FRUIT-TREES. 415 



diffuse its fragrance through a whole apartment. The 

 latter is common on the hills of Yemen; the women 

 steep its fruit in water, which they use for washing and 

 perfuming the hair. The onkoba is a large tree, yielding 

 an insipid fruit, which children eat. Of the Jchadara, the 

 antura, and the kulhamia, we know nothing except that 

 they are new species discovered by Forskal, and that their 

 wood is used in building. The chestnut and sycamore 

 grow to a gigantic size in Hejaz. The Arabs, however, 

 have little timber suited for this purpose, their trees being 

 generally of a light porous texture. The skeura, a new 

 genus, which grows on the shore of the Red Sea, is so 

 soft that it is entirely useless. The el atl, which abounds 

 in Nejed, resembles the oak, and is employed in the con- 

 struction of houses. The samar, sareh, saiem, wahat, 

 and kathad, serve only for firewood ; their leaves afford 

 shelter for the cattle, and form the chief nourishment of 

 the camels. 



Fruit-trees. Most of the fruit-trees reared in the gar- 

 dens and hot-houses of Europe are indigenous to Arabia. 

 The apple, pear, peach, apricot, almond, quince, citron, 

 pomegranate, lemon, orange, olive, mulberry, and filberts, 

 are to be met with in the wadis and irrigated plains, from 

 the borders of the Dead Sea to the Euphrates and the 

 shores of Oman.* The Arabs likewise eat the fruit of se- 

 veral common shrubs, such as Asclepias and the Rham- 

 nus ; but they have a species of pear and a cornel pecu- 

 liar to themselves. From common oranges, cut through 

 the middle while green, dried in the air, and steeped forty 

 days in oil, they prepare an essence famous among old 

 women for restoring a fresh black colour to gray hairs.t 

 Though wine is forbidden, they plant vines, and have a 

 great variety of grapes, a small kind of which, without 

 stones, called zebib or kischmis, they dry and export in 



* Burckhardt doubts whether apples or pears grow in Arabia 

 (Travels, p. 367) ; but he seems to have forgotten that he men- 

 tions them elsewhere among the fruits in the garden of the convent 

 at Mount Sinai. Niebuhr speaks of them as common in Yemen. 

 Tome iii. 130. 



j- From the name Portuyhan, given to the orange both in Ara- 

 bia and Italy, travellers and naturalists have supposed that it was 

 brought into Europe by the Portuguese. This is a mistake. The 

 orange was cultivated by the Arabs in Sicily and Spain many cen- 

 turies before the Portuguese visited the East. See p. 119 of this 

 Volume. Cod. Diplorn. Arab. Sicit., tome i. p. 114. 



