![]() ![]() And one odd form of the story, found, strange to say, both in China and diffused over Ethiopia, represents the males as actual dogs whilst the females are women. Friar Jordanus had heard the same of the dog-headed islanders. One reads in some books that the Borus have dogs' faces it is a way of saying that they are very brave" Ibn Batuta describes an Indo-Chinese tribe on the coast of Arakan or Pegu as having dogs' mouths, but says the women were beautiful. A curious passage from the Arab geographer Ibn Said pays an ambiguous compliment to the forefathers of Moltke and Von Roon: "The Borus (Prussians) are a miserable people, and still more savage than the Russians. The Cubans described the Caribs to Columbus as man-eaters with dogs' muzzles and the old Danes had tales of Cynocephali in Finland. The story originated, I imagine, in the disgust with which "allophylian" types of countenance are regarded, kindred to the feeling which makes the Hindus and other eastern nations represent the aborigines whom they superseded as demons. The Dog-head feature is at least as old as Ctesias. ![]()
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