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.
[Illustration: _Kol-quall._
_Heath. Sc._
_London Published Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]
[Illustration: _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.
[Illustration: _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.
[Illustration: _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.
[Illustration: _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.
[Illustration: _Gaguedi_
_Heath. Sc._
_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]
[Illustration: _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.
[Illustration: _Wanzey_
_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._
_Heath. Sc._]
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.
[Illustration: _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.