IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
MARCO POLO
420
B00K III.
i
~
~
►
jl
Lane's Arabian Nights, Notes on Sindbad ; Benj. of Tudela, p. I 17 ; De Varia Fortuna Ernesti Bavariae Ducis, in Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum of Martene and Durand, vol. III. col. 353 seqq. ; I. B. IV. 305 ; Gildem. p. 220 ; Pi;afetta, p. 174 Major's Prince Henry, p. 311 ; Erman, II. 88 ; Garcin de Tassy, La Poésie philos. etc., chez les Persans, 3o segq. )
[In a letter to Sir Henry Yule, dated 24th March 1887, Sir (then Dr.) John Kirk writes : " I was speaking with the present Sultan of Zanzibar, Seyyed Barghash, about the great bird which the natives say exists, and in doing so I laughed at the idea. His Highness turned serious and said that indeed he believed it to be quite true that a great bird visited the Udoe country, and that it caused a great shadow to fall upon the country ; he added that it let fall at times large rocks. Of course he did not pretend to know these things from his own experience, for he has never been inland, but he considered he had ample grounds to believe these stories from what he had been told of those who travelled. The Udoe country lies north of the River Wami opposite the island of Zanzibar and about two days going inland. The people are jealous of strangers and practise cannibalism in war. They are therefore little visited, and although near the coast we know little of them. The only members of their tribe I have known have been converted to Islam, and not disposed to say much of their native customs, being ashamed of them, while secretly still believing in them. The only thing I noticed was an idea that the tribe came originally from the West, from about Manyema ; now the people of that part are cannibals, and cannibalism is almost unknown except among the Wadoe, nearer the east coast. It is also singular that the other story of a gigantic bird comes from near Manyema and that the whalebone that was passed off at Zanzibar as the wing of a bird, came, they said, from Tanganyika. As to rocks falling in East Africa, I think their idea might easily arise from the fall of meteoric stones."]
[M. Alfred Grandidier (Hist. de la Géog de Madagascar, p. 31) thinks that the Rukh is but an image ; it is a personification of water-spouts, cyclones, and typhoons.—H. C.]
NOTE 6.—Sir Thomas Brown says that if any man will say he desires before belief to behold such a creature as is the Rukh in Paulus Venetus, for his own part he
will not be angry with his incredulity. But M. Pauthier is of more liberal belief ; for he considers that, after all, the dimensions which Marco assigns to the wings and quills of the Rukh are not so extravagant that we should refuse to admit their possibility.
Ludolf will furnish him with corroborative evidence, that of Padre Bolivar, a Jesuit, as communicated to Thévenot ; the assigned position will suit well enough with Marco's report : " The bird condor differs in size in different parts of the world. The greater species was seen by many of the Portuguese in their expedition against the Kingdoms of Sofala and Cuama and the Land of the Caffres from Monomotapa to the Kingdom of Angola and the Mountains of Teroa. In some countries I have myself seen the wing-feathers of that enormous fowl, although the bird itself I never beheld. The feather in question, as could he deduced from its form, was one of the middle ones, and it was 28 palms in length and three in breadth. The quill part, from the root to the extremity, was five palms in length, of the thickness of an average man's arm, and of extreme strength and hardness. [M. Alfred Grandidier (Hist. de la Géog. de Madagascar, p. 25) thinks that the quill part of this feather was one of the bamboo shoots formerly brought to Yemen to be used as water-jars and called there feathers of Rukh, the Arabs looking upon these bamboo shoots as the quill part of the feathers of the Rukh.—H.C.] The fibres of the feather were equal in length and closely fitted, so that they could scarcely be parted without some exertion of force ; and they were jet black, whilst the quill part was white. Those who had seen the bird stated that it was bigger than the bulk of a couple of elephants, and that hitherto nobody had succeeded in killing one. It rises to the clouds with such extraordinary swiftness that it seems scarcely to stir its wings. In form it is like an
~
•
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.