[2] The chronology of the Chinese history is attended with extreme
    difficulty.  According to Du Halde:  In the reign of the emperor Hi
    Tseng, the 18th of the Tsong dynasty, the empire fell into great
    confusion, in consequence of heavy taxations, and a great famine
    occasioned by the inundation of the rivers, and the ravages of
    locusts.  These things caused many insurrections, and a rebel, named
    Hoan Tsia put himself at the head of the malcontents, and drove the
    emperor from the imperial city.  But he was afterwards defeated, and
    the emperor restored.  It must be owned that there are about twenty
    years difference between the time of the rebellion mentioned in the
    text, and the date of the great revolt, as assigned by Du Halde; but
    whether the mistake lies in the Arabian manuscript, or in the
    difficulties of Chinese chronology, I cannot take upon me to
    determine; yet both stories probably relate to the same event. 
    —­Harris.

[3] According to Abulpharagius, one Abu Said revolted against the Khaliff
    Al Mohated, in the year of the hegira, 285, A.D. 893, and laid waste
    Bassora.  This date agrees with the story of Ebn Wahab in the text. 
    —­Harris.

[4] From this circumstance, it appears probable that the great canal of
    China was not then constructed.—­E.

[5] Some circumstances in this very interesting detail have been a little
    curtailed.  If Abu Zaid had been a man of talents, he might surely have
    acquired and transmitted more useful information from this traveller;
    who indeed seems to have been a poor drivelling zelot.—­E.

[6] There is a vast deal of error in this long paragraph.  It certainly was
    impossible to ascertain the route or voyage of the wreck, which was
    said to have been cast away on the coast of Syria.  If it could have
    been ascertained to have come from the sea of the Chozars, or the
    Euxine, by the canal of Constantinople, and the Egean, into the gulf
    of Syria, and actually was utterly different from the build of the
    Mediterranean, it may or must have been Russian.  If it certainly was
    built at Siraff, some adventurous Arabian crew must have doubled the
    south of Africa from the east, and perished when they had well nigh
    immortalized their fame, by opening up the passage by sea from Europe
    to India:  And as the Arabian Moslems very soon navigated to Zanguebar,
    Hinzuan, and Madagascar, where their colonies still remain, this list
    is not impossible, though very unlikely.  The ambergris may have
    proceeded from a sick cachalot that had wandered into the
    Mediterranean.

    The north-east passage around the north of Asia and Europe, which is
    adduced by the commentator, in Harris’s Collection, is now thoroughly
    known to be impracticable.—­E.