Ewlin, in his book of Travels in Turkey, has recorded a singular tradition of the history of the Flea and its confraternity, as preserved among a sect of Kurds, who dwelt in his time at the foot of Mount Sindshar. “When Noah’s Ark,” says the legend, “sprung a leak by striking against a rock in the vicinity of Mount Sindshar, and Noah despaired altogether of safety, the serpent promised to help him out of his mishap if he would engage to feed him upon human flesh after the deluge had subsided. Noah pledged himself to do so; and the serpent coiling himself up, drove his body into the fracture and stopped the leak. When the pluvious element was appeased, and all were making their way out of the ark, the serpent insisted upon the fulfillment of the pledge he had received; but Noah, by Gabriel’s advice, committed the pledge to the flames, and scattering its ashes in the air, there arose out of them Fleas, Flies, Lice, Bugs, and all such sort of vermin as prey upon human blood, and after this fashion was Noah’s pledge redeemed.”[1019] The Sandwich Islanders have the following tradition in regard to the introduction of Fleas into their country: Many years ago a woman from Waimea went out to a ship to see her lover, and as she was about to return, he gave her a bottle, saying that there was very little valuable property (_waiwai_) contained in it, but that she must not open it, on any account, until she reached the shore. As soon as she gained the beach, she eagerly uncorked the bottle to examine her treasure, but nothing was to be discovered,--the Fleas hopped out, and “they have gone on hopping and biting ever since.”[1020] Our pigmy tormentor, _Pulex irritans_, in the opinion of some, seems to have been regarded as an agreeable rather than a repulsive object. “Dear Miss,” said a lively old lady to a friend of Kirby and Spence (who had the misfortune to be confined to her bed by a broken limb, and was complaining that the Fleas tormented her), “don’t you like _Fleas_? Well, I think they are the prettiest little merry things in the world.--I never saw a dull Flea in all my life.”[1021] Dr. Townson, as mentioned by the above writers, from the encomium which he bestows upon these vigilant little vaulters, as supplying the place of an alarum and driving us from the bed of sloth, should seem to have regarded them with the same happy feelings.[1022]