[395]. Our proverb says: Give a man luck and throw him into the sea.
[396]. As a rule Easterns, I repeat, cover head and face when sleeping especially in the open air and moonlight. Europeans find the practice difficult, and can learn it only by long habit.
[397]. Pers. = a flower-garden. In Galland Bahram has two daughters, Bostama and Cavama. In the Bres. Edit. the daughter is "Bostan" and the slave-girl "Kawám."
[398]. Arab. "Kahíl" = eyes which look as if darkened with antimony: hence the name of the noble Arab breed of horses "Kuhaylat" (Al-Ajuz, etc.).
[399]. "As'ad" = more (or most) fortunate.
[400]. This is the vulgar belief, although Mohammed expressly disclaimed the power in the Koran (chapt. xiii. 8), "Thou art commissioned to be a preacher only and not a worker of miracles." "Signs" (Arab. Ayát) may here also mean verses of the Koran, which the Apostle of Allah held to be his standing miracles. He despised the common miracula which in the East are of everyday occurrence and are held to be easy for any holy man. Hume does not believe in miracles because he never saw one. Had he travelled in the East he would have seen (and heard of) so many that his scepticism (more likely that testimony should be false than miracles be true) would have been based on a firmer foundation. It is one of the marvels of our age that whilst two-thirds of Christendom (the Catholics and the "Orthodox" Greeks) believe in "miracles" occurring not only in ancient but even in our present days, the influential and intelligent third (Protestant) absolutely "denies the fact."
[401]. Arab. "Al-Shahádatáni"; testifying the Unity and the Apostleship.
END OF VOL. III.
