284 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [VOL. 5° 



nation, and extant in polyglot translations, there is no such written 

 testimony for the legend of Dido in any Asiatic literature to which, 

 as the starting-point, all the current versions could be reduced. 

 Thus we are led to presume, especially because of the introduction 

 of Europeans into the plot, that its occurrence in southern and east- 

 ern Asia is due to the oral stories of European sailors and mer- 

 chants, who had probably imbibed it during their school-days, while 

 its propagation in Siberia seems to have emanated from the mouths 

 of vagrant Russian adventurers. 



It may not be without interest to American readers to repeat here 

 some American parallels of the Dido story once discussed by the 

 great linguist. Pott. In his essay, "Etymologische Legenden bei den 

 Alten" (in the Journal Philologus, 1863, Supplementary vol. 11, 

 p. 258), he quotes from a work by Kottenkamp (Die ersten Ameri- 

 kaner im Westen, p. 382) the following: "The Indian reminded 

 us of the fraudulent procedure which had once been practised from 

 Pennsylvania against the Delawares. The whites had purchased a 

 plot of land not larger than they would be able to encompass with a 

 cowhide, and the Delawares had been infatuated by the appearance 

 of the small area. The whites, however, cut up the hide into thin 

 strips and covered a space a thousand times larger than the deceived 

 Delawares had sold." To this, Pott remarks in parentheses, 

 "Whether a white exploited in such a way the tradition of Dido 

 which he had learned in school, by transforming poetry into prose 

 and serious reality, may remain undecided. This matter, however, 

 has been told by Indians on the occasion of the foundations of 

 various establishments by Europeans. Thus this trick of land 

 acquisition on the part of the Dutch at their first settlement in the 

 State of New York has been related by Iroquois to subsequent trav- 

 elers ; likewise the story of the same swindle served for the provo- 

 cation of the Ohio Indians in those times of which we speak." 



