National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

20   MARCO POLO.

VOL. I. BK. I.

fatte, so that some of their tailes waigh tenne, and other twentie

pounds a peece, and they become fatte of their owne naturali

inclination : but in Egypt there are diuers that feede them fatte

with bran and barly, vntill their tailes growe so bigge that they

cannot remooue themselves from place to place : insomuch that

those which take charge of them are faine to binde little carts

vnder their tailes, to the end they may haue strength to walke.

I my selfe saw at a citie in Egypt called Asiot, and standing vpon

Nilus, about an hundred and fiftie miles from Cairo, one of the

saide rams tailes that weighed fowerscore pounds, and others

affirmed that they had seene one of those tailes of an hundred

and fiftie pounds weight. All the fatte therefore of this beast

consisteth in his taile ; neither is there any of them to be founde

but onely in Tunis and in Egypt." (LEO AFRICANUS, edited by

Dr. Robert BROWN, III., 1896, Hakluyt Society, p. 945.)

XVIII., pp. 97, I oo n.

Dr. B. • Laufer draws my attention to what is probably the

oldest mention of this sheep from Arabia, in Herodotus, Book III.,

Chap. 113 :

" Concerning the spices of Arabia let no more be said. The

whole country is scented with them, and exhales an odour

marvellously sweet. There are also in Arabia two kinds of sheep

worthy of admiration, the like of which is nowhere else to be

seen ; the one kind has long tails, not less than three cubits in

length, which, if they were allowed to trail on the ground, would

be bruised and fall into sores. As it is, all the shepherds know

enough of carpentering to make little trucks for their sheep's

tails. The trucks are placed under the tails, each sheep having

one to himself, and the tails are then tied down upon them. The

other kind has a broad tail, which is a cubit across sometimes."

Canon G. Rawlinson, in his edition of Herodotus, has the

following note on this subject (II., p. 500)

" Sheep of this character have acquired among our writers the

name of Cape Sheep, from the fact that they are the species chiefly

affected by our settlers at the Cape of Good Hope. They are

common in Africa and throughout the East, being found not

only in Arabia, but in Persia, Syria, Affghanistan, Egypt, Barbary,

and even Asia Minor. A recent traveller, writing from Smyrna,

says : ' The sheep:of the country are the Cape sheep, having a

kind of apron tail, entirely of rich marrowy fat, extending to

the width of their hind quarters, and frequently trailing on the