Now among these mountains there are certain great and deep valleys, to the bottom of which there is no access.  Wherefore the men who go in search of the diamonds take with them pieces of flesh, as lean as they can get, and these they cast into the bottom of a valley.  Now there are numbers of white eagles that haunt those mountains and feed upon the serpents.  When the eagles see the meat thrown down they pounce upon it and carry it up to some rocky hill-top where they begin to rend it.  But there are men on the watch, and as soon as they see that the eagles have settled they raise a loud shouting to drive them away.  And when the eagles are thus frightened away the men recover the pieces of meat, and find them full of diamonds which have stuck to the meat down in the bottom.  For the abundance of diamonds down there in the depths of the valleys is astonishing, but nobody can get down; and if one could, it would be only to be incontinently devoured by the serpents which are so rife there.

There is also another way of getting the diamonds.  The people go to the nests of those white eagles, of which there are many, and in their droppings they find plenty of diamonds which the birds have swallowed in devouring the meat that was cast into the valleys.  And, when the eagles themselves are taken, diamonds are found in their stomachs.

So now I have told you three different ways in which these stones are found.  No other country but this kingdom of Mutfili produces them, but there they are found both abundantly and of large size.  Those that are brought to our part of the world are only the refuse, as it were, of the finer and larger stones.  For the flower of the diamonds and other large gems, as well as the largest pearls, are all carried to the Great Kaan and other Kings and Princes of those regions; in truth they possess all the great treasures of the world.[NOTE 2]

In this kingdom also are made the best and most delicate buckrams, and those of highest price; in sooth they look like tissue of spider’s web!  There is no King nor Queen in the world but might be glad to wear them. [NOTE 3] The people have also the largest sheep in the world, and great abundance of all the necessaries of life.

There is now no more to say; so I will next tell you about a province called Lar from which the Abraiaman come.

NOTE 1.—­There is no doubt that the kingdom here spoken of is that of TELINGANA (Tiling of the Mahomedan writers), then ruled by the Kakateya or Ganapati dynasty reigning at Warangol, north-east of Hyderabad.  But Marco seems to give the kingdom the name of that place in it which was visited by himself or his informants.  MUTFILI is, with the usual Arab modification (e.g.  Perlec, Ferlec—­Pattan, Faitan), a port called MOTUPALLE, in the Gantur district of the Madras Presidency, about 170 miles north of Fort St. George.  Though it has dropt out of most of our modern maps it still exists, and a notice of