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 Stones
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 Geog. 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 Thevenot; 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 be 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 Geog. 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.
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