Fr. Jordanus also says:  “In this India Tertia (Eastern Africa) are certain birds which are called Roc, so big that they easily carry an elephant up into the air.  I have seen a certain person who said that he had seen one of those birds, one wing only of which stretched to a length of 80 palms” (p. 42).

The Japanese Encyclopaedia states that in the country of the Tsengsz’ (Zinjis) in the South-West Ocean, there is a bird called pheng, which in its flight eclipses the sun.  It can swallow a camel; and its quills are used for water-casks.  This was probably got from the Arabs. (J.  As., ser. 2, tom. xii. 235-236.)

I should note that the Geog.  Text in the first passage where the feathers are spoken of says:  “e ce qe je en vi voz dirai en autre leu, por ce qe il convient ensi faire a nostre livre,”—­“that which I have seen of them I will tell you elsewhere, as it suits the arrangement of our book.”  No such other detail is found in that text, but we have in Ramusio this passage about the quill brought to the Great Kaan, and I suspect that the phrase, “as I have heard,” is an interpolation, and that Polo is here telling ce qe il en vit.  What are we to make of the story?  I have sometimes thought that possibly some vegetable production, such as a great frond of the Ravenala, may have been cooked to pass as a Rukh’s quill. [See App. L.]

NOTE 7.—­The giraffes are an error.  The Eng.  Cyc. says that wild asses and zebras (?) do exist in Madagascar, but I cannot trace authority for this.

The great boar’s teeth were indubitably hippopotamus-teeth, which form a considerable article of export from Zanzibar[8] (not Madagascar).  Burton speaks of their reaching 12 lbs in weight.  And Cosmas tells us:  “The hippopotamus I have not seen indeed, but I had some great teeth of his that weighed thirteen pounds, which I sold here (in Alexandria).  And I have seen many such teeth in Ethiopia and in Egypt.” (See J.R.G.S. XXIX. 444; Cathay, p. clxxv.)

[1] Bretschneider, On the knowledge possessed by the Ancient Chinese of
    the Arabs, etc.  London, 1871, p. 21.

[2] Mas’udi speaks of an island Kanbalu, well cultivated and populous,
    one or two days from the Zinj coast, and the object of voyages from
    Oman, from which it was about 500 parasangs distant.  It was conquered
    by the Arabs, who captured the whole Zinj population of the island,
    about the beginning of the Abasside Dynasty (circa A.D. 750).  Barbier
    de Meynard thinks this may be Madagascar.  I suspect it rather to be
    Pemba, (See Prairies d’Or, I. 205, 232, and III. 31.)

[3] “De la grandeza de una bota d’anfora.”  The lowest estimate that I
    find of the Venetian anfora makes it equal to about 108 imperial
    gallons, a little less than the English butt.  This seems intended.  The
    ancient amphora would be more reasonable, being only 5.66 gallons.