The Classical Accounts of India c13.47

c13.47

29. As you proceed from Cana the land retires more and more and there succeeds another very deep and far-stretching gulf, Sachalites by name, and also the frankincense country, which is mountainous and difficult of access, having a dense air loaded with vapours and the frankincense exhaled from the trees. These trees, which are not of any great size or height, yield their incense in the form of a concretion on the bark, just as several of our trees in Egypt exude gum. The incense is collected by the hand of the king's slaves, and malefactors condemned to this service as a punishment. The country is unhealthy in the extreme:—pestilential even to those who sail along the coast, and mortal to the poor wretches who gather the incense, who also suffer from lack of food, which readily cuts them off.