SELECT SPECIMENS
OF
NATURAL HISTORY,
COLLECTED IN
Travels to discover the Source of the Nile,
IN
EGYPT, ARABIA, ABYSSINIA, AND NUBIA.

ΑΙΕΙ ΦΕΡΕΙ ΤΙ
ΛΙΒΥΗ ΚΑΙΝΟΝ
Arist. Hist. Anim. Lib. 8.
VOL. V.
“AND HE SPAKE OF TREES, FROM THE CEDAR-TREE THAT IS IN LEBANON, EVEN UNTO
THE HYSSOP THAT SPRINGETH OUT OF THE WALL: HE SPAKE ALSO OF BEASTS, AND OF
FOWL, AND OF CREEPING THINGS, AND OF FISHES.”
1 Kings, chap. iv. ver. 33
EDINBURGH:
PRINTED BY J. RUTHVEN,
FOR G. G. J. AND J. ROBINSON, PATERNOSTER-ROW,
LONDON.
M.DCC.XC.

CONTENTS
OF THE
FIFTH VOLUME.

INTRODUCTION.

As it has been my endeavour, throughout this history, to leave nothing unexplained that may assist the reader in understanding the different subjects that have been treated in the course of it, I think myself obliged to say a few words concerning the manner of arranging this Appendix. With regard to the Natural History, it must occur to every one, that, however numerous and respectable they may be who have dedicated themselves entirely to this study, they bear but a very small proportion to those who, for amusement or instruction, seek the miscellaneous and general occurrences of life that ordinarily compose a series of travels.

By presenting the two subjects promiscuously, I was apprehensive of incommoding and disgusting both species of readers. Every body that has read Tournefort, and some other authors of merit of that kind, must be sensible how unpleasant it is to have a very rapid, well-told, interesting narrative, concerning the arts, government, or ruins of Corinth, Athens, or Ephesus, interrupted by the appearance of a nettle or daffodil, from some particularity which they may possess, curious and important in the eye of a botanist, but invisible and indifferent to an ordinary beholder.

To prevent this, I have placed what belongs to Natural History in one volume or appendix, and in so doing I hope to meet the approbation of my scientific botanical readers, by laying the different subjects all together before them, without subjecting them to the trouble of turning over different books to get at any one of them. The figures, landscapes, and a few other plates of this kind, are illustrations of what immediately passes in the page; these descriptions seldom occupy more than a few lines, and therefore such plates cannot be more ornamentally or usefully placed than opposite to the page which treats of them.

Some further consideration was necessary in placing the maps, and the Appendix appeared to me to be by far the most proper part for them. The maps, whether such as are general of the country, or those adapted to serve particular itineraries, should always be laid open before the reader, till he has made himself perfectly master of the bearings and distances of the principal rivers, mountains, or provinces where the scene of action is then laid. Maps that fold lie generally but one way, and are mostly of strong paper, so that when they are doubled by an inattentive hand, contrary to the original fold they got at binding, they break, and come asunder in quarters and square pieces, the map is destroyed, and the book ever after incomplete; whereas, even if this misfortune happens to a map placed in the Appendix, it may either be taken out and joined anew, or replaced at very little expence by a fresh map from the bookseller.

I shall detain the reader but a few minutes with what I have further to say concerning the particular subjects of Natural History of which I have treated. The choice I know, though it may meet with the warmest concurrence from one set of readers, will not perhaps be equally agreeable to the taste of others. This I am heartily sorry for. My endeavour and wish is to please them all, if it were possible, as it is not.

The first subject I treat of is trees, shrubs, or plants; and in the selecting of them I have preferred those which, having once been considered as subjects of consequence by the ancients, and treated largely of by them, are now come, from want of the advantage of drawing, lapse of time, change of climate, alteration of manners, or accident befallen the inhabitants of a country, to be of doubtful existence and uncertain description; the ascertaining of many of these is necessary to the understanding the classics.

It is well known to every one the least versant in this part of Natural History, what a prodigious revolution has happened in the use of drugs, dyes, and gums, since the time of Galen, by the introduction of those Herculean medicines drawn from minerals. The discovery of the new world, besides, has given us vegetable medicines nearly as active and decisive as those of minerals themselves. Many found in the new world grow equally in the old, from which much confusion has arisen in the history of each, that will become inextricable in a few generations, unless attended to by regular botanists, assisted by attentive and patient draughts-men ignorant of system, or at least not slaves to it, who set down upon paper what with their eyes they see does exist, without amusing themselves with imagining, according to rules they have themselves made, what it regularly should be. One drawing of this kind, painfully and attentively made, has more merit, and promotes true knowledge more certainly, than a hundred horti sicci which constantly produce imaginary monsters, and throw a doubt upon the whole. The modern and more accurate system of botany has fixed its distinctions of genus and species upon a variety of such fine parts naturally so fragil, that drying, spreading, and pressing with the most careful hands, must break away and destroy some of those parts. These deficient in one plant, exiting in another in all other respects exactly similar, are often, I fear, construed into varieties, or different species, and well if the misfortune goes no farther. They are precisely of the same bad consequence as an inaccurate drawing, where these parts are left out through inattention, or design.

After having bestowed my first consideration upon these that make a principal figure in ancient history, which are either not at all or imperfectly known now, my next attention has been to those which have their uses in manufactures, medicine, or are used as food in the countries I am describing.

The next I have treated are the plants, or the varieties of plants, unknown, whether in genus or species. In these I have dealt sparingly in proportion to the knowledge I yet have acquired in this subject, which is every day increasing, and appears perfectly attainable.

The history of the birds and beasts is the subject which occupies the next place in this Appendix; and the rule I follow here, is to give the preference to such of each kind as are mentioned in scripture, and concerning which doubts have arisen. A positive precept that says, Thou shalt not eat such beast, or such bird, is absolutely useless, as long as it is unknown what that bird and what that animal is.

Many learned men have employed themselves with success upon these topics, yet much remains still to do; for it has generally happened, that those perfectly acquainted with the language in which the scriptures were written, have never travelled nor seen the animals of Judea, Palestine, or Arabia; and again, such as have travelled in these countries, and seen the animals in question, have been either not at all, or but superficially acquainted with the original language of scripture. It has been my earnest desire to employ the advantage I possess in both these requisites, to throw as much light as possible upon the doubts that have arisen. I hope I have done this freely, fairly, and candidly; if I have at all succeeded, I have obtained my reward.

As for the fishes and other marine productions of the Red Sea, my industry has been too great for my circumstances. I have by me above 300 articles from the Arabian gulf alone, all of equal merit with those specimens which I have here laid before the public. Though I have selected a very few articles only, and these perhaps not the most curious, yet as they are connected with the trade of the Red Sea as it was carried on in ancient times, and may again be resumed, and as of this I have treated professedly, I have preferred these, as having a classical foundation, to many others more curious and less known. Engraving in England has advanced rapidly towards perfection, and the prices, as we may suppose, have kept proportion with the improvement. My small fortune, already impaired with the expence of the journey, will not, without doing injustice to my family, bear the additional one, of publishing these numerous articles, which, however desirable it might be, would amount to a sum which in me it would not be thought prudent to venture.

If Egypt had been a new, late, and extraordinary creation, the gift of the Nile in these latter times, as some modern philosophers have pretended, the least thing we could have expected would have been to find some new and extraordinary plants accompany it, very different in figure and parts from those of ancient times, made by the old unphilosophical way, the fiat of the Creator of the universe. But just the contrary has happened. Egypt hath no trees, shrubs, or plants peculiar to it. All are brought thither from Syria, Arabia, Africa, and India; and these are so far from being the gift of the Nile, as scarcely to accustom themselves to suffer the quantity of water that for five months covers the land of Egypt by the inundation of that river.

Even many of those that the necessities of particular times have brought thither to supply wants with which they could not dispense, and those which curious hands have brought from foreign countries are not planted at random; for they would not grow in Egypt, but in chosen places formerly artificially raised above level, for gardens, and pleasure ground, where they are at this day watered by machinery; or upon banks above the calishes, which though near the water, are yet above the level of its annual inundation. Such is the garden of Mattareah, sometimes filled with exotic plants from all the countries around, from the veneration or superstition, pilgrims and dervishies, the only travellers of the east, have for that spot, the supposed abode of the Virgin Mary when she fled into Egypt, sometimes, as at present, so neglected as to have scarce one foreign or curious plant in it.

The first kind of these adventitious productions, and the oldest inhabitant of Egypt brought there for use, is the sycamore, called Giumez[1] by the Arabs, which from its size, the facility with which it is sawn into the thinnest planks, and the largeness of these planks corresponding to the immense size of the tree, was most usefully adapted to the great demand they then had for mummy-chests, or coffins, which are made of this tree only: in order to add to its value, we may mention another supposed quality, its incorruptibility, very capable of giving it a preference, as coinciding with the ideas which led the Egyptians to those fantastic attempts of making the body eternal.

This last property, I suppose, is purely imaginary, for though it be true, tradition says, that all the mummy-chests, which have been found from former ages, were made of sycamore, though the same is the persuasion of latter times, and the fact is so far proven by all the mummy-chests now found being of that wood, yet I will not take upon me to vouch, that incorruptibility is a quality of this particular tree. I believe that seasoned elm, oak, or ash, perhaps even fir, laid in the dry sands of Egypt perfectly screened from moisture, and defended from the outward air, as all mummy-chests are, would likewise appear incorruptible; and my reason is, that having got made, while at Cairo, a case for a telescope of sycamore plank, I buried it in my garden after I came home from my travels, so as to leave it covered by half a foot of earth; in less than four years it was entirely putrid and rotten. And another telescope case of the cedar of Lebanon appeared much less decayed, though even in this last there were evident signs of corruption. But even suppose it true, that these planks have been found incorruptible, a doubt may still arise, whether they do not owe this quality to a kind of varnish of resinous materials with which I have seen almost all the mummy-chests covered, and to which materials the preservation of the mummy itself is in part certainly owing. The sycamore is a native of that low warm stripe of country between the Red Sea and mountains of Abyssinia; we saw a number of very fine ones before we came to Taranta; they are also in Syria about Sidon, but inferior in size to the former; they do not seem to thrive in Arabia, for want of moisture.

All the other vegetable productions of Egypt have been in a fluctuating state from one year to another. We find them in Prosper Alpinus, and by his authority we seek for them in that country. In Egypt we find them no more; through neglect, they are rotten and gone, but we meet them flourishing in Nubia, Abyssinia, and Arabia Felix, and these are the countries whence the curious first brought them, and from which, by some accident similar to the first, they may again appear in Egypt.

Prosper Alpinus’s work then, so far from being a collection of plants and trees of Egypt, may be said to be a treatise of plants that are not in Egypt, but by accident; they are gleanings of natural history from Syria, Arabia, Nubia, Abyssinia, Persia, Malabar, and Indostan, of which, as far as I could discern or discover, seven species only remained when I was in Egypt, mostly trees of such a growth as to be out of the power of every thing but the ax.

The plant that I shall now speak of, the Papyrus, is a strong proof of this, and is a remarkable instance of the violent changes these subjects have undergone in a few ages. It was at the first the repository of learning and of record; it was the vehicle of knowledge from one nation to another; its uses were so extended, that it came to be even the food of man, and yet we are now disputing what this plant was, and what was its figure, and whether or not it is to be found in Egypt.

A gentleman[2] at the head of the literary world, who from his early years has dedicated himself to the study of the theory of this science, and at a riper age has travelled through the world in the more agreeable pursuit of the practical part of it, hath assured me, that, unless from bad drawings, he never had an idea of what this plant was till I first gave him a very fine specimen. The Count de Caylus says, that having heard there was a specimen of this plant in Paris, he used his utmost endeavours to find it, but when brought to him, it appeared to be a cyperus of a very common, well-known kind. With my own hands, not without some labour and risk, I collected specimens from Syria, from the river Jordan, from two different places in Upper and Lower Egypt, from the lakes Tzana and Gooderoo in Abyssinia; and it was with the utmost pleasure I found they were in every particular intrinsically the same, without any variation or difference, from what this plant has been described by the ancients; only I thought that those of Egypt, the middle of the two extremes, were stronger, fairer, and fully a foot taller than those in Syria and Abyssinia.

Papyrus

London. Published Dec.^r 1.^st 1790 by G. Robinson & Co.

Of PLANTS, SHRUBS, and TREES.

PAPYRUS.

The papyrus is a cyperus, called by the Greeks Biblus. There is no doubt but it was early known in Egypt, since we learn from Horus Apollo, the Egyptians, wishing to describe the antiquity of their origin, figured a faggot, or bundle of papyrus, as an emblem of the food they first subsisted on, when the use of wheat was not yet known in that country. But I should rather apprehend that another plant, hereafter described, and not the papyrus, was what was substituted for wheat, for though the Egyptians sucked the honey or sweetness from the root of the papyrus, it does not appear that any part of this cyperus could be used for food, nor is it so at this day, though the Ensete, the plant to which I allude, might, without difficulty, have been used for bread in early ages before the discovery of wheat; in several provinces it holds its place at this day.

The papyrus seems to me to have early come down from Ethiopia, and to have been used in Upper Egypt immediately after the disuse of hieroglyphics, and the first paper made from this plant was in Seide. By Seide was anciently meant Upper Egypt, and it is so called to this day; and the Saitic, probably the oldest language known in Egypt after the Ethiopic, still subsists, being written in the first character that succeeded the hieroglyphics in the valley or cultivated part of Egypt.

Early, however, as the papyrus was known, it does not appear to me to have ever been a plant that could have existed in, or, as authors have said, been proper to the river Nile; its head is too heavy, and in a plain country the wind must have had too violent a hold of it. The stalk is small and feeble, and withal too tall, the root too short and slender to stay it against the violent pressure of the wind and current, therefore I do constantly believe it never could be a plant growing in the river Nile itself, or in any very deep or rapid river.

Pliny[3], who seems to have considered and known it perfectly in all its parts, does not pretend that it ever grew in the body of the Nile itself, but in the calishes or places where the Nile had overflowed and was stagnant, and where the water was not above two cubits high. This observation, I believe, holds good universally, at least it did so wherever I have seen this plant, either in the overflowed ground in the Seide, or Upper Egypt, or in Abyssinia where it never grew in the bed of a river, but generally in some small stream that issued out of, or into some large stagnant lake or abandoned water-course. It did not even trust itself to the weight of the wave of the deepest part of that lake when agitated by the wind, but it grew generally about the borders of it, as far as the depth of the water was within a yard.

Pliny says it grew likewise in Syria, and there I saw it first, before I went into Egypt; it was in the river Jordan, between the situation of the ancient city Paneas, which still bears its name, and the lake of Tiberias, which is probably the lake Pliny alludes to, where he says it grew, and with it the calamus odoratus, one of the adventitious plants brought thither formerly by curious men (as I conjecture) which now exists no more, either in Syria or Egypt. It was on the left hand of the bridge called the Bridge of the Sons of Jacob. The river where it grew was two feet nine inches deep, and it was then increased with rain. It grew likewise, as Guilandinus[4] tells us, at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates. I apprehend that it was not thus propagated into Asia and Greece till the use of it, as manufactured into paper, was first known.

When that was still admits of some difficulty. Pliny says that Varro writes it came not into general use till after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander; yet it is plain from Anacreon[5], Alcæus, Æschylus, and the comic poets, that it was known in their time. Plato and Aristotle speak of it also, so do Herodotus and Theophrastus[6]. We also know it was of old in use among the Ionians, who probably brought it in very early days directly from Egypt. Numa, too, who lived 300 years before Alexander, is said to have left a number of books wrote on the papyrus, which a long time after his death were found at Rome.

All this might very well be; the writers of those early ages were but few, and those that then were, had all of them, more or less, connection by their learning with Egypt; it was to them only Egypt was known, and if they learned to write there, it was not improbable, that from thence too they adopted the materials most commodious for writing upon.

With Aristotle began the first arrangement of a library. Alexander’s conquest, and the building of Alexandria, laid open Egypt, its trade and learning, to the world. Papyrus then, or the paper made from it, was the only materials made use of for writing upon. A violent desire of amassing books, and a library, immediately followed, which we may safely attribute to the example set by Aristotle.

The Ptolemies, and the kings of Pergamus, contended who should make the largest collection. The Ptolemies, masters of Egypt and of the papyrus, availed themselves of this monopoly to hinder the multiplication of books in Greece. The other princes probably smuggled this plant, and propagated it wherever it would grow out of Egypt. And Eumenes king of Pergamus set about bringing to perfection the manufacture of parchment, which, long before, the Ionians had used from the scarcity of paper; for whatever resemblance there might be in names, or whatever may be inferred from them, writing upon skins or parchment was much more ancient than any city or state in Greece and in use probably before Greece was inhabited. The Jews we know made use of it in the earliest ages. At this very time which we are now speaking of, we learn from Josephus[7], that the elders, by order of the high priest, carried a copy of the law to Ptolemy Philadelphus in letters of gold upon skins, the pieces of which were so artfully put together that the joinings did not appear.

The ancients divided this plant into three parts, the head and the small part of the stalk were cut off, then the woody part, or bottom, and the root connected with it, and there remained the middle. All these had separate uses. Pliny[8] says the upper part, which supported the large top itself, with the flowers upon it, was of no sort of use but to adorn the temples, and crown the statues of the gods; but it would seem that it was in use likewise for crowning men of merit. Plutarch[9] says, that Agesilaus preferred being crowned with that to any other, on account of its simplicity, and that parting from the king he had sought to be crowned with this as a favour, which was granted him. Athenæus[10], on the contrary, laughed at those that mixt roses in the crown of papyrus, and he says it is as ridiculous as mixing roses with a crown of garlic. The reason, however, he gives does not hold, for papyrus itself smells no more of mud, as he supposes, than a rose-bush; nay, the flower of the papyrus has something agreeable in its smell, though not so much so as roses. If he had said that the head of the papyrus resembled withered grass or hay, and made a bad contrast with the richness and beauty of the rose, he had said well. But notwithstanding what Pliny has written, the head of the papyrus was employed, not only to make crowns for statues of the gods, but also to make cables for ships. We are told that Antigonus made use of nothing else for ropes and cables to his fleets, before the use of spartum, or bent-grass, was known, which, though very little better, still serves that purpose in small ships on the coast of Provence to this day. The top of the papyrus was likewise used for sewing and caulking the vessels, by forcing it into the seams, and afterwards covering it with pitch.

Pliny[11] tells us, that the whole plant together was used for making boats, a piece of the acacia tree being put in the bottom to serve as the keel, to which plants were joined, being first sewed together, then gathered up at stem and stern, and the ends of the plant tied fast there, “Conseritur bibula Memphitis cymba papyro;” and this is the only boat they still have in Abyssinia, which they call Tancoa, and from the use of these it is that Isaiah describes the nations, probably the Egyptians, upon whom the vengeance of God was speedily to fall. I imagine also that the junks of the Red Sea, said to be of leather, were first built with papyrus and covered with skins. In these the Homerites trafficked with their friends the Sabeans across the mouth of the Red Sea, but they can never persuade me, however generally and confidently it has been asserted, that vessels of this kind could have lived an hour upon the Indian ocean.

The bottom, root, or woody part of this plant, was likewise of several uses before it turned absolutely hard; it was chewed in the manner of liquorice, having a considerable quantity of sweet juice in it. This we learn from Dioscorides; it was, I suppose, chewed, and the sweetness sucked out in the same manner as is done with sugar-cane. This is still practised in Abyssinia, where they likewise chew the root of the Indian corn, and of every kind of cyperus; and Herodotus tells us, that about a cubit of the lower part of the stalk was cut off and roasted over the fire, and eaten.

From the scarcity of wood, which was very great in Egypt for the reasons I have already mentioned, this lower part was likewise used in making cups, moulds, and other necessary utensils; we need not doubt too, one use of the woody part of this plant was to serve for what we call boards or covers for binding the leaves, which were made of the bark; we know that this was anciently one use of it, both from Alcæus and Anacreon.

In a large and very perfect manuscript in my possession, which was dug up at Thebes, the boards are of papyrus root, covered first with the coarser pieces of the paper, and then with leather, in the same manner as it would be done now. It is a book one would call a small folio, rather than by any other name, and I apprehend that the shape of the book where papyrus is employed was always of the same form with those of the moderns. The letters are strong, deep, black, and apparently written with a reed, as is practised by the Egyptians and Abyssinians still. It is written on both sides, so never could be rolled up as parchment was, nor would the brittleness of the materials when dry, support any such frequent unrolling. This probably arises from their having first written upon papyrus, after the use of stone was laid aside, and only adopted skins upon their embracing the Jewish religion. The Ethiopians, indeed, write upon parchment, yet use the same form of books as we do. The outer boards are made of wood and covered with leather. It was the law only they say they were in use to preserve in one long roll of parchment, upon the foreside of which it was written; it being indecent and improper to write any part of it on the back, or a less honourable place of the skin: And such was the roll we have just mentioned as presented to Ptolemy, where such pains were taken in joining the several skins together, for this very reason.

The manner paper was made has been controverted; but whoever will read Pliny[12] attentively, cannot, as I imagine, be long in doubt. The thick part of the stalk being cut in half, the pellicle between the pith and the bark, or perhaps the two pellicles, were stript off, and divided by an iron instrument, which probably was sharp-pointed, but did not cut at the edges. This was squared at the sides so as to be like a ribband, then laid upon a smooth table or dresser, after being cut into the length that it was required the leaf should be. These stripes, or ribbands of papyrus, were lapped over each other by a very thin border, and then pieces of the same kind were laid transversely, the length of these answering to the breadth of the first. The book which I have is eleven inches and a half long, and seven inches broad, and there is not one leaf in it that has a ribband of papyrus of two inches and a half broad, from which I imagine the size of this plant, formerly being fifteen feet long, was pretty near the truth. No such plant, however, appears now; I do not remember to have ever seen one more than ten feet high. This is probably owing to their being allowed to grow wild, and too thick together, without being weeded; we know from Herodotus[13], that the Egyptians cut theirs down yearly as they did their harvest.

These ribbands, or stripes of papyrus, have twelve different names in Pliny[14], which is to be copious with a vengeance. They are, philura, ramentum; scheda, cutis, plagula, corium, tænia, subtegmen, statumen, pagina, tabula, and papyrus. After these, by whatever name you call them, were arranged at right angles to each other, a weight was placed upon them while moist, which compressed them, and so they were suffered to dry in the sun.

It was supposed that the water of the Nile[15] had a gummy quality necessary to glue these stripes together. This we may be assured is without foundation, no such quality being found in the water of the Nile. On the contrary, I found it of all others the most improper, till it had settled, and was absolutely divested of all the earth gathered in its turbid state. I made several pieces of this paper, both in Abyssinia and Egypt, and it appears to me, that the sugar or sweetness with which the whole juice of this plant is impregnated, is the matter that causes the adhesion of these stripes together, and that the use of the water is no more than to dissolve this, and put it perfectly and equally in fusion.

There seemed to be an advantage in putting the inside of the pellicle in the situation that it was before divided, that is, the interior parts face to face, one long-ways, and one cross-ways, after which a thin board of the cover of a book was laid first over it, and a heap of stones piled upon it. I do not think it succeeded with boiled water, and it was always coarse and gritty with the water of the Nile. Some pieces were excellent, made with water that had settled, that is, in the state in which we drink it; but even the best of it was always thick and heavy, drying very soon, then turning firm and rigid, and never white; nor did I ever find one piece that would bear the strokes of a mallet[16], but in its greenest state the blow shivered and divided the fibres length-ways; nor did I see the marks of any stroke of a hammer or mallet in the book in my custody, which is certainly on Saitic or Hieratic paper. I apprehend by a passage in Pliny[17], that the mallet was used only when artificial glue or gum was made use of, which must have been as often as they let these stripes of the ribband or pellicle dry before arranging them.

Pliny[18] says, the books of Numa were 830 years old when they were found, and he wonders, from the brittleness of the inside of the paper, it could have lasted so long. The manuscript in my possession, which was dug up at Thebes, I conjecture is near three times the age that Pliny mentions; and, though it is certainly fragil, has substance and preservation of letter enough, with good care, to last as much longer, and be legible.

If the Saitic paper was, as we imagine, the first invented, it should follow, contrary to what Isidore advances, that it was not first invented in Memphis, but in Upper Egypt in Seide, whose language and writing obtained in the earliest age, though Lucan seems to think with Isidore,

Nondum flumineas Memphis contexere biblos
Noverat.——
Lucan, lib. iii.

After the hieroglyphics were lost, perhaps some time before, we know nothing the Egyptians adopted so generally as paper, and there were probably[19] religious reasons that impeded in those early days the people from falling upon the most natural, the skins of beasts. However this be, it is certain under the Egyptians, naturally averse to novelty and improvement, paper arrived to no great perfection till taken in hands by the Romans. The Charta Claudia was thirteen inches wide, the Hieratica, or Saitica, eleven, and such is the length of the leaf of my book in the Saitic dialect, that is, the old Coptic, or Egyptian of Upper Egypt. I have no idea what the Emporetic paper was, which obtained that degree of coarseness and toughness, as to serve for shopkeepers’ uses to tie up goods, unless it was like our brown paper employed to the same purposes.

If the date of the invention of this useful art of making paper is doubtful, the time when it was lost, or superseded by one more convenient, is as uncertain. Eustathius says it was disused in his time in the 1170. Mabillon endeavours to prove it existed in the 9th, and even that there existed some Popish bulls wrote upon it as late as the 11th century. He gives, as instances, a part of St Mark’s Gospel preserved at Venice as being upon papyrus, and the fragment of Josephus at Milan to be cotton paper, while Maffei proves this to be just the reverse, that of St Mark being cotton, and the other indisputably he thinks to be Egyptian papyrus, so that Mabillon’s authority as to the bulls of the pope may be fairly questioned.

The several times I have been at these places mentioned, I have never succeeded in seeing any of these pieces; that of St Mark at Venice I was assured had been recognized to be cotton paper; it was rendered not legible by the warm saliva of zealots kissing it from devotion, which I can easily comprehend must contain a very corrosive quality, and the Venetians now refuse to shew it more. I have seen two detached leaves of papyrus, but do not believe there is another book existing at the present time but that in my possession, which is very perfect. I gave Dr Woide leave to translate it at Lord North’s desire; it is a gnostic book, full of their dreams.

The general figure of this plant Pliny has rightly said to resemble a Thyrsus; the head is composed of a number of small grassy filaments, each about a foot long. About the middle, each of these filaments parts into four, and in the point, or partition, are four branches of flowers; the head of this is not unlike an ear of wheat in form, but which in fact is but a chaffy, silky, soft husk. These heads, or flowers, grow upon the stalk alternately, and are not opposite to, or on the same line with each other at the bottom.

Pliny[20] says it has no seed; but this we may be assured is an absurdity. The form of the flower sufficiently indicates that it was made to resolve itself into the covering of one, which is certainly very small, and by its exalted situation, and thickness of the head of the flower, seems to have needed the extraordinary covering it has had to protect it from the violent hold the wind must have had upon it. For the same reason, the bottom of the filaments composing the head are sheathed in four concave leaves, which keep them close together, and prevent injury from the wind getting in between them.

The stalk is of a vivid green, thickest at the bottom, and tapering up to the top[21]; it is of a triangular form. In the Jordan, the single side, or apex of the triangle, stood opposed to the stream as the cut-water of a boat or ship, or the sharp angle of a buttress of a bridge, by which the pressure of the stream upon the stalk would be greatly diminished. I do not precisely remember how it stood in the lakes in Ethiopia and Egypt, and only have this remark in the notes I made at the Jordan.

This construction of the stalk of the papyrus seems to reproach Aristotle with want of observation. He says that no plant had either triangular or quadrangular stalks. Here we see an instance of the contrary in the papyrus, whose stalk is certainly and universally triangular; and we learn from Dioscorides that many more have quadrangular stalks, or stems of four angles.

It has but one root, which is large and strong[22], Pliny says, as thick as a man’s arm: So it was, probably, when the plant was fifteen feet high, but it is now diminished in proportion, the whole length of the stalk, comprehending the head, being a little above ten, but the root is still hard and solid near the heart, and works with the turning loom tolerably well, as it did formerly when they made cups of it. In the middle of this long root arises the stalk at right angles, so when inverted it has the figure of a T, and on each side of the large root there are smaller elastic ones, which are of a direction perpendicular to it, and which, like the strings of a tent, steady it and fix it to the earth at the bottom. About two feet, or little more, of the lower part of the stalk is cloathed with long, hollow, sword-shaped leaves, which cover each other like scales, and fortify the foot of the plant. They are of a dusky brown, or yellow colour. I suppose the stalk was cut off below, at about where these leaves end.

The drawing represents the papyrus as growing. The head is not upright, but is inclined, as from its size it always must be in hot countries, in which alone it grows. In all such climates, there is some particular wind that reigns longer than others, and this being always the most violent, as well as the most constant, gives to heavy-headed trees, or plants, an inclination contrary to that from which it blows.

This plant is called el Berdi in Egypt, which signifies nothing in Arabic, and I suppose is old Egyptian. I have been told by a learned gentleman[23], that in Syria it is known by the name of Babeer, which approaches more to the sound of papyrus, and paper; this I never heard myself, but leave it entirely upon his authority.

BALESSAN, BALM, or BALSAM.

The great value set upon this drug in the east remounts to very early ages; it is coeval with the India trade for pepper, and the beginning of it consequently lost in the darkness of the first ages. We know from scripture, the oldest history extant, as well as most infallible, that the Ishmaelites, or Arabian carriers and merchants, trafficking with the India commodities into Egypt, brought with them balm as part of the cargo with pepper; but the price that they paid for Joseph was silver, and not a barter with any of their articles of merchandise.

Strabo alone, of all the ancients, hath given us the true account of the place of its origin, “Near to this, that historian says, is the most happy land of the Sabeans, and they are a very great people. Among these, frankincense, myrrh, and cinnamon grow, and in the coast that is about Saba the balsam also.” Among the myrrh-trees behind Azab all along the coast to the Straits of Babelmandeb is its native country. It grows to a tree above fourteen feet high, spontaneously and without culture, like the myrrh, the coffee, and frankincense tree; they are all equally the wood of the country, and are occasionally cut down and used for fuel. We need not doubt but that it was early transplanted into Arabia, that is, into the south part of Arabia Felix, immediately fronting Azab, the place of its nativity. The high country of Arabia was too cold to receive it, being all mountainous; water freezes there.

Balessan

London Publish’d Dec^r. 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

Balessan.

There is an anecdote relating to Sir William Middleton, who was surprised and taken prisoner by the Turks in the first attempt to open the trade of the Red Sea, that when about to set[24] out for Sanaa, corruptly called Zenan, the residence of the Imam, or prince of Arabia Felix, he was by the people desired[25] to take his fur cloak along with him to keep him from the cold; he thought they were ridiculing him upon what he had to suffer from the approaching heat, which he was convinced in the middle of Arabia must be excessive.

The first plantation that succeeded seems to have been at Petra, the ancient metropolis of Arabia, now called Beder, or Beder Hunein, whence I got one of the specimens from which the present drawing is made.

Josephus[26], in the history of the antiquities of his country, says, that a tree of this balsam was brought to Jerusalem by the queen of Saba, and given, among other presents, to Solomon, who, as we know from scripture, was very studious of all sort of plants, and skilful in the description and distinction of them. Here it seems to have been cultivated and to have thriven, so that the place of its origin came to be forgotten.

Notwithstanding this positive authority of Josephus, and the great probability that attends it, we are not to put it in competition with what we have been told from scripture, as we have just now seen, that the place where it grew, and was sold to merchants, was Gilead in Judea, more than 1730 years before Christ, or 1000 before the queen of Saba; so that reading the verse, nothing can be more plain than that it had been transplanted into Judea, flourished, and had become an article of commerce in Gilead long before the period Josephus mentions: “And they sat down to eat bread, and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and behold, a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead with their camels, bearing spicery, and balm, and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt[27].” Now, the spicery, or pepper, was certainly purchased by the Ishmaelites at the mouth of the Red Sea, where was the market for Indian goods, and at the same place they must have bought the myrrh, for that neither grew nor grows any where else than in Saba or Azabo east to Cape Gardefan, where were the ports for India, and whence it was dispersed all over the world.

The Ishmaelites, or Arabian carriers, loaded their camels at the mouth of the Red Sea with pepper and myrrh. For reasons not now known to us, they went and completed their cargo with balsam at Gilead, so that, contrary to the authority of Josephus, nothing is more certain, than 1730 years before Christ, and 1000 years before the queen of Saba came to Jerusalem, the balsam-tree had been transplanted from Abyssinia into Judea, and become an article of commerce there, and the place from which it originally was brought, through length of time, combined with other reasons, came to be forgotten.

Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Pliny, Solinus,and Serapion, all say that this balsam came only from Judea. The words of Pliny are, “But to all other odours whatever, the balsam is preferred, produced in no other part but the land of Judea, and even there in two gardens only; both of them belonging to the king, one no more than twenty acres, the other still smaller[28].”

At this time I suppose it got its name of Balsamum Judaicum, or, Balm of Gilead, and thence became an article in merchandise and fiscal revenue, which probably occasioned the discouragement of bringing it any more from Arabia, whence it very probably was prohibited as contraband. We shall suppose thirty acres planted with this tree would have produced more than all the trees in Arabia do at this day. Nor does the plantation of Beder Hunein amount to much more than that quantity, for we are still to observe, that even when it had been as it were naturalised in Judea, and acquired a name in the country, still it bore evident marks of its being a stranger there; and its being confined to two royal gardens alone, shews it was maintained there by force and culture, and was by no means a native of the country. And this is confirmed by Strabo, who speaks of it being in the king’s palace or garden at Jericho. This place being one of the warmest in Judea, shews likewise their apprehensions about it, so that in Judea, we may imagine it was pretty much in the state of our myrtles in England, which, though cultivated in green-houses in all the rest of the island, yet grow beautifully and luxuriantly in Devonshire and Cornwall, the western parts of it.

Diodorus Siculus says, it grew in a valley in Arabia Felix; he should have said on a number of gentle, sloping hills in Arabia Deserta, which have a very small degree of elevation above the plain, but by no means resemble a valley. This place was the scene of three bloody battles between Mahomet and his kinsmen the Beni Koreish, who refused to be converts to his religion, or acknowledge his divine legation. These are at large described by several of the historians of that nation, with circumstances and anecdotes, as well interesting and entertaining, as elegantly told. They shew plainly that Mahomet’s tribe, the Beni Koreish, did not receive their fanatical manners and disposition from Mahomet and his religion, but were just as obstinate, ignorant, and sanguinary when they were Pagans, as they were afterwards when converted and became Mahometans. The last of these battles, which was decisive in Mahomet’s favour, gave him the sovereignty of Mecca, and was attended with the extirpation of some of the principal families in this tribe.

At this time the balsam is supposed, by being sold in Judea, and not accessible by reason of the commotions in Arabia, to have become almost forgotten in that last part, where the trade from Abyssinia, its native country, was likewise interrupted by this innovation of religion, and by Mahomet’s profanation of the Caaba, or temple of the sun, the ancient resort of the Sabean merchants carrying on the trade of India. This interval the impostor thought proper for a pretended miracle; he said, that, from the blood of the Beni Koreish slain, there had sprung up this grove of trees, from the juice of which all the true believers on his side received a cure for their wounds, however fatal they appeared, nay, some of them were revived from even death itself. Since that time it has maintained its reputation equal to that which it had in antiquity.

Prosper Alpinus says, that one Messoner a eunuch, governor of Cairo in the year 1519, caused bring from Arabia forty plants, which he placed in the garden of Mattareah, where he superintended them. Every day he went to that garden to pay his devotions to the Virgin Mary. It was many times renewed, and has as often perished since. Bellonius says, that in his time there were ten plants at Mattareah, and he is of opinion, that in all ages they grew well in Arabia, which is not true, for those at Beder are constantly supplied with new plants so soon as the old ones decay. There was none existing at Mattareah the two several times I visited Cairo, but there were some of the Christians still living there that remembered one plant in that garden.

There were three productions from this tree very much esteemed among the ancients. The first was called Opobalsamum, or, Juice of the Balsam, which was the finest kind, composed of that greenish liquor found in the kernel of the fruit: The next was Carpo-balsamum, made by the expression of the fruit when in maturity. The third was Xylo-balsamum, the worst of all, it was an expression or decoction of the small new twigs of a reddish colour. These twigs are still gathered in little faggots and sent to Venice, where I am told they are an ingredient in the Theriac, or of some sort of compound drug made in the laboratories there: But the principal quantity of balsam in all times was produced by incision, as it is at this day. Concerning this, too, many fables have been invented and propagated.

Tacitus says, that this tree was so averse to iron that it trembled upon a knife being laid near it, and some pretend the incision should be made by ivory, glass, or stone. There is no doubt but the more attention there is given to it, and the cleaner the wound is made, the better this balsam will be. It is now, as it probably ever has been, cut by an ax, when the juice is in its strongest circulation in July, August, and beginning of September. It is then received into a small earthen bottle, and every day’s produce gathered and poured into a larger, which is kept closely corked. The Arabs Harb, a noble family of Beni Koreish, are the proprietors of it, and of Beder, where it grows. It is a station of the Emir Hadje, or pilgrims going to Mecca, half way between that city and Medina.

Some books speak of a white sort brought by the caravans from Mecca, and called Balsam of Mecca, and others a balsam called that of Judea, but all these are counterfeits or adulterations. The balsam of Judea, which I have already mentioned, was long ago lost, when the troubles of that country withdrew the royal attention from it; but, as late as Galen’s time, it not only existed, but was growing in many places of Palestine besides Jericho, and there is no doubt but it is now totally lost there.

When Sultan Selim made the conquest of Egypt and Arabia in the year 1516, three pound was then the tribute ordered to be sent to Constantinople yearly, and this proportion is kept up to this day. One pound is due to the governor of Cairo, one pound to the Emir Hadje who conducts the pilgrims to Mecca, half a pound to the basha of Damascus, and several smaller quantities to other officers, after which, the remainder is sold or farmed out to some merchants, who, to increase the quantity, adulterate it with oil of olives and wax, and several other mixtures, consulting only the agreement of colour, without considering the aptitude in mixing; formerly we were told it was done with art, but nothing is easier detected than this fraud now.

It does not appear to me, that the ancients had ever seen this plant, they describe it so variously; some will have it a tree, some a shrub, and some a plant only; and Prosper Alpinus, a modern, corroborates the errors of the ancients, by saying it is a kind of vine, (viticosus). The figure he has given of it is a very bad one, and leaves us entirely in doubt in what class to place it. The defect of the plant in Judea and in Egypt, and the contradiction in the description of the ancients as to its figure and resemblance, occasioned a doubt that the whole plants in these two countries, and Arabia also, had been lost in the desolation occasioned by the Mahometan conquest; and a warm dispute arose between the Venetians and Romans, whether the drug used by the former in the Theriac was really and truly the old genuine opobalsamum? The matter was referred to the pope, who directed proper inquiry to be made in Egypt, which turned out entirely in favour of the Venetians, and the opobalsamum continuing as formerly.

A very learned and tedious treatise was published by Veslingius, in the year 1643, at Padua, where this affair was discussed at full length. As both parties of the disputants seem to argue concerning what it is from the misunderstood reports of what it was, I shall content myself briefly with stating what the qualities of the opobalsamum are, without taking pains to refute the opinions of those that have reported what the opobalsamum is not.

The opobalsamum, or juice flowing from the balsam-tree, at first when it is received into the bottle or vase from the wound from whence it issues, is of a light, yellow colour, apparently turbid, in which there is a whitish cast, which I apprehend are the globules of air that pervade the whole of it in its first state of fermentation; it then appears very light upon shaking. As it settles and cools, it turns clear, and loses that milkiness which it first had when flowing from the tree into the bottle. It then has the colour of honey, and appears more fixed and heavy than at first. After being kept for years, it grows a much deeper yellow, and of the colour of gold. I have some of it, which, as I have already mentioned in my travels, I got from the Cadi of Medina in the year 1768; it is now still deeper in colour, full as much so as the yellowest honey. It is perfectly fluid, and has lost very little either of its taste, smell, or weight. The smell at first is violent and strongly pungent, giving a sensation to the brain like to that of volatile salts when rashly drawn up by an incautious person. This lasts in proportion to its freshness, for being neglected, and the bottle uncorked, it quickly loses this quality, as it probably will at last by age, whatever care is taken of it.

In its pure and fresh state it dissolves easily in water. If dropt on a woollen cloth, it will wash out easily, and leaves no stain. It is of an acrid, rough, pungent taste, is used by the Arabs in all complaints of the stomach and bowels, is reckoned a powerful antiseptic, and of use in preventing any infection of the plague. These qualities it now enjoys, in all probability, in common with the various balsams we have received from the new world, such as the balsam of Tolu, of Peru, and the rest; but it is always used, and in particular esteemed by the ladies, as a cosmetic: As such it has kept up its reputation in the east to this very day. The manner of applying it is this; you first go into the tepid bath till the pores are sufficiently opened, you then anoint yourself with a small quantity, and, as much as the vessels will absorb; never-fading youth and beauty are said to be the consequences of this. The purchase is easy enough. I do not hear that it ever has been thought restorative after the loss of either.

The figure I have here given of the balsam may be depended upon, as being carefully drawn, after an exact examination, from two very fine trees brought from Beder Hunein; the first by the Cadi of Medina at Yambo; the second at Jidda, by order of Yousef Kabil, vizir or minister to the sherriffe of Mecca. The first was so deliberately executed, that the second seemed of no service but to confirm me in the exactitude of the first. The tree was 5 feet 2 inches high from where the red root begins, or which was buried in the earth, to where it divides itself first into branches. The trunk at thickest was about 5 inches diameter, the wood light and open, and incapable of polishing, covered with a smooth bark of bluish-white, like to a standard cherry-tree in good health, which has not above half that diameter; indeed a part of the bark is a reddish brown; it flattens at top like trees that are exposed to snow-blasts or sea-air, which gives it a stunted appearance. It is remarkable for a penury of leaves. The flowers are like that of the acacia-tree, white and round, only that three hang upon three filaments, or stalks, where the acacia has but one. Two of these flowers fall off and leave a single fruit; the branches that bear this are the shoots of the present year; they are of a reddish colour, and tougher than the old wood: it is these that are cut off and put into little faggots, and sent to Venice for the Theriac, when bruised or drawn by fire, and formerly these made the Xylo-balsamum.

Concerning the vipers which, Pliny says, were frequent among the balsam trees I made very particular inquiry; several were brought me alive, both to Yambo and Jidda. Of these I shall speak in another place, when I give the figure, and an account of that animal so found.

SASSA, MYRRH, and OPOCALPASUM.

At the time when I was on the borders of the Tal-Tal, or Troglodyte country, I sought to procure myself branches and bark of the myrrh-tree, enough preserved to be able to describe it and make a design; but the length and ruggedness of the way, the heat of the weather, and the carelessness and want of resources of naked savages always disappointed me. In those goat-skin bags into which I had often ordered them to put small branches, I always found the leaves mostly in powder; some few that were entire seemed to resemble much the acacia vera, but were wider towards the extremity, and more pointed immediately at the end. In what order the leaves grew I never could determine. The bark was absolutely like that of the acacia vera; and among the leaves I often met with a small, straight, weak thorn, about two inches long.

These were all the circumstances I could combine relative to the myrrh-tree, too vague and uncertain to risk a drawing upon, when there still remained so many desiderata concerning it; and as the king was obstinate not to let me go thither after what had happened to the surgeon’s mate and boat’s crew of the Elgin Indiaman[29], I was obliged to abandon the drawing of the myrrh-tree to some more fortunate traveller, after having in vain attempted to procure it at Azab, as I have already mentioned.

At the same time that I was taking these pains about the myrrh, I had desired the savages to bring me all the gums they could find, with the branches and bark of the trees that produced them. They brought me at different times some very fine pieces of incense, and at another time a very small quantity of a bright colourless gum, sweeter on burning than incense, but no branches of either tree, though I found this latter afterwards in another part of Abyssinia. But at all times they procured me quantities of gum of an even and close grain, and of a dark brown colour, which was produced by a tree called Sassa, and twice I received branches of this tree in tolerable order, and of these I made a drawing.

Some weeks after, while walking at Emfras, a Mahometan village, whose inhabitants are myrrh merchants, I saw a large tree with the whole upper part of the trunk, and the large branches, so covered with bosses and knobs of gum, as to appear monstrously deformed, and inquiring farther about this tree, I found that it had been brought, many years before, from the myrrh country, by merchants, and planted there for the sake of its gum, with which these Mahometans stiffened the blue Surat cloths they got damaged from Mocha, to trade in with the Galla and Abyssinians. Neither the origin of the tree which they called Sassa, nor the gum, could allow me to doubt a moment that it was the same as what had been brought to me from the myrrh country, but I had the additional satisfaction to find the tree all covered over with beautiful crimson flowers of a very extraordinary and strange construction. I began then a drawing anew, with all that satisfaction known only to those who have been conversant in such discoveries.

Sassa

London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

Sassa

London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

I took pieces of the gum with me; it is very light. Galen complains that, in his time, the myrrh was often mixed with a drug which he calls Opocalpasum, by a Greek name, but what the drug was is totally unknown to us at this day, as nothing similar to the Greek name is found in the language of the country. But as the only view of the savage, in mixing another gum with his myrrh, must have been to increase the quantity, and as the great plenty in which this gum is produced, and its colour, make it very proper for this use, and above all, as there is no reason to think there is another gum-bearing tree of equal qualities in the country where the myrrh grows, it seems to me next to a proof, that this must have been the opocalpasum of Galen.

I must however confess, that Galen says the opocalpasum was so far from being an innocent drug, that it was a mortal poison, and had produced very fatal effects. But as those Troglodytes, though now more ignorant than formerly, are still well acquainted with the properties of their herbs and trees, it is not possible that the savage, desiring to increase his sales, would mix them with a poison that must needs diminish them. And we may therefore without scruple suppose that Galen was mistaken in the quality ascribed to this drug, and that he might have imagined, from tenderness to the profession, that people died of the opocalpasum who perhaps really died of the physician: First, Because we know of no gum or resin that is a mortal poison: Secondly, Because, from the construction of its parts, gum could not have the activity which violent poison has; and considering the small quantities in which myrrh is taken, and the opocalpasum could have been but in an inconsiderable proportion to the myrrh, to have killed, it must have been a very active poison indeed: Thirdly, these accidents from a known cause must have brought myrrh into disuse, as certainly as the Spaniards mixing arsenic with bark would banish that drug when we saw people die of it. Now this never was the case, it maintained its character among the Greeks and the Arabs, and so down to our days; and a modern physician, Van Helmont, thinks it might make man immortal if it could be rendered perfectly soluble in the human body. Galen then was mistaken as to the poisonous quality of the opocalpasum. The Greek physician knew little of the Natural History of Arabia, less still of that of Abyssinia, and we who have followed them know nothing of either.

This gum being put into water, swells and turns white, and loses all its glue; it very much resembles gum adragant in quality, and may be eaten safely. This specimen came from the Troglodyte country in the year 1771. The Sassa, the tree which produces the opocalpasum, does not grow in Arabia. Arabian myrrh is easily known from Abyssinian by the following method: Take a handful of the smallest pieces found at the bottom of the basket where the myrrh was packed, and throw them into a plate, and just cover them with water a little warm, the myrrh will remain for some time without visible alteration, for it dissolves slowly, but the gum will swell to five times its original size, and appear so many white spots amidst the myrrh.

Emfras, as I have said, is a large village something more than twenty miles south from Gondar, situated upon the face of a hill of considerable height above the lake Tzana, of which, and all its islands, it has a very distinct and pleasant view; it is divided from the lake by a large plain, near which is the island of Mitraha, one of the burying-places of the kings. The inhabitants of the lower town, close on the banks of the small river Arno, are all Mahometans, many of them men of substance, part of them the king’s tent-makers, who follow the camp, and pitch his tents in the field; the others are merchants to the myrrh and frankincense country, that is, from the east parallel of the kingdom of Dancali to the point Cape Gardefan, or Promontorium Aromatum; they also bring salt from the plains, on the west of the kingdom of Dancali, where fossile salt is dug; it is on the S. E. border of the kingdom of Tigré. These Mahometans trade also to the Galla, to the westward of the Nile; their principal commodity is myrrh and damaged cargoes of blue Surat cloth, which they unfold and clean, then stiffen them with gum, and fold them in form of a book as when they were new.

This gum, which is called Sassa, they at first brought from the myrrh country behind Azab, till ingenious and sagacious people had carried plants of the tree to their different villages, where they have it growing in great perfection, and more than supply the uses of the merchants.

This tree grows to a great height, not inferior to that of an English elm; that from which this draught was made was about two feet diameter; the gum grows on all sides of the trunk, in quantity enough almost to cover it, in form of large globes, and so it does on all the principal branches. These lumps are sometimes so large as to weigh two pound, though naturally very light.

The bark of the tree is thin and of a bluish colour, not unlike that of a cherry-tree when young, or rather whiter. The wood is white and hard, only the young branches which carry the flower are red. The leaves are joined to the sides of the small branches by a small pedicle of considerable strength, the leaves are two and two, or opposite to each other, and have no single leaf at the point; they are strongly varnished both on one side and the other, the back rather lighter than the foreside of the leaf. The branches that carry the leaves have about an inch of the stalk bare, where it is fixed to the larger branch. There are generally fourteen leaves, each of about three quarters of an inch long. At the top of the branch are knots out of which come three small stalks, bare for about an inch and a half, then having a number of small tubes, which, when they open at the top, put forth a long pistil from the bottom of the tube. The top of the tube, divided into five segments, or petals, arrives about one third up the pistil, and makes the figure of a calix or perianthium to it. From this tube proceeds a great number of very small capillaments of a pink colour, at the end of each of which hangs a purple stigma. At the top of this pistil is a large bunch of still finer fibres, or capillaments, with stigmata likewise, and at the end the pistil is rounded as if forming a fruit; without a very distinct drawing, it would be difficult to make a description that should be intelligible.

Nothing can be more beautiful, or more compounded, than the formation of this flower, though it has no odour; the head is composed of about thirty of these small branches now described, which make a very beautiful mass, and is of a pink colour of different shades. At sun-set, the leaves on each side of the branch shut face to face like the sensitive tribe. I never saw any seed or fruit that it bore, nor any thing like the rudiments of seed, unless it be that very small rotundity that appears at the end of the pistil, which seem to bear no proportion to so large a tree.

ERGETT Y’DIMMO.

The two beautiful shrubs which I have here given to the reader are called by the name of Ergett, which we may suppose, in Abyssinian botany, to be the generic name of the mimosa, as both of these have the same name, and both of the same family, of which there are many varieties in Abyssinia.

This first is called the Bloody Ergett, as we may suppose from the pink filaments of which this beautiful and uncommon flower is in part composed, and which we may therefore call Mimosa Sanguinea. The upper part of the flower is composed of curled, yellow filaments, and the bottom a pink of the same structure. I never saw it in any other state. Before the blossoms spread it appears in the form here exhibited. The pink, or lower part, in its unripe state, is composed of green tubercules, larger and more detached than where the yellow flower is produced, whose tubercules are smaller and closer set together. I need not say the leaves are of the double pinnated kind, as that and every thing else material can be learned from the figure, full as perfectly as if the flower was before them; none of the parts, however trifling and small, being neglected in the representation, and none of them supposed or placed there out of order, for ornament, or any other cause whatever: a rule which I would have the reader be persuaded is invariably observed in every article represented in this collection, whether tree or plant, beast, bird, or fish.

Ergett Dimmo.

London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

Ergett el Krone

London Published Decem.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

ERGETT EL KRONE.

The next of this species of Ergett or Mimosa, is called in Abyssinia Ergett el Krone, or the Horned Ergett; I apprehend the figure of the pods have given it that appellation. Its flower in size and form very much resembles the acacia vera, only that it is attached to the branch by a long and strong woody stalk, which grows out at the bottom of the branch bearing the leaves, and is sheltered as in a case by the lower part of it. The branches of it are all covered with very short, strong, sharp-pointed thorns, whose point is inclined backward towards the root. Its pods are covered with a prickly kind of hair, which, when touched, stick in your fingers and give very uneasy sensations. The pods are divided into thirteen divisions, in each of which are three round seeds, hard and shining, of a dusky brownish colour. The flower has scarcely any smell, nor do I know that it is of any utility whatever. Both these beautiful shrubs were found upon the banks of the river Arno, between Emfras and the lake Tzana. The soil is black mould, with a great mixture or composition of rotten putrified leaves, thinly covering the rock in the temperate part of Abyssinia. What I have to observe of both these shrubs is, that they shut their leaves upon the violent rains of winter, and are never fully expanded till the sun and fair season again return.

ENSETE.

The Ensete is an herbaceous plant. It is said to be a native of Narea, and to grow in the great swamps and marshes in that country, formed by many rivers rising there, which have little level to run to either ocean. It is said that the Galla, when transplanted into Abyssinia, brought for their particular use the coffee-tree, and the Ensete, the use of neither of which were before known. However, the general opinion is, that both are naturally produced in every part of Abyssinia, provided there is heat and moisture. It grows and comes to great perfection at Gondar, but it most abounds in that part of Maitsha and Goutto west of the Nile, where there are large plantations of it, and is there almost, exclusive of any thing else, the food of the Galla inhabiting that province; Maitsha is nearly upon a dead level, and the rains have not slope to get off easily, but stagnate and prevent the sowing of grain. Vegetable food would therefore be very scarce in Maitsha, were it not for this plant.

Ensete

Heath. Sc.

London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

Ensete

Heath. Sc.

London Published Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

Some who have seen my drawing of this plant, and at the same time found the banana in many parts of the east, have thought the Ensete to be a species of the Musa. This however, I imagine, is without any sort of reason. It is true, the leaf of the banana resembles that of the Ensete, it bears figs, and has an excrescence from its trunk, which is terminated by a conical figure, chiefly differing from the Ensete in size and quantity of parts, but the figs of the banana are in shape of a cucumber, and this is the part which is eaten. This fig is sweet though mealy, and of a taste highly agreeable. It is supposed to have no seeds, though in fact there are four small black seeds in every fig belonging to it. But the figs of the Ensete are not eatable; they are of a tender, soft substance; watery, tasteless, and in colour and consistence similar to a rotten apricot; they are of a conical form, crooked a little at the lower end, about an inch and a half in length, and an inch in breadth where thickest. In the inside of these is a large stone half an inch long, of the shape of a bean or cushoo-nut, of a dark brown colour, and this contains a small seed, which is seldom hardened into fruit, but consists only of skin.

The long stalk that bears the figs of the Ensete springs from the center of the plant, or rather is the body or solid part of the plant itself. Upon this, where it begins to bend, are a parcel of loose leaves, then grows the fig upon the body of the plant without any stalk, after which the top of the stalk is thick-set with small leaves, in the midst of which it terminates the flower in form of the artichoke; whereas in the banana, the flower, in form of the artichoke, grows at the end of that shoot, or stalk, which proceeds from the middle of the plant, the upper part of which bears the row of figs.

The leaves of the Ensete are a web of longitudinal fibres closely set together; the leaves grow from the bottom, and are without stalks; whereas the banana is in shape like a tree, and has been mistaken for such. One half of it is divided into a stem, the other is a head formed of leaves, and, in place of the stem that grows out of the Ensete, a number of leaves rolled together round like a truncheon, shoots out of the heart of the banana, and renews the upper as the under leaves fall off; but all the leaves of the banana have a long stalk; this fixes them to the trunk, which they do not embrace by a broad base, or involucrum, as the Ensete does.

But the greatest differences are still remaining. The banana, has, by some, been mistaken for a tree of the palmaceous tribe, for no other reason but a kind of similarity in producing the fruit on an excrescence or stalk growing from the heart of the stem; but still the musa is neither woody nor perennial; it bears fruit but once, and in all these respects it differs from trees of the palmaceous kind, and indeed from all sort of trees whatever. The Ensete, on the contrary, has no naked stem, no part of it is woody; the body of it, for several feet high, is esculent; but no part of the banana can be eaten. As soon as the stalk of the Ensete appears perfect and full of leaves, the body of the plant turns hard and fibrous, and is no longer eatable; before, it is the best of all vegetables; when boiled, it has the taste of the best new wheat-bread not perfectly baked.

The drawing which I have given the reader was of an Ensete ten years old. It was then very beautiful, and had no marks of decay. As for the pistil, stamina, and ovarium, they are drawn with such attention, and so clearly expressed by the pencil, that it would be lost time to say more about them. I have given one figure of the plant cloathed with leaves, and another of the stem stript of them, that the curious may have an opportunity of further investigating the difference between this and the musa.

When you make use of the Ensete for eating, you cut it immediately above the small detached roots, and perhaps a foot or two higher, as the plant is of age. You strip the green from the upper part till it becomes white; when soft, like a turnip well boiled, if eat with milk or butter it is the best of all food, wholesome, nourishing, and easily digested.

We see in some of the Egyptian antique statues the figure of Isis sitting between some branches of the banana tree, as it is supposed, and some handfuls of ears of wheat; you see likewise the hippopotamus ravaging a quantity of banana tree. Yet the banana is merely adventitious in Egypt, it is a native of Syria; it does not even exist in the low hot country of Arabia Felix, but chooses some elevation in the mountains where the air is temperate, and is not found in Syria farther to the southward than lat. 34°.

After all, I do not doubt that it might have grown in Mattareah, or in the gardens of Egypt or Rosetto; but it is not a plant of the country, and could never have entered into the list of their hieroglyphics; for this reason, it could not figure any thing permanent or regular in the history of Egypt or its climate. I therefore imagine that this hieroglyphic was wholly Ethiopian, and that the supposed banana, which, as an adventitious plant, signified nothing in Egypt, was only a representation of the Ensete, and that the record in the hieroglyphic of Isis and the Ensete-tree was something that happened between harvest, which was about August, and the time the Ensete-tree became to be in use, which is in October.

The hippopotamus is generally thought to represent a Nile that has been so abundant as to be destructive. When therefore we see upon the obelisks the hippopotamus destroying the banana, we may suppose it meant that the extraordinary inundation had gone so far as not only to destroy the wheat, but also to retard or hurt the growth of the Ensete, which was to supply its place. I do likewise conjecture, that the bundle of branches of a plant which Horus Apollo says the ancient Egyptians produced as the food on which they lived before the discovery of wheat, was not the papyrus, as he imagines, but this plant, the Ensete, which retired to its native Ethiopia upon a substitute being found better adapted to the climate of Egypt.

KOL-QUALL.

In that memorable day when leaving the Samhar, or low flat parched country which forms the sea-coast of Abyssinia, and turning westward, we came to the foot of that stupendous mountain Taranta, which we were to pass in order to enter into the high land of Abyssinia, we saw the whole side of that prodigious mountain covered from top to bottom with this beautiful tree. We were entering a country where we daily expected wonders, and therefore, perhaps, were not so much surprised as might have been supposed at so extraordinary a sight. The fruit was ripe, and being carried on the top of the branches, the trees that stood thick together appeared to be covered with a cloth or veil of the most vivid crimson colour.

The first thing that presented itself was the first shoot of this extraordinary tree. It was a single stalk, about six inches measured across, in eight divisions, regularly and beautifully scolloped and rounded at the top, joining in the centre at three feet and a half high. Upon the outside of these scollops were a sort of eyes or small knots, out of every one of which came five thorns, four on the sides and one in the centre, scarce half an inch long, fragil, and of no resistance, but exceedingly sharp and pointed. Its next process is to put out a branch from the first or second scollop near the top, others succeed from all directions; and this stalk, which is soft and succulent, of the consistence of the aloe, turns by degrees hard and ligneous, and, after a few years, by multiplying its branches, assumes the form as in the second plate. It is then a tree, the lower part of which is wood, the upper part, which is succulent, has no leaves; these are supplied by the fluted, scolloped, serrated, thorny sides of its branches. Upon the upper extremity of these branches grow its flowers, which are of a golden colour, rosaceous, and formed of five round or almost oval petala; this is succeeded by a triangular fruit, first of a light green with a slight cast of red, then turning to a deep crimson, with streaks of white both at top and bottom. In the inside it is divided into three cells, with a seed in each of them; the cells are of a greenish white, the seed round, and with no degree of humidity or moisture about it, yet the green leaves contain a quantity of bluish watery milk, almost incredible.

Kol-quall.

Heath. Sc.

London Published Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

Kol quall

Heath. Sc.

London Publish’d Jan. 1.^st 1790 by G. Robinson & Co.

Upon cutting two of the finest branches of a tree in its full vigour, a quantity of this issued out, which I cannot compute to be less than four English gallons, and this was so exceedingly caustic, that, though I washed the sabre that cut it immediately, the stain has not yet left it.

When the tree grows old, the branches wither, and, in place of milk, the inside appears to be full of powder, which is so pungent, that the small dust which I drew upon striking a withered branch seemed to threaten to make me sneeze to death, and the touching of the milk with my fingers excoriated them as if scalded with boiling water; yet I everywhere observed the wood-pecker piercing the rotten branches with its beak, and eating the insects, without any impression upon its olfactory nerves.

The only use the Abyssinians make of this is for tanning hides, at least for taking off the first hair. As we went west, the tree turned poor, the branches were few, seldom above two or three ribs, or divisions, and these not deeply indented, whereas those of Taranta had frequently eight. We afterwards saw some of them at the source of the Nile, in the cliff where the village of Geesh is situated, but, though upon very good ground, they did not seem to thrive; on the contrary, where they grew on Taranta it was sandy, stony, poor earth, scarce deep enough to cover the rock, but I suspect they received some benefit from their vicinity to the sea.

Some botanists who have seen the drawing have supposed this to be the euphorbia officinarum of Linnæus; but, without pretending to great skill in this matter, I should fear there would be some objection to this supposition: First, on account of the flower, which is certainly rosaceous, composed of several petals, and is not campaniform: Secondly, That it produces no sort of gum, either spontaneously or upon incision, at no period of its growth; therefore I imagine that the gum which comes from Africa in small pieces, first white on its arrival, then turning yellow by age, is not the produce of this tree, which, it may be depended upon, produces no gum whatever.

Juba the younger is said, by Pliny, to have given this name to the plant, calling it after his own physician, brother to Musa physician to Augustus. We need not trouble ourselves with what Juba says of it, he is a worse naturalist and worse historian than the Nubian geographer.

RACK.

This is a large tree, and seems peculiar to warm climates. It abounds in Arabia Felix, in Abyssinia, that is, in the low part of it, and in Nubia. The first place I saw it in was in Raback, a port in the Red Sea, where I discovered this singularity, that it grew in the sea within low-water mark. When we arrived at Masuah, in making a plan of the harbour, I saw a number of these in two islands both uninhabited, and without water, the one called Shekh Seide, the other Toulahout. These two islands are constantly overflowed by salt water, and though they are strangers to fresh, they yet produce large Rack-trees, which appear in a flourishing state, as if planted in a situation designed for them by nature.

Rack

London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

The Arabians, it is said, make boats of this tree. Its wood is so hardened by the sea, and also so bitter in taste, that no worm whatever will touch it. Of this tree the Arabians also make tooth-picks, these they sell in small bundles at Mecca, and are reputed to be favourable to the teeth, gums, and breath.

The reader will have observed frequent mention of some trees found in the desert which our camels would not eat. These are the Rack-tree, and the doom, or palma thebaica cuciofera[30]. These grow where they find salt springs in the sand; the desert being so impregnated with fossile salt in every part of it, that great blocks and strata of it are seen everywhere appearing above ground, especially about lat. 18°.

The Rack something resembles the ash on its first appearance, though in the formation of its parts it is widely different. Its bark is white and polished, smooth, and without furrows. Its trunk is generally 7 or 8 feet before it cleaves into branches. I have seen it above 24 feet in height, and 2 feet diameter.

Its leaves are, two and two, set on different sides, that is, each two perpendicular to each other alternately. The small branches that bear flowers part from the inside of the leaf, and have the same position with the leaves; that is, suppose the lowest pair of leaves and branches are on the east or west side of the tree, the pair above them will be on the north and south, and the next to these will be on the west as before. The leaves are long and very sharp-pointed; in the inside a deep green, and in the out a dirty white of a green cast; they have no visible ribs either in the inside or out. The cup is a perianthium of four petals, which closely confine the flower, and is only a little flat at the top. The flower is composed of four petals deeply cut, in the interstices of which is a small green fruit divided by a fissure in the middle; its colour is deep orange, with lights of gold colour, or yellow, throughout it. It has no smell, tastes very bitterly, and is never seen to be frequented by the bees. It is probable that a tree of this kind, tho’ perhaps of another name, and in greater perfection, and therefore more fit for use, may be found in some of our West India islands between lat. 15° and 18°, especially where there are salt springs and marshes.

Geshe el Aube

Heath. Sc.

London Published December 1, 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

GIR GIR, or GESHE EL AUBE.

This species of grass is one of the acquisitions which my travels have procured to botany. It was not before known; and the seed has not, as far as I know, produced any plant but in the garden of the king of France. It grows plentifully near Ras el Feel, not far from the banks of the large river Guangue, of which I have spoken in my return from Abyssinia into Egypt. It begins to shoot in the end of April, when it first feels the humidity of the air. It advances then speedily to its full height, which is about 3 feet 4 inches. It is ripe in the beginning of May, and decays, if not destroyed by fire, very soon afterwards.

The leaf is long, pointed, narrow, and of a feeble texture. The stock from which it shoots produces leaves in great abundance, which soon turn yellow and fall to the ground. The goats, the only cattle these miserable people have, are very fond of it, and for it abandon all other food while it is within their reach. On the leaves of some plants I have seen a very small glutinous juice, like to what we see upon the leaves of the lime or the plane, but in much less quantity; this is of the taste of sugar.

From the root of the branch arises a number of stalks, sometimes two, but never, as far as I have seen, more than three. The flower and seed are defended by a wonderful perfection and quantity of small parts. The head when in its maturity is of a purplish brown. The plate represents it in its natural size, with its constituent parts dissected and separated with very great attention. As they are many, each have a number affixed to them.

Male-flower described.

The 1st is the flower in its perfect state separated from its stalk. The 2d is the upper case. The 3d is the case, or sheath, opposite to the foregoing. The 4th are inner cases which inclose the three stamina, with the beard and the arista. The 5th is its stile. The 6th its stamina, with the two cases that inclose them. The 7th is the sheath, with its ear and its beard.

Female-flower described.

The 8th is the rudiment of the fruit, with two stigmata. The 9th, the perfect flower.

Kantuffa

London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

KANTUFFA.

This thorn, like many men we meet daily in society, has got itself into a degree of reputation and respect from the noxious qualities and power of doing ill which it possesses, and the constant exertion of these powers. The Abyssinians, who wear coarse cotton cloths, the coarsest of which are as thick as our blankets, the finest equal to our muslin, are in the same degree annoyed with it. The soldier screens himself by a goat’s, leopard, or lion’s skin, thrown over his shoulder, of which it has no hold. As his head is bare, he always cuts his hair short before he goes to battle, lest his enemy should take advantage of it; but the women, wearing their hair long, and the great men, whether in the army or travelling in peace, being always cloathed, it never fails to incommode them, whatever species of raiment they wear. If their cloak is fine muslin, the least motion against it puts it all in rags; but if it is a thick, soft cloth, as those are with which men of rank generally travel, it buries its thorns, great and small, so deep in it that the wearer must either dismount and appear naked, which to principal people is a great disgrace, or else much time will be spent before he can disengage himself from its thorns. In the time when one is thus employed, it rarely fails to lay hold of you by the hair, and that again brings on another operation, full as laborious, but much more painful than the other.

In the course of my history, when speaking of the king, Tecla Haimanout II. first entering Gondar after his exile into Tigré, I gave an instance that shewed how dangerous it was for the natives to leave this thorn standing; and of such consequence is the clearing of the ground thought to be, that every year when the king marches, among the necessary proclamations this is thought to be a very principal one, “Cut down the Kantuffa in the four quarters of the world, for I do not know where I am going.” This proclamation, from the abrupt stile of it, seems at first absurd to stranger ears, but when understood is full of good sense and information. It means, Do not sit gossiping with your hands before you, talking, The king is going to Damot, he certainly will go to Gojam, he will be obliged to go to Tigré. That is not your business, remove nuisances out of his way, that he may go as expeditiously as possible, or send to every place where he may have occasion.

The branches of the Kantuffa stand two and two upon the stalk; the leaves are disposed two and two likewise, without any single one at the point, whereas the branches bearing the leaves part from the stalk: at the immediate joining of them are two thick thorns placed perpendicular and parallel alternately; but there are also single ones distributed in all the interstices throughout the branch.

The male plant, which I suppose this to be, has a one-leaved perianthium, divided into five segments, and this falls off with the flower. The flower is composed of five petals, in the middle of which rise ten stamina or filaments, the outer row shorter than those of the middle, with long stigmata, having yellow farina upon them. The flowers grow in a branch, generally between three and four inches long, in a conical disposition, that is, broader at the base than the point. The inside of the leaves are a vivid green, in the outside much lighter. It grows in form of a bush, with a multitude of small branches rising immediately from the ground, and is generally seven or eight feet high, I saw it when in flower only, never when bearing fruit. It has a very strong smell, resembling that of the small scented flower called mignionet, sown in vases and boxes in windows, or rooms, where flowers are kept.

The wild animals, both birds and beasts, especially the Guinea-fowl, know how well it is qualified to protect them. In this shelter, the hunter in vain could endeavour to molest them, were it not for a hard-haired dog, or terrier of the smallest size, who being defended from the thorns by the roughness of his coat, goes into the cover and brings them and the partridges alive one by one to his master.

GAGUEDI.

The Gaguedi is a native of Lamalmon; whether it was not in a thriving state, or whether it was the nature of the tree, I know not, but it was thick and stunted, and had but few branches; it was not above nine feet high, though it was three feet in diameter. The leaves and flower, however, seemed to be in great vigor and I have here designed them all of their natural size as they stood.

The leaves are long, and broader as they approach the end. The point is obtuse; they are of a dead green not unlike the willow, and placed alternately one above the other on the stalk. The calix is composed of many broad scales lying one above the other, which operates by the pressure upon one another, and keeps the calix shut before the flower arrives at perfection. The flower is monopetalous, or made of one leaf; it is divided at the top into four segments, where these end it is covered with a tuft of down, resembling hair, and this is the case at the top also. When the flower is young and unripe, they are laid regularly so as to inclose one another in a circle. As they grow old and expand, they seem to lose their regular form, and become more confused, till at last, when arrived at its full perfection, they range themselves parallel to the lips of the calix, and perpendicular to the stamina, in the same order as a rose. The common receptacle of the flower is oblong, and very capacious, of a yellow colour, and covered with small leaves like hair. The stile is plain, simple, and upright, and covered at the bottom with a tuft of down, and is below the common receptacle of the flower.

Gaguedi

Heath. Sc.

London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

Gaguedi.

London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

As this flower is of a complicated nature, I have given two figures of it, the one where the flower is seen in face, the other in the outside. The stamina are three short filaments inserted in the segment of the flower near the summit.

I have observed, in the middle of a very hot day, that the flowers unbend themselves more, the calix seems to expand, and the whole flower to turn itself towards the sun in the same manner as does the sun-flower. When the branch is cut, the flower dries as it were instantaneously, so that it seems to contain very little humidity.

WANZEY.

This tree is very common throughout all Abyssinia. I do not know the reason, but all the towns are full of them; every house in Gondar has two or three planted round it, so that, when viewed first from the heights, it appears like a wood, especially all the season of the rains; but very exactly on the first of September, for three years together, in a night’s time, it was covered with a multitude of white flowers. Gondar, and all the towns about, then appeared as covered with white linen, or with new-fallen snow. This tree blossoms the first day the rains cease. It grows to a considerable magnitude, is from 18 to 20 feet high. The trunk is generally about 3 feet and a half from the ground; it then divides into four or five thick branches, which have at least 60° inclination to the horizon, and not more. These large branches are generally bare, for half way up the bark is rough and furrowed. They then put out a number of smaller branches, are circular and fattish at the top, of a figure like some of our early pear-trees. The cup is a single-leaved perianthium, red, marked very regularly before it flowers, but when the flower is out, the edges of the cup are marked with irregular notches, or segments, in the edge, which by no means correspond in numbers or distances to those that appeared before the perfection of the flower.

Wanzey

Heath. Sc.

London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

The flower itself consists of one leaf of the funnel-fashioned kind, spreads, and, when in its full perfection, folds back at the lips, though it has in some flowers marks or depressions which might appear like segments, yet they are not such, but merely accidental, and the edge of most of the flowers perfectly even, without any mark of separation.

The pistil consists of a very feeble thread; in the top it is bisected, or divided, into two; its apex is covered with a small portion of yellow dust. There are two, and sometimes three, of these divisions. The fruit is fully formed in the cup while the flower remains closed, and like a kind of tuft, which falls off, and the pistil still remains on the point of the fruit; is at first soft, then hardens like a nut, and is covered with a thin, green husk. It then dries, hardens into a shell, and withers. The leaf is of a dark green, without varnish, with an obtuse point; the ribs few but strong, marked both within and without. The outside is a greenish yellow, without varnish also.

I do not know that any part of this tree is of the smallest use in civil life, though its figure and parts seem to be too considerable not to contain useful qualities if fairly investigated by men endued with science. I have several times mentioned in the history of the Galla, that this and the coffee-tree have divine honours paid them by each and all of the seven nations. Under this tree their king is chosen; under this tree he holds his first council, in which he marks his enemies, and the time and manner in which his own soldiers are to make their irruption into their country. His sceptre is a bludgeon made of this tree, which, like a mace, is carried before him wherever he goes; it is produced in the general meetings of the nation, and is called Buco.

The wood is close and heavy, the bark thick; there is then a small quantity of white wood, the rest is dark brown and reddish, not unlike the laburnam, and the buco is stript to this last appearance, and always kept plentifully anointed with butter.

Farek

Heath. Sc.

London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

FAREK, or BAUHINIA ACUMINATA.

This beautiful shrub was found on the banks of a brook, which, falling from the west side of the mountain of Geesh down the south face of the precipice where the village is situated, is the first water that runs southward into the lake Gooderoo, in the plain of Assoa. It is the water we employed for common uses, not daring to touch that of the Nile, unless for drinking and dressing our food; it grew about 20 yards from this water, on the side of the cliff, not 400 yards from the fountain of the Nile itself. The name it bears here is Farek, which is, I suppose, given it from the division of the leaf.

This shrub is composed of several feeble branches: to what height it grows I do not know, having never seen it before, nor were there many others where I found it. The longest branch of this was not four feet high. It grew on good black mold, but of no great depth, having at the bottom a gritty or sandy stone, and seemed in full perfection. The branch is of its natural size; on one of the smaller or collateral branches is the flower full blown, with two others that are buds. The parts are separated and designed with care.

The first figure is the flower in its entire state, seen in front, the stamina of course fore-shortened. The second is an angular three-quarter view of the calix. The third is a back view of the calix. The fourth is the calix inclosing the stamina and pistil, round which last they form a fruit or grain. The fifth is the flower stript of its calix, where is seen the germ, the stamina, and the pistil. The sixth is the stamina magnified to twice their size. The seventh is the lower leaf. The eighth, the upper leaf of the flower. The ninth, the germ, or rudiment of the fruit, with the pistil joined to it, at the bottom of which there is a small cavity. The tenth is the seed or fruit entire. The eleventh represents the inside of the seed cut in half.

The leaves of this shrub are of a vivid green, and are joined to the branch by a long pedicle, in the inside of which are the rudiments of another, which I suppose begin to sprout when the large one is injured or falls off.

Though very little acquainted with the scientific part of botany myself, its classes, genera, and species, and still less jealous of my reputation in it, I cannot conceive why my single attention, in charging myself with a number of seeds in distant countries, and giving part to the garden at Paris, should lead to a conclusion that I was so absolutely uninstructed in the science for which at least I had shewn this attachment, that I could not distinguish the plant before us from the acacia vera. Is the knowledge of botany so notoriously imperfect in England, or is the pre-eminence so established in France, as to authorise such a presumption of ignorance against a person, who, from his exertions and enterprise, should hold some rank in the republic of letters among travellers and discoverers?

A compliment was paid me by the Count de Buffon, or by superior orders, in return for the articles I had presented to the king’s cabinet and garden at Paris, that the plants growing from the seeds which I had brought from Abyssinia should regularly, as they grew to perfection, be painted, and sent over to me at London. The compliment was a handsome one, and, I was very sensible of it, it would have contributed more to the furnishing the king’s garden with plants than many lectures on botany, ex cathedra, will ever do.

But it was not necessary to shew his knowledge for the sake of contrasting it with my ignorance, that Mr Jussieu says this bauhinia is by Mr Bruce taken for an acacia vera. Now the acacia vera is a large, wide-spreading, thorny, hard, red-wooded, rough-barked, gum-bearing tree. Its flower, though sometimes white, is generally yellow; it is round or globular, composed of many filaments or stamina; it is the Spina Egyptiaca, its leaves, in shape and disposition, resembling a mimosa; in Arabic it is called Saiel, Sunt, Gerar; and if M. de Jussieu had been at all acquainted with the history of the east, he must have known it was the tree of every desert, and consequently that I must be better acquainted with it than almost any traveller or botanist now alive. Upon what reasonable ground then could he suppose, upon my bringing to him a rare and elegant species of bauhinia, which probably he had not before seen, that I could not distinguish it from an acacia, of which I certainly brought him none?

A large species of Mullein likewise, or, as he pleases to term it, Bouillon Blanc, he has named Verbascum Abyssinicum; and this the unfortunate Mr Bruce, it seems, has called an aromatic herb growing upon the high mountains. I do really believe, that M. de Jussieu is more conversant with the Bouillon Blancs than I am; my Bouillons are of another colour; it must be the love of French cookery, not English taste, that would send a man to range the high mountains for aromatic herbs to put in his Bouillon, if the Verbascum had been really one of these.

Although I have sometimes made botany my amusement, I do confess it never was my study, and I believe from this the science has reaped so much the more benefit. I have represented to the eye, with the utmost attention, by the best drawings in natural history ever yet published, and to the understanding in plain English, what I have seen as it appeared to me on the spot, without tacking to it imaginary parts of my own, from preconceived systems of what it should have been, and thereby creating varieties that never existed.

When I arrived at the Lazaretto at Marseilles, the Farenteit, as it is called in Nubia, or the Guinea-worm, the name it bears in Europe, having been broken by mismanagement in my voyage from Alexandria, had retired into my leg and festered there. The foot, leg, and thigh, swelled to a monstrous size, appearance of mortification followed, and the surgeon, with a tenderness and humanity that did honour to his skill, declared, though reluctantly, that if I had been a man of weak nerves, or soft disposition, he would have prepared me for what was to happen by the interposition of a friend or a priest; but as from my past sufferings he presumed my spirit was of a more resolute and firmer kind, he thought saving time was of the utmost consequence, and therefore advised me to resolve upon submitting to an immediate amputation above the knee. To limp through the remains of life, after having escaped so many dangers with bones unbroken, was hard, so much so, that the loss of life itself seemed the most eligible of the two, for the bad habit of body in which I found myself in an inveterate disease, for which I knew no remedy, and joined to this the prejudice that an Englishman generally has against foreign operators in surgery, all persuaded me, that, after undergoing amputation, I had but very little chance of recovery, besides long and great suffering, want of sleep, want of food, and the weakness that attends lying long in sick-bed, had gradually subdued the natural desire and anxiety after life; every day death seemed to be a lesser evil than pain. Patience, however, strong fomentations, and inward applications of the bark, at length cured me.

It was immediately after receiving my melancholy sentence, that, thinking of my remaining duties, I remembered I had carried abroad with me an order from the king to procure seeds for his garden. Before I had lost the power of direction, I ordered Michael, my Greek servant, to take the half of all the different parcels and packages that were lying by me, made up for separate uses, and pack them so as they might be sent to Sir William Duncan the king’s physician, then in Italy, to be conveyed by him to Lord Rochfort, secretary of state. I by the same conveyance accompanied these with a short letter, wrote with great difficulty,—that it appearing, beyond leaving room for hope, that my return was to be prevented by an unexpected disease, I begged his Majesty to receive these as the last tender of my duty to him.

Michael, who never cared much for botany, at no period was less disposed to give himself trouble about it than now; his master, friend, and patron was gone, as he thought; he was left in a strange country; he knew not at word of the language, nor was he acquainted with one person in Marseilles, for we had not yet stirred out of the lazaretto. What became of the seeds for a time I believe neither he nor I knew; but, when he saw my recovery advancing, fear of reproof led him to conceal his former negligence. He could neither read nor write, so that the only thing he could do was to put the first seed that came to hand in the first envelope, either in parchment or paper, that had writing upon the back of it, and, thus selected, the seeds came into the hands of M. de Jussieu at Paris. By this operation of Michael, the verbascum became an aromatic herb growing on the highest mountains, and the bauhinia acuminata became an acacia vera.

The present of the drawings of the Abyssinian plants was really, as it was first designed, a compliment but it turned out just the contrary, for, in place of expecting the publication that I was to make, in which they would naturally be a part, the gates of the garden were thrown open, and every dabbler in botany that could afford pen, ink, and paper, was put in possession of those plants and flowers, at a time when I had not said one word upon the subject of my travels.

Whether this was owing to M. de Jussieu, M. de Thouin, or M. Daubenton, to all, or to any one of them, I do not know, but I beg they will for a moment consider the great impropriety of the measure. I suppose it would be thought natural, that a person delineating plants in a foreign country with such care, risk, and expence as I have done, should wish to bring home the very seeds of those plants he had delineated in preference to all others: supposing these had been the only seeds he could have brought home, and generosity and liberality of mind had led him to communicate part of them to M. de Jussieu, we shall further say, this last-mentioned gentleman had planted them, and when the time came, engraved, and published them, what would he think of this manner of repaying the traveller’s attention to him? The bookseller, that naturally expected to be the first that published these plants, would say to the traveller whose book he was to buy, This collection of natural history is not new, it has been printed in Sweden, Denmark, and France, and part of it is to be seen in every monthly magazine! Does M. de Jussieu think, that, after having been once so treated, any traveller would ever give one seed to the king’s garden? he certainly would rather put them in the fire; he must do so if he was a reasonable man, for otherwise, by giving them away he is certainly ruining his own work, and defeating the purposes for which he had travelled.

When I first came home, it was with great pleasure I gratified the curiosity of the whole world, by shewing them each what they fancied the most curious. I thought this was an office of humanity to young people, and to those of slender fortunes, or those who, from other causes, had no opportunity of travelling. I made it a particular duty to attend and explain to men of knowledge and learning that were foreigners, everything that was worth the time they bestowed upon considering the different articles that were new to them, and this I did at great length to the Count de Buffon, and Mons. Gueneau de Montbeliard, and to the very amiable and accomplished Madame d’Aubenton. I cannot say by whose industry, but it was in consequence of this friendly communication, a list or inventory (for they could give no more) of all my birds and beasts were published before I was well got to England.

From what I have seen of the performances of the artists employed by the cabinet, I do not think that they have anticipated in any shape the merit of my drawings, especially in birds and in plants; to say nothing milder of them, they are in both articles infamous; the birds are so dissimilar from the truth, that the names of them are very necessarily wrote under, or over them, for fear of the old mistake of taking them for something else. I condescend upon the Erkoom as a proof of this. I gave a very fine specimen of this bird in great preservation to the King’s collection; and though I shewed them the original, they had not genius enough to make a representation that could with any degree of certainty be promised upon for a guess. When I was at Paris, they had a woman, who, in place of any merit, at least that I could judge of, was protected, as they said, by the queen, and who made, what she called, Drawings; those of plants were so little characteristic, that it was, strictly speaking, impossible, without a very great consideration, to know one plant from another: while there was, at same time, a man of the greatest merit, M. de Seve, absolutely without employment; tho’, in my opinion, he was the best painter of every part of natural history either in France or England.

Kuara

London Published Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

KUARA.

This beautiful tree, now presented to the reader, is the production of the south and S. W. parts of Abyssinia. It is very frequent, and, with the ebony, almost the only wood of the province of Kuara, of which it bears the name; indeed in all Fazuclo, Nuba, and Guba, and the countries where there is gold. It is here designed in its natural size both leaves, flowers, and fruit, the whole so plainly, that it is needless to descant upon its particular parts, well known to naturalists. It is what they call a Corallodendron, probably from the colour of its flowers or of its fruit, both equal in colour to coral.

Its fruit is a red bean, with a black spot in the middle of it, which is inclosed in a round capsula, or covering, of a woody nature, very tough and hard. This bean seems to have been in the earliest ages used for a weight of gold among the Shangalla, where that metal is found all over Africa; and by repeated experiments, I have found that, from the time of its being gathered, it varies very little in weight, and may perhaps have been the very best choice that therefore could have been made between the collectors and the buyers of gold.

I have said this tree is called Kuara, which signifies the Sun. The bean is called Carat, from which is derived the manner of esteeming gold as so many carats fine. From the gold country in Africa it passed to India, and there came to be the weight of precious stones, especially diamonds; so that to this day in India we hear it commonly spoken of gold or diamonds, that they are of so many carats fine, or weight. I have seen these beans likewise from the West-Indian islands. They are just the same size, but, as far as I know, are not yet applied to any use there.

Walkuffa

London Publish’d Dec^r. 1.^st 1789. by G. Robinson & Co.

WALKUFFA.

This tree grows in the Kolla, or hottest part of Abyssinia. It does not flower immediately after the rains, as most trees in Abyssinia do, that is, between the beginning of September and the Epiphany, when the latter rains in November do still fall in violent periodical showers, but it is after the Epiphany, towards the middle of January, that it first appears covered with blossoms. However beautiful, it has no smell, and is accounted destructive to the bees, for which reason it is rooted out and destroyed in those countries that pay their revenue in honey. It resembles the Kentish cherry-tree in appearance, especially if that tree has but a moderate, not overspreading top. The wood immediately below its bark is white, but under that a brownish yellow, something like cedar; the old trees that I have seen turn darker, and are not unlike to the wood of the laburnum, or pease-cod tree. The natives say it does not swim in water. This however I can contradict upon experiment. The wood, indeed, is heavy, but still it swims.

Although the painting of this tree, which I here exhibit, is neither more nor less accurate in the delineation of its parts than every other design of natural history given in this work to the public, yet the inimitable beauty of the subject itself has induced me to bestow much more pains upon it than any other I have published, and, according to my judgment, it is the best executed in this collection. All its parts are so distinctly figured, the flower exposed in such variety of directions, that it supersedes the necessity of describing it to the skilful botanist, who will find here every thing he possibly could in the flower itself. This is a great advantage, for if the parts had been ever so studiously and carefully reserved in a hortus siccus as they are spread upon the paper, it would have been impossible not to have lost some of its finer members, they are so fragil, as I have often experienced in different attempts to dry and preserve it.

The flower consists of five petals, part of each overlapping or supporting the other, so that it maintains its regular figure of a cup till the leaves fall off, and does not spread and disjoin first, as do the generality of these rosaceous flowers before they fall to the ground. Its colour is a pure white, in the midst of which is a kind of sheath, or involucrum, of a beautiful pink colour, which surrounds the pistil, covering and concealing about one-third of it. Upon the top of this is a kind of impalement, consisting of five white upright threads, and between each of these are disposed three very feeble stamina of unequal lengths, which make them stand in a triangular oblong form, covered with yellow farina.

Wooginoos or Brucea Antidysenterica.

London Publish’d Dec^r. 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

The pistil is a yellow tube, divided at the top into five segments, and fixed at the bottom in what appears to be the rudiment of a fruit; but I never saw this in any state of perfection, and the Abyssinians say it never produces anything but a small, round, black seed, concerning which I can say no further. The perianthium consists of five sharp-pointed segments, which inclose the flower when not arrived to maturity, in a conical pod of a light-green colour, which colour it likewise keeps in its more advanced state when spread. I do not know any other name it has but that of Walkuffa, nor do I know the signification of that name in any language.

WOOGINOOS, or BRUCEA ANTIDYSENTERICA.

This shrub, the branch of which is before us, is a production of the greatest part of Abyssinia, especially the sides of the valleys in the low country, or Kolla. It is indeed on the north side of Debra Tzai, where you first descend into the Kolla. This drawing was made at Hor-Cacamoot, in Ras el Feel, where the Wooginoos grows abundantly, and where dysenteries reign continually, Heaven having put the antidote in the same place where grows the poison.

Some weeks before I left Gondar I had been very much tormented with this disease, and I had tried both ways of treating it, the one by hot medicines and astringents, the other by the contrary method of diluting. Small dozes of ipecacuanha under the bark had for several times procured me temporary relief, but relapses always followed. My strength began to fail, and, after a severe return of this disease, I had, at my ominous mansion, Hor-Cacamoot, the valley of the shadow of death, a very unpromising prospect, for I was now going to pass through the kingdom of Sennaar in the time of year when that disease most rages.

Sheba, chief of the Shangalia, called Ganjar, on the frontiers of Kuara, had at this time a kind of embassy or message to Ras el Feel. He wanted to burn some villages in Atbara belonging to the Arabs Jeheina, and wished Yasine might not protect them: they often came and sat with me, and one of them hearing of my complaint, and the apprehensions I annexed to it, seemed to make very light of both, and the reason was, he found at the very door this shrub, the strong and ligneous root of which, nearly as thick as a parsnip, was covered with a clean, clear, wrinkled root, of a light-brown colour, and which peeled easily off the root. The bark was without fibres to the very end, where it split like a fork into two thin divisions. After having cleared the inside of it of a whitish membrane, he laid it to dry in the sun, and then would have bruised it between two stones, had we not shewn him the easier and more expeditious way of powdering it in a mortar.

The first doze I took was about a heaped tea-spoonful in a cup of camel’s milk; I took two of these in a day, and then in the morning a tea-cup of the infusion in camel’s milk warm. It was attended the first day with a violent drought, but I was prohibited from drinking either water or bouza. I made privately a drink of my own; I took a little boiled water which had stood to cool, and in it a small quantity of spirits. I after used some ripe tamarinds in water, which I thought did me harm. I cannot say I found any alteration for the first day, unless a kind of hope that I was growing better, but the second day I found myself sensibly recovered. I left off laudanum and ipecacuanha, and resolved to trust only to my medicine. In looking at my journal, I think it was the 6th or 7th day that I pronounced myself well, and, though I had returns afterwards, I never was reduced to the necessity of taking one drop of laudanum, although before I had been very free with it. I did not perceive it occasioned any extraordinary evacuation, nor any remarkable symptom but that continued thirst, which abated after it had been taken some time.

In the course of my journey through Sennaar, I saw that all the inhabitants were well acquainted with the virtues of this plant. I had prepared a quantity pounded into powder, and used it successfully everywhere. I thought that the mixing of a third of bark with it produced the effect more speedily, and, as we had now little opportunity of getting milk, we made an infusion in water. I tried a spiritous tincture, which I do believe would succeed well. I made some for myself and servants, a spoonful of which we used to take when we found symptoms of our disease returning, or when it was raging in the place in which we chanced to reside. It is a plain, simple bitter, without any aromatic or resinous taste. It leaves in your throat and pallet something of roughness resembling ipecacuanha.

This shrub was not before known to botanists. I brought the seeds to Europe, and it has grown in every garden, but has produced only flowers, and never came to fruit. Sir Joseph Banks, president to the Royal Society, employed Mr Miller to make a large drawing from this shrub as it had grown at Kew. The drawing was as elegant as could be wished, and did the original great justice. To this piece of politeness Sir Joseph added another, of calling it after its discoverer’s name, Brucea Antidysenterica: the present figure is from a drawing of my own on the spot at Ras el Feel.

The leaf is oblong and pointed, smooth, and without collateral ribs that are visible. The right side of the leaf is a deep green, the reverse very little lighter. The leaves are placed two and two upon the branch, with a single one at the end. The flowers come chiefly from the point of the stalk from each side of a long branch. The cup is a perianthium divided into four segments. The flower has four petals, with a strong rib down the center of each. In place of a pistil there is a small cup, round which, between the segments of the perianthium and the petala of the flower, four feeble stamina arise, with a large stigma of a crimson colour, of the shape of a coffee-bean, and divided in the middle.

CUSSO, BANKESIA ABYSSINICA.

The Cusso is one of the most beautiful trees, as also one of the most useful. It is an inhabitant of the high country of Abyssinia, and indigenous there; I never saw it in the Kolla, nor in Arabia, nor in any other part of Asia or Africa. It is an instance of the wisdom of providence, that this tree does not extend beyond the limits of the disease of which it was intended to be the medicine or cure.

The Abyssinians of both sexes, and at all ages, are troubled with a terrible disease, which custom however has enabled them to bear with a kind of indifference. Every individual, once a month, evacuates a large quantity of worms; these are not the tape worm, or those that trouble children, but they are the sort of worm called Ascarides, and the method of promoting these evacuations, is by infusing a handful of dry Cusso flowers in about two English quarts of bouza, or the beer they make from teff; after it has been steeped all night, the next morning it is fit for use. During the time the patient is taking the Cusso, he makes a point of being invisible to all his friends, and continues at home from morning till night. Such too was the custom of the Egyptians upon taking a particular medicine. It is alledged that the want of this drug is the reason why the Abyssinians do not travel, or if they do, most of them are short-lived.

The seed of this is very small, more so than the semen santonicum, which seems to come from a species of worm-wood. Like it the Cusso sheds its seed very easily; from this circumstance, and its smallness, no great quantity of the seed is gathered, and therefore the flower is often substituted. It is bitter, but not nearly so much as the semen santonicum.

The Cusso grows seldom above twenty feet high, very rarely straight, generally crooked or inclined. It is planted always near churches, among the cedars which surround them, for the use of the town or village. Its leaf is about 2¼ inches long, divided into two by a strong rib. The two divisions, however, are not equal, the upper being longer and broader than the lower; it is a deep unvarnished green, exceedingly pleasant to the eye, the fore part covered with soft hair or down. It is very much indented, more so than a nettle-leaf, which in some measure it resembles, only is narrower and longer.

These leaves grow two and two upon a branch; between each two are the rudiments of two pair of young ones, prepared to supply the others when they fall off, but they are terminated at last with a single leaf at the point. The end of this stalk is broad and strong, like that of a palm-branch. It is not solid like the gerid of the date-tree, but opens in the part that is without leaves about an inch and a half from the bottom, and out of this aperture proceeds the flower. There is a round stalk bare for about an inch and a quarter, from which proceed crooked branches, to the end of which are attached single flowers; the stalk that carries these proceeds out of every crook, or geniculation; the whole cluster of flowers has very much the shape of a cluster of grapes, and the stalks upon which it is supported very much the stalk of the grape; a very few small leaves are scattered through the cluster of flowers.

Cusso or Banksia Abissinica

London. Published Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

Flower of the Banksia

Abissinica.

London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.

The coral itself is of a greenish colour, tinged with purple; when fully blown, it is altogether of a deep red or purple; the flower is white, and consists of five petals, in the midst is a short pistil with a round head, surrounded by eight stamina of the same form, loaded with yellow farina. The cup consists of five petals, which much resemble another flower; they are rounded at the top, and nearly of an equal breadth every way.

The bark of the tree is smooth, of a yellowish white, interspersed with brown streaks which pass through the whole body of the tree. It is not firm or hard, but rather stringy and reedy. On the upper part, before the first branch of leaves set out, are rings round the trunk, of small filaments, of the consistence of horse hair; these are generally fourteen or sixteen in number, and are a very remarkable characteristic belonging to this tree.

As the figure of this plant is true and exact beyond all manner of exception, I cannot but think it may be found in latitudes 11 or 12° north in the West Indies or America; and having been found a gentle, safe, and efficacious medicine in Abyssinia, it is not doubted but the superior skill of our physicians would turn it to the advantage of mankind in general, when used here in Europe. In consequence of the established prerogatives of discoverers, I have named this beautiful and useful tree after Sir Joseph Banks, President of the royal Society.

TEFF.

This grain is commonly sown all over Abyssinia, where it seems to thrive equally on all sorts of ground; from it is made the bread which is commonly used throughout Abyssinia. The Abyssinians, indeed, have plenty of wheat, and some of it of an excellent quality: They likewise make as fine wheat-bread as any in the world, both for colour and for taste; but the use of wheat-bread is chiefly confined to people of the first rank. On the other hand, Teff is used by all sorts of people from the king downwards, and there are kinds of it which are esteemed fully as much as wheat. The best of these is as white as flour, exceedingly light, and easily digested. There are others of a browner colour, and some nearly black; this last is the food of soldiers and servants. The cause of this variation of colour is manifold; the Teff that grows on light ground having a moderate degree of moisture, but never dry; the lighter the earth is in which it grows, the better and whiter the Teff will be; the husk too is thinner. That Teff, too, that ripens before the heavy rains, is usually whiter and finer, and a great deal depends upon sifting the husk from it after it is reduced to flour, by bruising or breaking it in a stone-mill. This is repeated several times with great care, in the finest kind of bread, which is found in the houses of all people of rank or substance. The manner of making it is by taking a broad earthen jar, and having made a lump of it with water, they put it into an earthen jar at some distance from the fire, where it remains till it begins to ferment, or turn sour; they then bake it into cakes of a circular form, and about two feet in diameter: It is of a spungy, soft quality, and not a disagreeable sourish taste. Two of these cakes a-day, and a coarse cotton cloth once a-year, are the wages of a common servant.

Teff

London Publish’d Feb.^y 9.^th 1790. by G. Robinson & Co.

At their banquets of raw meat, the flesh being cut in small bits, is wrapt up in pieces of this bread, with a proportion of fossile salt and Cayenne pepper. Before the company sits down to eat, a number of these cakes of different qualities are placed one upon the other, in the same manner as our plates, and the principal people, sitting first down, eat the white Teff; the second, or coarser sort, serves the second-rate people that succeed them, and the third is for the servants. Every man, when he is done, dries or wipes his fingers upon the bread which he is to leave for his successor, for they have no towels, and this is one of the most beastly customs of the whole.

The Teff bread, when well toasted, is put into a large jar, after being broken into small pieces, and warm water poured upon it. It is then set by the fire, and frequently stirred for several days, the mouth of the jar being close covered. After being allowed to settle three or four days, it acquires a sourish taste, and is what they call Bouza, or the common beer of the country. The bouza in Atbara is made in the same manner, only, instead of Teff, cakes of barley-meal are employed; both are very bad liquors, but the worst is that made of barley.

The plant is herbaceous: from a number of weak leaves proceeds a stalk of about twenty-eight inches in length, not perfectly straight, smooth, but jointed or knotted at particular distances. This stalk is not much thicker than that of a carnation or jellyflower. About eight inches from the top, a head is formed of a number of small branches, upon which it carries the fruit and flowers; the latter of which is small, of a crimson colour, and scarcely perceptible by the naked eye, but from the opposition of that colour. The pistil is divided into two, seemingly attached to the germ of the fruit, and has at each end small capillaments forming a brush. The stamina are three in number, two on the lower side of the pistil, and one on the upper. These are, each of them, crowned with two oval stigmata, at first green, but after, crimson. The fruit is formed in a capsula, consisting of two conical, hollow leaves, which, when closed, seems to compose a small conical pod, pointed at the top. The fruit, or seed, is oblong, and is not so large as the head of the smallest pin, yet it is very prolific, and produces these seeds in such quantity as to yield a very abundant crop in the quantity of meal.

Whether this grain was ever known to the Greeks and Romans, is what we are no where told. Indeed, the various grains made use of in antiquity, are so lamely and poorly described, that, unless it is a few of the most common, we cannot even guess at the rest. Pliny mentions several of them, but takes no notice of any of their qualities, but medicinal ones; some he specifies as growing in Gaul, others in the Campania of Rome, but takes no notice of those of Ethiopia or Egypt. Among these there is one which he calls Tiphe, but says not whence it came; the name would induce us to believe that this was Teff, but we can only venture this as a conjecture not supported. But it is very improbable, connected as Egypt and Ethiopia were from the first ages, both by trade and religion, that a grain of such consequence to one nation should be utterly unknown to the other. It is not produced in the low or hot country, the Kolla, that is, in the borders of it; for no grain can grow, as I have already said, in the Kolla or Mazaga itself; but in place of Teff, in these borders, there grows a black grain called Tocusso. The stalk of this is scarce a foot long; it has four divisions where the grain is produced, and seems to be a species of the meiem msalib, or gramen crucis, the grass of the cross. Of this a very black bread is made, ate only by the poorest sort; but though it makes worse bread, I think it makes better bouza.