Balessan
London Publish’d Decr. 1.st 1789 by G. Robinson & Co.
Balessan.
There is an anecdote relating to Sir William Middleton, who was surprised and taken prisoner by the Turks in the first attempt to open the trade of the Red Sea, that when about to set[24] out for Sanaa, corruptly called Zenan, the residence of the Imam, or prince of Arabia Felix, he was by the people desired[25] to take his fur cloak along with him to keep him from the cold; he thought they were ridiculing him upon what he had to suffer from the approaching heat, which he was convinced in the middle of Arabia must be excessive.
The first plantation that succeeded seems to have been at Petra, the ancient metropolis of Arabia, now called Beder, or Beder Hunein, whence I got one of the specimens from which the present drawing is made.
Josephus[26], in the history of the antiquities of his country, says, that a tree of this balsam was brought to Jerusalem by the queen of Saba, and given, among other presents, to Solomon, who, as we know from scripture, was very studious of all sort of plants, and skilful in the description and distinction of them. Here it seems to have been cultivated and to have thriven, so that the place of its origin came to be forgotten.
Notwithstanding this positive authority of Josephus, and the great probability that attends it, we are not to put it in competition with what we have been told from scripture, as we have just now seen, that the place where it grew, and was sold to merchants, was Gilead in Judea, more than 1730 years before Christ, or 1000 before the queen of Saba; so that reading the verse, nothing can be more plain than that it had been transplanted into Judea, flourished, and had become an article of commerce in Gilead long before the period Josephus mentions: “And they sat down to eat bread, and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and behold, a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead with their camels, bearing spicery, and balm, and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt[27].” Now, the spicery, or pepper, was certainly purchased by the Ishmaelites at the mouth of the Red Sea, where was the market for Indian goods, and at the same place they must have bought the myrrh, for that neither grew nor grows any where else than in Saba or Azabo east to Cape Gardefan, where were the ports for India, and whence it was dispersed all over the world.
The Ishmaelites, or Arabian carriers, loaded their camels at the mouth of the Red Sea with pepper and myrrh. For reasons not now known to us, they went and completed their cargo with balsam at Gilead, so that, contrary to the authority of Josephus, nothing is more certain, than 1730 years before Christ, and 1000 years before the queen of Saba came to Jerusalem, the balsam-tree had been transplanted from Abyssinia into Judea, and become an article of commerce there, and the place from which it originally was brought, through length of time, combined with other reasons, came to be forgotten.