs of the giant, who is guarding the door, by covering himself with the skin of a ram, and fastening horns upon his head. The giant in pretended admiration of his cleverness, gives him a gold ring, which by its magical power forces him to cry out, 'Here I am.' The giant follows the sound into the forest, running continually against the trees, but still gaining on the fugitive,

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who, finding he cannot disengage the ring from his finger, cuts the latter off and so escapes."

The

A Tartar legend describes a monster, who was the son of a nymph, his father having been an Oguzian shepherd. The child was born with a single eye in the crown of the head, and from his earliest childhood showed himself so fierce and savage, that he was banished from the house where he had been brought up. He was visited by his mother, who put a ring on his finger, which made him invulnerable by arrows or swords. He then went and lived in a cave, and preyed on his neighbours, who could offer no resistance, as no weapon could wound him. They were obliged to make an agreement to give him for his food two men every day and five hundred sheep, together with two servants to cook his victuals. victims were chosen by lot, and the lot fell on the sons of the man by whom the monster had been reared. The youngest son, Bissat, resolves to avenge the slaughter of his brethren. He enters the giant's cave and shoots his arrows at him. But the giant only fancies that the flies are buzzing about him. Presently the monster spies Bissat, and shuts him up in one of his leather boots, intending to make his supper off him. Bissat draws his knife and cuts a hole in the boot, by which he escapes. Then he heats the knife red-hot, waits till the giant is asleep, and plunges the blade into his eye. After this he hides himself among the sheep in the cave. knows that Bissat is somewhere in the house, and sits at the door to seize him as he tries to pass out. But Bissat wraps himself in the skin of a ram, and when his enemy clutches this, he lets go of the skin and slips out. The other now attempts a stratagem. He offers Bissat a ring, which has the property of returning to its master at his desire.

The monster

Bissat puts it