and
the mountains, differing essentially from each other. Philostratus
writes, that by how much the elephants of Lybia exceed in bigness the
horses of Nysea, so much do the elephants of India exceed those of
Lybia, for some of the elephants of India have been seen nine cubits
high; and these are so greatly feared by the others, that they dare not
abide to look upon them. Only the males among the Indian elephants have
tusks; but in Ethiopia and Lybia, both males and females are provided
with them. They are of divers heights, as of 12, 13, or 14 _dodrants_,
the dodrant being a measure of 9 inches; and some say that an elephant
is bigger than three wild oxen or buffaloes. Those of India are black,
or mouse-coloured; but those of Ethiopia or Guinea are brown. The hide
or skin of them all is very hard, and without hair or bristles. Their
ears are two dodrants, or 18 inches in breadth, and their eyes are very
small. Our men saw one drinking at a river in Guinea as they sailed
along the coast. Those who wish to know more of the properties of the
elephant, as of their wonderful docility, of their use in war, of their
chastity and generation, when they were first seen in the triumphs and
amphitheatres of the Romans, how they are taken and tamed, when they
cast their tusks, and of their use in medicine, and many other
particulars, will find all these things described in the eighth book of
Natural History, as written by Pliny. He also says in his twelfth book,
that the ancients made many goodly works of ivory or elephants teeth;
such as tables, tressels or couches, posts of houses, rails, lattices
for windows, idols of their gods, and many other things of ivory, either
coloured or uncoloured, and intermixed with various kinds of precious
woods; in which manner at this day are made chairs, lutes, virginals,
and the like. They had such plenty of it in ancient times, that one of
the gates of Jerusalem was called the ivory gate, as Josephus reports.
The whiteness of ivory was so much admired, that it was anciently
thought to represent the fairness of the human skin; insomuch that those
who endeavoured to improve, or rather to corrupt, the natural beauty by
painting, were said reproachfully, _ebur atramento candefacere_, to
whiten ivory with ink. Poets also, in describing the fair necks of
beautiful virgins, call them _eburnea colla_, or ivory necks. Thus much
may suffice of elephants and ivory, and I shall now say somewhat of the
peopl