and healing images, 201-2, 252, 265, 272, 293; vanishing countries, cities, and people, 67, 294, 306.
There is little medical information. Snake-skins were used in Zanzibar to cure consumption, 36. The aloe of Socotra is probably the drug Alexander Avas advised by Aristotle to look for in that island as the "grand remedy which alone could complete the medicine called (
Greek characters)," 65. A search for healing waters to cure their chief is said to have been the original motive for the invasion of Egypt by the Shepherds, 331. Numerous mythical beings are described, they form a special and lengthy subject.
The dates and places are mostly quite unreliable, depending on tradition which readily transfers what belongs to one age or country to another, or on travellers' tales. The statements are valuable at all events as secondary evidence, or as showing that such usages or beliefs probably existed.
The translator points out the writer's dependence on the Bible, the Koran, and on Indian, Persian, Rabbinic, and Coptic legends, with the consequent absence of real historic knowledge. There is far less learning than is shown by other writers of the same or earlier date, inaccurate and credulous as they themselves were. Little more is told of the ancient Egyptian religion than that it was a worship of the heavenly bodies, especially of the sun. The great personal gods are not named, unless Kronos-Saturn be the equivalent of Sibou. The monotheism of certain kings is described approvingly, for instance Malik, who concealed his creed, and not only refrained from interfering with the popular religion, but outwardly conformed to it. However this may be as history, it is fair to infer from the general tone of the book that the king's liberal views were also those of the intellectual leaders of Egypt in the writer's time. A habit of tolerant religious speculation would be consistent in the country where neoplatonism arose.
This second collection of tales of the Australian aborigines is of he same character as the former by Mrs. Parker, reviewed in these pages two years ago (vol. viii. p. 56). But in the present volume
