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| 0476 |
The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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eagle kind. (See Engr. Cyc. Nat. Hist. sub. v. Dinornis.) And Sir Geo. Grey appears to have read a paper, 23rd October 1872,* which was the description by a Maori of the Hokioi, an extinct gigantic bird of prey of which that people have traditions come down from their ancestors, said to have been a black hawk of great size, as large as the Moa.
I have to thank Mr. Arthur Grote for a few words more on that most interesting subject, the discovery of a real fossil Kue in New Zealand. He informs me (under date 4th December 1874) that Professor Owen is now working on the huge bones sent home by Dr. Haast, “and is convinced that they belonged to a bird of prey, probably (as Dr. Haast suggested) a Harrier, double the weight of the Moa, and quite capable therefore of preying on the young of that species. Indeed, he is disposed to attribute the extinction of the Harpagornis to that of the Moa, which was the only victim in the country which could supply it with a sufficiency of food.”
One is tempted to add that if the Moa or Dinornis of New Zealand had its Harpagornis scourge, the still greater Aepyornis of Madagascar may have had a proportionate tyrant, whose bones (and quills?) time may bring to light. And the description given by Sir Douglas Forsyth on page 542, of the action of the Golden Eagle of Kashgar in dealing with a wild boar, illustrates how such a bird as our imagined Harpagornis Aepyornithon might master the larger pachydermata, even the elephant himself, without having to treat him precisely as the Persian drawing at p. 415 represents.
Sindbad’s adventures with the Rukh are too well known for quotation. A variety of stories of the same tenor hitherto unpublished, have been collected by M. Marcel Devic from an Arabic work of the 10th century on the “Marvels of Hind,” by an author who professes only to repeat the narratives of merchants and mariners whom he had questioned. A specimen of these will be found under Note 6. The story takes a peculiar form in the Travels of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela. He heard that when ships were in danger of being lost in the stormy sea that led to China the sailors were wont to sew themselves up in hides, and so when cast upon the surface they were snatched up by great eagles called gryphons, which carried their supposed prey ashore, etc. It is curious that this very story occurs in a Latin poem stated to be at least as old as the beginning of the 13th century, which relates the romantic adventures of a certain Duke Ernest of Bavaria; whilst the story embodies more than one other adventure belonging to the History of Sindbad.† The Duke and his comrades, navigating in some unknown ramification of the Exine, fall within the fatal attraction of the Magnet Mountain. Hurried by this augmenting force, their ship is described as crashing through the rotten forest of masts already drawn to their doom :—
“Et ferit impulsus majoris vertere montem
Quam si diplasas impingat machina turres.”
There they starve, and the dead are deposited on the lofty poop to be carried away by the daily visits of the gryphons :—
“Quae grifae membra leonis
Et pennas aquilae simulantes unguibus artis
Tollentes miseranda suis dant prandia pullis.”
When only the Duke and six others survive, the wisest of the party suggests the scheme which Rabbi Benjamin has related :—
“Quaeramus tergora, et armis
Vestiti prius, optatis volvamur in illis,
Ut nos tollentes mentiin cadavera Grifae
Pullis objiciant, a quels facientibus armis
Et cute dissuta, nos, si volet, Ille Deorum
Optimus eripiet.”
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731
732
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