Select Specimens of Natural History Collected in Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile. Volume 5.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The seed of this is very small, more so than the semen santonicum, which seems to come from a species of worm-wood. Like it the Cusso sheds its seed very easily; from this circumstance, and its smallness, no great quantity of the seed is gathered, and therefore the flower is often substituted. It is bitter, but not nearly so much as the semen santonicum.

The Cusso grows seldom above twenty feet high, very rarely straight, generally crooked or inclined. It is planted always near churches, among the cedars which surround them, for the use of the town or village. Its leaf is about 2¼ inches long, divided into two by a strong rib. The two divisions, however, are not equal, the upper being longer and broader than the lower; it is a deep unvarnished green, exceedingly pleasant to the eye, the fore part covered with soft hair or down. It is very much indented, more so than a nettle-leaf, which in some measure it resembles, only is narrower and longer.

These leaves grow two and two upon a branch; between each two are the rudiments of two pair of young ones, prepared to supply the others when they fall off, but they are terminated at last with a single leaf at the point. The end of this stalk is broad and strong, like that of a palm-branch. It is not solid like the gerid of the date-tree, but opens in the part that is without leaves about an inch and a half from the bottom, and out of this aperture proceeds the flower. There is a round stalk bare for about an inch and a quarter, from which proceed crooked branches, to the end of which are attached single flowers; the stalk that carries these proceeds out of every crook, or geniculation; the whole cluster of flowers has very much the shape of a cluster of grapes, and the stalks upon which it is supported very much the stalk of the grape; a very few small leaves are scattered through the cluster of flowers.

The coral itself is of a greenish colour, tinged with purple; when fully blown, it is altogether of a deep red or purple; the flower is white, and consists of five petals, in the midst is a short pistil with a round head, surrounded by eight stamina of the same form, loaded with yellow farina. The cup consists of five petals, which much resemble another flower; they are rounded at the top, and nearly of an equal breadth every way.

The bark of the tree is smooth, of a yellowish white, interspersed with brown streaks which pass through the whole body of the tree. It is not firm or hard, but rather stringy and reedy. On the upper part, before the first branch of leaves set out, are rings round the trunk, of small filaments, of the consistence of horse hair; these are generally fourteen or sixteen in number, and are a very remarkable characteristic belonging to this tree.

As the figure of this plant is true and exact beyond all manner of exception, I cannot but think it may be found in latitudes 11 or 12° north in the West Indies or America; and having been found a gentle, safe, and efficacious medicine in Abyssinia, it is not doubted but the superior skill of our physicians would turn it to the advantage of mankind in general, when used here in Europe. In consequence of the established prerogatives of discoverers, I have named this beautiful and useful tree after Sir Joseph Banks, President of the royal Society.

TEFF.

This grain is commonly sown all over Abyssinia, where it seems to thrive equally on all sorts of ground; from it is made the bread which is commonly used throughout Abyssinia. The Abyssinians, indeed, have plenty of wheat, and some of it of an excellent quality: They likewise make as fine wheat-bread as any in the world, both for colour and for taste; but the use of wheat-bread is chiefly confined to people of the first rank. On the other hand, Teff is used by all sorts of people from the king downwards, and there are kinds of it which are esteemed fully as much as wheat. The best of these is as white as flour, exceedingly light, and easily digested. There are others of a browner colour, and some nearly black; this last is the food of soldiers and servants. The cause of this variation of colour is manifold; the Teff that grows on light ground having a moderate degree of moisture, but never dry; the lighter the earth is in which it grows, the better and whiter the Teff will be; the husk too is thinner. That Teff, too, that ripens before the heavy rains, is usually whiter and finer, and a great deal depends upon sifting the husk from it after it is reduced to flour, by bruising or breaking it in a stone-mill. This is repeated several times with great care, in the finest kind of bread, which is found in the houses of all people of rank or substance. The manner of making it is by taking a broad earthen jar, and having made a lump of it with water, they put it into an earthen jar at some distance from the fire, where it remains till it begins to ferment, or turn sour; they then bake it into cakes of a circular form, and about two feet in diameter: It is of a spungy, soft quality, and not a disagreeable sourish taste. Two of these cakes a-day, and a coarse cotton cloth once a-year, are the wages of a common servant.