"In
Barbary," says _Shaw_, "they are so fond of their looking-glasses, which
they hang upon their breasts, that they will not lay them aside, even when
after the drudgery of the day they are obliged to go two or three miles
with a pitcher or a goat's skin to fetch water."--_Travels_.
[204] "They say that if a snake or serpent fix his eyes on the lustre of
those stones (emeralds), he immediately becomes blind."--_Ahmed ben
Abdalaziz_, Treatise on Jewels.
[205] "At Gombaroon and the Isle of Ormus, it is sometimes so hot, that
the people are obliged to lie all day in the water."--_Marco Polo_.
[206] This mountain is generally supposed to be inaccessible. _Struy_
says, "I can well assure the reader that their opinion is not true, who
suppose this mount to be inaccessible." He adds, that "the lower part of
the mountain is cloudy, misty, and dark, the middlemost part very cold,
and like clouds of snow, but the upper regions perfectly calm."--It was on
this mountain that the Ark was supposed to have rested after the Deluge,
and part of it, they say, exists there still, which Struy thus gravely
accounts for:--"Whereas none can remember that the air on the top of the
hill did ever change or was subject either to wind or rain, which is
presumed to be the reason that the Ark has endured so long without being
rotten.
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