80 THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS.

females with young ones, with which they proceeded to the place at the hottest time of day, when the ants were in their holes, filled their bags with the aurif- erous sand, and then hurried back to escape the pur- suit of the ants ; the female camels leading the way, as anxious to get back to their young ones. The exist- ence of these gigantic ants has been asserted by com- paratively modern travellers, but it seems probable that they must have been really ant-eaters, which burrowed in the hills, and which some informants of Herodotus may have seen. Amongst the barbarian tribes in dependence on Per- sia, he mentions one called the Padseans, who, like the Massagetae before mentioned, allowed none of their sick to die a natural death. The horrible story is quaintly told. " If a man is taken ill, the men put him to death to prevent his flesh being spoiled by his malady. He protests loudly that he never felt better in his life ; but they kill and eat him notwithstanding. So, if a woman is ill, the women who are her friends do to her in like manner. (The decent division of the sexes is worth re- marking.) If any one reaches old age a very uncom- mon occurrence, for he can only do so on condition of never having been ill they sacrifice him to the gods, and afterwards eat him." Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller, writing about 1500, found the practice existing in Sumatra, where the relations as- sembled in the sick man's house, suffocated him, and then ate him, as he describes it, "in a convivial manner." Among other wonders he mentions Arabian sheep (the forefathers, no doubt, of our " Cape " breed) which had tails three cubits long, for which the shep- herds made little trucks to keep them off the ground