The Chinese appear occasionally to employ it, as seems to be indicated in a woodcut of a vessel of war which I have traced from a Chinese book in the National Library at Paris. (See above, p. 37.) [For the Chinese words for rudder, see p. 126 of J. Edkins’ article on Chinese Names for Boats and Boat Gear, Jour.  N. China Br.  R. As.  Soc. N.S.  XI. 1876.—­H.  C.] It is also used by certain craft of the Indian Archipelago, as appears from Mr. Wallace’s description of the Prau in which he sailed from Macassar to the Aru Islands.  And on the Caspian, it is stated in Smith’s “Dict. of Antiquities” (art. Gubernaculum), the practice remained in force till late times.  A modern traveller was nearly wrecked on that sea, because the two rudders were in the hands of two pilots who spoke different languages, and did not understand each other!

(Besides the works quoted see Jal, Archeologie Navale, II. 437-438, and Capmany, Memorias, III. 61.)

[Major Sykes remarks (Persia, ch. xxiii.):  “Some unrecorded event, probably the sight of the unseaworthy craft, which had not an ounce of iron in their composition, made our travellers decide that the risks of the sea were too great, so that we have the pleasure of accompanying them back to Kerman and thence northwards to Khorasan.”—­H.  C.]

NOTE 4.—­So also at Bander Abbasi Tavernier says it was so unhealthy that foreigners could not stop there beyond March; everybody left it in April.  Not a hundredth part of the population, says Kaempfer, remained in the city.  Not a beggar would stop for any reward!  The rich went to the towns of the interior or to the cool recesses of the mountains, the poor took refuge in the palm-groves at the distance of a day or two from the city.  A place called ’Ishin, some 12 miles north of the city, was a favourite resort of the European and Hindu merchants.  Here were fine gardens, spacious baths, and a rivulet of fresh and limpid water.

The custom of lying in water is mentioned also by Sir John Maundevile, and it was adopted by the Portuguese when they occupied Insular Hormuz, as P. della Valle and Linschoten relate.  The custom is still common during great heats, in Sind and Mekran (Sir B. F.).

An anonymous ancient geography (Liber Junioris Philosophi) speaks of a people in India who live in the Terrestrial Paradise, and lead the life of the Golden Age....  The sun is so hot that they remain all day in the river!

The heat in the Straits of Hormuz drove Abdurrazzak into an anticipation of a verse familiar to English schoolboys:  “Even the bird of rapid flight was burnt up in the heights of heaven, as well as the fish in the depths of the sea!” (Tavern. Bk.  V. ch. xxiii.; Am.  Exot. 716, 762; Mueller, Geog.  Gr.  Min. II. 514; India in XV.  Cent. p. 49.)