actually dried, and laid up among their other flores, for their own confumption. Two circumftances feem to fhew that these ideas are not exact. In the first place, they feem to be spoken of as parcels of nearly the fame fize: Abigail carried to David two hundred cakes of figs, 1 Sam. xxv. 18. What notion can a reader form of the quantity of figs, if the accidental lumps of adhering figs were meant? Some lumps are ten times, it may be, larger than others, when they are taken out of the veffel in which they have been packed, and ftrongly squeezed together. A more determinate notion feems to have been intended to be conveyed by that term. So alfo when a lump of figs was ordered to be applied to Hezekiah's boil, 2 Kings xx. 7. A fecond thing is, that when a part of fuch a parcel is spoken of, a word is used which fignifies' cutting: but cutting can by no means be neceffary to divide a lump of our Jigs into parts. Nothing is more easily divided. But a string of figs might require cutting. The Doctor has faid nothing of the number of figs ufually put on one ftring, or of the weight of one of thefe ftrings. It fhould feem they were but fmall, fince Abigail carried David twice as many ftrings of figs as dried bunches of grapes, 1 Sam. xxv. 18. Pelach. I Sam. 30. 12. Future Future travellers, perhaps, may ascertain these points with fo much precifion as may fatisfy the curious. I must however farther add, that I have fomewhere met with an account, though I cannot cite the paffage, that fome of the people of those countries prefs their dried figs. into veffels of a determinate fize, which must enable them to make their lumps of figs equal to each other, and of a well-known bigness. But even in this case it cannot be necessary to part them by cutting. OBSERVATION LII. Melons, which are now fo common, and at the fame time in the highest efteem in the Eaft, are contemporary with grapes, with pomegranates, and with figs; one would be inclined then to imagine, that they have been introduced into the Holy-Land fince the time Mofes fent Joshua, and the other spies, from the wilderness of Paran, to examine, and bring back an account of it's productions; as writers tell us many other useful plants have been imported from other places into that country, or at least it's neighbourhood'. Melons, according to Sir John Chardin, are the most excellent fruit that they have in Perfia; and he tells us the feafon for eating 1 See Dr. Shaw, p. 341. din, tome 2, p. 18. 2 Voy. de M. Char N 2 them them holds four months'. Dr. Shaw obferved that musk and water-melons began to be gathered the latter end of June in Barbary, confequently a month or more before either pomegranates, the common kind of fig, or the grape, begin to ripen. But if they hold four months, or about half so long only, they must have been found in the time of the first ripe grapes, when the spies were fent out. Agreeable to this, Dr. Richard Chandler mentions figs, melons, fuch as are peculiar to hot climates, (I suppose he means water-melons,) and grapes, in large and rich clusters, fresh from the vineyard, were ferved up to him in Afia Minor, at the close of a repast at noon, in the month of August. They certainly now grow in the Holy-Land. It is the fruit which Egmont and Heyman felected from all the reft that they found growing on Mount Carmel, as the fubject of panegyric, being in themfelves fo excellent, and fo much cultivated there *. 66 Doubtless," fays Dr. Shaw, "the wa"ter-melon, or angura, or piftacha, or dil lah, as they call it here, is providentially "calculated for the fouthern countries, as it "affords a cool refreshing juice, affuages thirst, "mitigates feverish diforders, and compen"fates thereby, in no fmall degree, for the · P. 19. 2 P. 141. 3 For the grape, according to Shaw, begins to ripen in Barbary towards the end of July, p. 146. ↑ Vol. 2, p. 12. "exceffive "exceffive heats, not fo much of these as of "the more fouthern diftricts "." Surely, if they had then grown in that country, the fpies would have carried a fample of this refreshing fruit to the camp of Ifrael in Paran! as eafy to be conveyed thither as any of those they brought to Moses. In fact melons are now carried to very diftant places. The beft melons, according to Sir John Chardin, grow in Coraffon, near the Little Tartary.. They bring them to Ifpahan for the king, and to make prefents of. They are not spoiled in the carrying, though they are brought above thirty days journey. He adds, that he had eaten, at Surat in the Indies, melons that had been fent from Agra. This, he obferved, was still more extraordinary. They were carried by a man on foot, in baskets, one in a basket, being very large, which baskets were hanged on a pole, one at each end, the pole being laid on one of his shoulders, from whence, for eafe, he shifted it to the other from time to time. These people go feven or eight leagues a day with their load. The way of carrying the clufter of grapes, from the valley of Efhcol, did not much differ. It would have been as easy to have carried fome of the melons after this Perfian manner, or in a basket between two, or as they did the uncured figs and pomegranates: their carrying none feems to fhow they then ! P. 141. 2 Numb. 13. 23. N 3 did did not grow in that country, though they do now in plenty, and are fo much valued as to be diftinctly mentioned, when other fruits are taken no notice of. It may even, poffibly, be doubted whether they then commonly grew in Egypt, notwithstanding that, according to our tranflation, the Ifraelites, in the Wilderness, regretted the want of them there: "We re"member the fish which we did eat in Ægypt freely, the cucumbers, and the me"lons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick," Numb. xi. 5. I have elsewhere fhown that the juftnefs of our verfion may be queftioned, as to fome other things mentioned here; and perhaps the fecond of the words ufed to defcribe the vegetables they longed after has been mif- tranflated. It is true, they are now in great numbers, and in great variety, in Ægypt: but fome of them, we are pofitively affured, have been introduced into that country, from other places, and fome of them not very many ages back. Perhaps none of the more delicious of the melon-kind were aboriginal, or introduced fo early as the time of Mofes. The Septuagint, which is known to be an Egyptian tranflation, fuppofed fruit of the melon-kind was meant by the Hebrew word, which appears no where elfe in the Old Teftament: Obferv. vol. 2, ch. 9, obf. 14. but |
