k,--such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline."
--Shakespeare. (_The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice_.)

[8] The date of the first English edition of Sir John Mandeville's book
of travels was 1499. According to his own account he discovered this
and other wonders in the kingdom of Ethiopia. The book was widely
read, very popular in several languages, and was one of the earliest
printed books, being published in Germany about 1475. Recent
investigations have shown that almost the whole of the matter was
cribbed from other authors, and that as a genuine explorer, Sir John
Mandeville was the Dr. Frederick Cook of his age.

[9] Cayley's _Life of Raleigh_.

[10] Translation of J. A. Van Heuvel in his "_El Dorado_. Being a
Narrative of the Circumstances which gave rise to reports in the
Sixteenth Century of the Existence of a Rich and Splendid City in South
America." (1844.)

CHAPTER XIV

THE WIZARDRY OF THE DIVINING ROD

Washington Irving was so thoroughly versed in the lore of buried
treasure that the necromancy of the divining rod, as a potent aid to
this kind of industry, had received his studious attention. For many
centuries, the magic wand of hazel, or various other woods, has been
used, and implicitly believed in, as a guide to the whereabouts of
secrets hidden underground, whether of running water, veins of metal,
or buried treasure. There is nothing far-fetched, or contrary to the
fact, in the lively picture of Dr. Knipperhausen, that experienced
magician, who helped Wolfert Webber seek the treasure concealed by
pirates on the Manhattan Island of the Knickerbocker Dutch of the
"Tales of a Traveler."

"He had passed some years of his youth among the Harz mountains of
Germany, and had derived much valuable instruction from the miners,
touching the mode of seeking treasure buried in the earth. He had
prosecuted his studies also under a traveling sage who united the
mysteries of medicine with magic and legerdemain. His mind therefore
had become stored with all kinds of mystic lore; he had dabbled a
little in astrology, alchemy, divination; knew how to detect stolen
money, and to tell where springs of water lay hidden; in a word, by the
dark nature of his knowledge he had acquired the name of the
High-German-Doctor, which is