plains of Asiatic Scythia? And how did this tiny partnership of the sea floor become in turn a phoenix-like creature of the air and the grisly Yedua, man-monster of Talmudic legend? The process illustrates the part that travel tale, the carrying of confused reports from place to place, has in creating myth. Though the fable grew up in the Roman Orient and reached China only through such reports, the superior historical sense of the Chinese has made their annals the key to its meaning.

The first Chinese record in point, not later than A. D. 220, speaks of a fine cloth in the Roman Orient "said by some to originate from the down of a water sheep." This may be inference from the almost contemporary phrase of Alciphron, the Greek sophist, who calls byssus textiles "woolen stuffs out of the sea." In the sixth century Procopius recites that each of the five hereditary satraps of Armenia had from the Roman emperor a golden-hued cloak made from "wool gathered out of the sea." In an account by the Arab Istakhri, written about A.D. 950, it is said that an animal runs out of the sea and rubs itself against the rocks, "whereupon it deposes a kind of wool of silken texture and golden color." Robes of this, worn by the Ommiad princes at Cordova, were valued at a thousand gold pieces each.

By etymological error and a device of ancient trade, the mollusk, which had already become a water sheep, got itself wings. Pinna, its name, is also the classic Latin word for "feather," an ambiguity which may have confused the Arabs; and the filaments of the shellfish are rather like the plumage of fowls. Byssus weaves were held at so high a price that they were counterfeited in feather fabrics, and to promote their sale the discovery of a wonderful bird was at length announced. The Arab, Kazwini, calls it abu baraquish and pictures it as like the stork; but "every hour its plumage glitters in another color, red, yellow, green and blue." The fabric from its plumage is named "phoenix-feather gold" in a Chinese work of the Mongol period. Skilled artisans, it is related, weave a soft golden brocade from the neck feathers of the phoenix, which in the spring drop to the foot of the mountains. These were probably the feathered headskins of peacocks, which in China are still made into jackets.

When the Annals of the T'ang Dynasty (618-906) were compiled, the water sheep had become a land animal of Syria, or Fu-lin as that country was called. Here is the Chinese account: "There are lambs engendered in the soil. The inhabitants wait till they are going to sprout, then build enclosures around as a preventive measure for wild beasts that might rush in from outside and devour them. The umbilical cord of the lambs is attached to the soil, and when forcibly cut off they will die. The people, donning cuirasses and mounted on horseback, beat drums to frighten them. The lambs shriek from fear and thus their umbilical cord is ruptured. Thereupon they set out in search of water and pasture."

It was part of the tradition of the marine sheep that it yielded its fleece of its own accord, and this was carried over into the later Chinese story that the Scythian or Syrian lamb must itself rupture the umbilical cord, which others could not sever without killing it. The appearance of men in armor to frighten it to this end is elucidated by a passage from the thirteenthcentury Arab traveler, Abul Abbas. After the pinna comes ashore and lets its wool escape, he records, it is pounced upon by large crabs. In the Chinese story, these crabs have become men on horseback and their shells are the cuirasses worn by the horsemen.

A debased version of the same story appears in the Mongol period when a thirteenth-century Chinese traveler describes the "sheep planted on hillocks" in the countries of the western sea. The umbilical cord of a sheep is planted and watered. At the time of the first thunder peals it begins to grow. When matured, the creature is frightened by the sound of wooden instruments and, breaking off the cord that attaches it to the ground, roams about in search of herbage. This was the tale Odoric and Maundeville heard; that the lamb was inclosed in a gourd may have been their own invention, or the report of some early attempt to relate it to the cotton pod, which about a generation ago was conjectured to be the basis of the fable.

"Creatures called Lords of the Field are regarded as beasts," says the Talmud. The same creature is also called the Man of the Mountain. "It draws its food out of the soil by means of the umbilical cord; if its navel be cut, it cannot live," says

Simeon a thirteenth-century rabbi. In the detailed portrait by Rabbi Meir the timid vegetable lamb undergoes a wolfish transformation: "There is an animal styled Yedua, with the bones of which witchcraft is practiced. It issues from the earth like the stem of a plant, just as a gourd. In all respects the Yedua has human form in face, body, hands, and feet. No creature can approach within the tether of the stem, for it seizes and kills all. As far as the stem stretches, it devours the herbage all around. Whoever is intent on capturing this animal must not approach it, but tear at the cord until it is ruptured, whereupon the animal soon dies."

Laufer thinks that the Jewish legend is early Christian allegory misunderstood; that the Man of the Mountain is "the lamb that stood on the mount Sion," a symbol of the Church itself the followers of which are attached to the earth by sensual pleasures; and that the mounted horsemen of the Chinese version, who cause the lambs to break their connection with the earth, may be the two hundred thousand horsemen of Revelation that symbolize the Last Judgment.

Gold-guarding Ants

Bits of turquoise, chips of obsidian arrow heads, and fragments of prehistoric jewelry are found in the little heaps of earth which ants bring up from underground on the sites of vanished cities in New Mexico. On the Pajarito plateau antgold is not unknown. Ant-gold is the theme of one of the most circumstantial and puzzling stories told by ancient travelers. Herodotus lays its scene somewhere near Cabul. The Indians of that district send forth men in search of gold into a sandy desert "where live great ants in size somewhat less than dogs, but bigger than foxes." A number of these were caught by hunters and sent to the Persian king. The ants live underground and, "like the Greek ants, which they very much resemble in shape, throw up sand-heaps as they burrow."

There is gold in the sand, but the ants are formidable enemies and fleet in pursuit. So the Indians harness a female camel between two males, and the female is one that has lately dropped a foal. The inroad is timed so that the caravans arrive when

the sun is hottest and the ants are hiding from the heat. Herodotus continues:

"The Indians fill their bags with the sand and ride away at full speed; the ants, however, scenting them, as the Persians say, rush forth in pursuit. Now these animals are so swift, they declare, that there is nothing in the world like them; if it were not, therefore, that the Indians get a start while the ants are mustering, not a single gold-gatherer could escape. During the flight the male camels grow tired and begin to drag; but the females recollect the young which they have left behind, and never flag. Thus, say the Persians, the Indians get most of their gold."

In substance the story is repeated in the letter which Prester John sent to the Pope in the twelfth century. The "emmet valley" also appears in the Arabian Nights. Megasthenes said that the plain tenanted by the monster ants is three thousand stadiæ in circumference and lies eastward in the mountains in the kingdom of the Dardæ. In winter the ants dig holes and pile the auriferous earth in heaps at the pit mouths. Pliny declares the ants are of the color of cats and the size of Egyptian wolves; that they work in winter and are despoiled in summer. "The horns of the Indian ant," he remarks, "fixed up in the temple of Hercules at Erythræ were objects of great wonderment." Nearchus, admiral of Alexander, reports having seen skins of these ants as large as leopard skins. Ctesias speaks in his Persica of a horse-pismire which was fed by the magi and became of such monstrous size that it took two pounds of meat a day to victual it. As late as the sixteenth century there is a story by Busbequius that the Shah of Persia sent one of the Indian ants as a present to Sultan Soliman at Constantinople. Maundeville transfers the whole scene to Taprobane (Ceylon) and varies the incidents: Men do not enter ant-land but send thither mares to which empty vessels are suspended. "It is Pismire nature that they let nothing be empty among them, but anon they fill it, and so they fill those Vessels with Gold." When the foals neigh in the distance their dams return to them with a golden burden.

What were these ants, and whence the fable?

It will be noted that the griffins were cast in a similar rôle

in another Indian gold quest. It may be accepted that goodsized animals, or the skins of animals, were seen in menageries, museums, and temples, and identified with the ant custodians of the Scythian metal. It has been suggested that these were some other burrowing animal-the anteater, or the marmot; but neither is fleet of foot. M. de Weltheim thought the Herodotoan ant might be the corsac, a small Asiatic fox.

Philology has a word to offer. The gold collected on the plains of Little Tibet is popularly known as pippilika, or “ant gold," from the belief that ants bring it up, or bare the veins which carry it. McCrindle asserts that the gold-diggers were neither ants nor other animals, but "Tibetan miners, who, like their descendants of the present day, preferred working their mines in winter when the frozen ground stands well and is not likely to trouble them by falling in." Thus the raid and retreat would be accomplished with the same expedition with which any tribe would make a sudden foray on another tribe equipped with equal ordnance and cavalry. Metaphor still speaks of the miner as a mole or a human ant.

The Questing Beast

In Le Morte d'Arthur, Malory describes a singular animal with an economy of phrase that whets curiosity. Arthur had had a heavy dream of griffins and serpents that devoured his land, and to put it out of his mind he went a-hunting. And he followed a white hart until his horse fell dead under him and his quarry was embushed. "He set him down by a fountain, and there he fell in great thoughts. And as he sat him so, him thought he heard a noise of hounds, to the sum of thirty. And with that the king saw coming toward him the strangest beast that ever he saw or heard of; so the beast went to the well and drank, and the noise was in the beast's belly like unto the questyng of thirty couple hounds; but all the while the beast drank there was no noise in the beast's belly; and therewith the beast departed with a great noise, whereof the king had great marvel."

Followed a knight hight Pellinore, and sought to borrow the king's horse to pursue this animal, and the king would have taken over his quest for a twelvemonth, but he would not. After