Lucan, in Cato’s march through the desert of the Cyrenaicum in Search of Juba, gives such a catalogue of these venomous animals, that we cannot wonder, as he insinuates, that great part of the Roman army was destroyed by them; yet I will not scruple to aver this is mere fable. I have travelled across the Cyrenaicum in all its directions, and never saw but one species of viper, which was the Cerastes, or Horned Viper, now before us. Neither did I ever see any of the snake kind that could be mistaken for the viper. I apprehend the snake cannot subsist without water, as the Cerastes, from the places in which he is found, seems assuredly to do. Indeed those that Lucan speaks of must have been all vipers, because the mention of every one of their names is followed by the death of a man.

There are no serpents of any kind in Upper Abyssinia that ever I saw, and no remarkable varieties even in Low, excepting the large snake called the Boa, which is often above twenty feet in length, and as thick as an ordinary man’s thigh. He is a beast of prey, feeds upon antelopes, and the deer kind, which having no canine teeth, consequently no poison, he swallows whole, after having broken all its bones in pieces, and drawn it into a length to be more easily mastered. His chief residence is by the grassy pools of rivers that are stagnant. Notwithstanding which, we hear of the Monk Gregory telling M. Ludolf, that serpents were so frequent in Abyssinia, that every man carried with him a stick bent in a particular manner, for the more commodiously killing these creatures, and this M. Ludolf recommends as a discovery. And Jerome Lobo, among the rest of his fables, has some on this subject likewise. A cold and rainy country can never be a habitation for vipers. We see, on the contrary, that their favourite choice are deserts and burning sand, without verdure, and without any moisture whatever.

The very learned, though too credulous, Prosper Alpinus, says, that many have assured him, that near the lakes contiguous to the sources of the Nile there is a number of basiliscs, about a palm in length, and the thickness of a middle finger; that they have two large scales, which they use as wings, and crests and combs upon their head, from which they are called Basilisci or Reguli, that is, crowned, crested, or kingly serpents; and he says that no person can approach these lakes without being destroyed by these crested snakes.

With all submission to this naturalist’s relation, I should imagine he could not have heard the description of these lakes from many travellers, if all those that approached them were killed by the basiliscs. I shall only answer for this, that having examined the Lake Gooderoo, those of Court Ohha, and Tzana, the only lakes near the sources of the Nile, I never yet saw one serpent there, whether crowned or uncrowned, nor did I ever hear of any, and therefore believe this account as fabulous as that of the Acontia and other animals he speaks of in this whole chapter86. The basilisc is a species of serpent, frequently made mention of in scripture, though never described, farther than that he cannot be charmed so as to do no hurt, nor trained so as to delight in music; which all travellers who have been in Egypt know is exceedingly possible, and frequently seen. “For, behold, I will send basiliscs among you, saith the scripture, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord87”. And88 “Thou shalt tread upon the lion and basilisc89 &c.”

I shall mention one name more, under which the Cerastes goes, because it is equivocal, and has been misunderstood in scripture, that is Tseboa, which name is given it in the Hebrew, from its different colours and spots. And hence the Greeks90 have called it by the name of Hyæna, because it is of the same reddish colour, marked with black spots as that quadruped is. And the same fable is applied to the serpent and quadruped, that they change their sex yearly.

Some philosophers, from particular system, have judged from a certain disposition of this animal’s scales, that it is what they term, Coluber, while others, from some arrangement of the scales of its tail, will have it to be what they call Boa. I enter not into the dispute, it is here as faithfully represented as the size will permit, only I shall observe that, unless Boa means something more than I know it does, the name is ill chosen when applied to any species of poisonous serpents, because it is already the proper name of the large snake, just mentioned, that is not viviparous, and has no poison. Pliny and Galen say, that the young vipers are so fierce as to become parricides, and destroy their mother upon their birth. But this is surely one of the ill-grounded fancies these authors have adopted. The Cerastes is mentioned by name in Lucan, and without warranting the separate existence of any of the rest, I can see several that are but the Cerastes under another term. The thebanus ophites, the ammodytes, the torrida dipsas, and the prester91, all of them are but this viper described from the form of its parts, or its colours. Cato must have been marching in the night when he met this army of serpents. The Cerastes hides itself all day in holes in the sand, where it lives in contiguous and similar houses to those of the jerboa, and I have already said, that I never but once found any animal in this viper’s belly, but one jerboa in a gravid female cerastes.

I kept two of these last-mentioned creatures in a glass jar, such as is used for keeping sweetmeats, for two years, without having given them any food; they did not sleep, that I observed, in winter, but cast their skins the last days of April.

The Cerastes moves with great rapidity, and in all directions, forward, backward, and sideways. When he inclines to surprise any one who is too far from him, he creeps with his side towards the person, and his head averted, till judging his distance, he turns round, springs upon him, and fastens upon the part next to him; for it is not true what is said, that the Cerastes does not leap or spring. I saw one of them at Cairo, in the house of Julian and Rosa, crawl up the side of a box, in which there were many, and there lye still as if hiding himself, till one of the people who brought them to us came near him, and though in a very disadvantageous posture, sticking as it were perpendicular to the side of the box, he leaped near the distance of three feet, and fastened between the man’s forefinger and thumb, so as to bring the blood. The fellow shewed no signs of either pain or fear, and we kept him with us full four hours, without his applying any sort of remedy, or his seeming inclined to do so.

To make myself assured that the animal was in its perfect state, I made the man hold him by the neck so as to force him to open his mouth, and lacerate the thigh of a pelican, a bird I had tamed, as big as a swan. The bird died in about 13 minutes, though it was apparently affected in 50 seconds; and we cannot think this was a fair trial, because a very few minutes before, it had bit the man, and so discharged part of its virus, and it was made to scratch the pelican by force, without any irritation or action of its own.

The Cerastes inhabits the greatest part of the eastern continent, especially the desert sandy parts of it. It abounds in Syria, in the three Arabias, and in Africa. I never saw so many of them as in the Cyrenaicum, where the Jerboa is frequent in proportion. He is a great lover of heat; for tho’ the sun was burning hot all day, when we made a fire at night, by digging a hole, and burning wood to charcoal in it, for dressing our victuals, it was seldom we had fewer than half a dozen of these vipers, who burnt themselves to death approaching the embers.

I apprehend this to be the aspic which Cleopatra employed to procure her death. Alexandria, plentifully supplied by water, must then have had fruit of all kinds in its gardens. The baskets of figs must have come from thence, and the aspic, or Cerastes, that was hid in them, from the adjoining desert, where there are plenty to this day; for to the westward in Egypt, where the Nile overflows, there is no sort of serpent whatever that I ever saw; nor, as I have before said, is there any other of the mortal kind that I know in those parts of Africa adjoining to Egypt, excepting the Cerastes.

It should seem very natural for any one, who, from motives of distress, 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 ½. 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 ½. 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,

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.

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.

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. Martial92 says, that beds were inlaid with it. Juvenal93, 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 Paterculus94, 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.

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.

Pearls are produced only in shells that are bivalves, that is, which have an upper and lower shell closing by a hinge in a manner little differing from the oyster. It is commonly said by the fishermen, that all bivalves in the Red Sea have pearls of some kind in them. This is a very rude and large view of the matter, for though it is true that some excrescences, or secretions, of the nature of pearls, may be found in the bisser, and the large bivalves with which this sea abounds, yet it is well known to all conversant in these matters, that many of the pearl shell itself (I shall not call it an oyster, for it is not one) are found without any pearl or likeness of pearl in them; being, I suppose, not yet arrived to that age when the extravasation of that juice which forms the pearl happens.

There are three shell fish in the Red Sea which regularly are sought after as containing pearls. The first is a mussel, and this is of the rarest kind, whether they are now failed in number, or whether they were at any former time frequent, is now unknown. They are chiefly found in the north end of the Gulf, and on the Egyptian side. The only part I have ever seen them was about Cosseir, and to the northward of it, where I must observe there was an ancient port, called Myos Hormos, which commentators have called the Port of the Mouse, when they should have translated it, the Harbour of the Mussel. This fish contains often pearls of great beauty for lustre and shape, but seldom of a white or clear water. Pliny relates this to be the case in the Italian seas, and also in the Thracian Bosphorus, where he observes they are more frequent.

The second sort of shell which generally contains the pearl is called Pinna. It is broad and semicircular at the top, and decreases till it turns sharp at the lower end, where is the hinge. It is rough and figured on the outside, of a beautiful red colour, exceedingly fragil, and sometimes three feet long. In the inside it is cloathed with a most beautiful lining called Nacre, or mother-of-pearl, white, tinged with an elegant blush of red. Of this most delicate complexion is the pearl found in this fish, so that it seems to confirm the sentiments of M. Reamur on the formation of pearls, that they are formed of that glutinous fluid which is the first origin of the shell, that it forms the pearl of the same colour and water that is communicated to it from that part of the shell with which it is more immediately in contact, and which is generally observed in the pinna to be higher in colour as it approaches the broadest, which is the reddest end.

Upon the maturest consideration, I can have no doubt that the pearl found in this shell is the penim or peninim rather, for it is always spoken of in the plural, to which allusion has been often made in scripture. And this derived from its redness is the true reason of its name. On the contrary, the word pinna has been idly imagined to be derived from penna, a feather, as being broad and round at the top, and ending at a point, or like a quill below. The English translation of the scripture, erroneous and innacurate in many things more material, translates this peninim by rubies95, without any foundation or authority, but because they are both red, as are bricks and tiles, and many other things of base and vile materials. The Greeks have translated it literally pina, or pinna, and the shell they call Pinnicus; and many places occur in Strabo, Elian, Ptolemy, and Theophrastus, which are mentioned famous for this species of pearl. I should imagine also, that by Solomon saying it is the most precious of all productions, he means, that this species of pearl was the most valued, or the best known in Judea. For though we learn from Pliny that the excellency of pearls was their whiteness, yet we know the pearls of a yellowish cast are those esteemed in India to this day, as the peninim, or reddish pearl was in Judea in the days of Solomon.

The third sort of pearl-bearing shell is what I suppose has been called the Oyster; for the two shells I have already spoken of surely bear no sort of likeness to that shell-fish, nor can this, though most approaching to it, be said any way to resemble it, as the reader will judge by a very accurate drawing given of it, now before him.

Bochart says these are called Darra, or Dora in Arabic, which seems to be the general word for all pearls in scripture, whereas the peninim is one in particular. In the Red Sea, where it holds the first rank among pearls, it is called Lule single, or96Lulu el Berber, i. e. the pearl of Berber, Barabra, or Beja, the country of the Shepherds, which we have already spoken of at large, extending from the northern tropic, southward, to the country of the Shangalla or Troglodytes. Androsthenes says, the ancient name of these pearls was Berberis, which he believes to be an Indian word, and so it is, understanding, as the ancients did, India to mean the country I have already mentioned between the tropics.

The character of this pearl is extreme whiteness, and even in this whiteness Pliny justly says there are shades or differences. To continue to use his words, the clearest of these are found in the Red Sea, but those in India have the colour of the flakes, or divisions of the lapis specularis. The most excellent are those like a solution of alum, limpid, milky like, and even with a certain almost imperceptible cast of a fiery colour. Theophrastus says, that these pearls are transparent, as indeed the foregoing description of Pliny would lead us to imagine; but it is not so, and if they were, it is apprehended they would lose all their beauty and value, and approach too much to glass.

It has been erronenously said, that pearl shells grow upon rocks, and again, that they are caught by nets. This is certainly a contradiction, as nobody would employ nets to gather fish from among rocks. On the contrary, all kinds of pearl are found in the deepest, stillest water, and softest bottom. The parts of most of them are too fine to bear the agitation of the sea among rocks. Their manners and œconomy are little known, but, as far as I have observed, they are all stuck in the mud upright by an extremity, the mussel by one end, the pinna by the small sharp point, and the berberi, or lule, by the hinge or square part which projects from the round.

In shallow and clear streams I have seen small furrows or tracts, upon the sandy bottom, by which you could trace the mussel, from its last station, and these not straight, but deviating into traverses and triangles, like the course of a ship in a contrary wind laid down upon a map, the tract of the mussel probably in pursuit of food. The general belief is, that the mussel is constantly stationary in a state of repose, and cannot transfer itself from place to place. This is a vulgar prejudice, and one of those facts that are mistaken for want of sufficient pains, or opportunity, to make more critical observation. Others finding the first opinion a false one, and that they are endowed with power of changing place like other animals, have, upon the same foundation, gone into the contrary extreme, so far as to attribute swiftness to them, a property surely inconsistent with their being fixed to rocks. Pliny and Solinus say, that the mussel have leaders, and go in flocks, and that their leader is endowed with great cunning, to protect himself and his flock from the fishers, and when he is taken, the others fall an easy prey. This however I think we are to look upon as a fable. Some of the most accurate observers having discovered the motion of the mussel, which is indeed wonderful, and that they lie in beds, which is not at all so, have added the rest to make their history complete.

It is observed that pearls are always the most beautiful in those places of the sea where a quantity of fresh water falls. Thus in the Red Sea they were always most esteemed that were fished from Suakem southward, that is in those parts corresponding to the country anciently called Berberia, and Azamia, from reasons before given; on the Arabian coast, near the island Camaran, where there is abundance of fresh water; and the island of Foosht, laid down in my map, where there are springs; there I purchased one I had the pleasure to see taken out of the shell. It has been said that the fish of these shells are good, which is an error; they were the only shell-fish in the Red Sea I found not eatable. I never saw any pearl shells on either side southward of the parallel of Mocha in Arabia Felix. As it is a fish that delights in repose, I imagine it avoids this part of the gulf, as lying open to the Indian Ocean, and agitated by variable winds.

In that part of my narrative where I speak of my return through the Desert of Nubia, and the shells found there, I have likewise mentioned the mussel found in the salt springs that appear in various parts of that desert. These likewise travel far from home, and are sometimes surprised by the ceasing of the rains, at a greater distance from their beds than they have strength and moisture to carry them. In many of these shells I have found those kind of excrescences which we may call Pearls, all of them ill-formed, foul, and of a bad colour, but of the same consistence, and lodged in the same part of the body as those in the sea. The mussel, too, is in every respect similar, I think larger, the outer skin or covering of it is of a vivid green. Upon removing this, which is the epidermis, what next appears is a beautiful pink, without gloss, and seemingly of a calcareous nature. Below this, the mother-of-pearl, which is undermost, is a white without lustre, partaking much of the blue, and very little of the red, and this is all the difference I observed between it and the pearl-bearing mussel in the Red Sea; but even this latter I always found in still water, soft bottom, and far from stony or rocky ground. None of these pearl mussels, either in the Red Sea or the desert, have any appearance of being spinners, as they are generally described to be.

I have said that the Baherein has been esteemed the place whence the greatest quantity of pearls are brought. I would be understood to mean, that this has been the reputed greatest regular market from antiquity to the present time. But Americus, in his second navigation, says, that he found an unknown people of that continent, who sold him above 54 pound weight for 40 ducats97. And Peter the Martyr says, that Tunacca, one of the kings of that country, seeing the great desire the Spaniards had for pearls, and the value they set upon them, sent some of his own people in search of them, who returning the fourth day, brought with them 12 pounds of pearls, each pound 8 ounces. If this is the case, America surely excells both Africa and Asia in the quantity of this article.

The value of pearls depends upon size, regularity of form, (for roundness is not always requisite) weight, smoothness, colour, and the different shades of that colour. Suetonius says, that Cæsar gave to Servilia, Marcus Brutus’s mother, a pearl worth about L. 50,000 of our money. And Cleopatra, after vaunting to her lover, Mark Antony, that she would give him a supper which should cost two hundred and fifty-thousand pounds, for this purpose dissolved one of the pearls which she carried in her ears, which amounted to that price, and drank it. The other, it is said, was carried afterwards to Rome by Augustus Cæsar, sawn in two, and put in the ears of Venus Genetrix.

The price of pearls has been always variable. Pliny seems to have over-rated them much, when he says they are the most valuable and excellent of all precious stones. He must probably have had those just mentioned in his view, for otherwise they cannot bear comparison with diamonds, amethysts, rubies, or sapphires.

It has been observed to me by the pearl fishers in the east, that when the shell is smooth and perfect, there they have no expectation of a pearl, but are sure to find them when the shell has begun to be distorted and deformed. From this it would seem, as the fish turned older, the vessels containing the juice for forming the shell, and keeping it in its vigour, grew weak and ruptured; and thence, from this juice accumulating in the fish, the pearl was formed, and the shell brought to decay, perfectly in the manner, as I have before said, supposed by M. Reamur.

In Scotland, especially to the northward, in all rivers running from lakes, there are found mussels that have pearls of more than ordinary merit, though seldom of large size. I have purchased many hundreds, till lately the wearing of real pearls coming into fashion, those of Scotland have increased in price greatly beyond their value, and superior often to the price of oriental ones when bought in the east. The reason of this is a demand from London, where they are actually employed in work, and sold as oriental. But the excellency of all glass or paste manufactory, it is likely, will keep the price of this article, and the demand for it within bounds, when every lady has it in her power to wear in her ears, for the price of sixpence, a pearl as beautiful in colour, more elegant in form, lighter and easier to carry, and as much bigger as she pleases, than those famous ones of Cleopatra and Servilia. I shall only further observe, that the same remark on the shell holds in Scotland as in the east. The smooth and perfect mussel shell rarely produces a pearl, the crooked and distorted shell seldom wants one.

I shall here mention a very elegant sort of manufactory, with which I cannot positively say the ancients were acquainted, which is fineering, or inlaying with the inside of the shell called mother-of-pearl, known to the dealers in trinkets all over Europe, and in particular brought to great perfection at Jerusalem. That of Peninim, though the most beautiful, is too fragil and thin to be employed in large pieces. It is the nacre, or mother-of-pearl taken from the Lulu el Berberi, or what is called Abyssinian oyster, principally used in those fine works. Great quantities of this shell are brought daily from the Red Sea to Jerusalem. Of these all the fine works, the crucifixes, the wafer-boxes, and the beads, are made, which are sent to the Spanish dominions in the new world, and produce a return incomparably greater than the staple of the greatest manufactory in the old.

THE END.