SECOND WATCH 7 A. M. PRIME
ELEPHANT BIRD or RUKH – 1700
Aepyornis maximus
Marco Polo – 1298
Travels: Concerning the Isle of Madastar,
Madagascar
The people of this island report that at a certain season of the year, an extraordinary giant bird, which they call a Rukh, makes an appearance in the southern regions. The Grand Khan having heard this extraordinary relation, sent messengers to the island to enquire about these curious matters.
Marco Polo’s account of Madagascar was written in 1294 after his return by ship via the Indies and the coast of Africa from the court of the Great Khan. Arab traders had for centuries before Europeans traded along the coast of Africa and long believed Madagascar to be the home of this legendary giant Rukh or Roc. Anyone familiar with the stories of Sinbad and Aladdin from the Thousand and One Nights was acquainted with this extraordinary bird; but its celebrity is not confined to that work.
“Rukh,” says one Arabic and Persian Dictionary, “is the name of a monstrous bird, which is said to have powers sufficient to carry off a live rhinoceros.” Its existence seems to have been universally credited in the East; and those Arabian navigators with whom Marco Polo conversed did not hesitate to attest to its existence.
However, it was not until 1866 that a complete skeleton of this bird was discovered. And it was not until then that the bird’s size was calculated. It may have not been the size of the mythical Roc, but with a height of ten feet and weight of half a ton, it was certainly the largest and heaviest bird to ever walk the earth.
The name Elephant Bird seems somewhat peculiar, as Madagascar has never had an indigenous elephant population. It does serve to indicate the bird’s huge size, or perhaps is a reference to Sinbad’s legend, wherein it was so large it was capable of carrying off elephants. Its scientific name, Aepyornis, means “tall or lofty bird.”
Sieur Etienne de Flacourt – 1658
History of the Great Island of Madagascar
The Vouron Patra is a giant bird that lives in the country of the Amphrates people in the south of Madagascar. The great eggs of these birds are used to store water. So that people of these places may not catch it, the Vouron Patra seeks the loneliest places.
France took possession of Madagascar in 1642, and Flacourt was the island’s first governor and a keen naturalist. Shortly after completing his History, Flacourt was killed by Algerian pirates while on a return voyage to France, and there were no other written accounts of this bird for nearly two centuries.
Then, in 1832, Victor Sganzin, a French artillery officer stationed in Madagascar, found one native family using as a water bowl half an eggshell a foot in diameter. Upon querying, he was told that such eggs were quite common in certain parts of the island. Sganzin purchased the egg and sent it to Jules Verreaux, a French collector of curiosities in Cape Town. Verreaux excitedly sailed for Paris with his discovery. Sadly, a terrible storm struck and Verreaux, the ship and the Roc’s egg all sank beneath the waves.
The Elephant Bird’s egg is the largest that any egg could possibly grow. It is estimated that any egg larger would have to have a shell so thick that it could not be broken by a hatching chick. Over the last century a considerable number of these eggs have been discovered, the largest measuring a metre in circumference with a fluid capacity of two imperial gallons – equal to 200 chicken eggs, or three times the size of the largest dinosaur eggs.
Ship Surgeon John Joliffe – 1848
Voyage to the Spice Islands,
Indian Ocean
Monsieur Dumarele, a merchant of Reunion, spoke of having seen at Port Leven the shell of an enormous egg, the production of an unknown bird inhabiting the wilds of the country, which held the almost incredible quantity of thirteen wine quart bottles of fluid!!! He having himself carefully measured the quantity. Dumarele offered to purchase the egg from the natives, but they declined selling it, stating that it belonged to their chief, and that they could not dispose of it without his permission. The natives said that the egg was found in the jungle, and observed that such eggs were very rarely met with, and that the bird which produces them is still more rarely seen.
John Joliffe was the surgeon on a British ship that stopped in Madagascar in 1848, where he was befriended by Dumarele, a trader from Reunion, who traded extensively along the Madagascar coast. Joliffe was somewhat sceptical, but reported his account to the British ornithologist, Hugh Strickland. Lacking physical evidence, Strickland replied: “The sight of one sound egg would be worth a thousand theories.”
Two years later, in 1850, an awe-struck Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the director of the Paris Zoo, received not one, but three “sound eggs” along with a crate of massive bones of this bird. These were collected by Captain Abadie, master of a French merchant ship recently returned from Madagascar. The largest measured approximately 13" by 16" in diameter and had a fluid capacity of nine litres.
Arab and Malay settlers came to settle Madagascar about a millennium before the French, and began to cut down its virgin forest and invade the nesting grounds that once were the sandy shores of Madagascar. When the final blow fell – whether by gun, spear or fire – is not known, although by 1700 the Elephant Bird was almost certainly extinct.
The discovery of Elephant Bird eggs in the late 19th century prompted H. G. Wells to write a little-known pre-Jurassic Park short story entitled “Aepyornis Island.”
THE RUKH’S EGG
Elephant Bird or Rukh – 1700
1.
O Kings of the Ages – what deeds have been done?
What taboos broken and whirlwinds unleashed?
For Alá al-Din’s wish to possess the Rukh’s Egg
The mighty Slave of the Lamp turned
On his Master with the threat of annihilation:
“O Ignorant Man, Know ye not what ye ask?
Know ye not from its outward form
What is held within the Rukh’s Egg?
For this wish I should slaughter you!”
And then came the Destroyer of Worlds,
The Plunderer of Palaces, the Despoiler of Cities.
2.
And yet, for all else the great Jin
Answered Alá al-Din, with a flourish:
“To hear is to obey!”
In a single night, the Slave of the Lamp
Raised a grand pavilion all built of alabaster,
Of Sumaki-marble, of jasper and jet and jade.
And beneath the great dome was a belvedere
With the latticed casements of four and twenty windows
Glazed and glittering with rubies and with emeralds.
And therein, Alá al-Din was placed upon a golden throne
And guarded by mamuluks and eunuchs
And served by handmaids and dancers
And eight and forty slave girls.
And all were covered in raiments of silk
And gold brocades and or frayed cloths
Embroidered with pearls and precious gems
Lit with candles of camphor and ambergris
And filled with the sounding of trumpets
And beating of kettle drums.
But all this ended with Alá al-Din’s fatal wish.
For at that utterance, from the abyss a voice thundered:
“By Allah, ye deserve that I reduce you to ashes
This very moment and scatter you upon the wind.
“Better ye wish to hang the mother of the Prophet
From the pavilion dome.”
3.
Once prized above all things,
What was the meaning of the Rukh’s Egg?
What made it the one great taboo?
Like Alá al-Din, we are still unknowing
Of its inner from its outer significance.
What was the secret of this talisman
Known only to the Wise?
What is here to be discovered?
What fatal prophecy is to be revealed?
The Rukh’s Egg is like a planet unto itself,
But bone white, barren as the moon
And now hollow, bereft of all life:
Vision of our world to come.