The world probably never saw a second time such a trade in spices as that which was carried on of old between Canaan and Egypt. The Dutch and Amboyna was a huckstering matter compared with it. Egypt sent Canaan her corn, wine, oil, and linen; and Canaan sent, in return, her spicery, balm, myrrh, precious woods, and minerals. The Ishmaelites were the carrying merchants; and, while each class of them had its especial article of commerce, they all dabbled a little in slave-dealing. Thus, the men of the tribe that purchased Joseph dealt in spicery only,—a term including balm and myrrh. The Egyptian demand for the article was enormous. At the period of the sale of Joseph, spicery was most extensively used, not only for the embalming of men, but of sacred animals. In after times, this practice ceased to a great extent, on account of a large failure in the supply.
There is something very characteristic of the “ancient nation” in the transaction of the brethren with respect to Joseph. The general proposal was to slay him; but it was Judah, first of his race, who, with a strong eye to business, exclaimed, “What profit to slay our brother, and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites.” The opposition to fratricide, on the part of Judah, was not on the principle that it was a crime, but that it brought nothing. But, no sooner had he pointed out how they might get rid of the troublesome brother, and put money in their purses to boot, than the profligate kinsmen adopted the project with alacrity, preferring lucrative felony to downright profitless murder.—Do I hear you remark, Sir, that it has ever been thus with this rebellious Jewish people? Well, let us not be rash in assertions. Judah was a very mercenary fellow, no doubt; but it was better to sell a live brother into a slavery which gave him the chance of sitting at the table of Pharaoh Phiops, than to murder one for the mere sake of making money by the sale of the body, as was done by a Christian gentleman of the name of Burke.
There are some plants used in seasoning which have been esteemed for other virtues besides lending a fillip to the appetite. Others of these seasoning plants have acquired an evil reputation. Thus orach was said to cause pallor and dropsy. Rocket had a double use: it not only was said to remove freckles, but an infusion of it in wine rendered the hide of a scourged convict insensible to the whip. Fennel was, unlike asparagus, held to be good for the sight. Dill, on the other hand, injured the eyes, while it strengthened the stomach. Anise-seed was in great favour with the medical philosophers, who prescribed it to be taken, fasting, in wine; and hyssop wine was a specific for cutaneous eruptions, brought on by drinking wine of a stronger quality. Wild thyme cured the bite of serpents,—if the sufferer could only collect it in time; and pennyroyal was sovereign for indigestion. Rue cured the ear-ache, and nullified poisons; for which latter purpose it was much used by Mithridates. Mint was gaily eaten, with many a joke, because it was said to have been originally a pretty girl, metamorphosed by Proserpine. The Romans, now and then, ate camomile at table, just as old country ladies, when tea was first introduced, and sent to them as a present, used to boil the leaves, and serve them, at dinner, like spinach. Capers, in the olden time, were vulgar berries, and left for democratic digestion. “I once saw growing in Italy,” said an Irish traveller, fit to be “own correspondent” to one of the morning papers, “the finest anchovies I ever beheld!” A listener naturally doubted the alleged fact; and the offended Irishman not only called him out, but shattered his knee-cap by a pistol-shot. As he was leaping about with intensity of pain, the Irishman’s second remarked to his principal, that he had made his adversary cut capers, at any rate. “Capers!” exclaimed the Hibernian, “capers! ’faith, that’s it. Sure, Sir,” he added, advancing to his antagonist, “you were right; it was not anchovies, but capers, that I saw growing. I beg pardon: don’t think any more about it.” Let us add, that, if the aristocratic ancients deeply declined capers, they were exceedingly fond of assafœtida, as a seasoning ingredient. Green ginger was also a popular condiment; and it is commonly eaten in Madagascar at this day. I suppose that, in former times, Hull imported this production in large quantities, and that therefore one of her streets is called “the Land of Green Ginger.” The Romans gave wormwood wine to the charioteers, perhaps considering that the stomachic beverage would secure them from dizziness.
I have mentioned above that Mithridates patronized rue as a nullifier of poisons. He was in the habit of swallowing poisons, as people in the summer swallow ices; and he was famous for inventing antidotes, to enable him to take them with impunity. One consequence is, that he has gained a sort of immortality in our pharmacopœia; and “Mithridate,” in pharmacy, is a compound medicine, in form of an electuary, serving as either a remedy or a preservative against poisons, being also accounted a cordial, opiate, sudorific, and alexipharmic. “Mithridate” is, or rather, I suppose, was, one of the capital medicines in the apothecaries’ shops. The preparation of it, according to the direction of the College, is as follows; and I request my readers to peruse it attentively, and to get it by heart, in case of necessity supervening. Here is the facile recipe: “Take of cinnamon, fourteen drachms; of myrrh, eleven drachms; agarick, spikenard, ginger, saffron, seeds of treacle-mustard, frankincense, Chio turpentine, of each ten drachms; camel’s hay, costus, Indian leaf, French lavender, long pepper, seeds of hartwort, juice of the rape of cistus, strained storax, opopanax, strained galbanum, balsam of Gilead, or, in its stead, expressed oil of nutmegs, Russian castor, of each an ounce; poly-mountain, water germander, the fruit of the balsam tree, seeds of the carrot of Crete, bdellium strained, of each seven drachms; Celtic nard, gentian root, leaves of dittany of Crete, red roses, seed of Macedonian parsley, the lesser Cardanum seeds freed from their husks, sweet fennel seeds, gum Arabic, opium strained, of each five drachms; root of the sweet flag, root of wild valerian, anise-seed, sagapenum strained, of each three drachms; spignel, St. John’s wort, juice of acacia, the bellies of scinks, of each two drachms and a half; of clarified honey, thrice the weight of all the rest: dissolve the opium first in a little wine, and then mix it with the honey made hot. In the mean time, melt together, in another vessel, the galbanum, storax, turpentine, and the balsam of Gilead, or the expressed oil of nutmeg,” (I have no doubt that one will do quite as well as the other; and this must be highly satisfactory for sufferers to know,) “continually stirring them round, that they may not burn; and, as soon as these are melted, add to them the hot honey, first by spoonsful, and afterwards more freely. Lastly, when this mixture is nearly cold, add by degrees the rest of the spices reduced to powder,”——and, as the French quack used to say of his specific for the toothache, if it does you no harm, it will certainly do you no good. For my own part, I think the remedy worse than the disease; but a gentleman just poisoned may be of another opinion; and I can only say, that if, with prussic acid knocking at his pylorus, he has leisure to wait till the above prescription is made up for him,—till the bellies of scinks and the camel’s hay are procured, and till the ingredients are amalgamated “by degrees,”—he will, if he survive the poison, the waiting, and the remedy, have deserved to be called, κατ’ ἐξοχὴν, the “patient.” But here are the pastry and the fruits; and there ARE people who are given to believe that pastry and poison are not very wide asunder.
When Murat wished to instigate the Italians to labour, he cut down their olive-trees. The Jews were forbidden to destroy fruit-trees, even in an enemy’s country; and it used to be a law in France, and may be so still, that when an individual had received permission to cut down one of his trees, it was on condition of his planting two. The planters of vineyards enjoyed many privileges under the Jewish dispensation, and heathen governments placed both vineyards and orchards under the protection of the most graceful of their deities, and these deities were supposed to have an especial affection for particular trees. The Romans were skilled in forcing their fruits, which were produced at the third course, and not, as with the Greeks, at the second.
Minerva is popularly said to have given birth to the olive, which was the emblem of Peace, the latter being naturally born of Wisdom. But the poisoned shafts of Hercules were made of the olive, perhaps to symbolize those armed neutralities which are generally so fatal to powers with whom the neutrals affect to be at peace. The Autocrat of Russia, for instance, has been dealing very largely in olive shafts, tipped with death. But the olive was known to the world before Wisdom, taking flesh, sprang in her bright panoply from the brain of her sire, and was called Minerva. From Judea the olive was taken into Greece; it was not planted within the territory of Rome until a later period; and, finally, in Spain it found a soil as favourable to cultivation as that of Decapolis, on holy ground. The Ancona olives were the most highly esteemed by the Roman Patricians, at whose tables they opened and closed the banquet. While the olives were greedily swallowed, the expressed oil was distributed by way of largess to the people. It was declared to possess, if not a vital principle, something that stimulated and maintained vitality. Augustus, who was for ever whiningly hoping that he might die easily, and for ever chanting the prayer, “Euthanasia!” asked Pollio how he might best maintain his health and strength in old age. “You have nothing in the world to do,” said Pollio, “but to drink abundance of wine, and lubricate your imperial carcase with plenty of oil!”—a prescription which does not say much for the medical instruction of Pollio. Olive oil was so scarce at one time, in Europe, that in 817 the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle authorized the priests to manufacture anointing oil from bacon. With regard to the fruit itself, it has not even yet undisputed possession of the public approval; and I am very much of the opinion of the farmer who, having taken some at his landlord’s table, expressed his indignation on reaching home, that he had been served with gooseberries stewed in——brine.
The palm-tree wine of the Hebrews inspired song, and thence, perhaps, did the palm itself pass into the possession of the mythological Muses. The palm-tree deserved to be a popular tree: its wood furnished man with a house, its branches with fuel; its leaves afforded him garments, and a bed; and from them he could manufacture baskets, wherein to carry the fruit, bread, and cakes which he could make from its dates. I am only astonished that tradition has not made the palm, rather than the beech or the oak, the original tree which first fed, clothed, and sheltered man.
The cherry, compared with the palm, is but as a rustic beauty, compared with Cleopatra. Mithridates and Lucullus share the glory of making men acquainted with its fruit. From Cerasus, in Asia, Lucullus, no doubt, transplanted a cultivated fruit-tree, of a peculiarly fine sort; but the fruit itself was not unknown to the Romans long anterior to the time of Lucullus. It was slow in acquiring an esteem in Italy. The most extraordinary species of cherry with which I am acquainted, is the Australian cherry, which grows with the stone on the outside. But Nature, in Australia, is distinguished for her freaks. There the pears are made of wood, and salt-water fish abound in the fresh-water rivers! The nastiest species I know of, grows in the vicinity of, and some of them within, the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise, at Paris. They are magnificent to the eye, and are not ill-flavoured; but, at the heart of each there is a maggot, as fat as one of Rubens’s Cupids, and, saving a slight bitterness, with as much of the taste of the cherry in him as a citizen of ripe Stilton has of the cheese of which he is so lively a part. There is not a bad story told of an old and poor Spanish Grandee, who used to put on spectacles when he sat down to his modest dinner of bread and cherries, in order that the fruit might gain, apparently, in magnitude. There was philosophy in this pleasant conceit! If the poor nobleman had had a dish of our cherries, from Kent, Berks, or Oxfordshire, he would not have stood in need of his merry delusion.
How grateful to the palate is the Armenian apricot, blushing, in its precocity, like a young nymph; or the Persian peach, for a couple of which the Romans would give a score of pounds! The peach has an evil tradition with it. It is said to have been originally poisonous, but to have lost its deadliness when it was transplanted. Perhaps the peculiarly peachy odour of prussic acid may have contributed to give currency to a very long-lived, but entirely foundationless, tradition,—except, indeed, that poison may be extracted from the kernel; but so may arsenic from a Turkey carpet, and, indeed, from apple-pips also, as Sir Fitzroy Kelly told the jury, when endeavouring to save from the gallows a man who had murdered his mistress, in order that he might not put in peril his respectability! Perhaps the plum-tree, whether of Africa or Asia, from Egypt or Damascus, has been more fatal to health, if not to life, than any other of the stone-fruits. When Pliny complained of their superabundant propagation in Italy, he probably had in view the usual consequences of a very plentiful plum season.
The apricot was not known in France till the eleventh century, and then they were accounted dear at a farthing each. In the same century cherries used to appear at the royal table in May. To effect this, lime was laid at the roots of the tree, which was irrigated with warm water! Louis XIII. was fond of early fruit, and he had strawberries in March, and figs in June: this is more than the most expert fig-rearers in Sussex ever accomplished! The fig used to be esteemed as only inferior to that compound of luscious savours, the pine,—a fruit which, in the seventeenth century, was religiously patronized by the Jesuits. The same sort of sanction was given in the East to dates, though these were fashionable in Rome, after a basket of them had been sent from Jericho to Augustus. The Tunis dates are the best; but indulgence in them is said to loosen the teeth, and produce scurvy. The Tunisian ladies, however, were as fond of them as the French ladies were of sweet citrons, before oranges were patronized by Louis XIV. The ladies used to carry them about, and occasionally suck them, the operation being considered excellent to produce ruby lips. The citron was hardly less popular than the Reine Claude plum, which received its pretty name from the Queen of Francis I., and daughter of Louis XII. I have noticed the Sussex fig: the white fig of the Channel Islands is also highly prized; and there is a tree at Hampton Court renowned for its fruit, but they who eat had better not too curiously inquire as to where the root of that productive tree penetrates, in order to accomplish its productiveness. In Sicily, they acupuncture the tree, and drop into it a little oil, and this is said to improve the flavour of the fruit. To what I have previously said of the peach, I may add here what the Chinese say of it; namely, that it produces eternity of life, and prevents corruption until the end of the world. This species would be a popular one in England.