i8 APPENDIX. 



die queen of Saba, and given, among other prefents, to So- 

 lomon, who, as we know from fcripture, was very ftudious 

 of all fort of plants, and fkilful in the defcription and dis- 

 tinction of them. Here it feems to have been cultivated 

 and to have thriven, fo that the place of its origin came to 

 be forgotten. 



Notwithstanding this pofitive authority of Jofephus, 

 and the great probability that attends it, we are not to put 

 it in competition with what we have been told from fcripture, 

 as we have jufl now feen, that the place where it grew, and 

 was fold to merchants, was Gilead in Judea, more than 1730 

 years before Chrift, or 1000 before the queen of Saba ; fo 

 that reading the verfe, nothing can be more plain than that 

 it had been tranfplanted into Judea, nourifhed, and had be- 

 come an article of commerce in Gilead long before the period 

 Jofephus mentions : " And they fat down to eat bread, and 

 " they lifted up their eyes and looked, and behold, a com- 

 " pany of Iihmaelites came from Gilead with their camels, 

 " bearing fpicery, and balm, and myrrh, going to carry it 

 " down to Egypt*." Now, rhe fpicery, or pepper, was certain- 

 ly purchafed by the lilimaelites at the mouth of the Red' Sea, 

 where was the market for Indian goods, and at the lame 

 place they mull have bought the myrrh, for that neither 

 grew nor grows any where elfe than in Saba or Azabo 

 eaft to Cape Gardefan, where were the ports for India, and 

 whence it was diiperfed all over the world. 



Th* 



* Gen. chap, xxxvii. ver. 2$, 



