While travelling on a professional tour in Upper Egypt, eight years before, engaged in exploring for some lost emerald and copper mines, he chanced to render medical service to an Arab attached to his party. In gratitude, the child of the desert formally presented to him this now-called 'Resurrection Flower,' at the same time enjoining upon him never to part with it. Like the fabled gift of the Egyptian, it was supposed to have 'magic in the web of it.' The doctor was solemnly assured by the Arab, and others of his race, that it had been taken ten years before from the breast of an Egyptian mummy, a high priestess, and was deemed a great rarity; that it would never decay if properly cared for; that its possession through life would tend to revive hope in adversity, and, if buried with its owner, would ensure for him hereafter all the enjoyments of the Seventh Heaven of Mahomet. When presented, this flower was one of two hanging upon the same stem. Dr. Deck carefully preserved one; the twin specimen he presented to Baron Humboldt, who acknowledged it to be the greatest floral wonder he had yet seen, and the only one of its kind he had met with in the course of his extensive travels.
For years the doctor carried his treasure with him everywhere, prizing it for its intrinsic qualities, and invariably awakening the deepest interest whenever he chanced to display its wondrous powers. During the remainder of his life he caused the flower to open more than one thousand times, without producing any diminution of its extraordinary property, or any injury to it whatever. It is proper to state that, though closely examined by some of the most eminent naturalists, both at home and abroad, no positive position in the botanical kingdom was ever assigned to it—indeed to this day it remains a waif in the floral world, none having determined under what classification it belongs.
I need not say that the doctor, while gratefully accepting the gift of his Arab friend, quietly rejected the accompanying superstitions. Subsequent trials and proofs positive confirmed his doubts of its hope-inspiring power, while his inclination and good old prejudices tempted him to forego the delights of the Seventh Heaven by bequeathing his treasure to his friend and pupil, Dr. C. J. Eames, of New York, than whom none could regard it with a truer appreciation, or recognize its exquisite perfection with a feeling nearer akin to veneration.
It has now been in the possession of Dr. Eames for several years, and has, in the mean time, been unfolded many hundred times, still without any deterioration of its mysterious power. It opens as fairly and freshly to-day, as when, under Egyptian skies, more than sixteen years ago, its delicate fibres, heavy with the dust of ages, quivered into a new life before the astonished eyes of Dr. Deck.
Well-named as, in some respects, it seems to be, this marvel of the botanical world has already given rise to not a few discussions among the scientific and curious, some earnestly proclaiming its right to the title of 'Resurrection Flower,' and others denying that it is a flower at all. Indeed, in its unfolded state, its resemblance to a flattened poppy-head, and other seed vessels, offers strong argument in favor of the latter opinion. In alluding to it, one uses the term 'flower' with decided 'mental reservation'—beautiful flower, as it seems to be when opened—and speaks of its 'petals' with a deprecating glance at imaginary hosts of irate botanists. Some, it is true, still insist that it is a bona fide flower; but Dr. Deck himself inclined to the belief that it was the pericarp or seed vessel of some desert shrub, rare indeed, as few or none like it have appeared in centuries, yet not without its analogies in the vegetable world.
The famous Rose of Jericho (not that mentioned in the Apocrypha, or the very common kind peculiar to the far East, but that long-lost variety prized by the Crusaders as a holy emblem of their zeal and pilgrimage) was, in all probability, a member of the same genus to which the 'Resurrection Flower' belongs. This opinion is supported by the fact that resemblances of the 'flower,' both open and closed, are sculptured upon some of the tombs of the Crusaders—two, in the Temple Church of London, and several in the Cathedrals of Bayeux and Rouen in Normandy, where lie some of the most renowned followers of Peter the Hermit.
A brother of Dr. Deck, engaged in antiquarian research in the island of Malta, discovered the same device graven upon the knights' tombs, and invariably on that portion of the shield, the 'dexter chief,' which was considered the place of highest honor. This gentleman has also furnished the following quotation from an old monkish manuscript, describing 'a wonder obtained from Jerusalem by the holy men, and called by them the 'Star of Bethlehem,' as, if exposed to the moon on the eve of the Epiphany, it would become wondrous fair to view, and like unto the star of the Saviour; and with the first glory of the sun, it would return to its lowliness.'
Doubtless the old chroniclers, had they lived in these days of evidence and 'solid fact,' would have given some credit to the heavy dews peculiar to moonlight nights, an exposure to which would assuredly have produced all the effect of immersion upon the flower.
The fact of so close a representation of the 'Resurrection Flower' being upon the tombs of the Crusaders, added to the circumstance that in his Egyptian researches he had never met with any allusion to it, induced Dr. Deck to discard the story of its Egyptian origin as untenable. 'I have unwrapped many mummies myself,' he wrote, 'and have had opportunities of being present at unrolling of others of all classes, and have never discovered another Resurrection Flower, nor heard of any one who had; and in the examination of hieroglyphics of every age and variety, I never discovered anything bearing the remotest resemblance to it. Those who are conversant with the wonderful features of the Egyptian religion and priestcraft, will observe how eagerly they seized upon and deified anything symbolical of their mysterious tenets, and transmitted them to posterity, figured as hieroglyphics; and it is but natural to presume that this homely-looking flower, with its halo, so typical of glory and resurrection, would have ranked high in their mythology, if it, and its properties, had been known to them. Moreover, an examination of the elaborate works of Josephus, Herodotus, King, and Diodorus, so full in their description of Egyptian mythology, has failed to elicit any description or notice of it whatever.'
Nearly every one has read of the famous Rose of Jericho (Anastatica hierochontina) or Holy Rose—a low, gray-leaved annual, utterly unlike a rose, growing abundantly in the arid wastes of Egypt, and also throughout Palestine and Barbary, and along the sandy coasts of the Red Sea. One of the most curious of the cruciferous plants, it exhibits, in a rare degree, a hygrometric action in its process of reproduction. During the hot season it blooms freely, growing close to the ground, bearing its leaves and blossoms upon its upper surface; when these fall off, the stems become dry and ligneous, curving upward and inward until the plant becomes a ball of twigs, containing its closed seed-vessels in the centre, and held to the sand by a short fibreless root. In this condition, it is readily freed by the winds, and blown across the desert, until it reaches an oasis or the sea; when, yielding to the 'Open Sesame' of water, it uncloses, leaving nature to use its jealously guarded treasures at her will.