  1 Supposed to be Sumatra. 2 ??? ??e?????, meaning the limit or boundary of the earth. 3 The Gryphon must not be confounded with the Griffin, as will be seen later on. 4 The Roman cubit was eighteen inches, so that these men were nearly eight feet high. 5 From ?p? t?? ???? ?????, “from having but one leg.” 6 From S??ap???, “making a shadow with his foot.” 8 Sparrow footed, from st??????, a sparrow. 9 Probably cotton. 10 Or long livers, from a????, “long,” and ???, “life.” 11 A palm was three inches, so that these men would be eight feet high. 12 From G???t??, one who takes much bodily exercise. 13 Mirage. 14 Other editions read rough hair. 15 In Greek, ??p???, means to guess, divine, or conjecture. 16 Burn. 17 Breast. 18 At war. 19 From t?e??, three, sp??a??, spans. 20 Other editions say six or seven years. 21 See his letters dated September 1888, which arrived in England early in April 1889. 22 Ox horns, horn cups. 23 A lake between Macedonia and Thrace. 24 The fishermen of lake Prasias still have lake dwellings as in the time of Herodotus. 25 The most abundant were the oyster, mussel, cockle, and periwinkle. 26 Transactions of the Ethnological Society, 1866, vol. iv., p.34. 27 Thyrsi. 28 The italics are mine.—J.A. 29 From ?ata??p?, “to look downwards.” 30 Spirals. 31 Plaits. 32 Taking the Ducat at 9s. 4½d., it would come to £37,000, but if this were multiplied by three, the lowest computation of the value of money then, and now, it would be worth considerably over £100,000. 33 Another name for short—vide Cutty pipe—Cutty sark. 34 “An unlicked cub” is a proverb which has sprung from this fable. Aristotle was right when he said that bears when newly born were without hair, and blind, but wrong in continuing “its legs, and almost all its parts, are without joints.” Still, the popular idea that bears licked their young into shape, lasted till very modern times, and still survives in the proverb quoted. Shakespeare mentions it in 3 Henry VI. iii. 2:— “Like to Chaos, or an unlick’d bear whelp, That carries no impression like the dam.” And Chester, in his Love’s Martyr, speaking of the Bear, says— “Brings forth at first a thing that’s indigest, A lump of flesh without all fashion, Which she, by often licking brings to rest, Making a formal body, good and sound. Which often in this iland we have found.” 35 This use of bear’s grease is about 1800 years old. 36 From ?e??t?f????, the Lion Killer. 37 Written to prove that this plant was the Cotton-plant. 38 Melons. 39 Wonder at. 40 Alluding to the Catoblepon (see ante, p.85), and its power of killing animals and human beings with its eye. This power does not seem confined to animals, for Sir John Mandeville says:—“An other yle there is northward where there are many evill and fell women, and they have precious stones in their eies, and they have such kinde yt if they behold any man with wrath, they sley them of the beholding, as the Basalisk doeth.” |
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