I will give you a sample
of their enchantments. Thus, if a ship be sailing past with a fair wind
and a strong, they will raise a contrary wind and compel her to turn back.
In fact they make the wind blow as they list, and produce great tempests
and disasters; and other such sorceries they perform, which it will be
better to say nothing about in our Book.[NOTE 4]
NOTE 1. - Mr. Blyth appears to consider that the only whale met with
nowadays in the Indian Sea north of the line is a great Rorqual or
Balaenoptera, to which he gives the specific name of Indica. (See
J.A.S.B. XXVIII. 481.) The text, however (from Ramusio), clearly points
to the Spermaceti whale; and Maury's Whale-Chart consists with this.
"The best ambergris," says Mas'udi, "is found on the islands and coasts of
the Sea of Zinj (Eastern Africa); it is round, of a pale blue, and
sometimes as big as an ostrich egg.... These are morsels which have been
swallowed by the fish called Awal. When the sea is much agitated it
casts up fragments of amber almost like lumps of rock, and the fish
swallowing these is choked thereby, and floats on the surface.
