The little bell for post-horses was introduced by the Mongols into Russia, and having been in use on post-roads ever since the time of their domination, has substituted the horn of the French and German postillion.—BRUUN.
(12.) “and they send it to whosoever it belongs.”—Pigeons were employed in Asia as earners, in very remote times. It was pigeon service of which the daughter of the governor of Atra, Hatra, or al Hadr, availed herself, that enabled Sapor, king of Persia, 240–271, to capture the city which the emperor Severus had failed to take. It is recorded by numerous European and Eastern writers, that the pigeon-post was in general use in Syria and Egypt during the Crusades. In his story of the Crusade under Henry VI., in 1196, Arnold, bishop of Lubeck, describes the training of pigeons, which was similar to what we read in the text, and observes that “the Infidels are more highly gifted than the children of light”, the training of pigeons being the invention of the Infidels, whose practice was imitated by their enemies. After the fall of Baïrouth in 1197, Boemund, prince of Antioch, announced the good tidings to his subjects by despatching a pigeon.
Khalil Daheri (Quatremère, i, 55, note 77), an Arabian writer of the 15th century, reports that Belbeis, Salehieh, Katia, and Varradeh or Barideh, were the pigeon-post stations on the road to Syria. According to Makrizi (_ibid._, 56), Varradeh was distant eighteen miles from Alarih. Query? Fort Arich or el-Arich in Lower Egypt, where the French capitulation was signed in 1800. Aboul-Mahazin declares that Bir al-Kady—The Kady’s well—must have marked the limits of Syria and Egypt.
Another Arabian writer (Abd-Allatif, _S. de Sacy edition_, 43) calls Alarich, Alaris—changed by the bishop of Lubeck, as his German editors believe, into Ahir, a name almost to be identified with “Archey”, one of the principal pigeon stations.—BRUUN.
(13.) “sacka.”—Literally, in Turkish, a water-carrier. A pelican is sákà koútchou.—ED.
(1.) “The Infidels call the mountain Muntagi.”—Hushan dagh, the correct name given by the Arabs, is here handed down to us as “Muntagi”, which differs so widely from the native appellation of Sinaï, that it may have been derived from the word Montagna, possibly the generic name by which the mount was known to pilgrims. In such a case, Schiltberger’s companions would have been Italians, who, on the supposition that they were mariners, supplied him with the details he gives on the Red Sea—its breadth, which is represented at double its actual extent—and the information that it had to be crossed to attain Sinai; although we know from De Lannoy that the journey from Egypt was performed “en costiant la mer”. The knight makes no mention of the wonderful supply of oil at the monastery of St. Catherine, nor of the other miracles performed by the saint; but he explains why the Infidels went to Sinai. At the foot of the mount was a church of St. Catherine, “à manière d’un chastel, forte et quarrée, où les trois lois de Jhésu-Crist, de Moyse et de Mahommet sont en trois églises représentées”.—BRUUN.