FABLE AND FOLKLORE 201 



SinbacTs purpose was to get himself carried away to 

 some better place, but when, next morning, the roc did 

 bear him aloft and afar, and finally alighted, the sailor 

 found himself in a horrid desert. After many further 

 adventures and voyages Sinbad revisits his island yet 

 does not recognize it until the men with whom he is stroll- 

 ing bade him look at a great dome. Not knowing what 

 it was they broke it open with stones, ''whereupon much 

 water ran out of it, and the young roc appeared within; 

 so they pulled it forth of the shell and killed it, and took 

 of it great store of meat." Dreadful misfortune fol- 

 lowed this inconsiderate act. 



This was a well-known Arabic wonder-tale. The au- 

 thor of one of their popular old books of "marvels," 

 several of which exist, tells almost exactly Sinbad's story 

 as happening to himself, and at least two other Arabic 

 works are said to contain the tale with picturesque varia- 

 tions. In later times the home of the monster was 

 placed in Madagascar. Marco Polo, the adventurous 

 Italian, who in the 13th century wandered overland to 

 China, and whose Travels 89 are a fine mixture of fact 

 and fancy, had a fair idea of where Madagascar was, and 

 recorded much that he was told about it — mostly errone- 

 ous. He relates that the people of that island report 

 "That at a certain season of the year . . . the rukh 

 makes its appearance from the southern region. . . . 

 Persons who have seen this bird assert that when the 

 wings are spread they measure sixteen paces in extent." 

 Marco says that he heard that the agents of the Grand 

 Khan took to him a feather ninety spans long. It is ex- 

 plained in Yule's edition of Polo's Travels that the sup- 

 posed roc's feather was one of the gigantic fronds of the 

 raphia palm "very like a quill in form." 



