Chau Ju-kwa, at Chung-li (Somali Coast), has (p. 131): “Every year there are driven on the coast a great many dead fish measuring two hundred feet in length and twenty feet through the body. The people do not eat the flesh of these fish, but they cut out their brains, marrow, and eyes, from which they get oil, often as much as three hundred odd töng (from a single fish). They mix this oil with lime to caulk their boats, and use it also in lamps. The poor people use the ribs of these fish to make rafters, the backbones for door leaves, and they cut off vertebræ8 to make mortars with.”
SCOTRA.
XXXII., [p. 407.] “And you must know that in this island there are the best enchanters in the world. It is true that their Archbishop forbids the practice to the best of his ability; but ’tis all to no purpose, for they insist that their forefathers followed it, and so must they also. I will give you a sample of their enchantments. Thus, if a ship be sailing past with a fair wind and a strong, they will raise a contrary wind and compel her to turn back. In fact they make the wind blow as they list, and produce great tempests and disasters; and other such sorceries they perform, which it will be better to say nothing about in our Book.”
Speaking of Chung-li (Somali Coast), Chau Ju-kwa writes, p. 130: “There are many sorcerers among them who are able to change themselves into birds, beasts, or aquatic animals, and by these means keep the ignorant people in a state of terror. If some of them in trading with some foreign ship have a quarrel, the sorcerers pronounce a charm over the ship, so that it can neither go forward nor backward, and they only release the ship when it has settled the dispute. The government has formally forbidden this practice.”
Hirth and Rockhill add, p. 132: “Friar Joanno dos Santos (A.D. 1597) says: ‘In the Ile of Zanzibar dwelt one Chande, a great sorcerer, which caused his Pangayo, which the Factor had taken against his will, to stand still as it were in defiance of the Winde, till the Factor had satisfied him, and then to fly forth the River after her fellowes at his words. He made that a Portugall which had angered him, could never open his mouth to speake, but a Cocke crowed in his belly, till he had reconciled himselfe: with other like sorceries.’” See Purchas, His Pilgrimes, IX., 254.
“Not twenty years ago, Theo. Bent found that the Somalis were afraid of the witchcraft of the natives of Socotra. Theo. Bent, Southern Arabia, p. 361.”
XXXIII., [p. 412.] Speaking of the bird Ruc at Madeigascar, Marco Polo says: “It is so strong that it will seize an elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air, and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces; having so killed him the bird gryphon swoops down on him and eats him at leisure.”
Chau Ju-kwa writing of K’un lun ts’öng’ ki, on the coast of Africa, writes, p. 149: “This country is in the sea to the south-west. It is adjacent to a large island. There are usually (there, i.e., on the great island) great p’öng birds which so mask the sun in their flight that the shade on the sundial is shifted. If the great p’öng finds a wild camel it swallows it, and if one should chance to find a p’öng’s feather, he can make a water-butt of it, after cutting off the hollow quill.”
XXXIII., [p. 421.]