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For this, or upon a charge of heresy, he was brought under the prosecution of the inquisition. But he was alarmed by the fate of Peter of Apono, and by recantation or some other mode of prudent contrivance was fortunate enough to escape.

Peter of Apono, so called from a village of that name in the vicinity of Padua, where he was born in the year 1250, was an eminent philosopher, mathematician and astrologer, but especially excelled in physic.

Du Chaillu asserts having seen one of these Ngoma, formed of a hollow log, nine feet long, at Apono; and describes a Fan drum which corresponds to the Zacatan of the Mayas as follows: “The cylinder was about four feet long and ten inches in diameter at one end, but only seven at the other. The wood was hollowed out quite thin, and the skin stretched over tightly.

It is more philosophical to say that the age believes this and that, than that the particular men who live in it do so. I have no means of ascertaining whether he did or not. He was more probably charged with it by the inquisitors. Mr. Leckie seems to write of him only upon hearsay, for he calls him Peter "of Apono," apparently translating a French translation of the Latin "Aponus."