great feet. Up flew the giant bird high into the
sky and Sindbad with it, descending somewhere in India in the Valley
of Diamonds. This bird was afterwards identified as an enormous eagle.

"And I arose and walked in that valley," says Sindbad, "and I beheld
its ground to be composed of diamonds, with which they perforate
minerals and jewels, porcelain, and the onyx, and it is a stone so
hard that neither iron nor rock have any effect upon it. All that valley
was likewise occupied by serpents and venomous snakes."

Here Sindbad found the camphor trees, "under each of which trees a
hundred men might shade themselves." From these trees flowed liquid
camphor. "In this island, too, is a kind of wild beast, called
rhinoceros--it is a huge beast with a single horn, thick, in the middle
of its head, and it lifteth the great elephant upon its horn."

Thus, after collecting heaps of diamonds, Sindbad returned to
Bagdad--a rich man.

[Illustration: SINDBAD'S GIANT ROC. From an Oriental miniature
painting.]

Again his soul yearns for travel. This time he starts for China, but
his ship is driven out of its course and cast on the Island of Apes,
probably Sumatra. These apes, "the most hideous of beasts, covered
with hair like black felt," surrounded the ship. They climbed up the
cables and severed them with their teeth to Sindbad's great alarm.
He escaped to the neighbouring islands known as the Clove Islands,
and again reached Bagdad safely. Again and yet again he starts forth
on fresh adventures. Now he is sailing on the seas beyond Ceylon, now
his ship is being pursued by a giant roc whose young have been killed
and eaten by Sindbad. Sindbad as usual escapes upon a plank, and sails
to an island, where he meets the "Old Man of the Sea," probably a huge
ape from Borneo. On he passed to the "Island of Apes," where, every
night, the people who reside in it go forth from the doors of the city
that open upon the sea in their fear of the apes lest they should come
down upon them in the night from the mountains. After this we find
Sindbad trading in pepper on the Coromandel coast of modern India and
discovering a wealth of pearls by the seashore of Ceylon. But at last
he grew tired of seafaring, which was never congenial to Arabs.

"Hateful was the dark blue sky,
Vaulted o'er the dark blue sea;
Sore task to heart, worn out by many wars;
And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot stars."

So he leaves private adve