Ethiopia was a land of marvels, the focus and centre of all the wonders of Africa. It was held that the strange and monstrous forms there produced arose from “the agility of the fiery heat to frame bodies and to carve them into strange shapes.” It was reported by some that far within the interior of the country were to be found whole nations of noseless men, and that others were without the upper lip, while others again were without speech, and only made communication by signs. It is easy to see how the notion of a noseless people originated, since the negro physiognomy often has the nose a very flattened feature, while the people who could only make signs to the strangers that came amongst them evidently did so from a full realization of the hopelessness of speech. The negro lip is ordinarily a very conspicuous feature, so that the lipless people were a legitimate object of wonder. In one district all the four-footed beasts were without ears, even the elephants, the old author is careful to add, being in the same plight. Our readers will doubtless remember that the ears of the African elephant, outside this district, are of enormous size, and form one marked difference between him and his Asiatic brother. Elsewhere in this wondrous land we hear of men having three and four eyes, but the old traveller carefully explains that this tale merely arose—“not because they are thus furnished, but because they are excellent archers.” The “because” is not very evident, as the keenness and excellence of sight that would be of such value to an archer is scarcely to be obtained by the multiplication of eyes: it is quality rather than quantity that is needed here, and the old writer is careful to add, “thus much must I advertise my readers, that I will not pawn my credit for many things that I shall deliver.” What he saw for himself he could vouch for, and these things were themselves so strange that he could scarcely refuse to credit some of the wonders that were by hearsay, but he very justly declines responsibility. Another old writer, Burton, in the same way cautiously evades fathering all the wonderful tales he tells of the men who live by scent alone,[17] of those who by eating the heart and liver of a dragon attain to the understanding of the language of beasts, of those who have the power of making themselves “invisible, and so forth,” “but of these I doubt not but that the understanding reader knoweth how to judge and what to believe.”