[Footnote 62: Mr. Ives mentions wells of fresh water under the sea in the Persian Gulf, near the island of Barien.--Hole.]
[Footnote 63: "Such fountains are not unfrequent in India and in Ceylon; and the Mohammedan travelers speak of ambergris swallowed by whales, who are made sick and regorge it."--Hole.]
[Footnote 64: "Ambergris--a substance of animal origin, found principally in warm climates floating on the sea, or thrown on the coast. The best comes from Madagascar, Surinam, and Java. When it is heated or rubbed, it exhales an agreeable odor."--Knight's _English Cyclopædia_, Vol. I, p. 142.]
[Footnote 65: "Camphor is the produce of certain trees in Borneo, Sumatra, and Japan. The camphor lies in perpendicular veins near the center of the tree, or in its knots, and the same tree exudes a fluid termed oil of camphor. The Venetians, and subsequently the Dutch, monopolized the sale of camphor."--_Encyclopædia Metropolitana_, Vol. III, p. 195. Gibbons, in his notes to the _Decline and Fall_, says: "From the remote islands of the Indian Ocean a large provision of camphor had been imported, which is employed, with a mixture of wax, to illuminate the palaces of the East."]
To finish the description of this place, it is not possible for ships to get off when once they approach within a certain distance. If they be driven thither by a wind from the sea, the wind and the current impel them; and if they come into it when a land wind blows, which might seem to favor their getting out again, the height of the mountain stops the wind, and occasions a calm, so that the force of the current carries them ashore; and what completes the misfortune is, that there is no possibility of ascending the mountain, or of escaping by sea.
We continued upon the shore, at the foot of the mountain, in a state of despair, and expected death every day. On our first landing we had divided our provisions as equally as we could, and thus every one lived a longer or a shorter time, according to his temperance, and the use he made of his provisions.
[Illustration: _Having balanced my cargo exactly, and fastened it well to the raft, I went on board with two oars I had made Page 281_]
I survived all my companions; and when I buried the last I had so little provisions remaining that I thought I could not long survive, and I dug a grave, resolving to lie down in it because there was no one left to pay me the last offices of respect. But it pleased God once more to take compassion on me, and put it in my mind to go to the bank of the river which ran into the great cavern. Considering its probable course with great attention, I said to myself, "This river, which runs thus underground, must somewhere have an issue. If I make a raft, and leave myself to the current, it will convey me to some inhabited country, or I shall perish. If I be drowned, I lose nothing, but only change one kind of death for another."