366 RECOLLECTIONS OF TRAVEL IN THE EAST,
CONCERNING THE CLOTHING OF OUR FIRST PARENTS.
And the Lord made for Adam and his wife coats of skins or fur, and clothed them therewith. But if it be asked, whence the skins ? the answer usually made is, either that they were expressly created (which savours not of wisdom!) ; or that an animal was slain for the purpose (and this is not satisfactory, seeing that 'tis believed the animals were at first created only in pairs, and there had been no time for the multiplication of the species) . Now then I say, without however meaning to dogmatize, that for coats of fur we should read coats of fibre. For among the fronds of the Nargil, of which I have spoken above, there grows a sort of fibrous web forming an open network of coarse dry filaments. Now to this day among the people there and the Indians' it is customary to make of those fibres wet weather mantles for those rustics whom they call camalls,2 whose business it is to carry burdens, and also to carry men and women on their shoulders in palankins, such as are mentioned in Canticles, `.Ferculuinfecit sibi Salomon de lignis Lib ani,' whereby is meant a portable litter, such as I used to be carried in at Zayton and in India. A garment such as I mean, of this camall cloth, (and not camel cloth) I wore till I got to Florence, and I left it in the sacristy of the Minor Friars there. No doubt the raiment of John Baptist was of this kind. For as regards camel's hair it is, next to silk, the softest stuff in the world, and never could have been meant. By the way (speaking of camels), I once found myself in company with an infinite multitude of camels and their foals in that immense desert by which you go down from Babylon of the Confusion towards Egypt by way of Damascus ; and of Arabs also there was no end ! Not that I mean to say there were any camels
Dobner has Judeos, which I take to be an error for Indos.
2 Hhaancil (Ar.), a porter or bearer. The word is still commonly applied to palankin bearers in Western India.
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