138 
PLINY's NATU11A.L HISTOEY. 
[Book XII. 
that cassia grows around certain marshes, but is protected by 
a frightful kind of bat armed with claws, and by winged ser- 
pents as well. All these tales, however, have been evidently 
invented for the purpose of enhancing the prices of these 
commodities. Another story, too, bears them company, to the 
effect that under the rays of the noon-day sun, the entire 
peninsula exhales a certain indescribable perfume composed of 
its numerous odours ; that the breezes, as they blow from it, 
are impregnated with these odours, and, indeed, were the first 
to announce the vicinity of Arabia to the fleets of Alexander 
the Great, while still far out at sea. All this, however, is 
false ; for cinnamomum, or cinnamum, which is the same thing, 
grows in the country of the ^^thiopians,^^ who are united by 
intermarriages with the Troglodytse. These last, after buying 
it of their neighbours, carry it over vast tracts of sea, upon 
rafts, which are neither steered by rudder, nor drawn or 
impelled by oars or sails. 'Not yet are they aided by any of the 
resources of art, man alone, and his daring boldness, standing 
in place of all these ; in addition to Avhich, they choose the 
winter season, about the time of the equinox, for their voyage, 
for then a south easterly wind is blowing ; these winds guide 
them in a straight course from gulf to gulf, and after they 
have doubled the promonotory of Arabia, the north east wind 
carries them to a port of the Gebanitae, known by the name of 
Ocilia.*^ Hence it is that they steer for this port in preference ; 
and they say that it is almost five years before the mer- 
chants are able to effect their return, while many perish on 
the voyage. In return for their wares, they bring back arti- 
cles of glass and copper, cloths, buckles, bracelets, and neck- 
laces ; hence it is that this traffic depends more particularly 
upon the capricious tastes and inclinations of the female sex. 
The cinnamon shrub is only two cubits in height, at the 
most, the lowest being no more than a palm in height. It is 
about four fingers in breadth, and hardly has it risen six 
fingers from the ground, before it begins to put forth shoots and 
39 See B. vi. c. 34. 4o See B. vi. c. 26. 
*i As Fee observes, this description does not at all resemble that of the 
cinnamon-tree of Ceylon, as known to us. M. Bonastre is of opinion that 
the nutmeg-tree was known to the ancients under this name ; but, as Fee 
observes, the nutmeg could never have been taken for a bark, and cinnamon 
is descriljed as such in the ancient writers. He inclines to think that their 
cinnamon was really the bark of a species of amyris. 
