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II>2-4 MTEEn. — dkagon's-blood. 197
from near Cape Risut, and also a little further west at a place called Chiseri». «To the south of
Mount Haghier (in Sokotra) one comes across valleys entirely full of frankincense-trees. The best
quality is called leban Idkt, and the second quality Ulan resimln Theo. Bent, Southern Arabia,
234, 252, 380. Our author knew of the African frankincense (supra, p. 130) as well as of the Arabian.
3) Also called ju-fou-hiang (^ |^ ^) or anipple incenses by mediaeval Chinese
writers. Bretschn eider, Botanicon Sinicum, III, 460.
3.
MYRRH ii^ ^).
Mo-yau comes from the country of Ma-lo-mo (0 R|| j^) of the Ta-shi.
10 The tree resembles in height and size the pine-tree (7^) of China; its bark is
one or two inches thick. At the time of gathering the incense they first dig
a hole in the ground at the foot of the tree, and then split open the bark
with a hatchet, upon which the juice runs down into the hole during fully
ten days, when it is removed.
15 Note,
The Chinese name for myrrh, meaning «mo medicine or drug» is a transcription of the
Arabic name mwrr — through the Cantonese mu*. See BretschneiderJ Ancient Chinese and
Arabs, 20, note 4; and Hirth, J. C. B. R. A. S., XXI, 220. Pon-ts'au, 34,49, quotes no authorities
on this subject earlier than the Sung.
20 Ma-Io-mo is clearly an error for Ma-lo-pa or Merbat, the Hadramaut coast of Arabia.
This error has been noticed in a previous passage, supra, p. 121, n. 11. Our author has stated in his
description of the Berbera coast (Pi-p'a-lo) that that country produced much myrrh (supra, p. 128).
At the present time the best myrrh comes from the Somali country near Harar. The myrrh which
is got from the hills about Shugra and Sureea to the east of Aden (which must have been included
25 in Merbat as Chinese understood it) is of an inferior quality. See Encyclopaedia Britannica
(9* edit.) XVII, 121. Theo. Bent, Southern Arabia, 254, says myrrh in large quantities grows
in the Gara mountains of the Hadramaut. Hanbury, Science Papers, 378—380, says myrrh
comes from the Ghizan district on the east coast of the Bed Sea, from the coast of Southern
Arabia, east of Aden, from the Somali country, south and west of Cape Gardafui, and from the
30 country between Tajura and Shoa. See also Linschoten, op. cit., II, 99.
The mo mentioned in the Yu-yang-tsa-tsu (18,io^) as being called a-tz'i ([JfH" -^^ the
last Character being also read so, tso and tsoJc) in Fu-lin, is the myrtle, the Aramean name of
which is asa, the original of a-tz"i. Hirth, J. A. 0. S., XXX, 21.
35 DRAGON'S-BLOOD (j^ ^).
4.
Hiie-Jcie comes also from the Ta-shi countries. This tree is somewhat like
the myrrh-tree, except that its leaves are rather different in size from those
of the latter; the manner of gathering is also the same. There is a variety of