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said: " If thou continuest thy course along the shore of this sea
thou shalt come to where thou findest a quadruped which confronts
the sun and, at its rising, rushes forward with the object of
swallowing it. Have thou no fear of it, but bestride it and it shall
carry thee to the other side of the sea : arriving there, walk back
along the shore till thou again com est to the Nile. Then follow
its course and thou shalt reach a region of iron, where the
mountains, the trees and the plains are all [of iron. Pass on and 22.
thou shalt roach a region of silver, where the mountains, the
trees and all other objects are of silver. Pass on again and thou
shalt come to a region of gold, where everything is] ¹ of gold. At
the end of this region thou shalt see a vaulted chamber of gold
and here will the secret of the Nile be disclosed to thee." Accordingly,
he went his way till at last he came to the vaulted chamber,
and lo! water flowed down the wall into the chamber, and having
divided, issued forth through the four doors 2 Three of the
channels, however, penetrated below the surface and only one
flowed on the face of the earth, and this was the Nile. He drank
of its waters and rested, then advanced to the wall and was
about to ascend it when an angel appeared to him and said, 'O
Ha'idh, stay where thou art, for now thou knowest fully the secret
of the Nile, and this is Paradise,'—and so on to the end of the
tradition ³ The Jaihim [Oxus] takes its rise in the country
of Wakhkhan and flows onwards in the direction of al-Khuttal,
where it swells in size and volume by receiving the waters of six
tributary streams,*—the river of Hulbuk, next in order the river
Barban, then the river of Farghar, then the river of Andijaragh
and then the river Wakhshab, which is the deepest; it is then
1 The words within brackets are wanting in the text; they have been
supplied from Yaqut, IV, 869, 1. 1-3.
2 The text refers to the wall and four doors of the chamber as if
previonsly mentioned. This, however, is not the case; and recourse is again
to be had to Yaqut. He has, ' After walking through the land of gold for
some time, he came to a golden wall, on which was a vaulted chamber having
four doors,' etc.
3 The curious may find the continuation of this story in Yaqut, IV, 869,
who supplements it with the remark that it is a story which looks very
much like a fable, but that it is widely diffused and found in many books—
his only apology for inserting it in his work.
4 The source of the Oxus is called the Jaryab or ' river of Badakhshan.'
To this, five other streams join in the districts of al-Khuttal and al-Wakhsh