The Sun himself had seem’d
A speck of darkness there.—XIX. p. 82.
“There the sun shines not, nor the moon and stars: these lightnings flash not in that place: how should even fire blaze there? God irradiates all this bright substance, and by its effulgence the universe is enlightened.”—From the Yajurveda. Asiat. Res.
Hæc ait, et sese radiorum nocte suorum Claudit inaccessum.——Carrara.
Whose cradles from some tree
Unnatural hands suspended.—XXI. p. 92.
I heard a voice crying out under my window; I looked out, and saw a poor young girl lamenting the unhappy case of her sister. On asking what was the matter, the reply was, Boot Laggeeosa, a demon has seized her. These unhappy people say Boot Laggeeosa, if a child newly born will not suck; and they expose it to death in a basket, hung on the branch of a tree. One day, as Mr. Thomas and I were riding out, we saw a basket hung in a tree, in which an infant had been exposed, the skull of which remained, the rest having been devoured by ants.—Periodical Accounts of the Baptist Missionaries.
That strange Indian Bird.—XXI. p. 93.
The Chatookee. They say it never drinks at the streams below, but, opening its bill when it rains, it catches the drops as they fall from the clouds.—Periodical Accounts of the Baptist Missionaries, vol. ii. p. 309.
The footless fowl of Heaven.—XXI. p. 93.
There is a bird that falls down out of the air dead, and is found sometimes in the Molucco Islands, that has no feet at all. The bigness of her body and bill, as likewise the form of them, is much the same as a swallow’s; but the spreading out of her wings and tail has no less compass than an eagle’s. She lives and breeds in the air, comes not near the earth but for her burial, for the largeness and lightness of her wings and tail sustain her without lassitude. And the laying of her eggs, and breeding of her young, is upon the back of the male, which is made hollow, as also the breast of the female, for the more easy incubation. Also two strings, like two shoemaker’s ends, come from the hinder parts of the male, wherewith it is conceived that he is fastened closer to the female, while she hatches her eggs on the hollow of his back. The dew of heaven is appointed her for food, her region being too far removed from the approach of flies and such like insects.
This is the entire story and philosophy of this miraculous bird in Cardan, who professes himself to have seen it no less than thrice, and to have described it accordingly. The contrivances whereof, if the matter were certainly true, are as evident arguments of a Divine Providence, as that copper-ring, with the Greek[36] inscription upon it, was an undeniable monument of the artifice and finger of man.