has resolved to put a period to his existence, especially women and
weak persons unaccustomed to handle arms, to seek the gentlest method
to free themselves from that load of life now become insupportable.
This, however, has not always been the case with the ancients. Aria,
Petus’s wife, stabbed herself with a dagger, to set her husband an
example to die, with this memorable assurance, after giving herself
the blow, “Petus, it is not painful.” Porcia, the wife of Brutus, died
by the barbarous, and not obvious way of perishing, by swallowing
fire; the violent agitation of spirits prevailing over the momentary
difference in the suffering. It is not to be doubted but that a woman,
high-spirited like Cleopatra, was also above the momentary differences
in feeling; and had the way in which she died not been ordinary and
usual, she certainly would not have applied herself to the invention
of a new one. We are therefore to look upon her dying by the bite of
the Cerastes, as only following the manner of death which she had seen
commonly adopted by those who were intended to die without torment.
Galen speaking of the Aspic in the great city of Alexandria, says, I
have seen how speedily they (the aspics) occasioned death. Whenever any
person is condemned to die whom they wish to end quickly and without
torment, they put the viper to his breast, and suffering him there
to creep a little, the man is presently killed. Pausanias speaks of
particular serpents that were to be found in Arabia among the balsam
trees, several of which I procured both alive and dead, when I brought
the tree from Beder Hunein; but they were still the same species of
serpent, only some from sex, and some from want of age, had not the
horns, though in every other respect they could not be mistaken. Ibn
Sina, called by Europeans Avicenna, has described this animal very
exactly; he says it is frequent in Shem (that is the country about
and south of Damascus) and also in Egypt; and he makes a very good
observation on their manners; that they do not go or walk straight,
but move by contracting themselves. But in the latter part of his
description he seems not to have known the serpent he is speaking of,
because he says its bite is cured in the same manner as that of the
viper and Cerastes, by which it is implied, that the animal he was
describing was not a Cerastes, and the Cerastes is not a viper, both
which assertions are false.
The general size of the Cerastes, from the extremity of its snout to
the end of its tail, is from 13 to 14 inches. Its head is triangular,
very flat, but higher near where it joins the neck than towards the
nose. The length of its head, from the point of the nose to the joining
of the neck, is 10/12ths of an inch, and the breadth 9/12ths. Between
its horns is 3/12ths. The opening of its mouth, or rictus oris 8/12ths.
Its horns in length 3/12ths. Its large canine teeth something more
than 2/12ths and 1/2. Its neck at the joining of the head 4/12ths.
The body where thickest 10/12ths. Its tail at the joining of the body
2/12ths and 1/2. The tip of the tail 1/12th. The length of the tail
one inch and 3/12ths. The aperture of the eye 2/12ths, but this varies
apparently according to the impression of light.
The Cerastes has sixteen small immoveable teeth, and in the upper jaw
two canine teeth, hollow, crooked inward, and of a remarkable fine
polish, white in colour, inclining to blueish. Near one fourth of
the bottom is strongly fixed in the upper jaw, and folds back like a
clasp knife, the point inclining inwards, and the greatest part of the
tooth is covered with a green soft membrane, not drawn tight, but as
it were wrinkled over it. Immediately above this is a slit along the
back of the tooth, which ends nearly in the middle of it, where the
tooth curves inwardly. From this aperture I apprehend that it sheds its
poison, not from the point, where with the best glasses I never could
perceive an aperture, so that the tooth is not a tube, but hollow only
half way; the point being for making the incision, and by its pressure
occasioning the venom in the bag at the bottom of the fang to rise in
the tooth, and spill itself through the slit into the wound.
By this flat position of the tooth along the jaw, and its being
defended by the membrane, it eats in perfect safety; for the tooth
cannot press the bag of poison at the root while it lies in this
position, nor can it rise in the tube to spill itself, nor can the
tooth make any wound so as to receive it, but the animal is supposed to
eat but seldom, or only when it is with young.
The viper has but one row of teeth, none but the canine are noxious.
The poison is very copious for so small a creature, it is fully as
large as a drop of laudanum dropt from a vial by a careful hand. Viewed
through a glass, it appears not perfectly transparent or pellucid. I
should imagine it hath other reservoirs than the bag under the tooth,
for I compelled it to scratch eighteen pigeons upon the thigh as quick
as possible, and they all died nearly in the same interval of time;
but I confess the danger attending the dissection of the head of this
creature made me so cautious, that any observation I should make upon
these parts would be less to be depended upon.
People have doubted whether or not this yellow liquor is the poison,
and the reason has been, that animals who had tasted it did not die
as when bitten, but this reason does not hold in modern physics. We
know why the saliva of a mad dog has been given to animals and has not
affected them; and a German physician was bold enough to distil the
pus, or putrid matter, flowing from the ulcer of a person infected by
the plague, and taste it afterwards without bad consequences; so that
it is clear the poison has no activity, till through some sore or wound
it is admitted into circulation. Again, the tooth itself, divested of
that poison, has as little effect. The viper deprived of his canine
teeth, an operation very easily performed, bites without any fatal
consequence with the others; and many instances there have been of mad
dogs having bit people cloathed in coarse woollen stuff, which had so
far cleaned the teeth of the saliva in passing through it, as not to
have left the smallest inflammation after the wound.
I forbear to fatigue the reader by longer insisting upon this subject.
A long dissertation would remain upon the incantation of serpents.
There is no doubt of its reality. The scriptures are full of it. All
that have been in Egypt have seen as many different instances as they
chose. Some have doubted that it was a trick, and that the animals so
handled had been first trained, and then disarmed of their power of
hurting; and fond of the discovery, they have rested themselves upon
it, without experiment, in the face of all antiquity. But I will not
hesitate to aver, that I have seen at Cairo (and this may be seen daily
without trouble or expence) a man who came from above the catacombs,
where the pits of the mummy birds are kept, who has taken a Cerastes
with his naked hand from a number of others lying at the bottom of
the tub, has put it upon his bare head, covered it with the common
red cap he wears, then taken it out, put it in his breast, and tied
it about his neck like a necklace; after which it has been applied to
a hen, and bit it, which has died in a few minutes; and, to complete
the experiment, the man has taken it by the neck, and beginning at his
tail, has ate it as one would do a carrot or a stock of celery, without
any seeming repugnance.
We know from history, that where any country has been remarkably
infested with serpents, there the people have been screened by this
secret. The Psylli and Marmarides of old undoubtedly were defended in
this manner,
_Ad Quorum cantus mites Jacuére Cerastæ._
SIL. ITAL. lib. iii.
To leave ancient history, I can myself vouch, that all the black people
in the kingdom of Sennaar, whether Funge or Nuba, are perfectly armed
against the bite of either scorpion or viper. They take the Cerastes in
their hands at all times, put them in their bosoms, and throw them to
one another as children do apples or balls, without having irritated
them, by this usage so much as to bite. The Arabs have not this secret
naturally, but from their infancy they acquire an exemption from the
mortal consequences attending the bite of these animals, by chawing
a certain root, and washing themselves (it is not anointing) with an
infusion of certain plants in water.
One day when I was with the brother of Shekh Adelan, prime minister
of Sennaar, a slave of his brought a Cerastes which he had just then
taken out of a hole, and was using it with every sort of familiarity.
I told him my suspicion that the teeth had been drawn, but he assured
me they were not, as did his master Kittou, who took it from him,
wound it round his arm, and at my desire ordered the servant to carry
it home with me. I took a chicken by the neck, and made it flutter
before him; his seeming indifference left him, and he bit it with great
signs of anger, the chicken died almost immediately; I say his seeming
indifference, for I constantly observed, that however lively the viper
was before, upon being seized by any of these barbarians he seemed as
if taken with sickness and feebleness, frequently shut his eyes, and
never turned his mouth towards the arm of the person that held him. I
asked Kittou how they came to be exempted from this mischief? he said,
they were born so, and so said the grave and respectable men among
them. Many of the lighter and lower sort talked of enchantments by
words and by writing, but they all knew how to prepare any person by
medicine, which were decoctions of herbs and roots.
I have seen many thus armed for a season do pretty much the same feats
as those that possessed the exemption naturally, the drugs were given
me, and I several times armed myself, as I thought, resolved to try the
experiment, but my heart always failed me when I came to the trial;
because among these wretched people it was a pretence they might very
probably have sheltered themselves under, that I was a Christian, that
therefore it had no effect upon me. I have still remaining by me a
small quantity of this root, but never had an opportunity of trying the
experiment.
The reader will attend to the horn which is placed over the eye in
the manner I have given the figure of it, it is fluted, and has four
divisions. He will likewise observe the tooth as viewed through a
glass. He may suppose the black represents a painter’s pallet, for the
easier discerning the white tooth, which could not otherwise appear
distinctly upon the white paper.
[Illustration: _Binny._
_London Publish’d Jan^y. 19.^{th} 1790 by G. Robinson & Co._]
BINNY.
Although the fish we find in the east are generally more distinguished
for their beauty and variety of colours, or for their uncouth forms,
rather than for the goodness of the fish itself, this before us appears
to be an exception; though it is not without singularities, yet its
form and colour are very simple, and, for the elegance of its taste,
may vie with any fish caught in any river which runs either into the
Mediterranean or Ocean. Whether it is the Latus, or the Oxyrinchus of
antiquity, both fishes of the Nile, so famous that divine honours were
paid them, by large cities, nomes, or districts situated upon that
river, is what I am not naturalist enough to discover. Such as it is,
in all its parts, I have placed it before the reader faithfully.
By the disproportion in the length of its jaws, I should imagine this
to be a fish of prey, though a circumstance concerning the bait with
which it is taken seems to contradict this. The fish from which this
drawing was made weighed 32 pounds English, but is often caught of 70
pounds and upwards, as I have been told by the fishermen, for I never
saw one larger than the one I am now describing. The largest of this
kind are caught about Rosetto and the mouth of the river, but they are
very numerous, higher up as far as Syene and the first cataract. This
was caught at Achmim, the ancient Panopolis, and the manner in which
this is performed is very uncommon and ingenious, and by the few trials
that I saw is also very successful.
They take a quantity of oil, clay, flour, and honey, with straw, and
some other thing that makes it stick together, they knead or tread it
with their feet till it is perfectly mixed. They then take two handfuls
of dates, and break them into small pieces about the bigness of the
point of the finger, and stick them in different parts of this mixture,
which begins now to have such consistency as to adhere perfectly
together, and appears in form like a Cheshire cheese. In the heart of
this cake they put seven or eight hooks, with dates upon them, and a
string of strong whip-cord to each. The fisherman then takes this large
mass of paste, and putting it upon a goat’s skin blown with wind, rides
behind it out into the middle of the stream; there he drops it in the
deepest part of the river, then cautiously holding the ends of each of
the strings slack, so as not to pull the dates and the hooks out of the
heart of the composition, he gets again ashore upon his skin a little
below where he had sunk the solid mass.
When arrived on the shore, he carefully separates the ends of the
strings, and ties them, without straining, each to a palm branch made
fast on shore, to the end of every one of which hangs a small bell. He
then goes and feeds his cattle, digs ditches, or lies down and sleeps
as his business calls him. The oil resists the water for some time, at
last the cake begins to dissolve, pieces fall off, the broken dates
dipped in the honey flow down the stream, and the large fish below
catch ravenously at them as they pass. The fish follow these pieces up
the stream, gathering them as they go along till they get to the cake
at last, when altogether, as many as are assembled, fall voraciously
to seek the dates buried in the composition; each fish that finds a
date swallows it, together with an iron hook, and feeling himself fast,
makes off as speedily as possible; the consequence is, endeavouring to
escape from the line by which he is fastened, he pulls the palm branch,
and rings the bell fastened to it.
The fisherman runs immediately to the bell, and finding thereby the
particular line, hauls his prisoner in, but does not kill him; the
hook being large, it generally catches him by the upper jaw, which is
considerably longer than the under. He then pulls him out of the water,
and puts a strong iron ring through his jaw, ties a few yards of cord
to it, and fastens him to the shore, so he does with the rest. Very
rarely one hook is found empty. Those that want fish at Girgé, a large
town opposite, or at Achmim itself, come thither as to a fish-market,
and every man takes the quantity he wants, buying them alive. Fish when
dead do not keep here, which makes that precaution necessary. We bought
two, which fully dined our whole boat’s crew; the fisherman had then
ten or twelve fastened to the shore, all of which he pulled out and
shewed us.
I apprehend that formerly this method of fishing was oftener practised,
and better known than it is now, for I have seen, in several fishing
towns, a tree, in which there was a fish with a ring through its nose,
and beside it a bell. I likewise imagine that this is the fish which
Mr Norden says the Kennouss caught at Syene, and which he calls a
Carp; but as I have already observed, streams are not the haunt of
leather-mouthed, or sucking fish, as is the carp, but rather of such
as are powerfully furnished with fins, as this is, to struggle with,
and traverse the current in all its directions. I believe the carp to
be a fish of northern climates; I have never even seen them in these,
they are certainly not in Ethiopia whence the Nile comes; their name,
Cyprinus, seem to indicate they belong to Greece. They are found in the
island of Cyprus, but whether exclusively from the rest of the islands
is what I cannot determine.
This fish has two fins upon its back; the first has a sharp short thorn
before it, and is composed of seven longer ones, sharp pointed, but
much weaker in shape, resembling the latine sail of a boat. The one
behind it is composed of eleven small pliable bones, but not armed with
any defence. The belly has two fins, made of pliable, unarmed bones
likewise, and on its side near the gills it has two others of the same
kind. The tail is forked into two sharp thin narrow divisions, that
below are considerably shorter than above. Below its throat is a parcel
of long bones hanging down like a beard, which grow longer as they
approach the tail, the last being the largest of all.
[Illustration: _Tortoise_
_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._
_Heath. Sc._]
The whole body of this fish is covered with silver scales much
resembling silver spangles, they lie close together. There is no
variety of colour upon the whole fish excepting a shade of red upon the
end of the nose, which is fat and fleshy. His eye is large and black,
with a broad iris of white stained with yellow. It has a number of
small teeth very sharp and closely set, nature has probably given him
this quantity of fins to save him from the crocodile, whom by his size
he seems destined to feed.
CARETTA, OR SEA-TORTOISE.
Among the natural productions of the Red Sea, which either have been
or are at present articles of commerce, I shall just speak a little
of that species of the Testudo or Tortoise, called the Caretta or
Hawk’s-bill. It is greatly inferior in size to the West Indian or
American sea-tortoise. The extreme length of the shell of this was 3
feet 7 inches, and which was esteemed a large one. Simple as it is, I
do not know one good figure of it. This which I have submitted to the
reader may be depended upon for its exactness, otherwise the animal is
well known, and has often been described.
Its back is covered like the rest of other turtles, with a bony
substance, and this again is covered by lamina, or scales of a thin
transparent texture, variegated with dark brown streaks, disposed in
each scale as radii proceeding from a centre. The outer rows of the
great scales are irregular pentagons. The row that runs down the middle
between these are regular hexagons, and round the whole circumference
the large scales are inclosed by a kind of quadrangular frame firmly
united; the broadest and largest of these scales being nearest the
tail. The lowest of all, as it were in the centre of the lowest part of
the figure, is notched, the centre of this division answering to a line
drawn through the middle of the oval, and the head or occiput.
This fish lays a multitude of eggs. Some have said that these are laid
among stones, contrary to the practice of the large sea-turtle, which
lays them upon sand. All I can say to this is, that I have seen them
but seldom, and always upon sand, but never among stones. The fish
itself is a very dry and coarse food, very different from that delicate
species which comes from the West Indies, if the difference does not
lie a great deal in the cookery. At the time that I ate of this animal,
I was going to view the junction of the Indian Ocean without the
Straits of Babelmandeb, and the wind setting in contrary, we were in
great fear of not being able to return, as the reader will have seen in
our voyage. Particularly, I did not observe any of the green fat, so
well known to our epicures, nor indeed any fat at all. When roasted, it
tasted to me much like old veal new killed. It is only an inhabitant of
the mouth of the Gulf. They seldom come up the length of Mocha; when
they do, they are few in number, are probably sick, and not able to
bear the agitation of the waves from the south-westers.
The Egyptians dealt largely with Rome in this elegant article of
commerce. Pliny tells us, the cutting them for fineering or inlaying,
was first practised by Carvilios Pollio, from which we would presume
that the Romans were ignorant of the Arabian and Egyptian art of
separating the lamina by fire, placed in the inside of the shell when
the meat is taken out; for these scales, though they appear perfectly
distinct and separate, do yet adhere, and oftener break than split
where the mark of separation may be seen distinct. Martial[92] says,
that beds were inlaid with it. Juvenal[93], and Apuleius, in his
tenth Book mentions that the Indian bed was all over shining with
tortoise-shell in the outside, and swelling with stuffing of down
within. The immense use made of it in Rome may be guessed by what we
learn from Velleius Paterculus[94], who says, that when Alexandria was
taken by Julius Cæsar, the magazines, or ware-houses, were so full of
this article, that he proposed to have made it the principal ornament
of his triumph, as he did ivory afterwards when triumphing for having
happily finished the African war.
This, too, in more modern times, was a great article in the trade to
China, and I have always been exceedingly surprised, since near the
whole of the Arabian Gulf is comprehended in the charter of the East
India Company, that they do not make an experiment of fishing both
pearls and tortoises; the former of which, so long abandoned, must now
be in great plenty and excellence, and a few fishers put on board each
ship trading to Jidda, might surely find very lucrative employment with
a long-boat or pinnace, at the time the vessels were selling their
cargo in the port, and while busied in this gainful occupation, the
coasts of the Red Sea might be fully explored.
[Illustration: _Pearls._
_London Published Dec^r. 1^{st}. 1789, by G. Robinson & C^o._]
OF PEARLS.
The ships which navigated the Red Sea brought gold and silver from
Ophir and Tarshish; they brought myrrh, frankincense, and ivory, from
Saba, and various kinds of spices from the continent of Asia, across
the Indian ocean. If we judge by the little notice taken of them in
very ancient times, the treasures which lay nearer home, in their own
seas, and upon their own shores, were very little sought after, or
spoken of, in the days when the navigation of the Arabian gulf was at
its height. We are not, however, to believe that the pearl fishery,
even in those days, was totally neglected; but foreign trade was
grown to such a magnitude, and its value so immense, that we are not
to be surprised, that articles that were only a matter of ornament
and luxury, or of domestic use, and did not enter into the medium of
commerce, were little spoken of, however closely followed and well
understood.
We gather from scripture, the only history of these early times to be
depended upon, that precious stones were imported from the southern
coast of Africa. This trade, however great it might be, is mentioned
but slightly, and as it were accidentally, being absorbed in the very
great articles of commerce then spoken of. In the same manner we read
of the beauty and excellence of pearls cursorily introduced, often by
allusions and comparisons throughout the sacred books, but always in a
manner which sufficiently shews the great intrinsic estimation in which
they were held.
Pearls are found in all the four quarters of the world, but in no
degree of excellence, excepting in the east of Africa and in Asia. They
are in every part of the Red Sea, they are in the Indian Ocean, in
that low part of the coast of Arabia Felix called the Baherein, which
joins to the Gulf of Persia. There are banks where they are found about
Gombron to the eastward of that Gulf, or in the flat coast there; and
in the seas which wash the island of Ceylon, many have been found of
the greatest beauty and price; and for number, they are nowhere so
plentiful as in the Baherein, between the coast of Arabia Felix and the
island of Ormus, whence they are transported to Aleppo, then sent to
Leghorn, and circulated through Europe, and this above all others is
the market for seed pearls.
The oyster is currently reported to be the species of fish where this
precious guest is lodged, and many a weary search and inquiry I have
made after these oysters in the Red Sea, despairing always to see a
pearl, till we had first found an oyster. The fact, however, turned
out to be, that there are no such fish as oysters in the Arabian Gulf,
and though our success in finding pearls was small, yet we got from
the natives of the coast a sufficient number as well as information,
to put it beyond doubt to what fish this beautiful and extraordinary
production belonged.