Note (23) — 40.—Of Jherusalem and of the Holy Sepulchre.

(23.) “and this they do that they may make more profit.”—Many travellers in Egypt, whether previous to, during, or since the Crusades, have noticed that balsam was to be obtained only from the Matarea garden near Cairo. To his translation of Abd-Allatif’s description of Egypt, Silvester de Sacy adds several passages on the cultivation of balsam in that country, being extracts from the reports of European and Eastern writers; but he omits Arnold of Lubeck and De Lannoy. Whilst at Cairo, the latter was presented by the patriarch of India with a “fyole de fin balme de la vigne, où il croist, dont il est en partie seigneur”; and he repeats the tradition related by Brocardus (Terræ Sanctæ Descr., 311), that the vine of the balsam had been brought to Babylon, meaning Cairo, by Cleopatra.