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FIRE IN THE EARTH
inhabited by deadly serpents. But Dr. Julius Ruska, in The Monographs of AI-Kazwini, says that a different tale was related by this Arabian in the ninth century a.d. The Kazwini monograph, as presumably translated by Dr. Ruska, presents this remarkable story:
Aristotle says that no one except Alexander ever reached the place where the diamond is produced. This is a Valley, connected with the land Hind. The glance cannot penetrate to its greatest depths and serpents are found there, the like of which no man hath seen, and upon which no man can gaze upon without dying. However, this power endures only as long as the serpents live, for when they die the power leaves them. In this place summer reigns for six months and winter for the same length of time.
Now, Alexander ordered that an iron mirror should be brought and placed at the spot where the serpents dwelt. When the ser­pents approached their glance fell upon their own image in the mirror, and this caused their death. Hereupon Alexander wished to bring out the diamonds from the valley, but no one was willing to undertake the descent. Alexander therefore sought counsel of the wise men, and they told him to throw down a piece of flesh into the valley. This he did, the diamond became attached to the flesh and the birds of the air seized the flesh and bore it up out of the valley. Then Alexander ordered his people to pursue the birds and pick up what fell from the flesh.
In this connection, Teifashi, in Sinbad the Sailor, says that finest corundum gems were washed down the streams that flowed from Adam's Peak, on the Island of Ceylon. Eagles built nests atop the mountain. Gem seekers put large pieces of flesh at the foot of the mountain; the eagles pounced on them and bore them to their nests. Obliged to light from time to time on the way up, the eagles tem­porarily dropped the food, when the corundum became at­tached to the flesh. When the eagles resumed their flight,. the minerals dropped from the flesh and rolled down the
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