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.
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