Note 1215 — WRITING-PENS.
William Johnston translation
Lib. i. cap. 114. Rauwolf says in his Travels, vol. i. p. 93, “In the shops were to be sold small reeds, hollow within and smooth without, and of a brownish-red colour, which are used by the Turks, Moors, and other Eastern people, for writing.” It appears that Rauwolf did not see these reeds growing, but prepared and freed from the pith. We are told by Winkelmann, in his second Letter on the Antiquities of Herculaneum, p. 46, that for want of quills he often cut into writing-pens those reeds which grow in the neighbourhood of Naples.