Spices and How to Know Them

by Walter M. Gibbs

It’s sent abroad by ship and barge;

And India’s fragrance you bestow,

In summer climes and frigid snow.

THE cinnamon tree has been known to live two hundred years and its history is nearly as old as the history of man. It appears to have been the first spice sought after in all Oriental voyages, and is one of the few condiments that has been honored with a price that only the wealthy can buy. Both cinnamon and cassia are mentioned as precious odoriferous substances in the Masonic writings. Bible history mentions cinnamon at a very early date in Exodus, Chap. XXX, 23; in Proverbs, Chap. VII, 17; in Song of Solomon, Chap. IV, 14, being then introduced by the Phœnicians. It was likewise known to the Greeks and Romans under the name of kinnamomun. Vespasian, on his return from Palestine, dedicated to the Goddess of Peace, in one of the temples of the Capitol, garlands of cinnamon enclosed in polished gold, and in the temple built on Mount Palatine by the Empress Augusta in honor of Augustus Cæsar, her husband, was placed a root of the cinnamon tree set in a golden cup. It is recorded that two hundred and ten burthens of spice were consumed on the funeral pile of Sylla, and that Nero burnt at the obsequies of his wife, Poppæa, a quantity of cinnamon and cassia exceeding the whole importation of one year. Dr. Carl Schumann’s Kritische Untersuchungen über die Zimtländer, published as a supplement to Petermann’s Geographische Mitteilungen, is a most erudite contribution to history of geography and commerce. The author carefully examines the notices on cinnamon and cassia to be found in the writings of the ancients and of the Arabs, and critically examines these by the light of modern research. The ancient Egyptians procured their cinnamon from punt, which is identified with the Rego Cinnamonifera at the promontory of Garadafiri of the modern Somaliland. But neither cinnamon nor cassia was a product of this region, nor are they at the present time, which is amply proved and illustrated by a consideration of the geographical distribution of the Louracea. Arabian merchants intentionally shrouded in mystery their manner or place of obtaining cinnamon and, in consequence, the ancients entertained the most preposterous ideas on the subject.

The “Khisit” of the inscriptions of the temple of Doral Bahari is correctly translated cinnamon or cassia. The latter word and the gizi of Galen and the Keziah of the Hebrew are derived from it, but it is of itself a corruption of Kei-shi, the Chinese name for cassia. From this fact, the author concludes that China supplied the ancient world with most, if not all, of its cinnamon, but did so through traders settled in parts of Arabia or the Somali coast, who maintained their monopoly until the discovery of cinnamon in the Island of Ceylon.

Herodotus relates that cassia grew in Arabia, but that cinnamon was brought there by birds from India, the fabled birthplace of Bacchus. This writer states that cassia grew in a shallow lake, the borders of which were infested with winged animals resembling bats; that these were powerful creatures and uttered piercing cries; but that the Arabs made war against them for the purpose of obtaining the spice and, defending their eyes from the attack of the monsters, drove them from their stronghold for a brief period and then, unmolested, collected the cassia.

CEYLON

A still more marvelous account was given by a Grecian historian of the manner in which cinnamon was obtained, which is as follows: “The Arabs themselves were perfectly ignorant of the situation of the favored spots which produced this spice; some, however, asserted with much appearance of probability that it grew in the country where Bacchus was born, and they gave the following account of the plan resorted to for obtaining cinnamon: Some very large birds collected together a quantity of the shoots and small branches of the cinnamon and built their nests with it on the lofty mountains inaccessible to man; and the inhabitants of the country placed large pieces of carrion flesh near the haunts of the birds who bore it to their nests which, not being made strong enough to hold the additional load, gave way, falling to the valley below, where it was gathered up by the natives and exported to foreign lands.”

It was exported into India in the time of the authors of the Periplus of the Erythræan Sea, and even long before it was much used among masters of the ancient world.