IN NORTHERN MISTS 



trees, and make their houses in their interiors and dwell in them. They support 

 themselves on acorns and chestnuts. Finally there is found there a large num- 

 ber of the animal called beaver; but it is smaller than the beaver [that comes] 

 from the mouth of Russia [i.e., no doubt, from the mouths of the Russian 

 rivers]. 



" In the Dark Sea [i.e., the outer encircling ocean] there are a number of 

 desert islands. There are, however, two which bear the name of the Islands of 

 the Heathen Amazons. The western one is inhabited solely by men; there is 

 no woman on it. The other is inhabited solely by women, and there is no man 

 among them. Every year at the coming of spring the men travel in boats to 

 the other isle, live with the women, pass a month or thereabouts there, and then 

 return to their own island, where they remain until the next year, when each 

 one goes to find his woman again, and thus it is every year. This custom is 

 well known and established. The nearest point opposite to these islands is 

 the town of Anho (?). One can also go thither from Qalmar and from Dag- 

 wada [Dago?], but the approach is difficult, and it is seldom that anyone ar- 

 rives there, on account of the frequency of fog and the deep darkness that pre- 

 vails on this sea." 



Edrisi says that there are many inhabited and uninhabited 

 islands in the Dark Sea to the west of Africa and Europe, indeed 

 according to Ptolemy " this ocean contained 27,000 islands." 

 He mentions some of them. There is an island called " Sara," 

 near the Dark Sea. 



"It is related that Du'1-Qarnain [Alexander the Great?] landed there be- 

 fore the deep darkness had covered the surface of the sea, and spent a night 

 there, and that the inhabitants of the island attacked him and his companions 

 with stones and wounded many of them [cf. the Skraelings' attack in Eric the 

 Red's Saga, and the island of smiths in the " Navigatio Brandani," Vol. I, p. 

 328; Vol. II, p. 9]. Another island in the same sea is called the Isle of Female 

 Devils [" gazirat as-sa-ali"], whose inhabitants resemble women more than 

 men; their eye-teeth protrude, their eyes flash like lightning, their cheeks are 

 like burnt wood; they speak an incomprehensible language and wage war with 

 the monsters of the ocean. . . ." 



He also mentions the Isle of Illusion (" gazirat khusran " = 

 " Villuland," cf. Vol. I, p. 377), of great extent, inhabited by men 

 of brown color, small stature, and with long beards reaching to 

 their knees; they have a large (broad) ^ face and long ears (cf. 

 the ideas of the Pygmies, dwarfs, underground people and 



1 This may be the same idea that we meet with again in the description of 

 the Skraelings in Eric the Red's Saga, where we are told that they were 

 " breiSir i kinnum." 

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