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that when they will gather the pepper, they make fire, to burn about to make the serpents and the cockodrills to flee. But save their grace of all that say so. For if they burnt about the trees that bear, the pepper should be burnt, and it would dry up all the virtue, as of any other thing; and then they did themselves much harm, and they should never quench the fire. But thus they do: they anoint their hands and their feet with a juice made of snails and of other things made therefor, of the which the serpents and the venomous beasts hate and dread the savour; and that maketh them flee before them, because of the smell, and then they gather it surely enough.”
This belief in the guarding of treasure, or of wealth-producing trees, or the habitation thereof, by spirits in the form of serpents, has already been noted as attaching to frankincense (§ 29), and will appear likewise with the diamond (§ 56). The supposed necessity of appeasing or else expelling the serpents by the use of other sub- stances was held strongly in Rome itself. Pliny ascribes this power to galbanum, “a kind of giant fennel” (XII, 56). ‘‘If ignited in a pure state it has the property of driving away serpents by its smoke.” And again (XXIV, 13), “the very touch of it, mingled with oil and spondylium, is sufficient to kill a serpent.” So also Virgil ( Georgies ,
III, 415):
“Galbaneoque agitare graves nidore chelydros. ”
The frankincense gatherers depended on burning storax; see under § 29, pp. 131-2.
56. Malabathrum. — Heeren, Vincent and McCrindle trans- late this “betel,” and thereby accuse the Periplus of a blunder in §§ 63 and 65, where the substance is described as coming from the Himalaya mountains. The translation rests on an assumption that the petros of the text in § 65 is the same as the Portuguese betre or betle meaning betel.
Watt (p. 891). says this latter is rather derived from a Malay word vettila or vern-ila, meaning “leaf, ” and it is very doubtful if the betel of modern times entered into international commerce in the Roman period.
The word petros is rather from the Sanscrit patra, “leaf,” of the tamala tree which, as explained under §§ 10, 13 and 14, is a variety of cinnamon or laurel. The leaf exported from Southern India was also from Cinnamomum iners, and possibly from the Cinna- momum ■zeylanicum which in later times was cultivated in Ceylon and is one of the sources of our cinnamon. (See Tavernier, Travels , II, xii). The leaf coming from the Himalaya mountains was prin- cipally from the Cinnamomum tamala , which was native there. Pliny
