[60] The only manna I have known in India was exuded by a tamarisk; but it appears to be produced on various shrubs in Persia and the adjoining countries, camelthorns, tamarisks, and others. And one kind called Bed-kisht is produced on a species of willow. (Bed signifies a willow.) Some kinds of manna are used as sugar. (See Pen. Cyc. in v. Manna.) This authority does not seem to recognize the agency of any insect in its production. But Macdonald Kinneir (in his Memoir of the Persian Empire, p. 329) has the following note. “Manna is exported from Moosh, on the Euphrates [west of Lake Van] in considerable quantities. It is termed guz by the Persians, and found in great quantities in Louristan, and in the district of Khonsar in Irak. It is taken from a small shrub, in appearance not unlike a funnel, about four feet in height and three in diameter at the top. The guz is said to be produced by small insects, which are seen to move in vast numbers under the small and narrow leaves of the shrub.—These were always in motion, and continued to crawl between the bark and the leaves. The guz is collected during the months of August and September in the following manner. A vessel of an oval form being placed under the bush as a receptacle, the leaves are beat every third day with a crooked stick covered with leather. The manna when first gathered has the tenacity and appearance of gum, but, when exposed to the heat of 90° of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, it dissolves into a liquid resembling honey. When mixed with sweetmeat its tenacity resists the application of the knife, but when suddenly struck it shivers into pieces.”
[61] There is a town called in the maps Ahar, about fifty miles north-east of Tabriz, but I cannot find that this was ever considered to be Ur of the Chaldees. Urfa, which is generally supposed to be Ur, is in quite another region, more than four hundred miles from Tabriz.
[62] Wild asses are found in the dry regions from the frontiers of Syria to the Runn of Cutch, and north to 48° lat. Ferrier mentions herds of hundreds between Mushid and Herat, and on the banks of the Khashrood, south of Herat. “They are fleet as deer,” he says. Their flesh is more delicate than Persian beef, and the Afghans consider it a great delicacy, as did the old Roman epicures. This species, as I learn from a note with which Mr. Moore, of the India Museum, has kindly favoured me, is Asinus Onager, the Kulan or Ghor-khar of the Persians. That of Syria and Northern Arabia is the Asinus Hemippus, the Hemionus of the ancients; whilst the Kyang or Jiggetai (Equus Hemionus of Pallas, E. Polyodon of Hodgson) inhabits Tibet and thence northward to southern Siberia; and the true wild ass (E. asinus) is indigenous to north-eastern Africa, and perhaps to south Arabia and the island of Socotra.
[63] “Lapis azurii,” hod. lapis lazuli. Quantities of this are found in Badakshan. (Burnes, Bokhara, ii. 205. 8vo ed.)
[64] Sic. Probably L, or LV is intended.
[65] “Ferculum et carnem.”
[66] “Tobalia.”
[67] The Afghans exceed the practices here graphically described; for they, I believe, often expectorate in the hairy sleeve of the postin, which in winter they wear after the fashion of Brian O’Linn, “with the leather side out and the woolly side in.” Scott Waring (Tour to Shiraz, p. 103) notices the dirty table habits of the Persians.
[68] The friar’s remarks seem to shew that forks were common in Europe earlier than is generally represented to be the case.
[69] No doubt it should be kīr, which is bituminous pitch in Persian. What the parenthesis means I cannot make out. Pegua can scarcely be a reference to the petroleum of Pegu at this early date?