Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

preferving fire; on which account it is "carried into their cities, where there is a great fale for them.

[ocr errors]

66

"Wolves very commonly lurk among these "trees, which has given rife to a common faying among the Arabs, when they would "prevent their camels eating the leaves of thefe trees, the wolf is near the gadha "."

This doth not determine, whether this tree is a fpecies of the juniper, or not, but it fhould feem to be meant in the Scriptures by that word which our verfion renders juniper. It grows in the deferts; it's coals long retain fire; and it grows to a fize capable of shading a perfon from the heat, fince it is called a

tree.

The other properties that are mentioned : it's affording food to camels, of which they are very fond; but which is apt to gripe them; and the frequent concealment of wolves among trees of this fpecies; may make it still more cafy, for thofe that travel with camels through the Eaftern deferts, to determine whether the tree that anfwers this defcription of d'Herbelot, and that of the Scriptures, is the juniper, or not. And I would hope, it may not be long before fome curious traveller may afcertain this matter.

I take no notice, here, of another fuppofed property of this tree, according to our verfion of Job xxx. 4, in which feveral other

· P. 356.

translations

tranflations concur, and that is, that it's roots are capable of being made ufe of for food. For I much question whether the roots of the juniper, or of any other tree in thofe deferts, can afford nourishment to the human body, on the one hand; and on the other, I would obferve, that the interlineary tranflation of Arias Montanus fuppofes, that the meaning of the paffage is, that they used the roots of the tree in question for fewel. And certainly the fame Hebrew letters may as well fignify the one as the other-that they used thofe roots for warming themselves, as for bread.

The reafon, I prefume, that has inclined fo many to understand the word as our tranflators have done, has been, in part, a not knowing how far the roots of this tree of the deferts might be used for food, by these miferable outcafts from fociety; and, on the other hand, that they could not want fire in those fultry deferts, for the purpose of warming themselves. But as Irwin complains not unfrequently of the cold of the night, and sometimes of the day, in the deserts on the West fide of the Red-Sea; fo, in an appendix to the History of the Revolt of Aly Bey, very lately published, we find the Arabs that attended the author of that journal, through the deserts that lay between Aleppo and Bagdat, were confiderably incommoded with the cold.

But if it were fo with the poor wretches

Job

Job mentions, why, it may be asked, are the roots of the juniper mentioned? Do we not find in the Travels of Rauwolff, published by Mr. Ray, that in the wilderness, on the eaftern fide of the Tigris, they went out of doors and gathered dry boughs, and ftalks of herbs, to drefs fome food with, without mention of roots of any kind of trees? and doth not Thevenot mention the gathering broom for boiling their coffee, and warming themselves, in the wilderness going from Cairo to Mount Sinai? Why then any mention of juniper as used for fewel? I would answer, that much flighter fewel would do for travellers that were well clothed, and wanted only to stay a little while to take fome refreshment, than would do for poor ftarving and almoft-naked creatures, whofe continued abode was in the deferts. At the fame time, it fhould feem, in the most destitute ftate, without proper tools to cut down trees there, fo that the moft fubftantial, lafting and comfortable fewel they could procure, might well be the roots, and refufe part of thofe gadha trees (whatever that word in d'Herbelot means) which were cut down to be made into charcoal, for the ufe of those towns that laid on the borders of that defert into which the outcafts mentioned by Job retired. To depend on the chips, and caft-away wood that others cut, to warm themfelves in their naked state, muft be great wretchedness.

OBSER

OBSERVATION L.

I have, in a preceding volume, taken notice of the Eaftern way of churning, which is done by putting the cream into a goat's fkin turned infide out, which the Arabs fufpend in their tents, and then preffing it to and fro, in one uniform direction, quickly occafion a separation of the unctuous from the wheyey part'. But there is another way, it feems, of churning in the Levant, which is by a man's treading upon the skin, which anfwers the fame purpofe: this Dr. Chandler took notice of in his way from Athens to Corinth 2.

Grapes, it is well known, are wont to be trodden with the feet, when they want to make wine. Dr. Chandler faw it practifed near Smyrna, juft as he left Afia. Black grapes were spread on the ground in beds, and expofed to the fun, to dry for raifins; while, in another part, the juice was expreffed for wine, a man, with feet and legs bare, treading the fruit in a kind of cistern, with an hole or vent near the bottom, and a veffel beneath it to receive the liquor3.

The Scriptures which mention the treading grapes for wine, inform us that olives alfo

1

3 P. 2.

4 Neh.

Shaw, p. 168. D'Arvieux gives a fimilar account. Travels in Greece, p. 217. 13. 15. If. 63. 2. Judges 9. 27, &c.

were

were trodden, to get the oil contained in them'. Whether any previous preparation was made ufe of in thofe ancient times, we are not told; but it feems certain mills are now used for preffing and grinding the olives, (according to Dr. Chandler,) which grow in the neighbourhood of Athens. Thefe mills are in the town, and not on the spot in which the olives grow; and feem to be used, in confequence of it's being found, that the mere weight of the human body is infuffi-. cient for an effectual extraction of the oil.

The treading of grapes then, and olives, are well known facts, but Dr. Chandler is the firft, fo far as I have obferved, that has given us an account of the way of treading on skins of cream, by men, in order to separate the butter from it's more watery part and deferves attention, not only on account of the novelty of the obfervation; but as it may, poffibly, throw fome light over a paffage of Job, which I never faw well accounted for: "When I washed my steps with butter, and the "rock poured me out rivers of oil "."

[ocr errors]

Commentators have obferved, what every fenfible reader must have perceived without their help, that great plenty of butter and oil, in his poffeffion, is what is meant in this paffage, but none, that I know of, have given any tolerable account of the ground of his reprefenting this exuberance of butter, produced by his kine, after this manner.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »