Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 16.djvu/296

 at that which they beheld. They became like madmen in consequence of what they saw upon the island, of commodities and wealth lying on the shore of the sea. I beheld also in the midst of the above-mentioned stream an abundance of various kinds of jewels and minerals, with jacinths and large pearls, suitable to Kings. They were like gravel in the channels of the water which flowed through the fields; and all the bed of that stream glittered by reason of the great number of minerals and other things that it contained. We likewise saw on that island an abundance of the best kind of Sanfi aloes-wood, and Kamari aloes-wood. And in that island is a gushing spring of crude ambergris, which floweth like wax over the side of that spring through the violence of the heat of the sun, and spreadeth upon the sea-shore, and the monsters of the deep come up from the sea and swallow it, and descend with it into the sea; but it becometh hot in their stomachs, therefore they eject it from their mouths into the sea, and it congealeth on the surface of the water. Upon this, its colour and its qualities become changed, and the waves cast it up on the shore of the sea: so the travellers and merchants who know it take it and smell it. But as to the crude ambergris that is not swallowed, it floweth over the side of that mountain, and congealeth upon the ground; and when the sun shineth upon it, it melteth, and from it the odour of the whole of that valley becometh like the odour of musk. Then, when the sun withdraweth from it, it congealeth again. The place wherein is this crude ambergris no one can enter: no one can gain access to it: for the mountain surroundeth that island.

We continued to wander about the island, diverting ourselves with the view of the good things which God (whose name be exalted!) had created upon it, and perplexed at our case, and at the things that we beheld, and affected with violent fear. We had collected upon the shore of the sea a small quantity of provisions, and we used it sparingly, eating of it every day, or two days, only one meal, dreading the exhaustion of our stock, and our dying in sorrow, from the violence of hunger and fear. Each one of us that died we washed, and shrouded in some of the clothes and linen which the sea cast upon the shore of the island; and thus we did until a great number of us had died, and there remained of us but a small party, who