Note 97 — EL IDRISI COMPARED WITH EL BEKRI.

The distance of Aúlíl (in the Bay of Arguin) from Sijilmésah, as stated by El Idrísí, supposes, as we have seen, a mean daily journey of 22½ geographical miles, instead of 15, which is the ordinary rate. Now, if the forty hours’ sail from Arguin to the mouth of the Senegal, be reduced in the ratio of 22½ to 15, or 3 to 2, we shall have 26⅔ for the number of hours, according to El Idrísí’s scale. But there is no need of such exactness. It is highly improbable that the navigation spoken of by the Arab author, and which formed an ornament of his theory, had any existence even so far as it was within the limits of possibility.