XXXVlll NOTES. 



Ophir to be the east coast of Africa, explains the thukkiim (thukkiyyim) to 

 mean not peacocks, but parrots, or Guinea-fowls (p. 375.) Respecting Soco- 

 tora, compare Bohlen, das alte Indien, Th. ii. S. 139, with Benfey, Indien, 

 S. 3032. Sofala is described as a country rich in gold by Edrisi (in 

 Amedee Jaubert's translation, t. i. p. 67), and subsequently by the Portuguese, 

 after Gama's voyage of discovery (Barros, Dec. I. liv. x. cap. i; P. ii. p. 375 ; 

 Kiilb, Geschiehte der Entdeckungs reisen, Th. i. 1841, S. 236.) I have called 

 attention elsewhere to the circumstance that Edrisi, in the middle of the 12th 

 century, speaks of the employment of quicksilver in the goldwashings made 

 by the negroes in this country, as a long known practice. Remembering the 

 great frequency of the interchange of r and 1, we find the name of the east 

 African Sofala perfectly equivalent to that of Sophara, which is used in the 

 Septuagint, with several other forms, for the Ophir of Solomon's and Hiram's 

 fleet. Ptolemy also, as has been noticed above (Note 179), speaks of a Sap- 

 phara, in Arabia (Ritter, Asien, Bd. viii. 1846, S. 252), and a Supura in India, 

 The significant Sanscrit names of the mother country had been repeated, or, 

 as it were, reflected on neighbouring or opposite coasts : we find similar re- 

 lations in the present day in the Spanish and English Americas. The range 

 of the trade to Ophir might thus, according to my view, be extended over a 

 wide space, just as a Phosnician voyage to Tartessus might include touching 

 at Cyrene and Carthage, Gadeira and Cerne ; and one to the Cassiterides 

 might embrace the Artabrian, British, and East Cimbrian coasts. It is, 

 however, remarkable, that we do not find incense, spices, and silk and cotton 

 cloth, named among the wares from Ophir, together with ivory, apes, and 

 peacocks. The latter, are exclusively Indian, although, from their gradual 

 extension to the westward, they were often called by the Greeks " Median 

 and Persian birds :" the Samians even supposed them to have been originally 

 belonging to Samos, on account of the peacocks kept by the priests in the 

 sanctuary of Hera. From a passage in Eustathius (Comm. in Iliad, t. iv> 

 p. 225, ed. Lips. 1827), on the sacredness of peacocks in Libya, it has been 

 unduly inferred that the rotas also belonged to Africa. 



O p. 999. See Columbus on Ophir, and el Monte Sopora, " which 

 Solomon's fleet could only reach in three years," in Navarrete, viages y descu- 

 brimientos que hicieron los Espafloles, t. i. p. 103. The great discoverer 

 says elsewhere, still in the hope of reaching Ophir, "the excellence and 

 power of the gold of Ophir are indescribable ; he who possesses it does what 

 he wills in this world ; nay, it even avails him to draw souls from purgatory 

 to paradise" ("llega a que echa las animas al paraiso.") Carta del Almirante 



