4

Note. About a quarter of a mile to the S. E. of these caves, there is another set of considerable extent; but as the rain during the monsoon runs into them and carries great quantities of earth along with it, they have been in a great measure filled up. Some of the statues appear half out of the earth; they belong to the Hindû mythology, and appear to be of respectable workmanship. Should the mania of Hinduism ever invade us, the stream of rain during the monsoon which has filled them, might with a little ingenuity be employed as the means of removing the rubbish that has been accumulated.

On the very top of the hill in which are the caves, there is the figure of a small tiger or lion of rude workmanship.

XVI.

REMARKS ON THE SUBSTANCE CALLED GEZ, OR MANNA,

FOUND IN PERSIA AND ARMENIA,

By Captain EDWARD FREDERICK, of the Bombay Establishment.

Read 28th September, 1813.

AT entertainments in Persia a sweetmeat called gezangabeen is usually met with, the pleasant taste and other singular properties of which, as well as the mystery that involved its origin, excited my curiosity to know if it were an animal or a vegetable production.

The principal ingredient in its composition is a white gummy substance called gez, which when mixed up with rose-water, flour, and pistachionuts into flat round cakes, that are generally made three inches in diameter and a quarter of an inch thick, has much the appearance and feel of common dough, though a little more hard. It is at the same time both adhesive and brittle, for any attempt to cut it shows the former quality, as it sticks to the knife; and if pulled, it admits of being drawn out to some length like birdlime. The mode, however, generally practised of breaking it for use, is by placing one cake on the palm of the hand somewhat hollowed and striking it with the other, when the blow occasions it to fly into several pieces, whose edges, rather unexpectedly, appear smooth and polished like broken glass.

Hardly any of the inhabitants of the provinces of Fars and Irak with whom I conversed, could afford me any thing like accurate information of the manner and place in which this singular substance was procured; the most intelligent of them candidly acknowledged their ignorance of the matter, merely saying that they believed it came from some place between Isfahan and Hummadan.

No traveller with whose works I am acquainted makes the slightest

mention of either the gez, or the shrub on which it is found, except Chardin; and even he, with the addition of the copious notes that are subjoined by his learned editor to the latest edition of his travels, affords but little satisfaction, and that through the medium of hearsay information.

Both the existence of manna and the mode of its production appear to have been objects of anxious research with M. Niebuhr during his visit to Arabia Petræa, a country which abounds, by his description, with prickly shrubs that are likely to produce such a substance; yet little success attended his labours, for he complains that his inquiries at Suez were answered in the most provoking manner by the fabulous tales of a monk, to which he prudently refused a place in his travels from their bearing too much the air of a monastic legend. At Bussora he seems to have been better pleased as to the result of his inquiries. A specimen of the Tarand jubin manna was given him in round grains of a yellowish hue, and said to be found in Persia on a prickly shrub; it was considered very nourishing, and when newly gathered had no purgative qualities. It was much used as a sugar in dishes of meat, and particularly in pastry.

However unwilling to place my own opinions in opposition to the authority of so intelligent and accurate a traveller as Niebuhr, still I cannot avoid thinking that he might have mistaken the dammah (the juice expressed from dates newly gathered) for an inferior kind of manna, which it resembles much by his description in colour and sweetness; and this idea is strengthened by the uses to which they are in common applied. The dammah is however not absolutely in a granulated state, but is very generally used in cookery as a substitute for sugar by the middle and lower classes of people, both at Bagdad and Bussora.

Chardin states*, that amongst the variety of botanical information which he obtained during his stay at Isfahan, he understood that the tree which bears the manna, of which there are many sorts, was also found in Persia. "The best is yellowish and large-grained, and is brought from Nichapoor, a country of Bactriana. The second is called the manna of the tamarisk, because the tree from which it distils is so named; it grows * Chardin's Travels, vol. iii. p. 295.

in abundance in the province of Susiana, and particularly about Dawrac, a place in the Persian gulph, which is the Araca* of Ptolemy. The third sort is liquid; it is gathered about Isfahan upon a sort of trees larger than the tamarisk, of which the bark is polished and shining. The leaves of this tree distil the liquid manna in summer, which they say is not a dew, but an exudation from the tree congealed upon the leaf; you see it in the morning on the earth, and it is the richest of all. They employ it in medicine, as well as the manna of the tamarisk, and it is as sweet as the other kind."

It is however to be observed that the tamarisk bears no resemblance to the gavan, the bush on which the gez is found; and although I am confident that Chardin alludes to the same substance which I saw, yet it appears extraordinary that he never speaks of the sweetmeat,

Let it however be recollected that Chardin did not visit the places of which he here speaks, but entered Persia from Georgia on the north, passed down the country through Tebriz, Sooltanea, Koom, and Kashan to Isfahan; thus moving many degrees to the westward of those countries of Khozistan, Irak, and some parts of Koordistan, which are the only ones that produce the gez, or manna, as the Armenians call it. The route which I took was also part of that which Chardin had travelled, but I was pursuing one in almost a contrary direction when I saw the ges; being at that time on the road through Gilpaegan and Khorumabad to Kermanshah, - which latter place is situated on the borders of Koordistan, lying in the 34th degree of north latitude, within which parallel the gez also abounds on the hills of Koordistan. I was, however, unable to ascertain its precise appearance and consistency in its native state, when seen in this neighbourhood. But the similarity of climate and mountainous aspect of country in the vicinity of Moosh† and Ahmudea producing the same shrubs, obviously led me to conjecture it must be the produce of an insect there also, as well as when found on the gavan in Persia.

* According to Dr. Vincent (in his Voyage of Nearchus, p. 362), the Araca of Ptolemy is situated near Bushire; he believes it to be the same island which Niebuhr calls Laredge (S.S.) The modern Larrock.

+ The ancient Maxoene.

All my endeavours to gain information relative to the gez were for some time fruitless, being commonly answered with fables and ridiculous stories too improbable to deserve credit, and too idle to be here related; but fortunately on my return from Hummadan I struck out to the right from the common road, and halting one day at the town of Khonsar, a place beautifully romantic from the wildness and luxuriance of its scenery, I heard from the inhabitants that its neighbourhood was celebrated for its gez, and that it was the production of an animal like a louse. This news excited no slight sensation of pleasure, as it held out a prospect of the accomplishment of my anxious wishes. That so little should be known of so singular a substance, even in the very vicinity of the place of its production, is, amongst many other instances, a proof of the ignorance and indifference of the Persians regarding the general knowledge and geography of their own country; for at Isfahan, which is only one hundred miles distant from Khonsar, and intimately connected with it by the constant intercourse of caravans of merchants, as well as innumerable pilgrims annually going to Nedgef, I was repeatedly told the most palpable absurdities of the gez being a dew that fell from heaven in autumn*. Had the Armenians accounted for it in this way in allusion to the manna received by the Israelites in the wilderness, it would have excited no astonishment, as they call it manna.

But to return :-Before daylight we marched from Khonsar, and, on clearing the boundaries of the town, deviated from the main road as we had been directed, and began rambling amongst the bushes on the face of the mountain on our right, diligently looking for the gez. The directions we had received were to examine the bushes closely, as the object of our search was not easily visible at any distance; too much confidence, however, in the knowledge of our servants and guide, who with true Per

* "The Usbek merchants trade chiefly in the higher Tartary, Muscovy, and the Indies. They carry thither silk and a great deal of manna, which they call sherkest, which signifies the milk of a tree, because this drug is white. 'Tis a dew that falls on the trees, and dropping from their branches, they reduce it into small grains, which the people put into glasses for sale." History of Genghiscan the Great, by P. de la Croix sen. p. 204.