Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/86

80 him, he showed his understanding and courtesy by pointing, but would not answer, for he was a dumb philosopher also.

These are all the notices, which I am at present able to gather, of the appearance of so great and learned a people on your side of the world. But if we return to their ancient native seats, Africa and India, we shall there find, even in modern times, many traces of their original conduct and valour.

In Africa (as we read among the indefatigable Mr. Purchas's collections) a body of them, whose leader was inflamed with love for a woman, by martial power and stratagem won a fort from the Portuguese.

But I must leave all others at present to celebrate the praise of two of their unparalleled monarchs in India. The one was Perimal the magnificent, a prince most learned and communicative; to whom in Malabar their excess of zeal dedicated a temple, raised on seven hundred pillars, not inferiour in Maffæus's opinion to those of Agrippa in the Pantheon. The other, Hanimant the Marvellous, his relation and successor, whose knowledge was so great, as made his followers doubt if even that wise species could arrive at such perfection: and therefore they rather imagined him and his race a sort of gods formed into apes. His was the tooth which the Portuguese took in Bisnagar 1559, for which the Indians offered, according to Linschotten, the immense sum of seven hundred thousand ducats. Nor let me quit this head without mentioning with all due respect Orang Outang the great, the last of this line