ver, is occasionally found. At Kerman a sort of wine or arrack
is made with spices and alcohol, distilled from sugar; it is called
Ma-ul-Hayat (water of life), and is recommended as an aphrodisiac. Grain in
the Shamil plain is harvested in April, dates are gathered in August."
(_Houtum-Schindler_, l.c. p. 496.)

See "Remarks on the Use of Wine and Distilled Liquors among the
Mohammedans of Turkey and Persia," pp. 315-330 of _Narrative of a Tour
through Armenia, Kurdistan, Persia, and Mesopotamia_.... By the Rev.
Horatio Southgate,... London, 1840, vol. ii.--H. C.]

[Sir H. Yule quotes, in a MS. note, these lines from Moore's _Light of the
Harem_:

"Wine, too, of every clime and hue,
Around their liquid lustre threw
_Amber Rosolli_[3]--the bright dew
From vineyards of the Green Sea gushing."] See above, p. 114.

[Illustration: The Double or Latin Rudder, as shown in the Navicella of
Giotto. (From Eastlake.)]

The date and dry-fish diet of the Gulf people is noticed by most
travellers, and P. del a Valle repeats the opinion about its being the
only wholesome one. Ibn Batuta says the people of Hormuz had a saying,
"_Khorma wa mahi lut-i-Padshahi_," i.e. "Dates and fish make an Emperor's
dish!" A fish, exactly like the tunny of the Mediterranean in general
appearance and habits, is one of the great objects of fishery off the Sind
and Mekran coasts. It comes in pursuit of shoals of anchovies, very much
like the Mediterranean fish also. (_I. B._ II. 231; _Sir B. Frere_.)

[Friar Odoric (_Cathay_, I. pp. 55-56) says: "And there you find (before
arriving at Hormuz) people who live almost entirely on dates, and you get
forty-two pounds of dates for less than a groat; and so of many other
things."]

NOTE 3.--The stitched vessels of Kerman ([Greek: ploiaria rapta]) are
noticed in the _Periplus_. Similar accounts to those of our text are given
of the ships of the Gulf and of Western India by Jordanus and John of
Montecorvino. (_Jord._ p. 53; _Cathay_, p. 217.) "Stitched vessels," Sir
B. Frere writes, "are still used. I have seen them of 200 tons burden; but
they are being driven out by iron-fastened vessels, as iron gets cheaper,
except where (as on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts) the pliancy of a
stitched boat is useful in a surf. Till the last few years, when steamers
have begun to take all the best horses, the Arab horses bound to Bombay
almost all came in the way Marco Polo describes." Some of them do still,