NOTE 4.—­De Barros, after describing the dangers of the Channel of Mozambique, adds:  “And as the Moors of this coast of Zanguebar make their voyages in ships and sambuks sewn with coir, instead of being nailed like ours, and thus strong enough to bear the force of the cold seas of the region about the Cape of Good Hope,.. they never dared to attempt the exploration of the regions to the westward of the Cape of Currents, although they greatly desired to do so.” (Dec.  I. viii. 4; and see also IV. i. 12.) Kazwini says of the Ocean, quoting Al Biruni:  “Then it extends to the sea known as that of Berbera, and stretches from Aden to the furthest extremity of Zanjibar; beyond this goes no vessel on account of the great current.  Then it extends to what are called the Mountains of the Moon, whence spring the sources of the Nile of Egypt, and thence to Western Sudan, to the Spanish Countries and the (Western) Ocean.”  There has been recent controversy between Captain A.D.  Taylor and Commodore Jansen of the Dutch navy, regarding the Mozambique currents, and (incidentally) Polo’s accuracy.  The currents in the Mozambique Channel vary with the monsoons, but from Cape Corrientes southward along the coast runs the permanent Lagullas current, and Polo’s statement requires but little correction. (Ethe pp. 214-215; see also Barbosa in Ram. I. 288; Owen, I. 269; Stanley’s Correa, p. 261; J.R.G.S. II. 91; Fra Mauro in Zurla, p. 61; see also Reinaud’s Abulfeda, vol. i. pp. 15-16; and Ocean Highways, August to November, 1873.)

[Illustration:  The Rukh (from Lane’s “Arabian Nights"), after a Persian drawing.]

NOTE 5.—­The fable of the RUKH was old and widely spread, like that of the Male and Female Islands, and, just as in that case, one accidental circumstance or another would give it a local habitation, now here now there.  The Garuda of the Hindus, the Simurgh of the old Persians, the ’Angka of the Arabs, the Bar Yuchre of the Rabbinical legends, the Gryps of the Greeks, were probably all versions of the same original fable.

Bochart quotes a bitter Arabic proverb which says, “Good-Faith, the Ghul, and the Gryphon (’Angka) are three names of things that exist nowhere.”  And Mas’udi, after having said that whatever country he visited he always found that the people believed these monstrous creatures to exist in regions as remote as possible from their own, observes:  “It is not that our reason absolutely rejects the possibility of the existence of the Nesnas (see vol. i. p. 206) or of the ’Angka, and other beings of that rare and wondrous order; for there is nothing in their existence incompatible with the Divine Power; but we decline to believe in them because their existence has not been manifested to us on any irrefragable authority.”

[Illustration:  Frontispiece showing the Bird Rukh.]