THE GIANT ARGUS. 
349 
" Spectre of Argus, thou, the earth-bom one — 
Ah, keep him off, O Earth ! 
I fear to look upon that herdsman dread, 
Him with ten thousand eyes. 
Ah, lo ! he cometh with his crafty look, 
Whom Earth refuses even dead to hold." 
Afterwards she relates the story of her woes to the Chorus :— 
" At last a clear word came to Inachos, 
Charging him plainly, and commanding him 
To thrust me from my country and my home 
And he, by Loxias' oracles induced. 
Thrust me, against his will, against mine too, 
And drove me from my home 
And then forthwith my face and mind were changed ; 
And horned as ye see me, stung to the quick 
By biting gadfly, I with maddened leap 
Rushed to Kerchneia's fair and limpid stream, 
And fount of Luna. And a giant herdsman, 
Argus, full rough of temper, followed me. 
With many an eye beholding, on my track ; 
And him a sudden and unlooked-for doom 
Deprived of life." 
The giant Argus figures largely in Malay poetry; and the Malays 
affirm that he performs the galangane ; that is, dances in an access 
of pride and vanity like the peacock. The Malays of Sumatra call 
him kuwan ; the Bangerezi, who inhabit the southern parts of Borneo, 
hamwe. Rosenberg describes him, on the authority of the natives, 
as a polygamous bird ; and asserts that he lives on insects, snails, 
worms, buds, and seeds. Marsden says : He is, perhaps, the most 
beautiful of all birds. When he has been captured in the forest, it is 
very difficult to keep him alive. He hates the light. If kept in a 
dark corner, he is lively and joyous, and makes his cry heard all 
around. His name, Jcu-an, is an onomatopoeia of it, and more plaintive 
and less penetrating than that of the peacock. If brought into 
the glare of day, he remains motionless. 
There let us leave him, and pass on to another of the Phasianidae, 
— the Lophophores, or pheasant birds, which confine their habitat to 
the mountains of South-eastern Asia. The principal species is the 
monaul or Impeyan pheasant; the latter name referring to Lady 
Impey, who introduced it into Europe. 
