[202] "In the midst of the garden is the chiosk, that is, a large room, commonly beautified with a fine fountain in the midst of it. It is raised nine or ten steps, and enclosed with gilded lattices, round which vines, jessamines, and honeysuckles, make a sort of green wall; large trees are planted round this place, which is the scene of their greatest pleasures."—Lady M. W. Montagu.
[203] The women of the East are never without their looking-glasses. "In Barbary," says Shaw, "they are so fond of their looking-glasses, which they hang upon their breasts, that they will not lay them aside, even when after the drudgery of the day they are obliged to go two or three miles with a pitcher or a goat's skin to fetch water."—Travels.
[204] "They say that if a snake or serpent fix his eyes on the lustre of those stones (emeralds), he immediately becomes blind."—Ahmed ben Abdalaziz, Treatise on Jewels.
[205] "At Gombaroon and the Isle of Ormus, it is sometimes so hot, that the people are obliged to lie all day in the water."—Marco Polo.
[206] This mountain is generally supposed to be inaccessible. Struy says, "I can well assure the reader that their opinion is not true, who suppose this mount to be inaccessible." He adds, that "the lower part of the mountain is cloudy, misty, and dark, the middlemost part very cold, and like clouds of snow, but the upper regions perfectly calm."—It was on this mountain that the Ark was supposed to have rested after the Deluge, and part of it, they say, exists there still, which Struy thus gravely accounts for:—"Whereas none can remember that the air on the top of the hill did ever change or was subject either to wind or rain, which is presumed to be the reason that the Ark has endured so long without being rotten."—See Carreri's Travels, where the Doctor laughs at this whole account of Mount Ararat.
[207] In one of the books of the Shâh Nâmeh, when Zal (a celebrated hero of Persia, remarkable for his white hair,) comes to the terrace of his mistress Rodahver at night, she lets down her long tresses to assist him in his ascent;—he, however, manages it in a less romantic way by fixing his crook in a projecting beam.—See Champion's Ferdosi.
[208] "On the lofty hills of Arabia Petraea, are rock-goats."—Niebuhr.
[209] "They (the Ghebers) lay so much stress on their cushee or girdle, as not to dare to be an instant without it."—Grose's Voyage.
[210] "They suppose the Throne of the Almighty is seated in the sun, and hence their worship of that luminary."—Hanway.
[211] The Mameluks that were in the other boat, when it was dark used to shoot up a sort of fiery arrows into the air which in some measure resembled lightning or falling stars."—Baumgarten.