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"Why did you stand waiting there for me to look your way?" Hatch laughed as he sat down in a chair. "I have got into the habit of waiting, I suppose," he said. "For the last five months I have been a servant in the train of the Sultan of the Maldive Islands." Ralston was not as a rule to be surprised by any strange thing which Hatch might have chosen to do.
He merely glanced at his companion and asked: "What in the world were you doing in the Maldive Islands?" "Nothing at all," replied Hatch. "I did not go to them. I joined the Sultan at Suez." This time Ralston, who had been moving about the room in search of some papers which he had mislaid, came to a stop. His attention was arrested. He sat down in a chair and prepared to listen.
Their neighbors on the platform are seafarers coming with the embassy from the Sultan of the Maldive Islands, bringing to the governor of Ceylon the annual tribute sanctioned by custom, and the renewed assurances of loyalty to Edward VII. Close by them, and taking a profound interest in a group of European ladies stepping from a launch below, are three black girls in the garb of Catholic Sisters of Charity, whose chains and crucifixes are of unusual size.
Sclater has proposed for the hypothetical continent connecting these distant points, and whose former existence is indicated by the Mascarene islands and the Maldive coral group, the name of Lemuria.
As soon as he was enabled by the kindness of some Delhi merchants to resume his travels, he embarked for the Maldive Islands, went on to Bengal, there set sail for Sumatra, and disembarked at one of the Nicobar Islands after a very bad passage which had lasted fifty days.
The inhabitants are idolatrous Malabars, having among them many rich Moorish merchants, more especially since the war broke out between us and the zamorin, as many of these merchants had left Calicut to reside at Coulan. They trade with Coromandel, Ceylon, the Maldive islands, Bengal, Pegu, Camatia, and Malava.
It struck me as being a very strong place, all the fortifications being almost entirely surrounded by water. There are two harbours an outer and an inner one. The Star came to anchor in the outer one, among a number of vessels of all sorts of curious rigs the petamars of Malabar, the dhows of the Arabs, the dhoneys of Coromandel, and curious sea boats from the Maldive and Laccadive islands.
It is to be feared that words rarely convey the real spirit of what most fascinates the eye, and whatever they do not help the reader to see, like glass, they darken. A Classic Island. Topographical Position. Maldive Islands. Lands rising out of the Sea. Size of Ceylon. Latitude and Longitude. A Link of a Powerful Chain. Important British Station. "Mountain of the Holy Foot."
Leaving the service of the emperor, and the advantages attaching to the post of ambassador, he embarked for the Maldive Islands, which were governed by a woman, and where a large trade in cocoa was carried on. Here he was again made a judge, but this was only of short duration, for the vizier became jealous of his success, and, after marrying three wives, Ibn was obliged to take refuge in flight.
He noticed a fish of enormous size, probably a spermaceti whale, which the seamen endeavoured to frighten away by ringing a bell, then a shark, in whose stomach they found a smaller shark, enclosing in its turn one still smaller, "both alive," says the traveller, which is manifestly an exaggeration; then, after describing the remora, the dactyloptera, and the porpoise, he speaks of the sea near the Maldive Islands in which he counted an enormous number of islands, among them he mentions Ceylon by its Arabian name, with its pearl fisheries; Sumatra, inhabited by cannibals, and rich in gold-mines; Nicobar, and the Andaman Islands, where cannibalism still exists even at the present day.
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