n and
chastitie, when they were first seene in the Theatres and triumphes of the
Romanes, how they are taken and tamed, and when they cast their tusks, with
the vse of the same in medicine, who so desireth to know, let him reade
Plinie, in the eight booke of his naturall history. He also writeth in his
twelft booke, that in olde time they made many goodly workes of iuory or
Elephants teeth: as tables, tressels, postes of houses, railes, lattesses
for windowes, images of their gods, and diuers other things of iuory, both
coloured, and vncoloured, and intermixt with sundry kindes of precious
woods, as at this day are made certaine chaires, lutes, and virginals. They
had such plenty thereof in olde time, that (as far as I remember) Iosephus
writeth, that one of the gates of Hierusalem was called Porta Eburnea,
(that is) the Iuory gate. The whitenesse thereof was so much esteemed, that
it was thought to represent the natural fairenesse of mans skinne: insomuch
that such as went about to set foorth (or rather corrupt) naturall beautie
with colours and painting, were reproued by this prouerbe, Ebur atramento
candefacere, that is, To make iuory white with inke. The Poets also
describing the faire necks of beautifull virgins, call them Eburnea colla,
that is, Iuory necks. And to haue said thus much of Elephants and Iuory, it
may suffice.

[Sidenote: The people of Africa.] Now therefore I will speake somewhat of
the people and their maners, and maner of liuing, with an other briefe
description of Africa also. It is to be vnderstood, that the people which
now inhabite the regions of the coast of Guinea, and the midle parts of
Africa, as Libya the inner, and Nubia, with diuers other great and large
regions about the same, were in old time called AEthiopes and Nigritae,
which we now call Moores, Moorens, or Negroes, a people of beastly liuing,
without a God, lawe, religion, or common wealth, and so scorched and vexed
with the heat of the sunne, that in many places they curse it when it
riseth. Of the regions and people about the inner Libya (called Libya
interior) Gemma Phrysius writeth thus.

Libya interior is very large and desolate, in the which are many horrible
wildernesses and mountaines, replenished with diuers kinds of wilde and
monstrous beastes and serpents. First from Muritania or Barbary toward the
South is Getulia, a rough and sauage region, whose inhabitants are wilde
and wandering people. After these follow the peopl