3), And Lately By Prichard (Natural History Of Man).

I repeat it because it has been my fate to hear, at a meeting of a learned society in London, a gentleman declare, that in Eastern Africa he found a people calling themselves Moors.

Maghrabin-Westerns,-then would be opposed to Sharkiyin, Easterns, the origin of our "Saracen." From Gibbon downwards many have discussed the history of this word; but few expected in the nineteenth century to see a writer on Eastern subjects assert, with Sir John Mandeville, that these people "properly, ben clept Sarrazins of Sarra." The learned M. Jomard, who never takes such original views of things, asks a curious question:-"Mais comment un son aussi distinct que le Chine [Arabic text] aurait-il pu se confondre avec le Syn [Arabic text] et, pour un mot aussi connu que charq; comment aurait-on pu se tromper a l'omission des points?" Simply because the word Saracens came to us through the Greeks (Ptolemy uses it), who have no such sound as sh in their language, and through the Italian which, hostile to the harsh sibilants of Oriental dialects, generally melts sh down into s. So the historical word Hashshashiyun-hemp-drinker,-civilised by the Italians into "assassino," became, as all know, an expression of European use. But if any one adverse to "etymological fancies" objects to my deriving Maurus from "Maghrab," let him remember Johnson's successfully tracing the course of the metamorphosis of "dies" into "jour." An even more peculiar change we may discover in the word "elephant." "Pilu" in Sanscrit, became "pil" in old Persian, which ignores short final vowels; "fil," and, with the article, "Al-fil," in Arabic, which supplies the place of p (an unknown letter to it), by f; and elephas in Greek, which is fond of adding "as" to Arabic words, as in the cases of Aretas (Haris) and Obodas (Obayd). "A name," says Humboldt, "often becoming a historical monument, and the etymological analysis of language, however it may be divided, is attended by valuable results." [FN#2] The Toni or Indian canoe is the hollowed-out trunk of a tree,-near Bombay generally a mango. It must have been the first step in advance from that simplest form of naval architecture, the "Catamaran" of Madras and Aden. [FN#3] In these vessels each traveller, unless a previous bargain be made, is expected to provide his own water and firewood. The best way, however, is, when the old wooden box called a tank is sound, to pay the captain for providing water, and to keep the key. [FN#4] The "opener"-the first chapter of the Koran, which Moslems recite as Christians do the Lord's Prayer; it is also used on occasions of danger, the beginnings of journeys, to bind contracts, &c. [FN#5] These Maghrabis, like the Somalis, the Wahhabis of the desert, and certain other barbarous races, unaccustomed to tobacco, appeared to hate the smell of a pipe. [FN#6] The hands are raised in order to catch the blessing that is supposed to descend from heaven upon the devotee; and the meaning of drawing the palms down the face is symbolically to transfer the benediction to every part of the body. [FN#7] As is the case under all despotic governments, nothing can be more intentionally offensive than the official manners of a superior to his inferior in Egypt.

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