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.
[Illustration: _Sassa_
_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]
[Illustration: _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.
[Illustration: _Ergett Dimmo._
_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]
[Illustration: _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.
[Illustration: _Ensete_
_Heath. Sc._
_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]
[Illustration: _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.