Part 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

KOL-QUALL.

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

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

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

Heath. Sc.

London Publish’d Jan. 1.^{st} 1790 by G. Robinson & Co.]

Upon cutting two of the finest branches of a tree in its full vigour, a quantity of this issued out, which I cannot compute to be less than four English gallons, and this was so exceedingly caustic, that, though I washed the sabre that cut it immediately, the stain has not yet left it.

When the tree grows old, the branches wither, and, in place of milk, the inside appears to be full of powder, which is so pungent, that the small dust which I drew upon striking a withered branch seemed to threaten to make me sneeze to death, and the touching of the milk with my fingers excoriated them as if scalded with boiling water; yet I everywhere observed the wood-pecker piercing the rotten branches with its beak, and eating the insects, without any impression upon its olfactory nerves.

The only use the Abyssinians make of this is for tanning hides, at least for taking off the first hair. As we went west, the tree turned poor, the branches were few, seldom above two or three ribs, or divisions, and these not deeply indented, whereas those of Taranta had frequently eight. We afterwards saw some of them at the source of the Nile, in the cliff where the village of Geesh is situated, but, though upon very good ground, they did not seem to thrive; on the contrary, where they grew on Taranta it was sandy, stony, poor earth, scarce deep enough to cover the rock, but I suspect they received some benefit from their vicinity to the sea.

Some botanists who have seen the drawing have supposed this to be the euphorbia officinarum of Linnæus; but, without pretending to great skill in this matter, I should fear there would be some objection to this supposition: First, on account of the flower, which is certainly rosaceous, composed of several petals, and is not campaniform: Secondly, That it produces no sort of gum, either spontaneously or upon incision, at no period of its growth; therefore I imagine that the gum which comes from Africa in small pieces, first white on its arrival, then turning yellow by age, is not the produce of this tree, which, it may be depended upon, produces no gum whatever.

Juba the younger is said, by Pliny, to have given this name to the plant, calling it after his own physician, brother to Musa physician to Augustus. We need not trouble ourselves with what Juba says of it, he is a worse naturalist and worse historian than the Nubian geographer.

RACK.

This is a large tree, and seems peculiar to warm climates. It abounds in Arabia Felix, in Abyssinia, that is, in the low part of it, and in Nubia. The first place I saw it in was in Raback, a port in the Red Sea, where I discovered this singularity, that it grew in the sea within low-water mark. When we arrived at Masuah, in making a plan of the harbour, I saw a number of these in two islands both uninhabited, and without water, the one called Shekh Seide, the other Toulahout. These two islands are constantly overflowed by salt water, and though they are strangers to fresh, they yet produce large Rack-trees, which appear in a flourishing state, as if planted in a situation designed for them by nature.

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

The Arabians, it is said, make boats of this tree. Its wood is so hardened by the sea, and also so bitter in taste, that no worm whatever will touch it. Of this tree the Arabians also make tooth-picks, these they sell in small bundles at Mecca, and are reputed to be favourable to the teeth, gums, and breath.

The reader will have observed frequent mention of some trees found in the desert which our camels would not eat. These are the Rack-tree, and the doom, or palma thebaica cuciofera. These grow where they find salt springs in the sand; the desert being so impregnated with fossile salt in every part of it, that great blocks and strata of it are seen everywhere appearing above ground, especially about lat. 18°.

The Rack something resembles the ash on its first appearance, though in the formation of its parts it is widely different. Its bark is white and polished, smooth, and without furrows. Its trunk is generally 7 or 8 feet before it cleaves into branches. I have seen it above 24 feet in height, and 2 feet diameter.

Its leaves are, two and two, set on different sides, that is, each two perpendicular to each other alternately. The small branches that bear flowers part from the inside of the leaf, and have the same position with the leaves; that is, suppose the lowest pair of leaves and branches are on the east or west side of the tree, the pair above them will be on the north and south, and the next to these will be on the west as before. The leaves are long and very sharp-pointed; in the inside a deep green, and in the out a dirty white of a green cast; they have no visible ribs either in the inside or out. The cup is a perianthium of four petals, which closely confine the flower, and is only a little flat at the top. The flower is composed of four petals deeply cut, in the interstices of which is a small green fruit divided by a fissure in the middle; its colour is deep orange, with lights of gold colour, or yellow, throughout it. It has no smell, tastes very bitterly, and is never seen to be frequented by the bees. It is probable that a tree of this kind, tho’ perhaps of another name, and in greater perfection, and therefore more fit for use, may be found in some of our West India islands between lat. 15° and 18°, especially where there are salt springs and marshes.

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London Published December 1, 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.]

GIR GIR, OR GESHE EL AUBE.