[Sidenote: Book of Wonders, tenth century]
There is preserved an "abstract of wonders" (oldest MS. of 1484),[206] by an unknown Arab author, which gives a picture of the Arabs' mythical ideas in the tenth century. It also tells of islands in the west, which are of interest to us on account of their resemblance to many of the mediæval mythical conceptions of Western Europe.
"In the great ocean is an island which is visible at sea at some distance, but if one tries to approach it, it withdraws and disappears. If one returns to the place one started from, it is seen again as before. It is said that upon this island is a tree that sprouts at sunrise, and grows as long as the sun is ascending; after midday it decreases, and disappears at sunset. Sailors assert that in this sea there is a little fish called 'shâkil,' and that those who carry it upon them can discover and reach the island without its concealing itself. This is truly a strange and wonderful thing."
This is evidently the same myth as that of the Lost Isle, already referred to (Perdita, cf. vol. i. p. 376), and of the Norwegian huldrelands, etc. It also bears resemblance to legends from China and Japan. The tree is the sun-tree of the Indian legends, which was already introduced into the earliest versions of the Alexander romance (Pseudo-Callisthenes, circa 200 A.D.), and which is met with again in the fairy-tales and mythical conceptions of many peoples.[207] Possibly it is this same tree that grows on the mountain Fusan in the Japanese happy land Horaisan, and which is sometimes seen over the sea horizon (see p. 56).
"The island of 'as-Sayyâra.' There are sailors who assert that they have often seen it, but they have not stayed there. It is a mountainous and cultivated island, which drifts towards the east when a west wind is blowing, and vice versa. The stone that forms this island is very light.... A man is there able to carry a large mass of rock." This floating island resembles those met with in tales from the Faroes and elsewhere (cf. vol. i. pp. 375, f.). Even Pliny [Nat. Hist., ii. c. 95] has statements about floating islands, and Las Casas, in 1552-61 [Historias de las Indias in "Documentos ineditos," lxii. p. 99], says that in the story of St. Brandan many such islands (?) are spoken of in the sea round the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores, and he asserts that "the same is mentioned in the book of 'Inventio fortunata,'" that is, by Nicholas of Lynn [cf. de Costa, 1880, p. 185].