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At daylight on the 11th we were still among icefloes, but going away from instead of meeting them, and on that morning we saw in the distance the coast of Iceland, which the Germans tried to persuade us was the sails of fishing boats, as they did not wish us to think we were so near the Icelandic coast, the first land that we had seen since the Maldive Islands, a week after our capture, i.e. more than four months before.
Among many others may be mentioned the Mozambique channel, and that tract of ocean, from the eastern coast of Africa, quite across to the coast of Malabar, including the Mahé, Chagas, Maldive and Laccadive archipelagos; the southeastern part of the China sea; the Red sea; the eastern part of Java; the coasts of all the Sunda islands; and various places in the Pacific ocean.
The sea is treated as a living thing, whose anger may be appeased by gifts; it is a monster, a dragon. The Spartan Cleomenes, about to start on a voyage, sacrifices a bull to the sea. Offerings to the sea are made in the Maldive Islands. +309+. Water is abundantly employed in religious ritual as a means of purification from ceremonial defilement, and in services of initiation.
The city of Benares, celebrated as a school of Indian philosophy, and the almost impregnable fortress of Gevatior, are mentioned by them, as well as a colony of Jews in Cochin, and the Maldive islands: these they frequented to obtain cowries, which then, as now, were used as money.
We know now that we were then anchored in a British possession, one of the southernmost groups of the Maldive Islands! Some of the islands were inhabited, and small sailing boats came out to the Wolf, presumably with provisions of some kind. We were, of course, not allowed to speak to any of the islanders, who came alongside the Wolf, and were not allowed alongside the Hitachi.
The viceroy now appointed Don George de Almeyda to the command in Ceylon, who sailed from Goa for that place on the 19th of February 1631, in the great galley taken by Botello when he destroyed the fleet of Acheen: But encountering a storm off Cape Comorin, the galley was ready to founder, on which Almeyda took to the boat with 29 persons, and reached one of the Maldive islands after four days of incredible distress.
Agatharcides, it is true, adds that these islands extend along the sea, which washes Gadrosia and India; but he probably had very confused notions of the extent and form of India; and, at any rate, giving the widest latitude to the term, the same sea may be said to wash Gadrosia and the Maldive Islands.
In this suggestive opinion Professor Owen also agrees with him. The Maldive Islands, situated five hundred miles west of Ceylon, are a group of seventeen coral islets containing a vast number of cocoanut palms, and are rich in varied tropical vegetation.
A usage of the same sort is reported to have prevailed in the Maldive Islands before the conversion of the inhabitants to Islam. The famous Arab traveller Ibn Batutah has described the custom and the manner in which it came to an end.
Rabardy, the captain, gladly let them go at Port Said and made for the Maldive Islands, where he engaged thirty Arabs. Later on he put these ashore at Point de Galle.
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