48 THE SECOND VOYAGE OF

fell before me, and I found no one. So I won-
dered thereat extremely; and I remembered a
story that I had heard long before from certain
of the merchants and travellers, and persons in
the habit of journeying about,—that in the moun-
tains of the diamonds are experienced great
terrors, and that no one can gain access to the
diamonds, but that the merchants who import
them know a stratagem by means of which to
obtain them; that they take a sheep, and
slaughter it, and skin it, and cut up its flesh,
which they throw down from the mountain to the
bottom of the valley; so, descending fresh and
moist, some of these stones stick to it. Then the
merchants leave it until midday, and birds of the
large kind of vulture and the aquiline vulture de-
scend to that meat, and, taking it in their talons,
fly up to the top of the mountain; whereupon the
merchants come to them, and cry out at them,
and they fly away from the meat. The merchants
then advance to that meat, and take from it the
stones sticking to it; after which they leave the
meat for the birds and the wild beasts, and carry
the stones to their countries. And no one can
procure the diamonds but by means of this strata-
gem. Therefore when I beheld that slaughtered
animal, and remembered this story, I arose and