[34]. Arab. “Aurat”: the word has been borrowed by the Hindostani jargon, and means a woman, a wife.
[35]. So in Al-Idrísi and Langlès: the Bres. Edit. has “Al-Kalásitah”; and Al-Kazwini “Al-Salámit.” The latter notes in it a petrifying spring which Camoens (The Lus. x. 104), places in Sunda, i.e. Java-Minor of M. Polo. Some read Salabat-Timor, one of the Moluccas famed for sanders, cloves, cinnamon, etc. (Purchas ii. 1784.)
[36]. Evidently the hippopotamus (Pliny, viii. 25; ix. 3 and xxiii. 11). It can hardly be the Mulaccan Tapir, as shields are not made of the hide. Hole suggests the buffalo which found its way to Egypt from India viâ Persia; but this would not be a speciosum miraculum.
[37]. The ass-headed fish is from Pliny (ix. cap. 3): all those tales are founded upon the manatee (whose dorsal protuberance may have suggested the camel), the seal and the dugong or sea-calf. I have noticed (Zanzibar i. 205) legends of ichthyological marvels current on the East African seaboard; and even the monsters of the Scottish waters are not all known: witness the mysterious “brigdie.” See Bochart De Cetis i. 7; and Purchas iii. 930.
[38]. The colossal tortoise is noticed by Ælian (De Nat. Animal. xvi. 17), by Strabo (Lib. xv.), by Pliny (ix. 10) and Diodorus Siculus (iv. 1) who had heard of a tribe of Chelonophagi. Ælian makes them 16 cubits long near Taprobane and serving as house-roofs; and others turn the shell 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 Académie des Sciences a monster crab from Japan 1.20 metres long (or 2.50 including legs); and other travellers have reported 4 metres. These crustacea seem never to cease growing and attain great dimensions under favourable circumstances, i.e. when not troubled by man.
[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. Possibly the barnacle, like the barometz or Tartarean lamb, may be a survivor of the day when the animal and vegetable kingdoms had not yet branched off into different directions.
[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.
[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 constitutions; 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.
[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
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