The Second Fact To Which We Allude Is Related In The Commentary Of Abu
Sird, On The Travels Of A Mahommedan In India And China, In The Ninth
Century Of The Christian Era.
The travels and commentary are already given
in the first volume of this work; but the importance of the fact will, we
trust, plead our excuse for repeating the passage which contains it.
"In our times, discovery has been made of a thing quite new: nobody
imagined that the sea which extends from the Indies to China, had any
communication with the sea of Syria, nor could any one take it into his
head. Now behold what has come to pass in our days, according to what we
have heard. In the Sea of Rum, or the Mediterranean, they found the wreck
of an Arabian ship which had been shattered by tempest; for all her men
perishing, and she being dashed to pieces by the waves, the remains of her
were driven by wind and weather into the Sea of Chozars, and from thence to
the canal of the Mediterranean sea, and at last were thrown on the Sea of
Syria. This evinces that the sea surrounds all the country of China, and of
Sila, - the uttermost parts of Turkestan, and the country of the Chozars,
and then it enters at the strait, till it washes the shore of Syria. The
proof of this is deduced from the built of the ship we are speaking of; for
none but the ships of Sarif are so put together, that the planks are not
nailed, or bolted, but joined together in an extraordinary manner, as if
they were sewn; whereas the planking of all the ships of the Mediterranean
Sea, and of the coast of Syria, is nailed and not joined together in the
same way."
When we entered on this digression, we had brought the historical sketch of
the discoveries and commerce of the Phoenicians down to the period of the
destruction of Old Tyre, or about six hundred years before Christ.
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