FOOTNOTES:
[50] These voyages of Sindbad are among the most curious of the tales contained in the Arabian Nights. They deserve a passing word of remark. Mr. Richard Hole of Exeter, about a century since, wrote a treatise upon them. He shows that while they must be regarded in many respects as fabulous, yet that they illustrate the early stories prevalent about strange countries. The earlier writers, as Plutarch, Aelian, Diodorus Siculus, and Pliny, mention the incidents related in these tales, as also do the earliest modern travelers, the Venetian Marco Polo, and the English Sir John Mandeville.
[51] Milton thus describes the Leviathan:
"How haply slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff,
Deeming some island, oft as seamen tell,
With fixed anchor in his scally rind
Moors by his side."
[52] Mr. More, in his account of these voyages, says that Marco Polo, in his Travels, and Father Martini, in his History of China, speak of this bird, called ruch, and say it will take up an elephant and a rhinoceros. It is as fabulous as the dodo, the salamander, or the phoenix.
[53] Captain Marryat, in his Bushboys, gives an account of this contest, in which the rhinoceros came off victorious. He also gives, in the same amusing volume, an account of a bird taking up a serpent into the air. The scene of the adventures of the Bushboys is South Africa.
[54] The youthful student will find in these references passages which will remind in some degree of the incidents mentioned in these tales: Homer's Odyssey, book iv, lines 350-410; Iliad, book xx, line 220; book xiii, lines 20-35; Virgil, Aeneid, iii, lines 356-542.
[55] Sandalwood. The wood of a low tree, the Santalum Album, resembling the privet, and growing on the coast of Malabar, in the Indian Archipelago, etc. The hard yellow wood in the center of the old sandal tree is highly esteemed for its fragrant perfume and is much used for cabinetwork, etc.
[56] The hippopotamus.
[57] The giraffe.
[58] "Aristomenes, the Messenian general, thus escaped from a cave. He perceived a fox near him gnawing a dead body; with one hand he caught it by the hind leg, and with the other held its jaws, when it attempted to bite him. Following, as well as he could, his struggling guide to the narrow crevice at which he entered, he there let him go, and soon forced a passage through it to the welcome face of day."—Hole, 141. Sancho's escape from the pit into which he tumbled with Daffle is somewhat similar.
[59] Mr. Marsden, in his notes to his translation of Marco Polo's Voyages, supposes the roc to be a description of the albatross or condor, under greatly exaggerated terms.
[60] Coco palms bear their fruit at the top.
[61] Marco Polo, a famous voyager (1298), gives an account of this pearl fishery.
[62] Mr. Ives mentions wells of fresh water under the sea in the Persian Gulf, near the island of Barien.—Hole.
[63] "Such fountains are not unfrequent in India and in Ceylon; and the Mohammedan travelers speak of ambergris swallowed by whales, who are made sick and regorge it."—Hole.
[64] "Ambergris—a substance of animal origin, found principally in warm climates floating on the sea, or thrown on the coast. The best comes from Madagascar, Surinam, and Java. When it is heated or rubbed, it exhales an agreeable odor."—Knight's English Cyclopædia, Vol. I, p. 142.
[65] "Camphor is the produce of certain trees in Borneo, Sumatra, and Japan. The camphor lies in perpendicular veins near the center of the tree, or in its knots, and the same tree exudes a fluid termed oil of camphor. The Venetians, and subsequently the Dutch, monopolized the sale of camphor."—Encyclopædia Metropolitana, Vol. III, p. 195. Gibbons, in his notes to the Decline and Fall, says: "From the remote islands of the Indian Ocean a large provision of camphor had been imported, which is employed, with a mixture of wax, to illuminate the palaces of the East."
[66] "There is a snake in Bengal whose skin is esteemed a cure for external pains by applying it to the part affected."—Hole.
[67] "The king is honorably distinguished by various kinds of ornaments, such as a collar set with jewels, sapphires, emeralds, and rubies of immense value."—Marco Polo, p. 384.
[68] "Throwing the lance was a favorite pastime among the young Arabians, and prepared them for the chase or war."—Notes to Vathek, p. 295.
[69] Thus the Roman slave, on the triumph of an imperator, "Respice post te, hominem te esse memento"; or the page of Philip of Macedonia, who was made to address him every morning, "Remember, Philip, thou art mortal."
[70] "The use of a bow was a constituent part of an Eastern education."—Notes to Vathek, p. 301. See the account of Cyrus's education—Xenophon's Cyclopædia.
[71] Periodical winds blowing six months from the same quarter or point of the compass, then changing, and blowing the same time from the opposite quarter.