At this time the balsam is supposed, by being sold in Judea, and not accessible by reason of the commotions in Arabia, to have become almost forgotten in that last part, where the trade from Abyssinia, its native country, was likewise interrupted by this innovation of religion, and by Mahomet’s profanation of the Caaba, or temple of the sun, the ancient resort of the Sabean merchants carrying on the trade of India. This interval the impostor thought proper for a pretended miracle; he said, that, from the blood of the Beni Koreish slain, there had sprung up this grove of trees, from the juice of which all the true believers on his side received a cure for their wounds, however fatal they appeared, nay, some of them were revived from even death itself. Since that time it has maintained its reputation equal to that which it had in antiquity. Prosper Alpinus says, that one Messoner a eunuch, governor of Cairo in the year 1519, caused bring from Arabia forty plants, which he placed in the garden of Mattareah, where he superintended them. Every day he went to that garden to pay his devotions to the Virgin Mary. It was many times renewed, and has as often perished since. Bellonius says, that in his time there were ten plants at Mattareah, and he is of opinion, that in all ages they grew well in Arabia, which is not true, for those at Beder are constantly supplied with new plants so soon as the old ones decay. There was none existing at Mattareah the two several times I visited Cairo, but there were some of the Christians still living there that remembered one plant in that garden. There were three productions from this tree very much esteemed among the ancients. The first was called Opobalsamum, or, Juice of the Balsam, which was the finest kind, composed of that greenish liquor found in the kernel of the fruit: The next was Carpo-balsamum, made by the expression of the fruit when in maturity. The third was Xylo-balsamum, the worst of all, it was an expression or decoction of the small new twigs of a reddish colour. These twigs are still gathered in little faggots and sent to Venice, where I am told they are an ingredient in the Theriac, or of some sort of compound drug made in the laboratories there: But the principal quantity of balsam in all times was produced by incision, as it is at this day. Concerning this, too, many fables have been invented and propagated.