[23] A band of irregular horsemen.
[24] The Arab term for men of high family.
[25] The description of this peculiar phenomenon of the Indian Ocean, as given by Captain Collins, surprised us as much as the reality seems to have done him. However, on consulting a seafaring old gentleman of much experience in all parts of the world, we are informed that such an appearance is periodically to be met with for some distance between the Laccadive and Maldive islands, as he had reason to know. The old Dutch Captain Stavorinus also furnishes an account substantially similar, having particularly attended to the cause of it in his voyage to the East Indies: it reaches also to some of the south-eastern islands at a great distance from India, near Java—or at all events appears there. In the Atlantic, Humboldt says there is a part of the sea always milky, although very deep, in about 57º W. longitude, and the parallel of the island of Dominica. Of the same nature, probably, are the immense olive-green spaces and stripes seen in blue water by Captain Scoresby and others, toward the ice of the north polar regions.
The pale sea alluded to is supposed either to move from the shores of Arabia Felix, and the gulfs in that coast, or, by some, to arise from sulphureous marine exhalations—appearing to rot the bottoms of vessels, and to frighten the fish. Both at the Laccadives and near Java it is seen twice a-year, often with a heavy rolling of the sea and bad weather. The first time, at the new moon in June, it is called by the Dutch the "little white-water;" again, at the new moon in August, the great "wit-water;" by English seamen, generally, the milk-sea, or the "blink."
[26] The zodiacal light, seen at sunrise and sunset.
[27] Histoire des Ducs de Guise. Par Réné de Bouillé, ancien Ministre Plénipotentiaire. Volume II. Paris: 1849.
[28] So styled by the Huguenots. Historians have adopted the designation. It consisted of Guise, Montmorency, and the Marshal of St André, and was a sort of prelude to the League.
[29] Discours de la Bataille de Dreux, dieté par François de Lorraine.
[30] Thus stated by M. de Bouillé. Other writers have called the total force of the Protestants two thousand seven hundred horse and foot.
[31] Other writers have said that he had already done so, or at least that he was seated under a tree, a recognised prisoner, when he was shot. M. de Bouillé's account leaves a sort of loop-hole, to infer that Montesquiou might have been hardly aware that Condé was a prisoner. Such an inference, however, he probably does not intend to be drawn, and, in either case, it is contrary to historical fact.