There is a tract of mountains, about fifty miles north of the Cape of Good Hope, which is wholly covered with aloes. Among the Mahometans, and particularly in Egypt, the aloe is a kind of symbolic plant: it is dedicated to the offices of religion; and pilgrims, on their return from Mecca, suspend it over their doors, as a declaration that they have performed that holy journey. 107. _SOCOTRINE ALOES are the dried juice of a large species of aloe_ (Aloe perfoliata, Fig. 38) _which grows in great abundance in the island of Socotra, near the mouth of the Red Sea._ _The leaves are sword-shaped, fleshy, smooth, full of juice, of bluish-green colour; and beset at the edges with strong spines. The flower-stems rise to the height of three or four feet, are smooth, erect, and have at the top a spike of flowers of purple or reddish colour, the stamens of which have oblong orange-coloured anthers._ The true Socotrine aloes are imported into this country wrapped in skins; and when pure have a bright surface, and are in some degree pellucid. In the lump they have a yellowish red colour, with a purplish cast; and, when reduced to powder, are of a golden yellow. Their taste is bitter and disagreeable, but somewhat aromatic; and their smell is not unpleasant. _Barbadoes aloes_, _common aloes_, or _hepatic aloes_, are the dried juice of a variety of the Socotrine aloes, which is cultivated in Barbadoes and Jamaica. Of this we import three kinds: one in gourd shells; an inferior kind, in pots; and another, still worse, in casks. In the cultivation of aloes it is requisite that the plants should grow for two or three years before the juice is procured from them. The operation of collecting the juice is performed in different ways. Dr. Browne tells us that labourers go into the field with knives and tubs; and that cutting off the largest and most succulent leaves close to the stalk, they immediately put them into the tubs in an upright position, that the liquor may drain from the wounds. When this is nearly all discharged, they take the leaves out singly, and clear them of any juice that may adhere to them; and the liquor is then put into shallow flat-bottomed vessels, and dried gradually in the sun, until it acquires a proper thickness to be poured out or ladled into the gourd shells which are to contain it. What is thus obtained is called _Socotrine aloes_, and is the clearest and most valuable of any. An additional quantity of juice is obtained by pressing the leaves.