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I") 86 MisR (eqypt). 145
a rock in the water so that only half his body is visible. If he is thus seen
taking up water in his hands, washing his face and cutting his nails, the
strange being is recognized, and they go near him, kneel before him and say:
((Will the present year bring the people happiness or misfortune?». The man
5 says nothing, but if he laughs, then the year will be a plenteous one and sickness
and plagues will not visit the people. If he frowns, then one may be sure
that either in the present year, or in the next, they will suffer from famine or
plague. The .old man remains a long time seated before he dives down again ».
In this river there are water-camels (^^ ^ .^g cranes?), and water-
10 horses {^t ^) which come up on the bank to eat the herbs, but they go
back into the water as soon as they see a man ".
Notes.
1) The contents of this chapter are not found in any other Chinese work that we know
of anterior to our author. Chau in a previous passage (supra, p. 116) speaks of the capital of
15 the Ta-shi by the name of Mi-su-li (Misr). In that he followed the custom of the Arabs, who used
the same name Mi§r for the country and its capital (e. g. Biblioth. geogr. Arab. II, p. 97,i. Yakut
IV, p. 554,6), but, using different modes of transcription, he shows he was ignorant of this fact.
2) Conf. supra, p. 116.
3) Shi-su is Joseph, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham (P'u-lo-hung).
^0 Arab tradition says that the canal of the Fayum was dug by Joseph, and that he brought that
region under cultivation; this latter fact is evidently the explanation of our author's story of the
360 villages founded by Joseph to supply Egypt with food. Edrisi, op. cit., I, 303—310 says
that when the canal had been dug, Joseph said to the king: 'The public good demands that you
should entrust me with one family for each district of Egypt'. The king consenting, Joseph
25 ordered a village to be built for each of these families. There were eighty-five families; there
were built as many villages. When the building was finished, Joseph gave to each village water
sufficient to water its lands, but nothing more; then to each tribe he assigned drinking water suffi-
cient even for the time of low waters. Conf. Masudi, op. cit., II, 363, 384. This latter author
says (II, 365—866) that when Joseph built the pyramids he built also a nilometer at Memphis.
SO San-ts'ai-t'u-hui (Pien-i-tien, 86, Sec. T'ien-fang), mentions P'u-lo-hung «the Patriarch (j|j^
^j]j)
of the Ta-shi».
4) Kie-ye is Kahirah. The name of Al-kahirah, «the Victorious)) was given the new city
founded in A. D. 973 by the general of the first Fatimite Caliph, Al-Mo'izz, who had conquered
Egypt in 969. See supra, pp. 16 and 120, n. 3.
35 5) We have no explanation to offer of this story, nor can we find any similar one in any
Arabic or western writers accessible to us.
6) Masudi, II, 394 is of opinion that the hippopotamus resembles somewhat a horse,
except as regards the hoofs and tail and the greater breadth of the former's head. Leo Afri-
canus, Historie of Africa, III, 949 speaks of both sea-horses and sea-oxen, which are found in
40 the rivers of Niger and Nilus. His sea-horse is the hippopotamus, his sea-ox seems to be a
rhinoceros. «The sea-oxe being covered with an exceeding hard skiane is shaped in all respects
like unto the land oxe; save that in bignes it exceedeth not a calfe of sixe moneths oldeD.
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