The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore Part 169

[122] The beauty of Ali's eyes was so remarkable, that whenever the Persians would describe anything as very lovely, they say it is Ayn Hali, or the Eyes of Ali.--_Chardin_.

[123] "Nakshab, the name of a city in Transoxiana, where they say there is a well, in which the appearance of the moon is to be seen night and day."

[124] The Shechinah, called Sakfnat in the Koran.--See _Sale's Note_, chap. ii.

[125] The parts of the night are made known as well by instruments of music, as by the rounds of the watchmen with cries and small drums.--See _Burder's Oriental Customs_, vol. i. p. 119.

[126] The Serrapurda, high screens of red cloth, stiffened with cane, used to enclose a considerable s.p.a.ce round the royal tents.--_Notes on the Bakarda.n.u.sh.

The tents of Princes were generally illuminated. Norden tells us that the tent of the Bey of Girge was distinguished from the other tents by forty lanterns being suspended before it.--See _Harmer's Observations on Job_.

[127] "From the groves of orange trees at Kauzeroon the bees cull a celebrated honey.--_Morier's Travels_.

[128] "A custom still subsisting at this day, seems to me to prove that the Egyptians formerly sacrificed a young virgin to the G.o.d of the Nile; for they now make a statue of earth in shape of a girl, to which they give the name of the Betrothed Bride, and throw it into the river."--_Savary_.

[129] That they knew the secret of the Greek fire among the Mussulmans early in the eleventh century, appears from _Dow's_ account of Mamood I.

"When he at Moultan, finding that the country of the Jits was defended by great rivers, he ordered fifteen hundred boats to be built, each of which he armed with six iron spikes, projecting from their prows and sides, to prevent their being boarded by the enemy, who were very expert in that kind of war. When he had launched this fleet, he ordered twenty archers into each boat, and five others with fire-b.a.l.l.s, to burn the craft of the Jits, and naphtha to set the whole river on fire."

[130] The Greek fire, which was occasionally lent by the emperors to their allies. "It was," says Gibbon, "either launched in red-hot b.a.l.l.s of stone and iron, or darted in arrows and javelins, twisted round with flax and tow, which had deeply imbibed the imflammable oil."

[131] See _Hanway's_ Account of the Springs of Naphtha at Baku (which is called by _Lieutenant Pottinger_ Joala Mookee, or, the Flaming Mouth), taking fire and running into the sea. _Dr. Cooke_, in his Journal, mentions some wells in Circa.s.sia, strongly impregnated with this inflammable oil, from which issues boiling water. "Though the weather," he adds, "was now very cold, the warmth of these wells of hot water produced near them the verdure and flowers of spring.'

[132] "At the great festival of fire, called the Sheb Seze, they used to set fire to large bunches of dry combustibles, fastened round wild beasts and birds, which being then let loose, the air and earth appeared one great illumination; and as these terrified creatures naturally fled to the woods for shelter, it is easy to conceive the conflagrations they produced."--_Richardson's Dissertation_.

[133] "The righteous shall be given to drink of pure wine, sealed: the seal whereof shall be musk."--_Koran_, chap lx.x.xiii.

[134] The Afghans believe each of the numerous solitudes and deserts of their country to be inhabited by a lonely demon, whom they call The Ghoolee Beeabau, or Spirit of the Waste. They often ill.u.s.trate the wildness of any sequestered tribe, by saying they are wild as the Demon of the Waste."--_Elphinstone's Caubul_.

[135] "They have all a great reverence for burial-grounds, which they sometimes call by the poetical name of Cities of the Silent, and which they people with the ghosts of the departed, who sit each at the head of his own grave, invisible to mortal eyes."--_Elphinstone_.

[136] The celebrity of Mazagong is owing to its mangoes, which are certainly the best I ever tasted. The parent-tree, from which all those of this species have been grafted, is honored during the fruit-season by a guard of sepoys; and, in the reign of Shah Jehan, couriers ware stationed between Delhi and the Mahratta coast, to secure an abundant and fresh supply of mangoes for the royal table."--_Mrs. Graham's_ Journal of Residence in India.

[137] This old porcelain is found in digging, and "if it is esteemed, it is not because it has acquired any new degree of beauty in the earth, but because it has retained its ancient beauty; and this alone is of great importance in China, where they give large sums for the smallest vessels which were used under the Emperors Yan and Chun, who reigned many ages before the dynasty of Tang, at which time porcelain began to be used by the Emperors" (about the year 442).--_Dunn's_ Collection of curious Observations, etc.

[138] The blacksmith Gao, who successfully resisted the tyrant Zohak, and whose ap.r.o.n became the royal standard of Persia.

[139] "The Huma, a bird peculiar to the East. It is supposed to fly constantly in the air, and never touch the ground; it is looked upon as a bird of happy omen; and that every head it overshades will in time wear a crown."--_Richardson_.

In the terms of alliance made by Fuzel Oola Khan with Hyder in 1760, one of the stipulations was, "that he should have the distinction of two honorary attendants standing behind him, holding fans composed of the feathers of the humma, according to the practice of his family."-- _Wilks's_ South of India. He adds in a note;--"The Humma is a fabulous bird. The head over which its shadow once pa.s.ses will a.s.suredly be circled with a crown. The splendid little bird suspended over the throne of Tippoo Sultaun, found at Seringapatam in 1799, was intended to represent this poetical fancy."

[140] "To the pilgrims to Mount Sinai we must attribute the inscriptions, figures, etc., on those rocks, which have from thence acquired the name of the Written Mountain."--_Volney_.

M. Gebelin and others have been at much pains to attach some mysterious and important meaning to these inscriptions; but Niebuhr, as well as Volney, thinks that they must have been executed at idle hours by the travellers to Mount Sinai, "who were satisfied with cutting the unpolished rock with any pointed instrument; adding to their names and the date of their journeys some rude figures, which bespeak the hand of a people but little skilled in the arts."--_Niebuhr_.

[141] The Story of Sinbad.

[142] "The Camalata (called by Linnaeus, Ipomaea) is the most beautiful of its order, both in the color and form of its leaves and flowers; its elegant blossoms are 'celestial rosy red, Love's proper hue,' and have justly procured is the name of Camalata, or Love's creeper."--_Sir W.

Jones_.

[143] "According to Father Premare, in his tract on Chinese Mythology, the mother of Fo-hi was the daughter of heaven, surnamed Flower-loving; and as the nymph was walking alone on the bank of a river, she found herself encircled by a rainbow, after which she became pregnant, and, at the end of twelve years, was delivered of a son radiant as herself."--_Asiat.

Res_.

[144] "Numerous small islands emerge from the Lake of Cashmere. One is called Char Chenaur, from the plane trees upon it.--_Foster_.

[145] "The Altan Kol or Golden River of Tibet, which runs into the Lakes of Sing-su-hay, has abundance of gold in its sands, which employs the inhabitants all the summer in gathering it."--_Description of Tibet in Pinkerton_.

[146] "The Brahmins of this province insist that the blue campac flowers only in Paradise."--_Sir W. Jones_. It appears, however, from a curious letter of the Sultan of Menangeabow, given by Marsden, that one place on earth may lay claim to the possession of it. "This is the Sultan, who keeps the flower champaka that is blue, and to be found in no other country but his, being yellow elsewhere."--_Marsden's_ Sumatra.

[147] "The Mahometans suppose that falling stars are the firebrands wherewith the good angels drive away the bad, when they approach too near the empyrean or verge or the heavens."--_Fryer_.

[148] The Forty Pillars; so the Persians call the ruins of Persepolis. It is imagined by them that this palace and the edifices at Balbec were built by Genii, for the purpose of hiding in their subterraneous caverns immense treasures, which still remain there.--_D'Herbelot, Volney_.

[149] _Diodorus_ mentions the Isle of Panchai, to the south of Arabia Felix, where there was a temple of Jupiter. This island, or rather cl.u.s.ter of isles, has disappeared, "sunk [says _Grandpre_] in the abyss made by the fire beneath their foundations."--_Voyage to the Indian Ocean_.

[150] The Isles of Panchaia.

[151] "The cup of Jams.h.i.+d, discovered, they say, when digging for the foundations of Persepolis."-_Richardson_.

[152] "It is not like the Sea of India, whose bottom is rich with pearls and ambergris, whose mountains of the coast are stored with gold and precious stones, whose gulfs breed creatures that yield ivory, and among the plants of whose sh.o.r.es are ebony, red wood, and the wood of Hairzan, aloes, camphor, cloves, sandal-wood, and all other spices and aromatics; where parrots and peac.o.c.ks are birds of the forest, and musk and civit are collected upon the lands."--_Travels of Two Mohammedans_.

[153] "With this immense treasure Mamood returned to Ghizni and in the year 400 prepared a magnificent festival, where he displayed to the people his wealth in golden thrones and in other ornaments, in a great plain without the city of Ghizni." _Ferishta_.

[154] "Mahmood of Gazna, or Chizni, who conquered India in the beginning of the 11th century."--See his History in _Dow_ and Sir _J. Malcolm_.

[155] "It is reported that the hunting equipage of the Sultan Mahmood was so magnificent, that he kept 400 greyhounds and bloodhounds each of which wore a collar set with jewels and a covering edged with gold and pearls."--_Universal History_, vol. iii.

[156] "The Mountains of the Moon, or the _Montes Lunae_ of antiquity, at the foot of which the Nile is supposed to arise."--_Bruce_.

[157] "The Nile, which the Abyssinians know by the names of Abey and Alawy or the Giant."--_Asiat. Research_. vol. i. p. 387.

[158] See Perry's View of the Levant for an account of the sepulchres in Upper Thebes, and the numberless grots, covered all over with hieroglyphics in the mountains of Upper Egypt.

[159] "The orchards of Rosetta are filled with turtle-doves.--_Sonnini_.

[160] Savary mentions the pelicans upon Lake Moeris.

[161] "The superb date-tree, whose head languidly reclines, like that of a handsome woman overcome with sleep."--_Dafard el Hadad_.

[162] "That beautiful bird, with plumage of the finest s.h.i.+ning blue, with purple beak and legs, the natural and living ornament of the temples and palaces of the Greeks and Romans, which, from the stateliness of its part, as well as the brilliancy of its colors, has obtained the t.i.tle of Sultana,"--_Sonnini_.

[163] Jackson, speaking of the plague that occurred in West Barbary, when he was there, says, "The birds of the air fled away from the abodes of men. The hyaenas, on the contrary, visited the cemeteries," etc.

[164] "Gondar was full of hyaenas from the time it turned dark, till the dawn of day, seeking the different pieces of slaughtered carca.s.ses, which this cruel and unclean people expose in the streets without burial, and who firmly believe that these animals are Falashta from the neighboring mountains, transformed by magic, and come down to eat human flesh in the dark in safety."--_Bruce_.

[165] "In the East, they suppose the Phoenix to have fifty orifices in his bill, which are continued to his tail; and that, after living one thousand years, he builds himself a funeral pile, sings a melodious air of different harmonies through his fifty organ pipes, flaps his wings with a velocity which sets fire to the wood and consumes himself."--_Richardson_.

[166] "On the sh.o.r.es of a quadrangular lake stand a thousand goblets, made of stars, out of which souls predestined to enjoy felicity drink the crystal wave."--From _Chateaubriand's_ Description of the Mahometan Paradise, in his _"Beauties of Christianity_."