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.
[Illustration: _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.
[Illustration: _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.
[Illustration: _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.