Chapter III: Introduction (2)

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.

_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]

_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.

_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]

_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.

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_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]

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_London Published Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KOL-QUALL.

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

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

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_London Published Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]

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_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.

_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.

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_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.

_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.

_Heath. Sc._

_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]

_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.

_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.

_Heath. Sc._

_London Publish’d Dec.^r 1.^{st} 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]

FAREK, OR BAUHINIA ACUMINATA.

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

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

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

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

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

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