Part 20

Ad Quorum cantus mites Jacuére Cerastæ.

SIL. ITAL. lib. iii.

To leave ancient history, I can myself vouch, that all the black people in the kingdom of Sennaar, whether Funge or Nuba, are perfectly armed against the bite of either scorpion or viper. They take the Cerastes in their hands at all times, put them in their bosoms, and throw them to one another as children do apples or balls, without having irritated them, by this usage so much as to bite. The Arabs have not this secret naturally, but from their infancy they acquire an exemption from the mortal consequences attending the bite of these animals, by chawing a certain root, and washing themselves (it is not anointing) with an infusion of certain plants in water.

One day when I was with the brother of Shekh Adelan, prime minister of Sennaar, a slave of his brought a Cerastes which he had just then taken out of a hole, and was using it with every sort of familiarity. I told him my suspicion that the teeth had been drawn, but he assured me they were not, as did his master Kittou, who took it from him, wound it round his arm, and at my desire ordered the servant to carry it home with me. I took a chicken by the neck, and made it flutter before him; his seeming indifference left him, and he bit it with great signs of anger, the chicken died almost immediately; I say his seeming indifference, for I constantly observed, that however lively the viper was before, upon being seized by any of these barbarians he seemed as if taken with sickness and feebleness, frequently shut his eyes, and never turned his mouth towards the arm of the person that held him. I asked Kittou how they came to be exempted from this mischief? he said, they were born so, and so said the grave and respectable men among them. Many of the lighter and lower sort talked of enchantments by words and by writing, but they all knew how to prepare any person by medicine, which were decoctions of herbs and roots.

I have seen many thus armed for a season do pretty much the same feats as those that possessed the exemption naturally, the drugs were given me, and I several times armed myself, as I thought, resolved to try the experiment, but my heart always failed me when I came to the trial; because among these wretched people it was a pretence they might very probably have sheltered themselves under, that I was a Christian, that therefore it had no effect upon me. I have still remaining by me a small quantity of this root, but never had an opportunity of trying the experiment.

The reader will attend to the horn which is placed over the eye in the manner I have given the figure of it, it is fluted, and has four divisions. He will likewise observe the tooth as viewed through a glass. He may suppose the black represents a painter’s pallet, for the easier discerning the white tooth, which could not otherwise appear distinctly upon the white paper.

London Publish’d Jan^y. 19.^{th} 1790 by G. Robinson & Co.]

BINNY.

Although the fish we find in the east are generally more distinguished for their beauty and variety of colours, or for their uncouth forms, rather than for the goodness of the fish itself, this before us appears to be an exception; though it is not without singularities, yet its form and colour are very simple, and, for the elegance of its taste, may vie with any fish caught in any river which runs either into the Mediterranean or Ocean. Whether it is the Latus, or the Oxyrinchus of antiquity, both fishes of the Nile, so famous that divine honours were paid them, by large cities, nomes, or districts situated upon that river, is what I am not naturalist enough to discover. Such as it is, in all its parts, I have placed it before the reader faithfully.

By the disproportion in the length of its jaws, I should imagine this to be a fish of prey, though a circumstance concerning the bait with which it is taken seems to contradict this. The fish from which this drawing was made weighed 32 pounds English, but is often caught of 70 pounds and upwards, as I have been told by the fishermen, for I never saw one larger than the one I am now describing. The largest of this kind are caught about Rosetto and the mouth of the river, but they are very numerous, higher up as far as Syene and the first cataract. This was caught at Achmim, the ancient Panopolis, and the manner in which this is performed is very uncommon and ingenious, and by the few trials that I saw is also very successful.

They take a quantity of oil, clay, flour, and honey, with straw, and some other thing that makes it stick together, they knead or tread it with their feet till it is perfectly mixed. They then take two handfuls of dates, and break them into small pieces about the bigness of the point of the finger, and stick them in different parts of this mixture, which begins now to have such consistency as to adhere perfectly together, and appears in form like a Cheshire cheese. In the heart of this cake they put seven or eight hooks, with dates upon them, and a string of strong whip-cord to each. The fisherman then takes this large mass of paste, and putting it upon a goat’s skin blown with wind, rides behind it out into the middle of the stream; there he drops it in the deepest part of the river, then cautiously holding the ends of each of the strings slack, so as not to pull the dates and the hooks out of the heart of the composition, he gets again ashore upon his skin a little below where he had sunk the solid mass.

When arrived on the shore, he carefully separates the ends of the strings, and ties them, without straining, each to a palm branch made fast on shore, to the end of every one of which hangs a small bell. He then goes and feeds his cattle, digs ditches, or lies down and sleeps as his business calls him. The oil resists the water for some time, at last the cake begins to dissolve, pieces fall off, the broken dates dipped in the honey flow down the stream, and the large fish below catch ravenously at them as they pass. The fish follow these pieces up the stream, gathering them as they go along till they get to the cake at last, when altogether, as many as are assembled, fall voraciously to seek the dates buried in the composition; each fish that finds a date swallows it, together with an iron hook, and feeling himself fast, makes off as speedily as possible; the consequence is, endeavouring to escape from the line by which he is fastened, he pulls the palm branch, and rings the bell fastened to it.

The fisherman runs immediately to the bell, and finding thereby the particular line, hauls his prisoner in, but does not kill him; the hook being large, it generally catches him by the upper jaw, which is considerably longer than the under. He then pulls him out of the water, and puts a strong iron ring through his jaw, ties a few yards of cord to it, and fastens him to the shore, so he does with the rest. Very rarely one hook is found empty. Those that want fish at Girgé, a large town opposite, or at Achmim itself, come thither as to a fish-market, and every man takes the quantity he wants, buying them alive. Fish when dead do not keep here, which makes that precaution necessary. We bought two, which fully dined our whole boat’s crew; the fisherman had then ten or twelve fastened to the shore, all of which he pulled out and shewed us.

I apprehend that formerly this method of fishing was oftener practised, and better known than it is now, for I have seen, in several fishing towns, a tree, in which there was a fish with a ring through its nose, and beside it a bell. I likewise imagine that this is the fish which Mr Norden says the Kennouss caught at Syene, and which he calls a Carp; but as I have already observed, streams are not the haunt of leather-mouthed, or sucking fish, as is the carp, but rather of such as are powerfully furnished with fins, as this is, to struggle with, and traverse the current in all its directions. I believe the carp to be a fish of northern climates; I have never even seen them in these, they are certainly not in Ethiopia whence the Nile comes; their name, Cyprinus, seem to indicate they belong to Greece. They are found in the island of Cyprus, but whether exclusively from the rest of the islands is what I cannot determine.

This fish has two fins upon its back; the first has a sharp short thorn before it, and is composed of seven longer ones, sharp pointed, but much weaker in shape, resembling the latine sail of a boat. The one behind it is composed of eleven small pliable bones, but not armed with any defence. The belly has two fins, made of pliable, unarmed bones likewise, and on its side near the gills it has two others of the same kind. The tail is forked into two sharp thin narrow divisions, that below are considerably shorter than above. Below its throat is a parcel of long bones hanging down like a beard, which grow longer as they approach the tail, the last being the largest of all.

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

Heath. Sc.]

The whole body of this fish is covered with silver scales much resembling silver spangles, they lie close together. There is no variety of colour upon the whole fish excepting a shade of red upon the end of the nose, which is fat and fleshy. His eye is large and black, with a broad iris of white stained with yellow. It has a number of small teeth very sharp and closely set, nature has probably given him this quantity of fins to save him from the crocodile, whom by his size he seems destined to feed.

CARETTA, OR SEA-TORTOISE.

Among the natural productions of the Red Sea, which either have been or are at present articles of commerce, I shall just speak a little of that species of the Testudo or Tortoise, called the Caretta or Hawk’s-bill. It is greatly inferior in size to the West Indian or American sea-tortoise. The extreme length of the shell of this was 3 feet 7 inches, and which was esteemed a large one. Simple as it is, I do not know one good figure of it. This which I have submitted to the reader may be depended upon for its exactness, otherwise the animal is well known, and has often been described.

Its back is covered like the rest of other turtles, with a bony substance, and this again is covered by lamina, or scales of a thin transparent texture, variegated with dark brown streaks, disposed in each scale as radii proceeding from a centre. The outer rows of the great scales are irregular pentagons. The row that runs down the middle between these are regular hexagons, and round the whole circumference the large scales are inclosed by a kind of quadrangular frame firmly united; the broadest and largest of these scales being nearest the tail. The lowest of all, as it were in the centre of the lowest part of the figure, is notched, the centre of this division answering to a line drawn through the middle of the oval, and the head or occiput.

This fish lays a multitude of eggs. Some have said that these are laid among stones, contrary to the practice of the large sea-turtle, which lays them upon sand. All I can say to this is, that I have seen them but seldom, and always upon sand, but never among stones. The fish itself is a very dry and coarse food, very different from that delicate species which comes from the West Indies, if the difference does not lie a great deal in the cookery. At the time that I ate of this animal, I was going to view the junction of the Indian Ocean without the Straits of Babelmandeb, and the wind setting in contrary, we were in great fear of not being able to return, as the reader will have seen in our voyage. Particularly, I did not observe any of the green fat, so well known to our epicures, nor indeed any fat at all. When roasted, it tasted to me much like old veal new killed. It is only an inhabitant of the mouth of the Gulf. They seldom come up the length of Mocha; when they do, they are few in number, are probably sick, and not able to bear the agitation of the waves from the south-westers.

The Egyptians dealt largely with Rome in this elegant article of commerce. Pliny tells us, the cutting them for fineering or inlaying, was first practised by Carvilios Pollio, from which we would presume that the Romans were ignorant of the Arabian and Egyptian art of separating the lamina by fire, placed in the inside of the shell when the meat is taken out; for these scales, though they appear perfectly distinct and separate, do yet adhere, and oftener break than split where the mark of separation may be seen distinct. Martial says, that beds were inlaid with it. Juvenal, and Apuleius, in his tenth Book mentions that the Indian bed was all over shining with tortoise-shell in the outside, and swelling with stuffing of down within. The immense use made of it in Rome may be guessed by what we learn from Velleius Paterculus, 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.

London Published Dec^r. 1^{st}. 1789, by G. Robinson & C^o.]

OF PEARLS.

The ships which navigated the Red Sea brought gold and silver from Ophir and Tarshish; they brought myrrh, frankincense, and ivory, from Saba, and various kinds of spices from the continent of Asia, across the Indian ocean. If we judge by the little notice taken of them in very ancient times, the treasures which lay nearer home, in their own seas, and upon their own shores, were very little sought after, or spoken of, in the days when the navigation of the Arabian gulf was at its height. We are not, however, to believe that the pearl fishery, even in those days, was totally neglected; but foreign trade was grown to such a magnitude, and its value so immense, that we are not to be surprised, that articles that were only a matter of ornament and luxury, or of domestic use, and did not enter into the medium of commerce, were little spoken of, however closely followed and well understood.

We gather from scripture, the only history of these early times to be depended upon, that precious stones were imported from the southern coast of Africa. This trade, however great it might be, is mentioned but slightly, and as it were accidentally, being absorbed in the very great articles of commerce then spoken of. In the same manner we read of the beauty and excellence of pearls cursorily introduced, often by allusions and comparisons throughout the sacred books, but always in a manner which sufficiently shews the great intrinsic estimation in which they were held.