The Moors possessed soap made to their hands, measured by mountains, and cheaper than manure. This substance is decomposed flints, or soap-stone: it is called Gazule, or Razule; it polishes the skin, makes it soft, and gives it lustre. It abounds on the river Seboo, and may, when exported, have got that name abroad. It is not fit for washing clothes, for which purpose they have a primitive soft soap like that of the ancient Celts--this is what they call Saboun. The first mention made of it is amongst the Gauls. The Romans had so little acquaintance with it in Pliny’s time, that he thought it was used for the purpose of turning the hair red. It is no trifling honour to the Gaulish race, looked upon as barbarous, that the Romans should have taken from them beds and mattresses, jewellery, and soap. “Soap,” says Pliny, “is an invention of the Gauls to colour the head yellow: it is made of tallow and ashes. The best which they make is of beech wood ashes and goat’s suet, and it is made in two ways, either thick and hard, or liquid and soft; but the one, as well as the other, is very much used in Germany; and a great deal more indeed by men than women.”[238] Great ingenuity was exerted in discovering and applying various kinds of earths and solvents to clean the body and the clothes, as may be followed at length in Pliny; but yet the best mixture at which they seem to have arrived, is that which was used in Greece, of which the preparation is described by Aristophanes in the Frogs--a composition[239] of ashes, nitre and crinoline earth. The Romans, like the French at present, _lessieved_ their dirty linen.[240] FOOTNOTES: [236] Another vessel was also off the port twice, and twice driven back to Gibraltar. [237] Beckman derives it from an old German word _sepe_. The German word is at present _seife_, evidently the same as the French _suif_, and the English _suet_. [238] Nat. Hist. b. 28.