40 



CHAPTER IV. 



AFRICA, of all the quarters of the old world, is the 

 country of wonders. Take up a steady-going book 

 of travels, or the Arabian Nights, what region like 

 Africa ? Open a volume of natural history, the older 

 the better, and the African marvellous forms throw 

 all the others into shade. Did not the phoenix live 

 there, and make its appearance among the Heliopolitans 

 only once in five hundred years ? He came, on the 

 death of his sire, in shape and size like an eagle, with 

 his glorious parti-coloured wings of golden hue set off 

 with red, dutifully bearing from Arabia the body of his 

 father to his burial-place in the temple of the sun, 

 and there piously deposited the paternal corpse in the 

 tomb. 



But how did the phoenix carry him to the grave — as 

 the kite carried Cock Robin, I suppose ? 



No, madam ; he brought his revered, deceased parent 

 in this manner. He first formed a large egg of myrrh, 

 and then having by trial ascertained that he could carry 

 it, he hollowed out the artificial egg, put his parent into 

 it, stopped up the hole through which he had introduced 

 the body with more myrrh, so that the weight was the 

 same as the solid egg of myrrh, and performed the 

 funeral in Eg3rpt.* 



If you would see the manner of his death, turn to 

 the Portraits d'Oyseaux, Animaux, Serpens, Herhes, 

 Arhres, Hommes et Femmes cVArahie et Egypte, ohservez 

 par P. Belon du Mans -.f and there you will behold ' Le 



* Herodotus, Euterpe, f Paris, 1557. 



