We gave, in the first edition of this work, a drawing of the great
Aepyornis egg in the British Museum of its true size, as the nearest
approach we could make to an illustration of the Rukh from nature. The
actual contents of this egg will be about 2.35 gallons, which may be
compared with Fra Mauro's anfora! Except in this matter of size, his
story of the ship and the egg may be true.
A passage from Temple's Travels in Peru has been quoted as exhibiting
exaggeration in the description of the condor surpassing anything that can
be laid to Polo's charge here; but that is, in fact, only somewhat heavy
banter directed against our traveller's own narrative. (See Travels in
Various Parts of Peru, 1830, II. 414-417.)
Recently fossil bones have been found in New Zealand, which seem to bring
us a step nearer to the realization of the Rukh. Dr. Haast discovered in a
swamp at Glenmark in the province of Otago, along with remains of the
Dinornis or Moa, some bones (femur, ungual phalanges, and rib) of a
gigantic bird which he pronounces to be a bird of prey, apparently allied
to the Harriers, and calls Harpagornis. He supposes it to have preyed
upon the Moa, and as that fowl is calculated to have been 10 feet and
upwards in height, we are not so very far from the elephant-devouring
Rukh. (See Comptes Rendus, Ac. des Sciences 1872, p. 1782; and Ibis,
October 1872, p. 433.) This discovery may possibly throw a new light on
the traditions of the New Zealanders. For Professor Owen, in first
describing the Dinornis in 1839, mentioned that the natives had a
tradition that the bones belonged to a bird of the eagle kind. (See
Eng. Cyc. Nat. Hist. sub. v. Dinornis.) And Sir Geo. Grey appears to
have read a paper, 23rd October 1872,[4] which was the description by a
Maori of the Hokiol, 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 Ruc 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.[5] The Duke and his comrades, navigating in
some unknown ramification of the Euxine, 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 verbere montem
Quam si diplosas 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 atris
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 mentita cadavera Grifae
Pullis objiciant, a queis facientibus armis
Et cute dissuta, nos, si volet, Ille Deorum
Optimus eripiet."
Which scheme is successfully carried out. The wanderers then make a raft
on which they embark on a river which plunges into a cavern in the heart
of a mountain; and after a time they emerge in the country of Arimaspia
inhabited by the Cyclopes; and so on. The Gryphon story also appears in
the romance of Huon de Bordeaux, as well as in the tale called 'Hasan of
el-Basrah' in Lane's Version of the Arabian Nights.
