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.

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