Note {1} — Chapter XXXI

Note 1.—It is not perhaps of much use to seek a serious identification of the locality of these Islands, or, as Marsden has done, to rationalise the fable. It ran from time immemorial, and as nobody ever found the Islands, their locality shifted with the horizon, though the legend long hung about Socotra and its vicinity. Coronelli’s Atlas (Venice, 1696) identifies these islands with those called Abdul Kuri near Cape Gardafui, and the same notion finds favour with Marsden. No islands indeed exist in the position indicated by Polo if we look to his direction “south of Kesmacoran,” but if we take his indication of “half-way between Mekrán and Socotra,” the Kuria Muria Islands on the Arabian coast, in which M. Pauthier longs to trace these veritable Male and Female Isles, will be nearer than any others. Marco’s statement that they had a bishop subject to the metropolitan of Socotra certainly looks as if certain concrete islands had been associated with the tale. Friar Jordanus (p. 44) also places them between India the Greater and India Tertia (i.e. with him Eastern Africa). Conti locates them not more than 5 miles from Socotra, and yet 100 mile distant from one another. “Sometimes the men pass over to the women, and sometimes the women pass over to the men, and each return to their own respective island before the expiration of six months. Those who remain on the island of the others beyond this fatal period die immediately” (p. 21). Fra Mauro places the islands to the south of Zanzibar, and gives them the names of Mangla and Nebila. One is curious to know whence came these names, one of which seems to be Sanskrit, the other (also in Sanudo’s map) Arabic; (Nabílah, Ar., “Beautiful”; Mangala, Sansk. “Fortunate”).