"How haply slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff,
Deeming some island, oft as seamen tell,
With fixed anchor in his scally rind
Moors by his side."
[52] Mr. More, in his account of these voyages, says that Marco Polo, in his Travels, and Father Martini, in his History of China, speak of this bird, called ruch, and say it will take up an elephant and a rhinoceros. It is as fabulous as the dodo, the salamander, or the phoenix.
[53] Captain Marryat, in his Bushboys, gives an account of this contest, in which the rhinoceros came off victorious. He also gives, in the same amusing volume, an account of a bird taking up a serpent into the air. The scene of the adventures of the Bushboys is South Africa.
[54] The youthful student will find in these references passages which will remind in some degree of the incidents mentioned in these tales: Homer's Odyssey, book iv, lines 350-410; Iliad, book xx, line 220; book xiii, lines 20-35; Virgil, Aeneid, iii, lines 356-542.
[55] Sandalwood. The wood of a low tree, the Santalum Album, resembling the privet, and growing on the coast of Malabar, in the Indian Archipelago, etc. The hard yellow wood in the center of the old sandal tree is highly esteemed for its fragrant perfume and is much used for cabinetwork, etc.
[56] The hippopotamus.
[57] The giraffe.
[58] "Aristomenes, the Messenian general, thus escaped from a cave. He perceived a fox near him gnawing a dead body; with one hand he caught it by the hind leg, and with the other held its jaws, when it attempted to bite him. Following, as well as he could, his struggling guide to the narrow crevice at which he entered, he there let him go, and soon forced a passage through it to the welcome face of day."—Hole, 141. Sancho's escape from the pit into which he tumbled with Daffle is somewhat similar.
[59] Mr. Marsden, in his notes to his translation of Marco Polo's Voyages, supposes the roc to be a description of the albatross or condor, under greatly exaggerated terms.
[60] Coco palms bear their fruit at the top.