NOTE 2. - Frankincense presents a remarkable example of the obscurity which
so often attends the history of familiar drugs; though in this case the
darkness has been, like that of which Marco spoke in his account of the
Caraonas (vol. i. p. 98), much of man's making.
This coast of Hadhramaut is the true and ancient [Greek: chora
libanophoros] or [Greek: libanotophoros], indicated or described under
those names by Theophrastus, Ptolemy, Pliny, Pseudo-Arrian, and other
classical writers; i.e. the country producing the fragrant gum-resin called
by the Hebrews Lebonah, by the Brahmans apparently Kundu and Kunduru,
by the Arabs Luban and Kundur, by the Greeks Libanos, by the Romans
Thus, in mediaeval Latin Olibanum, and in English Frankincense, i.e.
I apprehend, "Genuine incense," or "Incense Proper."[1] It is still
produced in this region and exported from it: but the larger part of that
which enters the markets of the world is exported from the roadsteads of
the opposite Sumali coast. In ancient times also an important quantity was
exported from the latter coast, immediately west of Cape Gardafui
(Aromatum Prom.), and in the Periplus this frankincense is distinguished
by the title Peratic, "from over the water."
The Marasid-al-Ittila', a Geog. Dictionary of the end of the 14th
century, in a passage of which we have quoted the commencement in the
preceding note, proceeds as follows: "The other Dhafar, which still
subsists, is on the shore of the Indian Sea, distant 5 parasangs from
Merbath in the province of Shehr.
