Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/153

 of the spirit of the lake, the waters of which might not be polluted by the foot of man; the propitiation of the spirit by the "chief magician" at the time of gathering the frankincense, and the celebration of the harvest by a "tribal dance" probably reminiscent of bacchanalian rites; after which the product is sent to Bombay for distribution, that the rest of the world, in the words of Pausanias (IX, 30) may "worship God with other people's incense."

The name Moscha is another of those place-names that are repeated along the coast from east to west, and survives in the modern Muscat, with which Müller mistakenly identifies this port. According to Forster (op. cit., II, 174–5) this is an Arabic word meaning "inflated skin," from the Genaba "Fish-Eaters" or "floaters on skins." The word continues in the Greek moschos, calf. Glaser supposes the word to be the same as Mocha, and to signify a "commercial harbor," and to the author of the Periplus, and to Ptolemy, it is probable that Moscha limên meant "Incense Harbor;" moschos meaning also "musk," or in later Greek any perfume, even to that of strawberries; as indeed the same idea was uppermost with Camões (Lusiad, X, 201) and with Milton:—

(See the works already cited of Bent, Wellsted, Glaser, Hommel, Zwemer, and Hogarth; Lenormant and Chevalier, Manual of Ancient History of the East, VII, 1–2; also J.B. Haines, in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society for 1839 and 1845; H.J. Carter, in Transactions of the Bombay Asiatic Society, for 1845, 1847, and 1851; Makrizi, De Valle Hadramaut, Bonn, 1866; Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, III, 135–146.)

32. The ship could not clear.—Compare the trading of the Egyptian expeditions with the "chiefs of the land of Punt" over these "heaps of incense," and again Marco Polo's description (III, xxxvii): "A great deal of white incense grows in this country, and brings in a great revenue to the Prince; for no one dares sell it to any one else; and whilst he takes it from the people at 10 livres of gold for the