Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/158

 The range is the Jebel Akhdar, or "Green Mountains," behind Muscat, and about 10,000 feet in altitude. Good descriptions are given by Wellsted, Zwemer, and Hogarth, and of especial interest is the account of the fertile and populous Wadi Tyin, enclosed by these mountains, visited by General S.B. Miles (op. cit.).

35. The pearl-mussel, Meleagrina margaritifera, Ham., family Aviculidae, is found in many parts of the Indian Ocean, but particularly on the southern shores of the Persian Gulf and in the shallow water between India and Ceylon. The pearl is a deposit formed around a foreign substance in the mantle of the mussel, generally a parasitic larva. Examination by Prof. Herdman at the Manaar fisheries indicated that the nucleus of the pearl was generally a Platyhelminthian parasite, which he identified as the larval condition of a cestode or tapeworm. This cestode passes from the body of the pearl mussel into that of a file-fish and thence into some larger animal, possibly the large Trygon or ray (Watt, The Commercial Products of India, pp.557–8; Cambridge Natural History, III, 100, 449.)

35. Asabon mountains.—This is another tribal name, "mountains of the Asabi," or Beni Assab, whom Wellsted described as still living there (op. cit., I, 239–242), a people very different from the other tribes of Oman, living in exclusion in their mountains; and whom Zwemer (Oman and Eastern Arabia, in the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, 1907; pp.597–606) considers a remnant of the aboriginal race of South Arabia, their speech being allied to the Mahri and both to the ancient Himyaritic; who were probably not as Zwemer thinks, "driven northward by Semitic migration," but represent rather a relic of that pre-Joktanite southward migration around this very coast.

The mountain preserves the name, being now the Jebel Sibi, 2800 feet, 26° 20′N., 56° 25′E., continued at the end of the cape in the promontory of Ras Musandum.

35. A round and high mountain called Semiramis. Fabricius, following Sprenger and Ritter, identifies this with Kôh-i-mubârak, "Mountain of the Blest" (25° 50′N., 57° 19′E.), which, while not high, being only about 600 feet, is of the shape here described and directly on the strait.

Fabricius (p.146) suggests that the name Semiramis is probably from the Arabic Shamarîda "held precious." Ras Musandum has been a sacred spot to Arabian navigators from time immemorial. The classic geographers describe some of the practices of the ship-captains passing it, and Vincent tells of those in his time as follows (II, 354): "All the Arabian ships take their departure from it with some ceremonies