CURIOUS CREATURES. 21 



western coasts of the Red Sea and Ethiopia. These 

 latter could not have led a particularly happy life, for 

 Herodotus tells us that the " Garamantes hunt the 

 Ethiopian Troglodytes in four horse chariots ; for the 

 Ethiopian Troglodytes are the swiftest of foot of all 

 men of whom we have heard any account given. The 

 Troglodytes feed upon serpents and lizards, and such 

 kind of reptiles ; they speak a language like no other, 

 but screech like bats." 



Pliny, as we have seen, speaks of an adder eating 

 people, whose food enables them to achieve extra- 

 ordinary longevity, and Mandeville tells us that " From 

 this yle, men go to an yle that is called Tracota, where 

 all men are as beastes, & not reasonable, they dwell 

 in caves, for they have not wyt to make them houses 

 they eate adders, and they speake not, but they make 

 such a noyse as adders doe one to another, and they 

 make no force of ryches, but of a stone that hath forty 

 colours, and it is called Traconyt after that yle, they 

 know not the vertue thereof, but they covete it for the 

 great fayreness." 



This stone was probably some kind of agate. It 

 could not possibly have been a topaz, as some have 

 thought, as the context from Pliny will show. "Topazos 

 is a stone that is still held in very high estimation for 

 its green tints ; indeed, when first it was discovered, 

 it was preferred to every other kind of precious stone. 

 It so happened that some Troglodytic pirates, suffering 

 from tempest and hunger, having landed upon an island 

 off the coast of Arabia, known as Cytis, when digging 

 there for roots and grass, discovered this precious 

 stone ; such, at least, is the opinion expressed by 

 Archelaiis. Juba says that there is an island in the 



