of this bird, under its Hindu name of _Garuda_, so big that it could fly
away with an elephant.[7] Kazwini also says that the 'Angka carries off
an elephant as a hawk flies off with a mouse; his flight is like the loud
thunder. Whilom he dwelt near the haunts of men, and wrought them great
mischief. But once on a time it had carried off a bride in her bridal
array, and Hamd Allah, the Prophet of those days, invoked a curse upon the
bird. Wherefore the Lord banished it to an inaccessible Island in the
Encircling Ocean.

The Simurgh or 'Angka, dwelling behind veils of Light and Darkness on the
inaccessible summits of Caucasus, is in Persian mysticism an emblem of the
Almighty.

In Northern Siberia the people have a firm belief in the former existence
of birds of colossal size, suggested apparently by the fossil bones of
great pachyderms which are so abundant there. And the compressed
sabre-like horns of _Rhinoceros tichorinus_ are constantly called, even by
Russian merchants, _birds' claws_. Some of the native tribes fancy the
vaulted skull of the same rhinoceros to be the bird's head, and the
leg-bones of other pachyderms to be its quills; and they relate that their
forefathers used to fight wonderful battles with this bird. Erman
ingeniously suggests that the Herodotean story of the Gryphons, _from under
which_ the Arimaspians drew their gold, grew out of the legends about these
fossils.

I may add that the name of our _rook_ in chess is taken from that of this
same bird; though first perverted from (Sansk.) _rath_, a chariot.

Some Eastern authors make the _Rukh_ an enormous beast instead of a bird.
(See _J.R.A.S._ XIII. 64, and _Elliot_, II. 203.) A Spanish author of
the 16th century seems to take the same view of the Gryphon, but he is
prudently vague in describing it, which he does among the animals of
Africa: "The _Grifo which some call_ CAMELLO PARDAL ... is called by the
Arabs _Yfrit_(!), and is made just in that fashion in which we see it
painted in pictures." (_Marmol, Descripcion General de Africa_, Granada,
1573, I. f. 30.) The _Zorafa_ is described as a different beast, which it
certainly is!

(_Bochart, Hierozoica_, II. 852 seqq.; _Mas'udi_, IV. 16; _Mem. dell'
Acad. dell' Instit. di Bologna_, III. 174 seqq., V. 112 seqq.; _Zurla_
on _Fra Mauro_, p. 62; _Lane's Arabian Nights_, Notes on Sindbad; _Benj.
of Tudela_, p. 117; _De Varia Fortuna Ernesti Bavariae Ducis_, in
_Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum_ of Ma