lie down there to die by a lake of clear water.
This, he observes, is a belief in harmony with
the adventure of Sindbad when, after carrying the
gifts to the King of Serrendib, he was wrecked,
made a slave, employed in shooting elephants for
the sake of their ivory; and one day, senseless
from a fall, was carried away by the great
elephant, who wound his trunk around him, and
ceased not to proceed until he had taken him to
a place where "he found himself amongst the
bones of the elephants, and knew that this was
their burial-place."

We are told also of a native belief in the
connexion of a subterranean river with a remarkable
well near Potoor, which tallies with Sindbad's
account of his river voyage underground, where
the raft rubbed against the sides and his head
against the roof.

Such are the notes made by the newest of
travellers in corroboration of the faith in ancient
Sindbad which has of late years been steadily
increasing. Saying nothing of the learned
treatise upon Sindbad, written by Mr. Hole, and
the notes of several French scholars and
geographers, we may dwell especially upon the
commentary of Baron Walckenaer, published twenty-
eight years ago in a volume of a French series
of Annals of Travel. A summary of the
baron's views was given by Mr. R. H. Major, in
the introduction to a recent collection of
accounts of Early Voyages to India, published by our
own most excellent and useful Hakluyt Society.
The Adventures of Sindbad of the Sea
formerly constituted a distinct Arabic work which
was no part of the Arabian Nights entertainment.
They were composed of the genuine
travellers' tales of probably two or three Arabic
merchants who lived at the beginning, or in the
middle, of the ninth century, and were
contemporary with the Mahometan merchant Soliman.
The trade with India is very ancient. From
Ceylon, the Phœnician pilots of King Soliman's
fleet brought gold and silver, ivory, apes, and
peacocks. Horace sang of the untouched
treasures of rich India. Indians served in the
ancient Persian armies. Alexander the Great
laid open the way to India and an Indian trade.
The luxurious Persians could not dispense with
Oriental silks and gems, and ivory. Egypt was
the link in trade between India and Europe.
When Rome conquered Egypt, the rich Roman
matrons were proud in the show of silk dresses
that had cost their weight in gold. Eighty years
after the conquest, in the year fifty, Hippalus,
commander of a vessel in the Indian trade,
stretched boldly out to sea from the mouth of
the Arabian Gulf, and was carried by the south-
western monsoon to a point on the coast of
Malabar. The monsoon, of which the use was
thus discovered, was named, after this captain,
the wind Hippalus. Constantinople, after the
decay of Rome, became the new centre of
commerce between Europe and the East. Caravans
came by Candahar into Persia, but the Persians
after the overthrow of the Parthian empire
began trading actively with Ceylon and India
by way of the Persian Gulf.

Then came the time when the Arabs,
conquering ground for the doctrines of their prophet,
established in Persia the rule of the Caliphs on
the throne of the Sassanides, and, subduing also
Egypt, gained complete posssesion of the Eastern
trade. For the direct purpose of promoting it,
the Caliph Omar founded the port of Bassorah,
from which Sindbad sailed.

When, therefore, on his first voyage, Sindbad
has to tell the story of the snare of the King
of Mahradje, we are not to be surprised at finding
in the Malay Annals, translated by Mr.
Leyden, the same story connected with the
founding of the city of Vijnagar, in the Deccan,
once a place of great importance. We
conclude that the Maharajah of whom Sindbad tells
was a king of the Deccan.

In the account of the second voyage, only
one country is named, the peninsula of Riha,
where we are told there are high mountains
and camphor. Sindbad rightly describes the
manner of getting camphor from the trees; he
describes, also, the rhinoceros and elephant.
Camphor was unknown to the Greeks and
Romans. Arabs are its first describers, and the
best comes from Sumatra, Borneo, and the
Malay peninsula. On the Malay peninsula we
find also the elephant and the rhinoceros;
therefore we may assume that the Malay peninsula
was visited by Sindbad or by those merchants
whose tale we have in Sindbad's second voyage.

The third voyage was to an island of fierce
tattooed savages, answering to the character of
natives of the Andaman Islands. A fish is
described partaking of the nature of the ox,
and breeding and suckling its young in a like
manner. Doubtless the dugong of those coasts.

The fourth voyage was to an island—all
unexplored coast was commonly spoken of as island
in the middle ages—to an island where pepper
was gathered. The coast of Malabar was the
chief pepper ground. Thence, Sindbad went to
Nacous (Nicobar); thence, in six days, to Kela,
"a large empire bordering on India, in which
are mines of tin, plantations of sugar-cane, and
excellent camphor." This, Baron Walckenaer
finds in the province of Keydah, in the Malay
peninsula, opposite Sumatra.

The fifth voyage led to shipwreck on the island
in which Sindbad served the Old Man of the
Sea, whom he was obliged to carry on his back.
Again, says Baron Walckenaer, a portion of the
coast of Malabar. Ibn Batuta, who visited that
coast early in the fourteenth century, says that
in his time there were no horses or beasts of
burden, and that everything had to be carried
on the backs of men hired for the purpose.
After escaping from the Old Man of the Sea,
and setting sail again, Sindbad almost
immediately arrived at a place where they gathered
cocoa-nuts. And the chief cocoa-nut islands are
the Maldives, Iying opposite the coast of Malabar.
Thence, he went to the pepper land—the
coast of Malabar again; thence, to the coast of
Comorin, in the region of Komar, which he
identifies by mentioning its aloes wood. Then
he went to the pearl fisheries, which are in the