[FN#428] Arab.  “Ya Saki’ al-Wajh,” which Lane translates by “lying” or “liar.”

[FN#429] Kamin (in Bresl.  Edit. “bayn” = between) Al-Bahrayn = Ambuscade or lurking-place of the two seas.  The name of the city in Lane is “’Emareeych” imaginary but derived from Emarch (’imarah) = being populous.  Trebutien (ii. 161) takes from Bresl.  Edit.  “Amar” and translates the port-name, “le lieu de refuge des deux mers.”

[FN#430] i.e.  “High of (among) the Kings.”  Lane proposes to read ’Ali al-Mulk = high in dominion.

[FN#431] Pronounce Mu’inuddeen = Aider of the Faith.  The Bresl.  Edit. (iv. 266) also read “Mu’in al-Riyasah” = Mu’in of the Captaincies.

[FN#432] Arab.  “Shum” = a tough wood used for the staves with which donkeys are driven.  Sir Gardner Wilkinson informed Lane that it is the ash.

[FN#433] In Persian we find the fuller metaphorical form, “kissing the ground of obedience.”

[FN#434] For the Shaykh of the Sea(-board) in Sindbad the Seaman see vol. vi. 50.

[FN#435] That this riding is a facetious exaggeration of the African practice I find was guessed by Mr. Keightley.

[FN#436] Arab.  “Kummasra”:  the root seems to be “Kamsara” = being slender or compact.

[FN#437] Lane translates, “by reason of the exhilaration produced by intoxication.”  But the Arabic here has no assonance.  The passage also alludes to the drunken habits of those blameless Ethiopians, the races of Central Africa where, after midday a chief is rarely if ever found sober.  We hear much about drink in England but Englishmen are mere babes compared with these stalwart Negroes.  In Unyamwezi I found all the standing bedsteads of pole-sleepers and bark-slabs disposed at an angle of about 20 degrees for the purpose of draining off the huge pottle-fulls of Pome (Osirian beer) drained by the occupants; and, comminxit lectum potus might be said of the whole male population.

[FN#438] This is not exaggerated.  When at Hebron I saw the biblical spectacle of two men carrying a huge bunch slung to a pole, not so much for the weight as to keep the grapes from injury.

[FN#439] The Mac. and Bul.  Edits. add, “and with him a host of others after his kind”; but these words are omitted by the Bresl.  Edit. and apparently from the sequel there was only one Ghul-giant.

[FN#440] Probably alluding to the most barbarous Persian practice of plucking or tearing out the eyes from their sockets.  See Sir John Malcolm’s description of the capture of Kirman and Morier (in Zohrab, the hostage) for the wholesale blinding of the Asterabadian by the Eunuch-King Agha Mohammed Shah.  I may note that the mediaeval Italian practice called bacinare, or scorching with red-hot basins, came from Persia.

[FN#441] Arab.  “Laban” as opposed to “Halib”:  in Night dcclxxiv. (infra p. 365) the former is used for sweet milk, and other passages could be cited.  I have noted that all galaktophagi, or milk-drinking races, prefer the artificially soured to the sweet, choosing the fermentation to take place outside rather than inside their stomachs.  Amongst the Somal I never saw man, woman or child drink a drop of fresh milk; and they offered considerable opposition to our heating it for coffee.