SCOT AT TOLEDO 63 



and need not their tusks for eating, but only for 

 defence, such as boars, and this is the reason why 

 they have the strength of which we have just 

 spoken. It is the same with the camel, and so 

 we pass to speak of this general truth as it 

 appears with regard to all other means of defence. 

 Hence hath the stag his horn and not the hind ; 

 the ram and not the ewe ; the he-goat and not 

 his female, and fish which eat not flesh have no 

 need of teeth that are sharp.' 



The city where these strange writings were 

 deciphered and translated into Latin, being itself 

 so strange and remote from the ways of modern 

 life, had a certain poetic fitness as the scene 

 where Michael Scot undertook his labours upon 

 the Arabian authors. No passage of all their 

 texts was more bizarre and tortuous than the 

 mass of intricate lanes which formed then, as 

 they form to-day, the thoroughfares of com- 

 munication in Toledo. No hidden jewel of know- 

 ledge and observation could surprise and reward 

 the translator in the midst of his tedious labours 

 with a flash of sudden light and glory more 

 unexpectedly delicious than that felt by the 

 traveller, when, after long wandering in that maze 

 and labyrinth, he finds a wider air; a stronger 

 light beats before him, beckoning, and in a moment 

 he stands in the full sunshine of the plaza mayor, 

 with space to see and light to show the wonders 

 of mind and hand, and all the toil of past ages 

 in the fabric of the great cathedral. 



Such as it now stands, the Cathedral of Toledo 

 had not yet begun to rise above ground when 

 Michael Scot had his residence there, but enough 



