Now-a-days, a sort of oil, produced from the myrobalsamum and prepared at Jerusalem, is sold to superstitious pilgrims for genuine balsam or extract of opobalsamum, although it does not possess its qualities. Deception was also practised in Schiltberger’s time, but he has shewn himself not to have been so great a simpleton as the many who are being continually duped. That the sale of balsam was a great source of revenue to the sultan (the patriarch of Armenia paid a high price for it, see page 92), is confirmed by others. Makrizi considered it a most useful commodity. Christian sovereigns vied with each other in securing a supply, and it was greatly esteemed by Christians in general, because baptism was not considered efficacious unless oil of balsam was dropped into the water prepared for the purpose.—BRUUN. (23A.) A plant called the balsam, from which oil was extracted, and not to be found in any other part of the world, grew in the vicinity of Fostat the chief city of Egypt, situated on the river Nile to the north. So wrote Ibn Haukal in the 10th century. It was near Fostat that Cairo was founded in 968. Jacques de Vitry, a bishop in Palestine in the 13th century (afterwards bishop of Tusculum, the modern Frascati) alludes to the produce of balsam in Egypt, which previously was to be obtained in the Holy Land only (_Gesta Dei per Francos_, etc., Hanoviæ, MDCXI, _Bongars edition_). According to De Lannoy, it grew by the shore near the city of Cairo, and De Maillet, Consul for France at that city in the early part of the last century, specially describes the plant, which, however, he could not have seen, as it had disappeared two hundred years before his time. The last of the plants that grew in the garden of Matarea, says this author, were not more than two or three cubits in height, the stem being about one inch in thickness; the leaves of a beautiful green, on slender branches, resembled those of the rue. The stem had a double bark, the outer of a reddish colour, the inner, the thinnest, being perfectly green. The smell of the two barks was not unlike that of the turpentine tree, but when bruised between the fingers emitted an odour similar to that of cardamom. Like the vine, this plant was primed annually, and De Maillet supposes that then was extracted the valuable balsam so greatly esteemed by all Christians, especially those of the Coptic church, the efficacy of baptism without its application being generally doubted (_Descr. de l’Egypte_, edited by the Abbé Le Mascrier, à la Haye, 1740). De Maillet distinguishes the balsam of Cairo from that of Mecca, which Ali Bey (_Travels_, etc.) informs us was not made there, but, on the contrary, was very scarce, as it could only be obtained when brought by the Bedouins. Ali Bey was told that it came from Medina. According to some authors, the last of the balsam plants growing in Egypt were destroyed in 1615 by an inundation of the Nile.—ED. CHAPTER XLI.