The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume VI Part 13

Animal. xvi. 17), by Strabo (Lib. xv.), by Pliny (ix. 10) and Diodorus Siculus (iv. 1) who had heard of a tribe of Chelonophagi. aelian makes them 16 cubits long near Taprobane and serving as house-roofs; and others turn the sh.e.l.l into boats and coracles. A colossochelys was first found on the Scwalik Hills by Dr. Falconer and Major (afterwards Sir Proby) Cantley. In 1867 M.

Emile Blanchard exhibited to the Academie des Sciences a monster crab from j.a.pan 1.20 metres long (or 2.50 including legs); and other travellers have reported 4 metres. These crustaceae seem never to cease growing and attain great dimensions under favourable circ.u.mstances, i.e. when not troubled by man.

[FN#39] Lane suggests (iii. 97), and with some probability, that the "bird" was a nautilus; but the wild traditions concerning the barnacle-goose may perhaps have been the base of the fable. The albatross also was long supposed never to touch land. Possible the barnacle, like the barometz of Tartarean lamb, may be a survivor of the day when the animal and vegetable kingdoms had not yet branched off into different directions.

[FN#40] Arab. "Zahwah," also meaning a luncheon. The five daily prayers made all Moslems take strict account of time, and their nomenclature of its division is extensive.

[FN#41] This is the "insane herb." Davis, who visited Sumatra in 1599 (Purchas i. 120) speaks "of a kind of seed, whereof a little being eaten, maketh a man to turn foole, all things seeming to him to be metamorphosed." Linschoten's "Dutroa" was a poppy-like bud containing small kernels like melons which stamped and administered as a drink make a man "as if he were foolish, or out of his wits." This is Father Lobo's "Vanguini" of the Cafres, called by the Portuguese dutro (Datura Stramonium) still used by dishonest confectioners. It may be Dampier's Ganga (Ganjah) or Bang (Bhang) which he justly describes as acting differently "according to different const.i.tutions; for some it stupefies, others it makes sleepy, others merry and some quite mad."

(Harris, Collect. ii. 900.) Dr. Fryer also mentions Duty, Bung and Post, the Poust of Bernier, an infusion of poppy-seed.

[FN#42] Arab. "Ghul," here an ogre, a cannibal. I cannot but regard the "Ghul of the waste" as an embodiment of the natural fear and horror which a man feels when he faces a really dangerous desert. As regards cannibalism, Al-Islam's religion of common sense freely allows it when necessary to save life, and unlike our mawkish modern sensibility, never blames those who

Alimentis talibus usi Produxere animos.

[FN#43] For Cannibals, see the Ma.s.sagetae of Herod (i.), the Padaei of India (iii.), and the Essedones near Maeotis (iv.); Strabo (lib. iv.) of the Luci; Pomponious Mela (iii. 7) and St. Jerome (ad Jovinum) of Scoti. M. Polo locates them in Dragvia, a kingdom of Sumatra (iii. 17), and in Angaman (the Andamanian Isles?), possibly the ten Maniolai which Ptolemy (vii.), confusing with the Nicobars, places on the Eastern side of the Bay of Bengal; and thence derives the Heraklian stone (magnet) which attracts the iron of ships (See Serapion, De Magnete, fol. 6, Edit. of 1479, and Brown's Vulgar Errors, p. 74, 6th Edit.). Mandeville finds his cannibals in Lamaray (Sumatra) and Barthema in the "Isle of Gyava" (Java). Ibn Al-Wardi and Al-Kazwini notice them in the Isle Saksar, in the Sea of the Zanj (Zanzibar): the name is corrupted Persian "Sag-Sar" (Dogs'-heads) hence the dog- descended race of Camoens in Pegu (The Lus. x. 122). The Bresl.

Edit. (iv. 52) calls them "Khawarij"=certain sectarians in Eastern Arabia. Needless to say that cocoa-nut oil would have no stupefying effect unless mixed with opium or datura, hemp or henbane.

[FN#44] Black pepper is produced in the Goanese but we must go south to find the "Bilad al-Filfil" (home of pepper) i.e.

Malabar. The exorbitant prices demanded by Venice for this spice led directly to the discovery of The Cape route by the Portuguese; as the "Grains of Paradise" (Amomum Granum Paradisi) induced the English to explore the West African Coast.

[FN#45] Arab. "Kazdir." Sansk. "Kastir." Gr. "Ka.s.siteron." Lat.

"Ca.s.siteros," evidently derived from one root. The Heb. is "Badih," a subst.i.tute, an alloy. "Tanakah" is the vulg. Arab.

word, a congener of the a.s.syrian "Anaku," and "Kala-i" is the corrupt Arab. term used in India.

[FN#46] Our Arabian Ulysses had probably left a Penelope or two at home and finds a Calypso in this Ogygia. His modesty at the mention of womankind is notable.

[FN#47] These are the commonplaces of Moslem consolation on such occasions: the artistic part is their contrast with the unfortunate widower's prospect.

[FN#48] Lit. "a margin of stone, like the curb-stone of a well."

[FN#49] I am not aware that this vivisepulture of the widower is the custom of any race, but the fable would be readily suggested by the Sati (Suttee)-rite of the Hindus. Simple vivisepulture was and is practised by many people.

[FN#50] Because she was weaker than a man. The Bresl. Edit.

however, has "a gugglet of water and five scones."

[FN#51] The confession is made with true Eastern sang-froid and probably none of the hearers "disapproved" of the murders which saved the speaker's life.

[FN#52] This tale is evidently taken from the escape of Aristomenes the Messenian from the pit into which he had been thrown, a fox being his guide. The Arabs in an early day were eager students of Greek literature. Hole (p. 140) noted the coincidence.

[FN#53] Bresl. Edit. "Khwajah," our "Howajee," meaning a schoolmaster, a man of letters, a gentleman.

[FN#54] And he does repeat at full length what the hearers must have known right well. I abridge.

[FN#55] Island of the Bell (Arab. "Nakus"=a wooden gong used by Christians but forbidden to Moslems). "Kala" is written "Kela,"

"Kullah" and a variety of ways. Baron Walckenaer places it at Keydah in the Malay peninsula opposite Sumatra. Renaudot identifies it with Calabar, "somewhere about the point of Malabar."

[FN#56] Islands, because Arab cosmographers love to place their speciosa miracula in such places.

[FN#57] Like the companions of Ulysses who ate the sacred oxen (Od. xii.).

[FN#58] So the enormous kingfisher of Lucian's True History (lib.

ii.).

[FN#59] This tale is borrowed from Ibn Al-Wardi, who adds that the greybeards awoke in the morning after eating the young Rukh with black hair which never turned white. The same legend is recounted by Al-Dimiri (ob. A.H. 808=1405-6) who was translated into Latin by Bochart (Hierozoicon ii. p. 854) and quoted by Hole and Lane (iii. 103). An excellent study of Marco Polo's Rukh was made by my learned friend the late Prof. G. G. Bianconi of Bologna, "Dell'Uccello Ruc," Bologna, Gamberini, 1868. Prof.

Bianconi predicted that other giant birds would be found in Madagascar on the East African Coast opposite; but he died before hearing of Hildebrand's discovery.

[FN#60] Arab. "Izar," the earliest garb of Eastern man; and, as such preserved in the Meccan pilgrimage. The "waist-cloth" is either tucked in or kept in place by a girdle.

[FN#61] Arab. "Lif," a succedaneum for the unclean sponge, not unknown in the "Turkish Baths" of London.

[FN#62] The Persians have a Plinian monster called "Tasmeh- pa"=Strap-legs without bones. The "Old Man" is not an ourang- outang nor an Ifrit as in Sayf al-Muluk, Night dcclxxi., but a jocose exaggeration of a custom prevailing in parts of Asia and especially in the African interior where the Tsetse-fly prevents the breeding of burden-beasts. Ibn Batutah tells us that in Malabar everything was borne upon men's backs. In Central Africa the kinglet rides a slave, and on ceremonious occasions mounts his Prime Minister. I have often been reduced to this style of conveyance and found man the worst imaginable riding: there is no hold and the sharpness of the shoulder-ridge soon makes the legs ache intolerably. The cla.s.sicists of course find the Shaykh of the Sea in the Tritons and Nereus, and Bochart (Hiero. ii. 858, 880) notices the h.o.m.o aquaticus, Senex Judaeus and Senex Marinus.

Hole (p. 151) suggests the inevitable ouran-outan (man o' wood), one of "our humiliating copyists," and quotes "Destiny" in Scarron's comical romance (Part ii. chapt. i) and "Jealousy"

enfolding Rinaldo. (O.F. lib. 42).

[FN#63] More literally "The Chief of the Sea (-Coast)," Shaykh being here a chief rather than an elder (eoldermann, alderman).

So the "Old Man of the Mountain," famous in crusading days, was the Chief who lived on the Nusayriyah or Ansari range, a northern prolongation of the Liba.n.u.s. Our "old man" of the text may have been suggested by the Koranic commentators on chapt. vi. When an Infidel rises from the grave, a hideous figure meets him and says, "Why wonderest thou at my loathsomeness? I am thine Evil Deeds: thou didst ride upon me in the world and now I will ride upon thee." (Suiting the action to the words.)

[FN#64] In parts of West Africa and especially in Gorilla-land there are many stories of women and children being carried off by apes, and all believe that the former bear issue to them. It is certain that the anthropoid ape is l.u.s.tfully excited by the presence of women and I have related how at Cairo (1856) a huge cynocephalus would have raped a girl had it not been bayonetted.

Young ladies who visited the Demidoff Gardens and menagerie at Florence were often scandalised by the vicious exposure of the baboons' parti-coloured persons. The female monkey equally solicits the attentions of man and I heard in India from my late friend, Mirza Ali Akbar of Bombay, that to his knowledge connection had taken place. Whether there would be issue and whether such issue would be viable are still disputed points: the produce would add another difficulty to the pseudo-science called psychology, as such mule would have only half a soul and issue by a congener would have a quarter-soul. A traveller well known to me once proposed to breed pithecoid men who might be useful as hewers of wood and drawers of water: his idea was to put the highest races of apes to the lowest of humanity. I never heard what became of his "breeding stables."

[FN#65] Arab. "Jauz al-Hindi": our word cocoa is from the Port.

"Coco," meaning a "bug" (bugbear) in allusion to its caricature of the human face, hair, eyes and mouth. I may here note that a cocoa-tree is easily climbed with a bit of rope or a handkerchief.

[FN#66] Tomb-pictures in Egypt show tame monkeys gathering fruits and Grossier (Description of China, quoted by Hole and Lane) mentions a similar mode of harvesting tea by irritating the monkeys of the Middle Kingdom.

[FN#67] Bresl. Edit. Cloves and cinnamon in those days grew in widely distant places.

[FN#68] In pepper-plantations it is usual to set bananas (Musa Paradisiaca) for shading the young shrubs which bear bunches like ivy-fruit, not pods.

[FN#69] The Bresl. Edit. has "Al-Ma'arat." Langles calls it the Island of Al-Kamari. See Lane, iii. 86.

[FN#70] Insula, pro. peninsula. "Comorin" is a corrupt. of "Kanya" (=Virgo, the G.o.ddess Durga) and "k.u.mari" (a maid, a princess); from a temple of Shiva's wife: hence Ptolemy's {Greek letters} and near it to the N. East {Greek letters}, "Promontorium Cori quod Comorini caput insulae vocant," says Maffaeus (Hist. Indic. i. p. 16). In the text "Al'ud" refers to the eagle-wood (Aloekylon Agallochum) so called because spotted like the bird's plume. That of Champa (Cochin-China, mentioned in Camoens, The Lus. x. 129) is still famous.

[FN#71] Arab. "Birkat"=tank, pool, reach, bight. Hence Birkat Far'aun in the Suez Gulf. (Pilgrimage i. 297.)

[FN#72] Probably Cape Comorin; to judge from the river, but the text names Sarandib (Ceylon Island) famous for gems. This was noticed by Marco Polo, iii. cap. 19; and ancient authors relate the same of "Taprobane."

[FN#73] I need hardly trouble the reader with a note on pearl- fisheries: the descriptions of travellers are continuous from the days of Pliny (ix. 35), Solinus (cap. 56) and Marco Polo (iii.

23). Maximilian of Transylvania, in his narrative of Magellan's voyage (Novus...o...b..s, p. 532) says that the Celebes produce pearls big as turtle-doves' eggs; and the King of p.o.r.ne (Borneo) had two unions as great as goose's eggs. Pigafetta (in Purchas) reduces this to hen's eggs and Sir Thomas Herbert to dove's eggs.

[FN#74] Arab. "Anbar" p.r.o.nounced "Ambar;" wherein I would derive "Ambrosia." Ambergris was long supposed to be a fossil, a vegetable which grew upon the sea-bottom or rose in springs; or a "substance produced in the water like naphtha or bitumen"(!): now it is known to be the egesta of a whale. It is found in lumps weighing several pounds upon the Zanzibar Coast and is sold at a high price, being held a potent aphrodisiac. A small hollow is drilled in the bottom of the cup and the coffee is poured upon the bit of ambergris it contains; when the oleaginous matter shows in dots amidst the "Kaymagh" (coffee-cream), the bubbly froth which floats upon the surface and which an expert "coffee servant" distributes equally among the guests. Argensola mentions in Ceylon, "springs of liquid bitumen thicker than our oil and some of pure balsam."

[FN#75] The tale-teller forgets that Sindbad and his companions have just ascended it; but this inconsequence is a characteristic of the Eastern Saga. I may note that the description of ambergris in the text tells us admirably well what it is not.

[FN#76] This custom is alluded to by Lane (Mod Egypt, ch. xv.): it is the rule of pilgrims to Meccah when too ill to walk or ride (Pilgrimage i. 180). Hence all men carry their shrouds: mine, after being dipped in the Holy Water of Zemzem, was stolen from me by the rascally Somal of Berberah.

[FN#77] Arab. "Fulk;" some Edits. read "Kalak" and "Ramaz" (=a raft).

[FN#78] These lines occur in modified form in Night xi.