"The best ambergris," says Mas'udi, "is found on the islands and coasts of
the Sea of Zinj (Eastern Africa); it is round, of a pale blue, and
sometimes as big as an ostrich egg.... These are morsels which have been
swallowed by the fish called Awal. When the sea is much agitated it
casts up fragments of amber almost like lumps of rock, and the fish
swallowing these is choked thereby, and floats on the surface. The men of
Zinj, or wherever it be, then come in their canoes, and fall on the
creature with harpoons and cables, draw it ashore, cut it up, and extract
the ambergris" (I. 134).
Kazwini speaks of whales as often imprisoned by the ebb tide in the
channels about Basra. The people harpooned them, and got much oil out of
the brain, which they used for lamps, and smearing their ships. This also
is clearly the sperm whale. (Ethe, p. 268.)
After having been long doubted, scientific opinion seems to have come back
to the opinion that ambergris is an excretion from the whale. "Ambergris
is a morbid secretion in the intestines of the cachalot, deriving its
origin either from the stomach or biliary ducts, and allied in its nature
to gall-stones, ... whilst the masses found floating on the sea are those
that have been voided by the whale, or liberated from the dead animal by
the process of putrefaction." (Bennett, Whaling Voyage Round the Globe,
1840, II. 326.)
["The Pen ts'ao, ch. xliii. fol. 5, mentions ambergris under the name
lung sien hiang (dragon's saliva perfume), and describes it as a
sweet-scented product, which is obtained from the south-western sea. It is
greasy, and at first yellowish white; when dry, it forms pieces of a
yellowish black colour. In spring whole herds of dragons swim in that sea,
and vomit it out. Others say that it is found in the belly of a large fish.
This description also doubtless points to ambergris, which in reality is a
pathological secretion of the intestines of the spermaceti whale (Physeter
macrocephalus), a large cetaceous animal. The best ambergris is collected
on the Arabian coast. In the Ming shi (ch. cccxxvi.) lung sien hiang is
mentioned as a product of Bu-la-wa (Brava on the east coast of Africa),
and an-ba-rh (evidently also ambergris) amongst the products of
Dsu-fa-rh (Dsahfar, on the south coast of Arabia)." (Bretschneider,
Med. Res. I. p. 152, note.) - H.C.]
NOTE 2. - Scotra probably represented the usual pronunciation of the name
SOCOTRA, which has been hypothetically traced to a Sanskrit original,
Dvipa-Sukhadhara, "the Island Abode of Bliss," from which (contracted
Diuskadra) the Greeks made "the island of Dioscorides."
So much painful interest attaches to the history of a people once
Christian, but now degenerated almost to savagery, that some detail maybe
permitted on this subject.
