Then he begins straightway to tell us of various herbs and gums brought from the New World, and of what the herbalists had been able to learn of their medicinal virtues. He writes of "Copall" and "Anime" (varieties of rosin), and tells us that the Spaniards first learnt of these from the Indian priests, who "went out to receive them [the Spaniards] with little firepottes, burnyng in them this Copall, and giuing to them the smoke of it at their noses." "Tacamahaca" (the Indian name for a rosin) is "taken out by incision of a tree beyng as greate as a Willowe Tree, and is of a verie sweete smell; he doeth bryng forth a redde fruite, as the seede of Pionia." The Indians used it for swellings in any part of the body and also for toothache. "Caranna," another gum brought from Nombre de Dios, is discovered to be of sovereign virtue for gout--"it taketh it awaie with muche easines." The balsam of the New World, "that licour most excellent whiche for his Excellencie and meruerlous effectes is called Balsamo, an imitation of the true Balsamo that was in the lande of Egipt," is "made of a tree greater than a Powndgarned Tree, it carrieth leaues like to Nettles: the Indians doe call it Xilo and we do call the same Balsamo." There follows an account of the way in which the Red Indians made the balsam, either by cutting incisions in the tree and letting the "clammish licour, of colour white but most excellent and very perfite," run out, or by cutting up boughs and branches of the tree into very small pieces, boiling them in cauldrons and then skimming off the oil. "It is not convenient, nor it ought to be kept in any other vessel then in silver (glasse or Tinne or any other thing glassed, it doth penetrate and doth passe through it), the use thereof is onely in thinges of Medecine and it hath been used of long tyme ... the Spaniards had knowledge of it because they did heale therwith the woundes that they did receive of the Indians: beyng advised of the vertue thereof by the same Indians, and they did see the saide Indians heale and cure themselves therewith." We learn that when this precious new balsam was first brought to Spain it sold for ten ducats an ounce, and in Italy for a hundred ducats an ounce. The use of another wound herb, "for shottes of arrows," of which unfortunately he does not give even the Indian name, was taught to a certain "Jhon Infante" by his native servant. The book gives us many pleasant glimpses of the kindly courtesy of the Red Indians to their foes, and though, according to some authorities, they would never tell the secrets of the herbs they used as medicines, we have Monardes's detailed accounts of how they showed the Spaniards the uses of them. Guiacum, for instance, was brought to the notice of a Spaniard in San Domingo by an Indian doctor.