script, 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.

[7] It is difficult to say anything certain of the countries to which this
story relates; which may have been some of the islands now called
Philipines, or perhaps some of the islands in the straits of Sunda.
--Harris.

Such is the opinion of the editor of Harris's Collection. But I am
disposed, especially from the rivers mentioned, to consider Zapage as
Pegu; and that Malacca, Sumatra, and Java, were the dependent islan