APPENDIX. *3 



the origin of the tree which they called Sana, nor the gum, 

 could allow me to doubt a moment that it was the fame as 

 what had been brought to me from the myrrh country, but 

 Ihadthe additionaljfatisfacliontofindthe tree all covered over 

 with beautiful crimfon flowers of a very extraordinary and 

 ilrange conftruction. I began then a drawing anew, with 

 all that fatisfaction known only to thofe w r ho have been con- 

 verfant in fuch difcoveries. 



I took pieces of the gum with me ; it is very light. Ga- 

 len complains that, in his time, the myrrh was often mixed 

 with a drug which he calls Opocalpafum, by a Greek name, 

 but what the drug was is totally unknown to us at this 

 day, as nothing fimilar to the Greek name is found in the 



language of the country. But as the only view of the fa- * 



vage, in mixing another gum with his myrrh, muff have 

 been to increafe the quantity, and as the great plenty in 

 which this gum is produced, and its colour, make it very 

 proper for this ufe, and above all, as there is no reafon to 

 think there is another gum-bearing tree of equal qualities 

 in the country where the myrrh grows, it feems to me next 

 to a proof, that this muft have been the opocalpafum of 

 Galen. 



I must however confefs, that Galen fays the opocal- 

 pafum was fo far from being an innocent drug, that it 

 was a mortal poifon, and had produced very fatal ef- 

 fects. But as thofe Troglodytes, though now more igno- 

 rant than formerly, are flill well acquainted with the pro- 

 perties of their herbs and trees, it is not pofUble that the 

 favage, defiring to increafe his fales, would mix them 



F 2 with 



