This may be my new favorite Tolkien quote. It’s a refutation of scholars who thought the sigel in “Sigelwara-land” meant the sun:

The Ethiopians did not dwell in the sun, or have any such relation to it as exists between wara and its accompaniment in other compounds. They may have dwelt uncomfortably near it (east or west, the direct south seems to have been thought too hot even for them), but they were none the less earth dwellers, slowly roasted perhaps, but not cremated; they were not salamanders.

I think we have here a glimpse into the English mind-set that caused the UK Foreign Office to give 19th-century embassy staff  in Washington DC a pay augmentation because of the hazardous tropical climate. [citation needed]

Sunshine icon that is black with a white face