[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.”
[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 Orbis, p. 532) says that the Celebes produce pearls big as turtle-doves’ eggs; and the King of Porne (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.
[74]. Arab. “Anbar” pronounced “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.”
[75]. The tale-teller forgets that Sindbad and his companions have just ascended it; but this inconséquence 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.
[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.
[77]. Arab. “Fulk;” some Edits. read “Kalak” and “Ramaz” (= a raft).
[78]. These lines occur in modified form in Night xi.
[79]. These underground rivers (which Dr. Livingstone derided) are familiar to every geographer from Spenser’s “Mole” to the Poika of Adelberg and the Timavo near Trieste. Hence “Peter Wilkins” borrowed his cavern which led him to Grandevolet. I have some experience of Sindbad’s sorrows, having once attempted to descend the Poika on foot. The Classics had the Alpheus (Pliny v. 31; and Seneca, Nat. Quæ. vi.), and the Tigris-Euphrates supposed to flow underground: and the Mediævals knew the Abana of Damascus and the Zenderúd of Isfahan.
[80]. Abyssinians can hardly be called “blackamoors,” but the arrogance of the white skin shows itself in Easterns (e.g. Turks and Brahmans) as much as, if not more than, amongst Europeans. Southern India at the time it was explored by Vasco da Gama was crowded with Abyssinian slaves imported by the Arabs.
[81]. “Sarandib” and “Ceylon” (the Taprobane of Ptolemy and Diodorus Siculus) derive from the Pali “Sihalam” (not the Sansk. “Sinhala”) shortened to Silam and Ilam in old Tamul. Van der Tunk would find it in the Malay “Pulo Selam” = Isle of Gems (the Ratna-dwípa or Jewel Isle of the Hindus and the Jazirat al-Yakút or Ruby-Island of the Arabs); and the learned Colonel Yule (Marco Polo ii. 296) remarks that we have adopted many Malayan names, e.g. Pegu, China and Japan. Sarandib is clearly “Selan-dwípa,” which Mandeville reduced to “Silha.”