Note 264 — Chapter II · KUSCOUSSOO.

Humboldt has decided that for maize (Zea maize) the old continent is indebted to the new. If so, it would carry its own name, or receive a descriptive one. Tobacco we can trace as tobacco, or as “smoke” καχνὸς (Tutun). Potatoes by that name, or as “root apples:” not so maize. The Greeks call it Arabic Ἀραποσιτι. The Turks, Egyptian (Missir Bogda). On the Black Sea, it is Cucuruzzi. The Arabs of Egypt call it Doura Shamee, or Grain of Damascus. The Bulgarians call it Callamboki. Throughout the Indian archipelago it is known as Sagung. In one of the Egyptian tombs there is a figure holding a head of Indian corn; but this a learned writer will not admit, “because that grain was introduced into Europe from Virginia.” Is it the ksob of Negroland? the Droueu and Beshna of various parts of north Africa?—See Egyptian Antiquities, Lib. Ent. Knowledge, vol. ii. p. 30; Wilkinson, vol. i. p. 397; Crawford’s Indian Archipelago, vol. i. p. 366; Bradford’s American Antiquities, p. 418; Carette’s Algeria, vol. ii.