Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/94

 distinguish them. Cassia bark (C. cassia, or Cassia lignea) was historically the first to be known, and the best qualities came from China, where it is recorded first about 2700 B. C. The Malabar bark was less valuable. Persian records invariably refer to cinnamon as Dar Chini, "Chinese bark;" and between the 3d and 6th centuries A. D. there was an active sea-trade in this article, in Chinese ships, from China to Persia.

Marco Polo describes cinnamon as growing in Malabar, Ceylon, and Tibet. The British East India Company's records show that it came usually from China; and Millburn (Or. Comm. 1813, II, 500) describes both bark and buds, and warns traders against the "coarse, dark and badly packed" product of Malabar.

Since the later years of the 18th century the variety C. zeylanicum has been extensively cultivated in Ceylon; but the best quality is still shipped from Canton, being from C. Cassia, native throughout Assam, Burma, and Southern China. It seems altogether probable that the true cinnamon of the ancient Egyptian and Hebrew records, of Herodotus and Pliny, reached the Mediterranean nations from no nearer place than Burma, and perhaps through the Straits of Malacca from China itself. Many, indeed, must have been the hands through which it passed on its long journey to Rome.

The malabathrum of the Romans, which they bought in India while still unable to obtain cinnamon there, was the leaves of three varieties: that of the Malabar mountains from C. zeylanicum, and that of the Himalayas from C. tamala, with a little from C. iners.

These trees are all of fairly large growth, evergreen, rising to about 6000 feet altitude. The tree flowers in January, the fruit ripens in April, and the bark is full of sap in May and June, when it is stripped off and forms the best grade of cinnamon. The strippings of later months are not so delicate and are less valued.

See Watt, op. cit., pp.310–313; Lassen, op. cit., I, 279–285, II, 555–561; Vincent, II, 130, 701–706; Flückiger and Hanbury, Pharmacographia, 519–527; Marco Polo, Yule ed., II, 49, 56, 315, 389; and for malabathrum or folium indicum, see Garcia de Orta, Coll., XXIII; also comment by Ball in Roy. Ir. Acad., 3d ser., I, 409; also Linschoten, Voy. E. Ind. (Ed. Hakl. Soc.), II, 131.

11. Little Nile River.—The text is Neilopotamion, perhaps a reflection of Egyptian Greek settlement. Another reading is Neiloptolemaion, which might also suggest a connection with one of the Ptolemies. But in Egyptian records there is no mention of a settlement or conquest so far east.

Müller identifies the river with the Tokwina (11° 30′N., 49°